We're going to hear more as the months pass about plans to repair and improve Yocom (formerly East) Park, I believe --- and if the maintenance of existing and the planting of new trees is part of the program, Elizabeth Lovey (Teas) Hickman would be gratified.
Elizabeth rests now with her spouse, attorney Stephen D. Hickman, and children just inside the main gates of the Chariton Cemetery.
Born during 1840 in Mount Pleasant and a resident of Chariton since the late 1860s, Elizabeth was one of many influential women who worked very hard to improve her city (and the status of her sisters) over the course of the 60 years she lived here.
She recalled those early years during a program at what then was called East Park on May 16, 1927, held by members of the Chariton Woman's Club, prime mover in development of the park. The occasion was the dedication of 16 trees planted as memorials although we're not sure to whom since a list has not survived. In all the Woman's Club contributed about $1,400 (a not inconsiderable amount in the 1920s), countless hours of labor and plants from their gardens to the park effort.
Elizabeth was 86 and still going strong when she delivered the following address, recalling her own club work that stretched back to 1886 when the Equal Suffrage Society was organized and continued in the Woman's Club, organized during 1921:
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Madam President and ladies of the Woman's Club: I am deeply sensible of the honor conferred by the committee in giving me a place on the program this afternoon. I feel that it is not a personal honor but as a tribute to the pioneer club women who gave their very best to make possible what we are accomplishing today.
Forty-six years is a long time if we count time by heart throbs, as one has said. At that time the Equal Suffrage Club was organized, with a constitution and bylaws that asked for equal rights with men before the law. The U.S. Supreme Court had decided we were not citizens, leaving us in a sort of maverick position; worse off than the man without a country. It was a long, disheartening struggle. But we won, and with achievement time turned backward and the years seemed but as a tale that is told.
Then in the summer of 1892 was organized the Village Improvement Society, founded by Miss Margaret McCormick. In 1895, it was reorganized and renamed the Chariton Improvement Society. Its object was set forth in the new name. We continued with the fundamentals begun by the first organization, to restrain cows and hogs from running at large in the towns, a condition this generation can hardly believe possible. To prevent the streets and alleys from being made dumping grounds for rubbish, and to have the weeds cut on the parking along the sidewalks, and on vacant lots. To have the streets around the public square swept and sprinkled, and the square kept clean, and to provide a rest room for women coming to town to do shopping, or as we spoke of it then, "to trade.''
How we worked would be too long a story, but suffice to say the ancient sources of our efforts are still in vogue, though I am glad to say not used by the Woman's Clubs so often, such as refreshment stands and public suppers. We met with much encouragement and also opposition. Mrs. O'Grady complained because her cow had to be herded, but Mrs. O'Brien rejoiced because the beast couldn't break into her garden and eat up her cabbage and chew the wash on her clothesline.
Some said the streets didn't belong to them, so let the town look after them. Some claimed the alleys, and the right to use them as they pleased, and considered it a hardship to have to cut the weeds outside their own fences.
Sitting on the porch one evening, at peace with the world and myself, two Odd Fellows returning home from lodge stopped in front of one of our large trees and made some not very complimentary remarks. As soon as they left I went out and looking up in this beautiful tree, resolved it should never be cut down. But as I glanced down, lo and behold, there was a burdock plant full grown and I realized the conversation was meant for me.
It was very gradually that we extended our efforts to sweeping and cleaning the streets. We bought a street sweeper. I think we paid about $300 for it. It was not a success as a sweeper; it proved a white elephant. I never see those cuts of the white elephant in the Des Moines Register without thinking of our sweeper. I believe the city council has it in charge now. Mrs. Lockwood could take Manuel Spears (note: Manuel was a handyman who worked mostly on the square) in hand and do a better job for $1 than we could do with our $300 sweeper, and she did it. Peace to her ashes. Her works do follow her.
An old copy of the minutes show that when the Fourth of July was celebrated on Saturday by a very large crowd on the public square, when the crowd began to disperse at 11:30 p.m., Mrs. Lockwood came on the scene with her force taken from the club, and by 2 a.m. had removed fourteen barrels of rubbish, mostly watermelon rinds (a carload from the south had been brought up for the occasion), and Sunday morning found everything spik-span.
But our crowning effort was the founding of the rest room. The county supervisors reluctantly allowed us the southwest room in the southwest corner upstairs of the new courthouse. After rearranging the basement we were given the northeast room down there. Hardly one thing has contributed more to the comfort and convenience of the women and little children of the county than this adjunct. We agreed to operate the room at our own expense and for a time different members took turns staying there and caring for it. To Miss Emily McCormick of blessed memory and Mrs. Effie Douglass, who washed and ironed all the furnishings for the cribs and the curtains for the windows for many months, I am glad to give this late mead of praise.
I hope wherever her intelligence exists, Emily knows of this meeting and knows that we are carrying on. Miss Emily was a real mother, though a childless one, whom every child loved. A woman assured of this left her babe and its bottles of milk with Miss Emily and went out free to shop and visit. The afternoon waned and the sun was going down, but she had not returned. Help was called, but no one knew the mother, no one had seen her. It looked as though the Chariton Improvement Society had acquired the beginning of a family. But we had not, for a frantic mother who had forgotten she had brought the baby to town, rushed in and claimed the baby just as the sun went down.
It is a far call from those days to the present. There is a very great difference in public sentiment. For instance, a sidewalk notice is no longer looked upon in the light of a personal calumny, and a notice to clean an alley is not received in the spirit of criminal libel. Prominently among our hopes for the future were a sufficient water supply, a public reading room or library, perfect drainage and a public park. Fairy tales, so they seemed to many. Thank goodness, this is the day when the fairy tales are all coming true. All honor to those pioneers. Against the name of nearly all is written, "Emigrant." They rest from their labors but their works do follow them.
Today what does it mean to be a club woman? It means simply as a leading financier has said, if you were to take a census in almost any community you would find that nearly every intelligent, progressive woman belonged to a woman's club, because it is there she meets with other progressive, intelligent women who will discuss with her music, literature, travel, education, hygiene, diiet, food values, the best and most scientific way to run her home, to conserve the well being of her family and the community she lives in. There are four million such women with membership in nearly 14,000 clubs, organized to study and apply those branches, including art and civics, and best of all, child care and welfare.
No one can convince me that the world is not growing better and coming near the Kingdom of Heaven, for those women are a tremendous influence in the education of the politics of the country. Those up and coming American women, who believe in clean, efficient, economical government.
It is a very small detachment of this great army of club women who have met here this afternoon to dedicate these trees to the memory of the pioneers who blazed the trail they have made into a highway.
But why the trees for memorials? Because they are the most fitting. Because we are so closely associated with them all the days of our lives. When we come into the world, the most helpless of all young mammals, the tree has provided for our repose in a cradle made from its own body. The roof for our shelter from storms and the four walls of our home. For the common people (Lincoln said God must love them for he made so many of them) wood must, and long will be the building material for America. Because it is the most sanitary, the most economical and the nearest within reach of all. It heats the home in frigid wintry weather, and casts a grateful shade to shield it from the torrid heat of summer; provides the furniture for our homes, the beds upon which we recline, the chairs upon which we sit, the tables from which we eat and much of the most appetizing food we eat. At every turn in life we meet with gifts from the trees, suited to our necessities and comforts, and at the last, "when the lessons and tasks are all ended and we go the way of all the earth," the tree provides the receptacle for our mortal remains, and leaving us not, covers us over, enfolding us with a mother love, remains to moulder with us back to the dust from whence we came, all the way from cradle to the grave. "Earth to Earth and Dust to Dust."
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As a stimulus to our increasing interest in the new City Park many visitors were in attendance at the impressive services held there Monday afternoon and enjoyed the following program:
"America," Girls Glee Club, director, Miss Lyon.
Jerry Paton, scoutmaster, gave a splendid talk on birds, their uses and abuses and wonderful assets.
The Boy Scouts presented a beautiful bird house, which was accepted in a most gracious manner by Mrs. Robt. Adams, president of the Woman's Club.
The noted Girls' Glee Club, which with their efficient leader, Miss Lyon, has recently won state honors, then sang "Trees."
Mrs. E.L. Hickman's reminiscenses on pioneer days.
Mrs. John R. Bonnett, chairman of the committee, and helpers, are to be congratulated on the splendid program. Mrs. C.C. Calbreath gave a brief dismissal after which the guests enjoyed a progressive garden party.
The beautiful gardens belonging to Mesdames Fred Risser, S.C. Hickman, I.L. Guernsey, Dayton Piper, Peter West, O.J. Israel, Claude Gates, Lloyd Penick, J.S. Oppenheimer and the attractive pool at the Frank Schwartz residence were visited.
There were seventeen memorial trees donated to the park. The fountain donated by Mrs. C.J. Stewart made a pretty setting as well as the other shrubbery which had previously been arranged.
Mrs. J.R. Bonnett was chairman of the committee in charge of the garden party and the other committee members were Mesdames Claude Gates, S.C. Hickman, H.W. Elliott and J. I. Dool.
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Elizabeth died a year later --- with her boots on. She attended a Chariton Woman's Club luncheon on April 2, 1928, and delivered what was described as a "splendid" talk on Iowa's Children's Home Society, of which she was a trustee. Then, feeling faint, she stepped outside for a breath of fresh air and expired, surrounded by friends who had accompanied her, on the back steps of the church.
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