Presidential Politics at the Heart of the Yellow Brick Road

There's still a sense of optimism running through the downstate city of Bloomington, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln spent much of his career as a young attorney. His friend Jesse Fell once recalled encouraging Lincoln to run for president when they met across from the courthouse the Phoenix Block, named for how quickly it sprang back to life after a devastating fire swept through the town. Fell's gravestone now sits under the tree which boasts the first fall foliage in Evergreen Cemetery each year. The cemetery tour guide explains that, "We always know it's fall when Jesse's tree starts to turn."

Vice President Adlai Stevenson and Governor Adlai Stevenson II, twice a presidential candidate, are also buried in Evergreen cemetery, and the cemetery marker for Adlai II is in the shape of the United Nations building in honor of his pride in serving as the United States ambassador from 1961 to 1965.

Evergreen Cemetery is not just the final resting place for both Stevensons, surprisingly it leads to the heart of the Yellow Brick Road. Author L. Frank Baum once wrote about a boy's journey to another dimension, but before his book was published, Baum's infant niece died, the first girl in the family for years, and to comfort them he changed the main character from a boy to a girl.

That girl's name was Dorothy Louise Gage and she has inspired generations to pay attention to the man behind the curtain in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.. Dorothy's grandmother, Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage, also inspired the character's sense of social justice. She not only argued with officials on behalf of women attempting to vote in the 1870's, she also defended Susan B. Anthony who was put on trial for voting.

Gage once wrote:

"While so much is said of the inferior intellect of woman, it is by a strange absurdity conceded that very many eminent men owe their station in life to their mothers."

Her words still resonate in this election with Barack Obama's tribute to his late grandmother's strength in his formative years. Gage passed away in her son-in-law's Chicago home 110 years ago, the same year as Dorothy. Both inspired Baum to create an icon who saw through the Emerald City.

In Dorothy's honor, Bloomington's Evergreen Cemetery has dedicated a plot of land to infants whose families cannot otherwise afford their burials, and ten years ago Mikey Carroll who played a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz dedicated a new headstone honoring the original Dorothy.

More on Bloomington's Evergreen Cemetery, along with a slideshow, are posted at http://www.ourhouse.biz.