Alex Sewielski wore a brown brimmed hat that tilted slightly to the right. Dressed in a navy blue, gold buttoned coat, dingy blue baggy trousers and brown knee boots, Sewielski was dressed as a Lt. Henry Goodrich Meacham, a Civil War Union officer who was buried in the Town of Maine Cemetery in 1863 at age 22.
A Maine South alum, Sewielski is close to the same age as Lt. Meacham when he died. Sewielski portrayed one of five new spirits featured at the annual “Spirits of Old Park Ridge” event at the Town of Maine Cemetery.
Including many students from the Maine South drama department, and a few adults, there were 21 total spirits featured at the one-day event this year. Some of the other new spirits this year included businessman and alderman Fred Gillick Sr. and his wife Marian; German farmers Christian and Sophia Ehrhardt; and Park Ridge restaurateur, Frank Eng,
Each tour took about 40 minutes, jaunting across the peaceful decorated cemetery landscape. In handfuls, visitors to the “Spirits of Old Park Ridge” were led on foot by a historical society volunteer. The spirits were dressed in period clothing as they happily awaited the opportunity to demonstrate a few facts about their characters’ history and contributions to the town.
“There are a lot of interesting things that you can come here and find … interesting people you didn’t really know lived in Park Ridge. It’s a lot of fun,” Sewielski said. “It’s good to get to know your local town’s history and also the people that were in it,” he said.
Natalie Briggs, a senior in the Maine South drama department, portrayed Harriet Rand, the first educator in Maine Township.
“I want to be a teacher, so I connect with the teacher figure I guess,” Briggs said. “And I just think it’s really interesting because she was the first Maine Township teacher, and I’m part of Maine Township, so it is nice to see that her work evolved into this huge district that I’m a part of. That’s why I like her.”
Megan Wilcox, a Maine South senior, portrayed Ellen Haskins Whitcomb.
“My character, I think it’s really cool because they talk about where she lived and what the places are now, and I think it’s so cool to see how the town has evolved in really a short amount of time,” Wilcox said.
Eugene Beeler portrayed Park Ridge’s second mayor, William Malone.
“They attach people and stories to things they see every day,” Beeler said. As part of the tour, “the kids who go to the Pickwick Theatre find out it was a mayor who built it. That might trigger them to go look deeper. History is all about looking deeper.”
Beeler said that this is his fourth year as one of the spirits.
Marilyn Lason, 74, said “it’s amazing to see that they have preserved the history of all the founders of Park Ridge.”
“I finally found out about Mr. Eng because I still go to that restaurant,” she said.
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Lason said she learned about professional ballplayers and two Park Ridge mayors buried there.
“I think I’ll come back next year because they’ll have different spirits,” she said. “I’ll learn even more.”
Park Ridge Historical society volunteer Joan Mattingly said visitors can learn a lot about Park Ridge.
“The roads that we drive on, Rand Road, Hinkley Field … there are just names in our town that you learn more about how they came to be,” Mattingly said. “So, I think that’s important.”
Marc Erlandson, 65, called himself “a history type.”
“So this is pretty cool,” Erlandson said at the end of his tour. “All this re-enactment, the guys from the Civil War telling about what they experienced, all of the characters were very good.”
Pat Adlaf of the Park Ridge Historical Society said the event is about history, “and I think we learn by history, and I think that becomes part of who we are. And makes us step back and think about what these people did for us.”
She mentioned that there are historical events and heroes that are well-known around the world, but “people here have interesting stories, too.”
Taryn Galbreath is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.