Category Archives: All Marion Content

All content related to Marion Illinois

1974, Marion Annexes Over 500 Acres Including East Lawn Cemetery

Posted on by December 22, 2013

Council Votes to Add Area West to Rt. 148

The Marion city Council Monday night accepted the grant of Egyptian Memorial Gardens Cemetery on Route 148 five miles from downtown Marion, and initiated steps to annex territory to include the cemetery and most of the Williamson County Airport nearby.

Councilmen voted to accept a deed to the cemetery property from Woodrow Dann, Carterville Rt. 2, who has operated for the last 17 years the perpetual care cemetery which was established in the 1930’s. Continue reading →

1974, Girls Want to Play Basketball

Posted on by December 17, 2013

Girls Want to Play Basketball 0ct 29 1974Girls Want to Play Basketball

This group of elementary school girls and their mothers gathered in protest outside the Logan School gym Monday afternoon, October 28, 1974, while tryouts for boy’s basketball teams were being held inside.

The mothers said the demonstration was arranged to protest the lack of similar athletic programs for girls. They said their daughters had been barred from tryouts. They said the board of education was sympathetic. Continue reading →

1974, The Cold Case Murder of Dr. Donald Ripley

Posted on by December 17, 2013

Dr. Donald Ripley
Dr. Ripley Murder
Dr. Ripley Murder
Dr. Ripley Murder

On December 4, 1974, Dr. Ripley’s chiropractic office at 1825 W. Main Street was full of patients awaiting treatment. At 9:30, an hour after the office should have opened, an unanswered telephone prompted one of the patients to answer it. Upon opening a hallway door he discovered the body of Dr. Donald Ripley. Ripley had been shot seven times with a .45 caliber hand gun. Most of the efforts to uncover his murderer centered around a mysterious, well-dressed black man, but his killer was never found and remains one of Marion’s cold cases to this day.  Continue reading →

1976, Former Marion High School Athletic Greats

Posted on by January 28, 2014

This list of former Marion High School athletic greats was published in the Bi-Centennial Edition of the Daily Republican in 1976. It was created from the memories of the public at large and is in no way encyclopedic or complete, but serves as a reminder that Marion High has nurtured many great athletes in its past.   Continue reading →

1974, Early Coal Miner’s Wages and Striking

Posted on by December 15, 2013

1910 Coal Mine StrikeThis article, written in 1974 by Homer Butler, notates typical wages received by local coal miners and the effects of striking for higher wages on the miners and their families from just after the turn of the century to the depression.

“My father came home from the mines one day in the spring of 1910 wearing a pair of new elk hide shoes, and bearing the news that the miners were going out on strike. The shoes had cost $3 which was more than a day’s pay for a miner. They were the cheapest shoes available, not much good for rough work, but they would do for wear while hunting work to tide the family over during the strike which would last nobody knew how long. Continue reading →