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Bickle Files; Page Three

Bickel File Selections

Since March is Music Month and National Women’s History Month two Bickel articles have been selected.  Since the articles are lengthy, extracts are taken from both articles with a notation of the appropriate Bickel volume for each article, the date, and newspaper.

The first article is about a Director of the Keokuk Municipal Band who directed the band for 30 years and was a musician for 55 years.    

“No Regrets – Music Has Been W.H. Bower’s Life – An Interesting One”

“….  Music has been Mr. Bower’s life – and there have been no regrets that he chose this profession.  His father followed the same vocation, and Mr. Bower has found it an interesting and highly enjoyable work.  He declared this week that if he had to live his life over – he would follow the same profession. – music.

The son of A.J. Bower, who gained fame in the east as a Civil War bandmaster, W.H. Bower began playing when he was 16 years old.  His first experience was with the famous old Walter L. Main circus.  He was also in minstrel and dramatic work during the winter months but always returned to his first love – the circus band.  He traveled throughout the country, all principal metropolitan centers and in most of the famous theaters of the past era of entertainment.  He was a member of the Barnum & Baily circus band, predecessors of Ringling Bros. circus, for two seasons….

Thirty years spent as director of the Keokuk Municipal Band will be treasured as his happiest, Bower asserted this week.  He said that his work with Keokuk musicians will be an indelible memory to him in the future.  Bower closed his circus musician career at Lancaster, Mo., and went to Kahoka where he spent three years.  He had intended to go to South America to play with an organization there, but passage could not be booked because of World War I.  Instead, after his three years in Kahoka, he came to Keokuk as director of the Municipal Band.  And it was one of the best decisions of his life, he says….”

~ Taken in part from an article in the Gate City and Constitution, dated Wednesday, May 21, 1947 from the volume entitled Biographies, page 204

 

The second article is about a prominent Keokuk lady who led one of the most colorful lives on record as an international socialite. 

“Keokuk Claims Elsa Maxwell Noted International Hostess”

“Keokuk has produced very few international hostesses – the field is rather limited and job security is not the best – but, the Chamber of Commerce points out this city was the birthplace of one.  The house at 318 North Fourth, the tenth stop on the “scenic drive” was the early home of Elsa Maxwell.

Despite the popular legend that she was born in a theatre box during an opera,

Miss Maxwell once told Ray Garrison, author of Early Keokuk Homes, that she was in fact born in the house on North Fourth.  The old two-story brick building was built by her maternal grandfather, Dr. Rufas H. Wyman in the 1850s.

Wyman’s daughter, Laura, married a local music teacher, James David Maxwell and Elsa was born in 1881.  The family moved to California when Elsa was still a child….

By the time the First World War rolled around she was an international hostess; that was always listed as her main occupation despite the fact that she also worked and an author, actress, lecturer, composer and businesswoman from time to time….

She died at the age of 80 in her suite in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in 1963. 

The house is now owned by Maynard Johnson, a Union Electric foreman.”

~ Taken in part from an article in The Daily Gate City, Wednesday, May 24, 1967 from the volume entitled Biographies, page 237

 

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