Chance Commemoration

November is a quarter of the way over. For the past week we've been haing some nice weather, with highs in the mid-60s. That will be changing later in the week, so while we can Hubby Tony and I have been getting out and around to enjoy it. Today we were in Alton, Illinois completing another chapter of our scavenger hunt book.

The book showcases three cities across the river (Alton, Belleville, and Edwardsville). Alton is the one Tony and I are the most familiar with, which helped us to find a lot of the locations suggested by the book's clues. However, there are also always some new-to-us places. 

Wikipedia

One of those new places was the Elijah P. Lovejoy monument. Lovejoy was a newspaper editor and abolitionist who was killed defending his right to print antislavery material in the period leading up to the Civil War. His monument is on the edge of the city cemetery.

When we arrived at the monument there were several other people there. Someone was setting up a portable speaker and microphone, and it looked like a young man was getting ready to speak into it. While Tony and I were looking up at the top of the monument a woman came up and handed us programs. It turns out that they were getting ready to have an annual Lovejoy Day ceremony, which would have speeches and a wreath laying. 

It would have been interesting to stay around for the ceremony, but Tony and I were on a short time frame. Rather than leave in the middle of the program we chose to get out of there before it started.

Five years ago today: I Voted Today!