Back in a more innocent time of Marion’s history, this story was printed in the Sunday Magazine edition of the St. Louis Post Dispatch on April 8, 1928, and recounts the story of a thwarted Marion love affair. Well, today they would probably call it “stalking”.

He’s the big bee man of Rascal Ridge, Edward Fosse, and he knows his honey. Wherever taste for honey is discriminating, the brand of Edward Fosse is celebrated for its rare quality and flavor. Throughout Southern Illinois, it is a staple delicacy and he knows all about bees. He’s as much at home with them as bees are with clover blossoms.

But Edward Fosse doesn’t know his women, No! He admits it. Their perverseness bewilders him. Their cruelty appalls him. Entirely without success, he tries to comprehend the feminine mind. More specifically, he tries to comprehend the mind of one woman, for he is a one-woman man if ever there was one. That one woman is Miss Ruth Kay Aikman, cashier at the Marion State and Savings Bank. Since she taught school at Rascal Ridge, Edward Fosse has been interested in no other.

To the task of winning the love of the lady bank cashier, Fosse has dedicated his entire life for the last 13 years. Forsaking all others, he has laid at her feet his undivided heart. Whether she would have it or not, he has laid it there just the same. And she, with invariable precision, has stepped on it. Rebuffed and scorned, his pride wounded, his feelings hurt, but with constancy unwavering, he has persisted all these years in the hope that she would grant him just on brief interview, just one “date”. He has suffered his letters to be sent back unopened, his telephone calls to be answered with a click of the receiver at the other end, his worshipful glances to be parried by studied unconcern. He has even suffered himself to be slapped for his love’s sake. And at last, as a reward for all his devotion comes a court injunction depriving him of the only lover’s privilege he ever had—that of gazing at the lady of his dreams as she sits, all dressed up, in the church choir.

From all perspectives, it’s a most pathetic mess in which this harassed bee man finds himself involved through no fault of his own but overzealousness. For the life of him, he can’t understand what offense he has been guilt of, what breach of propriety he has committed that would have “the law” on him. He was a persistent wooer, yes, but he wasn’t fresh or given to cave man tactics, not at all. His intentions were painfully honorable. He wasn’t the kind of suitor that women, as a tribute to their virtue, like to brag about having repulsed. He was meek and hopelessly scrupulous. He was content to follow his chosen lady around like a dog and admire her from as far back as the tenth row in the Southern Methodist Church.

Now, with this injunction hanging over him, he doesn’t dare to go to church at all. He might violate the court’s order. When he goes downtown from his home in the outskirts, he has to duck around by a back street, because if he traveled his own street he would have to pass Miss Aikman’s house. To do that would be hazardous, for if he passed he would have to look and if he looked he would be in danger of going to jail for contempt of court. Was ever an honest knight of the beehives beset by such a handicap.

Frankly, the injunction has him down. For 13 years he has fought courageously against the dragons of indifference, rebuff, contempt, and even insult to reach his lady’s castle and he would gladly continue the fight, but what is a fellow to do about an injunction? What would Galahad have done? It’s a brand new obstacle, without classical precedent. It practically disarms a knight before he starts. Even so resolute a knight as Edward Fosse is unhorsed and shaken, but he is still resolute.

“I am not dead,” he replies, quoting Sir Andrew Barton. “I am hurt, but I am not slain. I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile, and then I’ll rise and fight again.”

That, he told me, is precisely the way he has felt ever since March 20, when his romance suffered its hardest blow. Since then he has kept out of Miss Aikman’s way, spending most of his time at home with his mother with whom he resides, or at his farm, two and a half miles out, where he goes every morning at 6 to look after his bees.

The injunction is a simple one. It merely requires the 45 year old bachelor to “absolutely desist and refrain” from doing virtually everything but thinking about Ruth Aikman. Particularly, he must desist and refrain from doing anything which she might choose to interpret as showing her “attentions”, which means that he can[t even attend to his own business if it happens to involve looking at her, because she regards that as an “attention”. Miss Aikman, who is about 35, has been for eight years cashier of the bank where Fosse in the past has transacted his business. He has now been compelled to change to another bank, and the other day he had to steal in while she was out at lunch in order to draw out his deposits without violating the injunction.

The writ is a temporary restraining order, returnable May l7, when Fosse will be required to appear and show cause why it should not be made permanent. It was granted by Circuit Judge D.T. Hartwell in the Williamson County Chancery Court upon the application of Miss Aikman, who filed a petition of eight typewritten pages. The petition voices an exasperated young woman’s desperate appeal for deliverance from “officious, meddlesome, impertinent and uninvited attentions.” The Court provides such deliverance with this extraordinary document.

“The Court orders,” it reads, ”that you absolutely desist and refrain from molesting the said Ruth Aikman, complainant, and that you do absolutely desists and refrain from following the said Ruth Aikman upon the streets or in any public place or places, or any place or places whatsoever, and from loitering about and near her house and residence or in front thereof, or in proximity thereto, and from addressing a speaking to the said Ruth Aikman, and from gazing and staring at her in church or in any other public place, and from writing to her, either through the United States mails or by having letters or any communications in writing delivered to her by hand or otherwise, either at her residence or at her place of employment or at any other place whatsoever, and from calling the said Ruth Aikman on the telephone, either at her residence, at her place of employment or at any other place whatever, or in any way or manner whatever of communicating with the said Ruth Aikman or attempting to so communicate with her, the said Ruth Aikman.”

Fosse and Aikman have been more or less acquainted for the last 20 years. He was born and reared on what is now his bee farm and attended high school in Marion. Miss Aikman also is a native of the town, the daughter of the late W.J. Aikman, well-to-do banker and stock raiser. She lives with two sisters, also unmarried, in the family residence on West Main Street. It is about the largest and most attractive dwelling in the city and stands as a monument to an old and prominent family.

Fosse, as a young man, used to see her occasionally, but it was not until she came to teach at Rascal Ridge, near his farm that he became so infatuated, that was in 1915. Fosse was a school director at Rascal Ridge and prior to 1915, it is said, didn’t take more interest in the school affairs than a bachelor usually does. He hardly ever paid the school a visit. That fact was called to his attention by parents and other directors. They said that as a director he ought to see how things were going. He said he would do that. So when school opened he went early and often falling more in love with the teacher every visit. According to Miss Aikman, this continued all winter, and caused her so much annoyance and embarrassment that she was finally compelled to resign in order to get away from him.

Having thus lost his first campaign, Fosse settled down to a protracted siege. He started writing her letters. She says that in the past 13 years he has written more than a thousand, declaring his love and urging her to accept his hand. Some of these, she told me recently, she tore into small pieces and mailed back to him. Others she returned unopened. But still the letters came and with them came other annoyances which she itemizes in her petition to the Court for relief. By every manner within the law, she declares, he showered her with attentions, namely:

1. By passing her house, looking, staring, walking slowly and acting in such a way as to attract the notice of others.
2. By changing his membership from a Lutheran church to the Methodist church, of which Miss Aikman is a member, his purpose being, she believes, to pursue, molest and harass her by taking a position where he could have a full view of her. As a result of this, she says, she suffered much embarrassment and changed her position in the choir several times, but to no avail.
3. By calling her over the telephone, sometimes at 15 minute intervals for as many as a dozen times in one afternoon and usually making these calls when she had “company”.
4. By walking to town along her street at times when she was most likely to be walking herself. On such occasions, she asserts, he would walk slowly when she was behind, so she would have to pass him and when she was ahead he would walk rapidly so he could pass her.

“For years I put up with all these things and ignored them,” she explained to me. “But finally I could endure it no longer. He was guilty of no criminal action, so I had no recourse, except through this injunction. If I thought I had been in any way responsible for such a silly infatuation I should feel very badly indeed, but I haven’t been. Never from the first have I given him the slightest encouragement or invited his attentions.”

It was his conduct in church, Miss Aikman says, which finally led her to take court action. On Sunday, March 4, she relates, he sat and stare at her until she got so uncomfortable she had to leave. He followed her and overtook her in the vestibule. She was so vexed, that she slapped him.

Opinion in the town appears to be widely divided, and there is much to draw sympathy on each side of the case. On one side is the young woman, constantly pursued and embarrassed by a suitor she can’t shake. On the other is the unrequited lover, with devotion and patience surpassing human belief. Acquaintances, who take the case lightly, say Fosse’s attentions have been most conspicuous when some other suitor appeared as a rival. His recent burst of activity, it is declared was strikingly coincidental with the fact that the Methodist minister, the Rev. O.H. Schweitzer, whose wife died a year ago, has been seen of late in the company of Miss Aikman.

Business men of the town speak a good word for Edward Fosse. They have dealt with him for many years and know him to be an honest and substantial citizen. Indeed, it is only in his strange love affair that he has appeared eccentric. In 1926, he was graduated from the Southern Illinois State Teacher’s College at Carbondale, after completing two and a half years of high school work and a four year college course all in four years. And behind that accomplishment is seen unmistakably his devotion to the bank cashier. His resolution to go back to school at the age of 40 was based upon a belief that maybe Ruth Aikman would like him better if he had a college education.

Fosse still is loath to believe she isn’t just a little bit in love with him and is convinced somebody else is influencing her against him. If he could only talk to her, he believes, he could explain everything and she would listen to what he terms “a small, small voice”. Then, of course, the 13 years of snubs would be forgotten and all would be lovely on Rascal Ridge.

Sam’s Notes:

The Aikman family lived at 1414 West Main Street in the house now occupied by Jasone’s Bed and Breakfast at the corner of N. Russell and W. Main. Only three months after this article was written, Ruth married Rev. Oliver H. Schweitzer on July 23, 1928. They had no children and she died in Lawrenceville, Illinois on September 11, 1978.

Edward Fosse lived out his life in Marion and doesn’t appear to have ever married, he died in January of 1984.

(Extracted from the Sunday Magazine, St. Louis Post Dispatch, April, 8, 1928)