Searchers used boats, grappling hooks and dynamite to try to retrieve the body of Edgar M. Shanklin from Lick Creek. But it took more than a month for the icy, swollen stream to relinquish the remains of the Springfield business leader.
Edgar Shanklin, undated (Courtesy State Journal-Register)
Shanklin, vice president and sales manager of his family’s manufacturing firm, was “temporarily deranged,” newspapers said, when he deliberately stepped into the creek on Nov. 14, 1926.
Searchers – Shanklin’s friends and employees of Shanklin Manufacturing Co. – had to battle high water and ice to look for the body. Using grappling hooks, they finally located it on Dec. 21.
“When taken from the creek the body had on the clothes which Mr. Shanklin wore on the nigh he disappeared, even to rubbers, cap and a pair of glasses,” the Journal reported.
Shanklin (1877-1926) and his wife of less than a year, Elena Koch Shanklin (1891-1938), had been staying in a cottage at Camp Shuster, a summertime YMCA camp on the banks of Lick Creek, in hopes that the change of scenery would improve Shanklin’s mental state. Shanklin, who had been ill for more than a year, previously spent some time at the Norbury Sanitarium in Jacksonville, which specialized in treatment of nervous and mental diseases.
A male nurse accompanied the couple at Camp Shuster. According to the Journal’s account of Shanklin’s disappearance:
About 9 o’clock Sunday night, November 14, Mr. Shanklin walked out of the house and, after eluding his nurse who had accompanied him, jumped into the creek, which was swollen by recent rains.
Mr. Shanklin’s footsteps were traced to the bank of the creek by the nurse and neighbors, and a search was started at once. Although day after day passed without the finding of a trace of his body, the belief was adhered to that it was in the stream. Dynamiting was resorted to on several occasions (in hopes of bringing the body to the surface – ed.) without result.
Shanklin was one of three brothers – the others were George (1880-1948) and W. Elmer (1884-1932) – who founded the Shanklin Manufacturing Company in 1913. Its main product was the Guy’s Dropper carbide miners’ lamp, which the Shanklins first started manufacturing on George Shanklin’s back porch.
With carbide lamps giving way to battery lamps, the surviving Shanklins sold their factory in 1927. Their plant in the Harvard Park neighborhood eventually was taken over by the Park Sherman Company, which made smoking paraphernalia and novelties in Springfield until 1960.
Edgar Shanklin is buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery.
Camp Shuster
Boys in front of a Camp Shuster tent, 1927 (SJ-R)
The Springfield YMCA administered Camp Shuster from 1923 until 1931. The camp was named after F.E. “Fred” Shuster (1879-1949), who donated part of his dairy farm to the YMCA to create the camp.
The Illinois State Register described Camp Shuster in 1927 as “a mecca for local lads who want to spend a week or two in the open under competent leaders and with congenial companions.”
The camp, made possible through the generosity of Fred Shuster, is located on Lick Creek, about eight miles southwest of the city where there is good fishing and excellent swimming facilities. All around is woods where wild flowers grow and where the study of nature may be pursued. Adjoining are fields on which hikes may be taken.
Camp Shuster also boasted facilities for baseball, tennis and other sports. While campers slept in tents, camp buildings included a dining hall and lodge, constructed mainly by YMCA adult volunteers. The camp accommodated dozens, if not hundreds, of boys every summer. The cost was $4 for a week’s stay, including all camp activities and meals. YMCA membership was not required.
“Parents are urged not to equip their children with expensive clothing as the wear and tear on it at camp will soon reduce it to ‘old’ clothes,” the Register said.
Other things which boys will be permitted to take along are musical instruments, joke book, fishing outfit, tennis rackets, bath robes, gym suits, blanket pins, needle pins, needle and thread and a camera.
The city of Springfield acquired Camp Shuster in the early 1930s in the process of assembling land for the eventual construction of Lake Springfield.
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