Sunday, March 8, 2009 1:13 AM CST
Rail passengers sitting on history
By HERB MEEKER, Staff Writer
hmeeker@jg-tc.com
MATTOON
Frank “Kid” Henning leaned back in one of the tall wooden benches at the Mattoon railroad depot and smiled widely.
Then the Illinois Central Railroad retiree recalled a trip he took for the United States government nearly 65 years ago.
“I had enlisted in the Air Force in ’44. I was just a kid. I went into the USO (lounge) upstairs. It was close to Christmas and they were handing out gifts to the guys leaving Mattoon. They gave me a shaving kit. I didn’t have a whisker then so I hardly ever opened it,” said Henning.
He probably waited on one of the same benches that are in the Illinois Central Railroad Depot today in midtown Mattoon before a steam locomotive took him and other enlistees north to Chicago for induction before being sent to statewide training and eventual postings across the globe.
Henning served with the Army Air Force in the Philippines and Tinian, where an American bomber took off with the atomic bomb that helped end the war in the Pacific.
Last week, Henning looked over the benches, pock-marked, carved with graffiti and damaged by vandals in recent years.
“I’d say these were probably here when this place opened. I remember coming in as a kid when I was 4 or 5 and they were here,” said Henning.
That means the benches that provide seating for dozens of Amtrak passengers now would date back to 1918 when Illinois Central opened its new three-level, brick passenger depot between Broadway Avenue and the old New York Central Railroad bridge just west of the Big Four Depot that served east-west trains.
The benches have offered respite for generations using the depot, which is an active Amtrak passenger station today serving more than 30,000 passengers per year.
As a direct link to the history of the old depot, the Coles County Historical Society, which manages the facility in cooperation with the City of Mattoon, wants to repair and restore the benches.
“We hope to restore most of the benches. We might take pieces from others to repair the broken armrests. We have one-sided benches and pieces of others in a room in the upper floor,” said Jackie Record, who heads Project Depot, the committee spearheading the facility’s restoration.
“We refinished them before to cover the graffiti but now we want to fix them, too. Some of the armrests might have been knocked out so people could lay down in the benches,” Record said.
Historical society President Ted Ostrem said the goal is to find a wood craftsman willing to assist with the effort. A facility with dry storage is needed because the benches will be removed for different phases of the depot project. The hope is that someone might volunteer work and a facility to reduce costs on the bench effort, which is not in the building restoration plans.
Ostrem said the benches do appear to be an original part of the train station. He said Thomas French, a Project Depot supporter, found a reference to wooden benches in the original blueprints of the building.
These are pretty close to what is down there,” explained French. “ Benches of 14 seats. Admittedly, there appears to be one missing. But an odd coincidence if they aren’t original.”
Ostrem believes the benches fit well into the passenger lobby design.
“They are appropriate to the scale of the room. And the design is typical railroad station style,” Ostrem said.
But photographic evidence is lacking for now to link the benches to the start of the depot. Craig Sanders, a Mattoon native now a professor at Cleveland State University, did not find any solid evidence on the age of the benches when he researched his book, “Mattoon and Charleston Area Railroads.”
“I did not come across any photographs of the interior. But I am not aware of any major renovations to the station soon after it was built, especially in the passenger area,” Sanders said.
Henning believes, whatever their age, the benches should be restored along with the building. He witnessed both some sad and happy moments when he was in the depot through the years.
“I can remember some kids and women crying when the National Guard was going off to the Korean War. I never really talked to the passengers when I worked here. But I’m sure there were plenty of hard-luck stories for people in the benches,” Henning said.
Still, some of his memories from the depot are not all about farewells.
“We used to have some big poker games back in the baggage room,” he said with a grin.
Contact Herb Meeker at hmeeker@jg-tc.com or 238-6869.
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