CONFEDERATE SOLDIER IN FOREST HOME: Mike Stewart and Paula Fenza play Theophilus and Harriet Noel, The Texas immigrants buried in Forest Home. Theo, a bookstore owner and businessman served as a Confederate soldier during the war, and ended up in Chicago. JEAN LOTUS/Staff
Abraham Lincoln stands beside the Haase family memorial, monument for one of Forest Park’s founding families. JEAN LOTUS/Staff
Elliot Wimbush portrays Percy Hobbs, a composite character representing the 180,000 African American troops who fought for the Union. Wimbush performed with Kermit Eby (not pictured), playing Ernest Hemingway’s abolitionist grandfather, Lt. Anson Hemingway. Hemingway was officer of a black regiment at the Battle of Vicksburg and later worked for the Freedman Bureau. JEAN LOTUS/Staff
Brian Flora plays Wilbur Crummer, Oak Parker buried in the GAR plot at Forest Home Cemetery. Behind him is a siege mortar from the Battle of Vicksburg. JEAN LOTUS/Staff
Ladies of the GAR Mary Peak (Diane Pingle) and Mary Yalding (Susan Lindberg) are joined by Civil War-era widow Sophie Schnaubel (Kay Kuhlman) sewing items for Memorial Day (Remembrance Day). The walk focused on the 150th Anniversary of the end of Civil War: Veterans and their families. JEAN LOTUS/Staff
Actress Lee Conte, dressed in a costume she made herself (down to the petticoats!) portrayed a Civil War widow at Forest Home Cemetery’s 23rd Annual Tale of the Tombstones Cemetery walk Oct. 19. JEAN LOTUS/Staff
BAND OF BROTHERS: Brothers Daniel and Darryl Flora perform as Alexander and Richard Thain, two Union Soldiers at the 23rd Annual Tale of the Tombstone cemetery walk in Forest Home Cemetery, Oct. 19. They demonstrated weapons and displayed uniforms, a tent and homemade hard-tack. JEAN LOTUS/Staff
The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest presented their 23rd Annual Cemetery walk Oct. 19. This year the tour remembered the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War in 1865. Even though the Forest Home and German Waldheim cemeteries were not founded until the 1870s, many veterans and their family members were buried there. There’s even a special veteran’s plot purchased by the Grand Army of the Republic for deceased veterans.
