Wet weather doesn't dampen Summer Camp fun

Editor's note: The Peorian got a couple press passes and sent a freelance writer, Julian Watkins, and our own Stu Clubb (and his camera) to the Summer Camp Music Festival to review the event. Here is their first installment.

Every year on Memorial Date weekend, Three Sisters Park in Chillicothe is filled with thousands of music lovers flocking to the campgrounds for a weekend filled with heavy hitting musical acts for the Summer Camp Music Festival.

Since it began in 2001, the festival has grown exponentially and has attracted many major artists. This year was no different, hosting artists such as Trey Anastasio, STS9 and hip hop artist Big Boi. Also back in the mix were Summer Camp regulars Umnphrey's McGee and moe. who, as usual, played multiple sets throughout the weekend, drawing huge crowds for power packed performances.

On Thursday, hardcore Summer Camp attendees, which I refer to as Scampers, flood Three Sisters park to begin preparing for the weekend. The parking lot begins to fill with thousands of attendees organizing their camping gear for the weekend. Seasoned veterans of the festival have learned creative ways to prepare for the long hike to the camping area, loading wagons and wheeled coolers filled with tents, food, beverages and other gear to take up residence for the weekend.

Lines form at the gates where patrons are searched and given wristbands before entering into the campgrounds. Once through the gates, Scampers are home for the weekend.

The wooded area of the campgrounds quickly fill with tents and gazebos. Trails line with concert goers who turn the wooded area into a gathering for festivities that last late into the night. Outside the wooded area is a sea of campsites in the field camping area. It is amazing to see such a gathering at Three Sisters Park, which becomes somewhat of a shantytown for the weekend. Festival attendees help each other set up tents and tape off areas for friends who have not yet arrived to set up camp. Some campsites are tagged with flags and markers for easy identification throughout the weekend. Some of these identifying markers include smiley face flags, college mascots and even Pac Man and Mrs. Pac Man.

Three Sister's Park has hosted Summer Camp Music Festival all 13 years and the atmosphere and environment has evolved as it has grown. This year was no different. With a wide variety of vendors and restaurants, the campgrounds had some extra added fun and festivities this year. The most noticeable addition to the festival this year was carnival rides for Scampers to enjoy. Summer Camp always seems like a bit of a circus, but this addition reiterated this feeling. Campers had the opportunity to ride a giant slide, a Ferris wheel or the Tilt-A-Whirl as well as participate in carnival games. A major highlight of this Scamper's weekend was getting to watch Umphrey's McGee play their instrumental power jam Glory from the top of the Ferris wheel... pure joy.

Beginning on Thursday the side stages of the festival give a preview of what is to come. This year's pre-party saw such acts Family Groove Company, Cornmeal and Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band.

This year, however, the weather proved to be a key component to the ambiance of the festival. Thursday's festivities began with a light drizzle, which did not damper the fun for concert goers. The drizzle was only a sample of the weather that was to come later in the weekend.

A Summer Camp favorite, Family Groove Company jammed out to a power packed performance in which they were joined by Cornmeal's Allie Kral, who had announced that the Summer Camp Music Festival would be her last performance with her longtime Cornmeal band mates.

Some attendees flocked to the Vibe Tent, which is basically a circus tent full of funkiness and good vibes. The Vibe Tent did not fail to live up to its name, hosting aptly named Positive Vibr8ions, which left Scampers in a state of euphoria by bringing together U.S. and UK sounds.

One of the last shows on Thursday was a Campfire Stage performance by Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band, which was phenomenal.

The sun decided to come out to play on Friday to provide for a fun-filled day of performances with no impediment. This is when most attendees who were not able to get off work for Thursday's pre-party festivals start rolling in.

Many top-notch performers played the festival stages on Friday. Normally performing as a sort of one-man jam band, Keller Williams took the stage with his new band "More Than a Little," playing an amazing set including a cover of Grateful Dead's West LA Fadeaway. This performance was joined by bassist Victor Wooten and Umphrey's guitarist Jake Cinninger. Reggae Legends, the Wailers, also took the stage on Friday afternoon, playing the music of Jamaica's son, Bob Marley. Never disappointing, the Wailers played the familiar tunes such as "Stir It Up" and "Waiting in Vain."

Friday night also proved to be no disappointment. Umphrey's McGee played two incredible sets followed by an electronic rock performance on the popular Moonshine stage by STS9. While these popular acts drew large crowds, the side stages had acts that are less known, but still put on some of the best performances at the festival.

One of these hidden gems was The Soul Rebels performing a set consisting of nothing but songs from the hip-hop trio DeLaSoul. They called themselves the DeLaSoul Rebels and gave an amazing performance which was not to be forgotten by anyone who attended.

Coming up: A review of Saturday's shows, including Cornmeal's last performance, Karl Denson, Thievery Corp., and the Umphrey-Moe sandwich.

Knight: Area student became novelist, writer for film, TV

Jonathan Latimer wasn't from Peoria, but the 1929 graduate of Knox College in Galesburg became "one of the best Golden Age authors of the hard-boiled school you've probably never heard of," said one critic, and Turner Classic Movies (TCM) on Friday, June 21 is showing two classic film noir movies he wrote.

Latimer's writing career went from covering Al Capone to working with Frank Capra, adapting novels by Dashiell Hammett and Kenneth Fearing to writing more than 40 scripts for TV's "Perry Mason."

After earning his bachelor's degree, Phi Beta Kappa, from Knox, Latimer traveled to Europe and biked through Germany and France, then returned to Chicago, where he worked for the Herald-Examiner and the Tribune newspapers, mostly covering crime at a time when there was a lot of it.

"I knew Al Capone, George 'Bugs' Moran and assorted other gangsters, as well as whorehouse madams, pimps, dope peddlers and con men," Latimer said years later.

He left journalism after writing a news story about FDR's Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, who liked Latimer and hired him to ghost-write a book. In 1935 Latimer turned to writing novels, starting with a series of mysteries featuring hard-drinking private eye William Crane, an operative for the Black Detective Agency, in which Latimer introduced his distinctive blend of hard-boiled crime fiction and screwball comedy.

"Murder in the Madhouse" was Latimer's first novel, one of five in the Crane series. It became so popular that three were made into movies starring Preston Foster as Crane. The other books were "Headed for a Hearse," "The Lady in the Morgue," "The Dead Don't Care" and "Red Gardenias."

Through the 1940s and '50s his books also included mainstream novels "The Search for My Great Uncle's Head" (under the pseudonym Peter Coffin) and "Dark Memory," and crime novels with protagonists other than Crane: "Black Is the Fashion for Dying," "Sinners and Shrouds" and "Solomon's Vineyard," a rather steamy book that was suppressed in the United States for a few years. (Here's a hint why: Its opening line is "From the way her buttocks looked under the black silk dress, I knew she'd be good in bed.")

After serving in the Navy during World War II, Latimer shifted to writing for Hollywood, where he aimed for realism, or at least believability, as he explained in an interview about his 1948 adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's best-selling "Night Has A Thousand Eyes."

"What I hoped to establish," Latimer said, in a conversation near the end of his life, "was a real sense of terror that these things were coming true."

Besides "Night Has A Thousand Eyes," Latimer's screenplays are impressive: "The Big Clock" (based on Kenneth Fearing's novel), "The Glass Key" (from Dashiell Hammett's book), "The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt" (based on Louis Joseph Vance's novel), "Plunder of the Sun" (based on David F. Dodge's novel), "Topper Returns" (an original script), "The Unchained Goddess" (with Frank Capra), "The Unholy Wife" (co-authored with William Durkee), "The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays" (also with Capra) and the two motion pictures featured on TCM next week, "Nocturne" (from 1946), and "They Won't Believe Me" (1947, based on a story by Gordon McDonell).

For a while Latimer lived in Key West, where he became friends with Ernest Hemingway, and after starting to work for Hollywood he moved to LaJolla, Calif., where his neighbors included legendary hard-boiled author Raymond Chandler, who also had turned some of his attention to working for the movies (penning the film version of his own "Big Sleep" and the original screenplay "The Blue Dahlia").

Latimer eventually settled into a routine of writing for television, contributing dozens of episodes (some say 45) for "Perry Mason" and other scripts (such as "The Greenhouse Jungle" for Peter Falk's "Columbo" series, but "Nocturne" and "They Won't Believe Me" may be his best work.

"Nocturne" (scheduled to air at 7 p.m. June 21) was produced by longtime Alfred Hitchcock associate Joan Harrison and directed by Edwin L. Marin. It stars George Raft and Lynn Bari in a story about a determined cop (Raft) who won't accept that the death of a Hollywood film composer was suicide. He begins looking for "Dolores," a name in a song by the victim, then discovers the dead man had a list of models as girlfriends – and that 10 of them had motives for killing him.

"They Won't Believe Me" (scheduled to air at 8:45 p.m. June 21) is an often-unheralded classic of film noir, toying with cinematic clichés and plot coincidences – and starring Robert Young (eventually starring in TV's "Father Knows Best"), cast against type as a playboy on trial for a murder he didn't commit. Also produced by Joan Harrison, the movie was directed by Irving Pichel and co-stars Susan Hayward and Jane Greer. Somewhat foreshadowing Latimer's fascination with trials that he demonstrated in "Perry Mason," much of it is set in a courtroom, where Young testifies about his innocence – and his adultery, and foolishness, and stupidity.

A long way from Central Illinois. (At least, it's hoped.)

Watson: Honor Flight's Memorable Trip (Part 3)

Editor's note: Doc Watson was aboard the inaugural Greater Peoria Honor Flight that took 81 veterans to Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, June 4. He wrote a series of articles about the trip, including photos, for his employer's website, www.955glo.com, and is sharing them with readers of The Peoria. This is the third and final installment.

As one of two media members on the initial trip that sent area military veterans to see their memorials, I had an ambiguous role. WEEK/WHOI-TV's Josh Simon was definitely in work mode, while I was told to "have fun," knowing that I'd talk about my experience when I returned to the 95.5 GLO airwaves the following afternoon.

I didn't want to bug the veterans too much during their once-in-a-lifetime special day. I also wanted to see the newer memorials that had been erected since my last tourist trip to D.C. during a ninth grade field trip. Plus, I wanted some alone time to think about my late father, who served some unknown role in the Army in the Pacific theater during WWII. So I went with the flow and talked a bit with whomever I bumped into or sat next to.

Walking from the Vietnam to the Korean War Memorials, I met up with the Anton group. Nick and Nell Anton of Pekin had the distinction of being the only married pair of veterans in our group. Nick was an enlisted man in the Air Force in WWII, serving as a B-29 bomber mechanic on Guam. He attended Bradley University after the war and earned an officer's commission before getting called back to duty for the Korean War. Nell served as a nurse during that war.

"We met at a bar," Nick joked. More precisely, they met at a cocktail lounge at the officer's club at Eglin Air Force base in the Florida panhandle, where both served stateside during the early 50's. Nick remembers asking Nell's friend to serve as interpreter because he was having trouble deciphering her North Carolina accent. Despite that inauspicious start, they married two years later and have been so for an amazing 60 years.

Nell, however, remembers their beginning slightly differently. "We met on a psych ward," she cracked, "and I had the key." Nick acknowledged that version as "somewhat true." Nell was the nurse in charge of security at the closed ward, where each soldier/patient had his own locked room. Nick was a staff psychologist on the board that administered psychological testing to airmen and officers. After the war, Nick took that experience to Caterpillar, starting out doing similar work there before finishing his 30 year career by training managers.

Nick, like many of the vets I chatted up on this day, downplayed his role in the military. "I'm really happy for these guys, especially the Vietnam guys, who trudged through the jungles and came home to a poor reception. All I did was fix planes." He mentioned how some of the guys he'd shared a beer with at the Reagan Airport had been through tougher experiences than he did. One of the guys he spoke about served a role that few survived. Ironically, I'd overheard a conversation at the Vietnam Wall between that man and a Washington area veteran earlier.

The Washington vet approached our local central Illinois vet, and they hit it off quickly, talking, smiling and shaking hands. When our vet mentioned what unit he was in during WWII, the other vet replied, "You shouldn't be alive!" The Illinois man was Flanagan, Illinois' Delbert Augsburger, a ball turret gunner over the skies of Europe.

Of the roughly 16 million U.S. military members who served in WWII, only about 30,000 were chosen to be belly gunners. Most did not survive. Delbert's 91st Bomb Group in the 8th Air Force suffered the greatest losses of any heavy bomb group in WW II. These gunners sat in a cramped "ball" underneath B-17 bombers, firing .50-caliber Browning machine guns at German aircraft that intercepted our planes. WWII was the only war that featured this isolated, vulnerable, exposed gunner position.

To hear Delbert tell it, however, he grew accustomed to the harrowing air battles. In all, he flew on 23 combat missions. He admitted feeling frightened just before entering the battle, when he could see the anti-aircraft flak shells exploding in the sky just ahead. He said when he quit flying, he was "disappointed, really, because we got extra money in our paychecks for combat pay."

The belly gunner role was not one that men chose generally. Delbert wanted to be an Air Force pilot when he joined up as a teenager. He tested and was close. Then, he was sent to gunnery school in Las Vegas. After the war, he used the G.I. Bill to obtain his private pilot's license and did "buzz my dad on his tractor on the farm a few times."

I mentioned in an earlier blog that the fate of our military men in war was so random. Delbert survived 23 missions in a short-life-expectancy gunner slot. His son, Dave, also feels lucky to have survived, but he did not come out unscathed.

Dave served in the Army during the Vietnam War. In 1969, his troop transport truck ran off the road and struck a pole that crashed down on to the vehicle, carrying 9 soldiers. The driver, it was later discovered during a military trial, had suffered a seizure due to undiagnosed epilepsy. The pole severed off Dave's right arm, which had been hanging out over a railing, and came within inches of killing him. One fellow passenger died when that pole struck his head. Wondering why the truck was heading off the road, Dave had leaned forward to investigate seconds before the impact, saving his life.

Dave remembers his flight back to the U.S. was not warmly received, unlike the just completed inaugural Peoria Honor Flight. After landing in Washington, D.C., they off loaded the wounded soldiers before reaching the terminal to avoid sign-carrying protestors at the gate and along the airport fence lines. He was transported on a bus with no military markings or windows, attempting to be inconspicuous and not incite the anti-war crowd. During his rehab at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, he and his fellow vets stayed away from the college kids' hangouts and spent time socializing at veteran's organizations for the same reason.

"Back home it was better." Dave said, "I was always treated well, treated as a soldier. Of course, Flanagan is small and I'm related to half the town." He also didn't encounter animosity in Peoria, where he used the G.I. Bill to attend a computer trade school downtown. In those classes, Vietnam veterans mixed in well with recent high school graduates. Dave finished his working civilian career in 2004, after a run of over 26 years at Caterpillar.

As Nick Anton noted above, the warm return reception before thousands at the General Wayne A. Downing Peoria International Airport last Tuesday night felt tremendous to every veteran on the flight, but perhaps more so for the Vietnam veterans who never experienced a proper welcome home.

The second flight is tentatively planned for September, and donations are needed to reach the roughly $80,000 cost of each trip. If you want more info on how to get your vet on a future flight, click on http://greaterpeoriahonorflight.org

Here's the link to Part 1: http://www.955glo.com/common/page.php?pt=Greater+Peoria+Honor+Flight+Returns+After+Memorable+Trip.+%28Part+1+in+series%29&id=6293&is_corp=0

Part 2: http://www.955glo.com/common/page.php?pt=Stories+From+The+Greater+Peoria+Honor+Flight+Vets.+%28Part+2+in+a+series%29&id=6333&is_corp=0

Peoria Players celebrates 95 years

In 1957-58, Peoria Players produced only one show and did it as a traveling show while the company's current theatre on North University Street was under construction.

It may not have seemed all that significant at the time, but it is today as Peoria Players Theatre celebrates 95 consecutive years of entertaining the Peoria area with musicals, dramas, comedies and special events. It is the longest continually operating community theatre in Illinois and the fourth longest in the United States.

On Saturday, for one night only, about 30 of the performers who have graced the Peoria Players stage will present a revue of those 95 years in an on-stage celebration that will bring its audience much nostalgia as well as a reminder of the load of talent that exists and has long existed in Peoria.

"Our purpose is to give our theatre folks the chance to celebrate with our audience, our faithful theatre goers that will know many of the songs we're doing and may even remember when some of them were done," said Peoria Players business manager Nicki Haschke. "It just really promises to be a fun evening."

From the opening number that reminds the audience that "There's No Business Like Show Business" to the ending piece "What I Did For Love" that the full ensemble will perform, there will be solos, ensembles, dance numbers and ballads that have been performed at Players once or more over the years.

The show begins at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday and tickets are on sale now for $20.

Performers will include Cheri Beever, Bryan Blanks, Steve Bortolotti, Barb Couri, Erica Franken, Megan Manley, Katie McLuckie, Mike Reams, Roger Roemer, Michelle Steffen-Rouland, Bruce and Pat White.

Lee Wenger, who recently charmed audiences in "Fiddler on the Roof," will perform a piece from that show. Also, the cast of "Godspell," which was an audience favorite this past season, will perform songs from that show. Its director, Cheryl Dawn Koenig, who has performed in and directed many shows on the Peoria Players stage, will be making her final appearance there before relocating to another part of the country.

And Jerry Johnson, long a favorite of Peoria audiences who portrayed just about every leading man role through the years, will make his first appearance on a local stage in a decade.

In between songs Bruce White will narrate the theatre's history while photographs appear on the big screen behind the performers.

"Everybody in this show is so talented and we've had so much fun putting it together," said Haschke, who is coordinating the show along with Jimmy Ulrich. "It truly has been a group effort."

Peoria Players was founded in October 1919 when a play called "The Maker of Dreams" was staged. As it turns out, the theatre has been making dreams for nearly a century, which is why Haschke believes the anniversary should be shared with an audience.

"Without audiences we wouldn't be here and they have been so supportive through the years. Technically, this is also a fundraiser. But really, it's a celebration," she said.

Noting she had been involved in Peoria Players much of her life, including the last 21 as its manager, Haschke said, "This theatre has always given a people a chance to dream and live their dream. Most of us work our eight-hour day and here, people can come and perform and do something they've always dreamed of doing. That's what we're about and that's what we want to celebrate."

The 95th season of Peoria Players opens in September with one of Broadway's biggest blockbusters, "Les Miserable," directed by Connie Sinn.

Season tickets are on sale for $90 for the six shows, including four musicals. For more information or to order tickets call Saturday's show or for the 95th season, call (309) 688-4473 or visit www.peoriaplayers.org.