Let Them Eat Culture: Rockford's $60 Million Question

Let Them Eat Culture: Rockford's $60 Million Question

Thomas L. Vaultonburg The Rockford Blog | Civic Commentary

There is something profoundly unsettling about a city contemplating a $60 million cultural center while more than one in five of its residents lives below the poverty line. Not because art is unnecessary. Not because historic buildings should be abandoned. And certainly not because Rockford lacks the artists, musicians, performers, and cultural organizations deserving of public support. The question is whether a city struggling with longstanding economic inequality can distinguish between investing in culture and investing in the appearance of cultural prosperity. There is a difference between creating opportunities for the people who live in a community and creating impressive monuments to the idea that the community is thriving. Sometimes those objectives overlap. Sometimes they do not. And sometimes the distinction becomes obscured by the language of economic development, civic pride, and revitalization.

The proposed redevelopment of the former Illinois National Guard Armory at 605 North Main Street offers an opportunity to examine that distinction. Originally discussed as a $45 million undertaking, the project was described in May 2025 reporting as an estimated $60 million development. The Rockford Area Arts Council envisions a cultural civic center with performance and exhibition spaces, offices for arts organizations, and approximately 25 to 30 affordable residences for artists. These are not inherently frivolous ambitions. Affordable housing for artists is a legitimate need. Historic preservation has value. A thriving arts community contributes to a city's identity, economy, and quality of life. But none of those observations relieves the project of the obligation to justify its scale, financing, beneficiaries, and relationship to the needs of the larger community. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020–2024 American Community Survey estimates, 21.3 percent of Rockford residents live in poverty. The city's median household income is $54,752. These numbers describe a community in which economic insecurity is not an occasional inconvenience but a persistent condition of everyday life. Against that background, a $60 million cultural project deserves considerably more scrutiny than the familiar assurances that art is good for the economy and that redevelopment demonstrates progress.

Marie Antoinette almost certainly never uttered the phrase attributed to her: "Let them eat cake." The historical accuracy of the quotation, however, has never been the source of its enduring power. It survives because it expresses something recognizable about the relationship between privilege and deprivation: the possibility that those entrusted with power can become so insulated from ordinary hardship that they mistake their own priorities for the needs of everyone else. Rockford's proposed cultural center invites a similar question. Not whether the people advocating for it are indifferent to poverty, but whether the institutions responsible for shaping the city's future have developed a definition of progress that is more responsive to prestigious development projects than to the daily circumstances of its least fortunate residents. A cultural center is visible. It can be photographed, celebrated, dedicated, and incorporated into promotional materials. Its completion can be presented as evidence that a city is moving forward. Poverty reduction, neighborhood stabilization, affordable housing, and the repair of longstanding institutional inequalities are considerably less theatrical. They require sustained commitments whose accomplishments may never be commemorated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The danger is that civic leadership begins to favor what can be displayed over what must be repaired.

Rockford's history makes these questions especially important. During the federal litigation surrounding racial discrimination in Rockford Public School District 205, U.S. Magistrate Judge P. Michael Mahoney described a school system that had engaged in acts of discrimination so blatant as to be cruel and others so subtle as to elevate discrimination to an art form. It was an extraordinary judicial characterization of institutional conduct. More importantly, it described discrimination not simply as the product of individual prejudice but as something embedded in administrative decisions, policies, boundaries, and the distribution of educational opportunities. That history does not establish that the proposed Armory redevelopment is discriminatory. It does, however, provide a compelling reason to examine how public institutions distribute resources and opportunities, and who benefits from the decisions they make. When a community has a documented history of institutional inequality, the promise that a major development will benefit everyone should be the beginning of an inquiry, not the end of one. Who will use the cultural center? Who will be able to afford its events? Which organizations will occupy its offices? How will its affordable artist housing be allocated? What opportunities will exist for artists and residents outside the established network of cultural institutions? These are not hostile questions. They are the questions that public accountability requires.

It is important to distinguish the project's estimated $60 million development cost from a $60 million expenditure by the City of Rockford. They are not the same thing. The Rockford Area Arts Council purchased the former Armory from the city for $1,000 in November 2024. In May 2025, the organization received a $1.54 million federal Environmental Protection Agency grant for environmental remediation. The proposed financing structure includes possible historic preservation tax credits, housing and energy tax credits, private investment, philanthropy, government allocations, and potential city or county participation. In September 2026, Rockford's City Council approved a measure providing for reimbursement of tax increment financing revenue generated by improvements to the Armory for up to three years. These distinctions matter. A federal environmental grant is not the same as an appropriation from the city's general fund. Tax credits are not interchangeable with direct municipal expenditures. And an estimated development budget is not evidence that the entire amount has been secured or spent. Nevertheless, the presence of potential public investment, tax incentives, and publicly controlled assets makes the project a legitimate subject of public scrutiny. The essential question is not simply how much the building will cost. It is how much public value the project will create, who will receive that value, and whether alternative uses of public resources have been adequately considered.

A project can be financially sophisticated without being socially equitable. It can preserve an important building without necessarily addressing the needs of the surrounding population. It can create attractive spaces while remaining inaccessible to people who live only a few blocks away. Perhaps the most troubling assumption underlying expensive cultural redevelopment is the suggestion that culture requires a monumental physical structure to become legitimate. Rockford already has culture. It exists in neighborhood galleries, independent publications, community performances, small music venues, informal artist collectives, libraries, schools, and the homes of people who create without institutional sponsorship. Much of this activity takes place with minimal financial support, little publicity, and no expectation that the city will construct a multimillion-dollar facility to accommodate it. This does not make a centralized cultural center unnecessary. It does suggest that the cultural value of such a center should be measured by how effectively it strengthens the creative community that already exists. Will independent artists have genuinely affordable access? Will emerging organizations receive opportunities comparable to established institutions? Will the project serve neighborhoods beyond downtown? Will public programming reflect Rockford's economic and cultural diversity? Or will the building become another impressive civic destination whose primary beneficiaries are those already positioned to participate in the city's institutional cultural life? The answers are not predetermined. They should be established before the public is asked to celebrate the undertaking as an unquestionable civic achievement.

Supporters of the Armory project have made a reasonable argument that cultural amenities and historic redevelopment can contribute to economic development. A restored landmark may attract visitors, support businesses, provide housing, and create opportunities for artists. Those benefits deserve consideration. But the existence of possible benefits does not establish that any particular project, at any particular price, represents the best available investment. A serious public discussion should include a transparent accounting of anticipated public costs, projected economic returns, operating expenses, accessibility, and measurable community benefits. It should also examine the consequences if projected funding fails to materialize or the completed facility requires continuing public assistance. And it should acknowledge that cultural development and poverty reduction are not necessarily competing objectives. A properly designed cultural project could advance both. Affordable housing, accessible programming, employment opportunities, and meaningful participation by underserved communities could make the Armory more than a showcase. The challenge is to make those commitments concrete rather than rhetorical.

There is also a larger question about the relationship between cultural institutions and the communities they claim to represent. Culture is not something that descends from an administrative structure upon a population waiting to be enlightened. It is something people produce continuously through their experiences, histories, relationships, struggles, and creative work. A city does not become cultured when it builds a cultural center. It becomes a city that has built a cultural center. Whether that building enriches the cultural life of its residents depends on what happens inside it, who is welcomed, who is excluded, and how its resources are distributed. A multimillion-dollar development cannot substitute for a genuine commitment to the people whose lives and work give a community its identity. The building should serve the culture. The culture should not be expected to justify the building.

Rockford does not have to choose between art and social responsibility. Indeed, a city that understands the importance of culture should recognize that dignity, opportunity, education, housing, and meaningful participation in community life are themselves cultural concerns. The question is whether the proposed Armory redevelopment reflects that understanding. A $60 million cultural center might become a valuable civic institution. It might preserve an important landmark, expand access to the arts, and provide resources that the community has long needed. Those possibilities should not be dismissed. But neither should they be accepted as inevitable simply because the project is ambitious, architecturally impressive, or supported by influential institutions. Rockford's residents deserve to know precisely what is being proposed, how it will be financed, who will benefit, and what obligations the project will create for the public. Most importantly, they deserve an honest conversation about the difference between a city that looks prosperous and a city in which prosperity is meaningfully shared.

"Let them eat cake" has endured for centuries because it captures the distance that can develop between those who govern and those who struggle. Rockford should be careful not to construct that distance in brick, stone, and glass. Culture should not become the dessert served while the city's more fundamental needs remain unmet.

Following the Yellow Brick Road: CherryVale Mall and the Glory Days of Shopping in Rockford

Following the Yellow Brick Road: CherryVale Mall and the Glory Days of Shopping in Rockford

By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

There was a time when going to CherryVale Mall was an event in itself. You didn't necessarily need anything. You didn't need a shopping list, a particular store in mind, or even money to spend. You went because something might be happening there, because you might run into someone you knew, or because there was always the possibility of discovering something you hadn't known existed. For generations of people growing up in Rockford, Cherry Valley, Byron, Belvidere, and the surrounding communities, CherryVale was more than a shopping center. It was one of the places where the larger world came to us.

There are already enough stories about the decline of American shopping malls. Empty storefronts, abandoned food courts, and photographs of escalators carrying nobody anywhere have practically become their own genre of internet entertainment. That's not the story I want to tell. I want to remember CherryVale when it was an exciting place to go, when the stores were full of merchandise that couldn't be purchased by pressing a button on a telephone, and when an afternoon spent wandering around a shopping mall could become a treasured childhood memory. I want to remember the strange little details that made CherryVale unlike anywhere else, including the fact that for a while, you could actually follow a yellow brick road through the mall to a working radio station.

Building a New Shopping World

Construction of the Mall at CherryVale began in January 1972 on a large tract of land southeast of Rockford, near Harrison Avenue and Perryville Road. Developed by the Richard E. Jacobs Group of Cleveland, the project represented an enormous investment in the future of regional retail. The developers understood that Rockford occupied a strategic position between Chicago, Madison, and the smaller communities of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. With access to U.S. Route 20 and the Northwest Tollway, CherryVale was designed to attract shoppers from well beyond Rockford's city limits.

The original mall was an ambitious undertaking, occupying approximately 714,000 square feet of retail space. Sears opened on September 26, 1973, followed by Marshall Field's on October 1. The first group of specialty stores opened that autumn, and on November 1, CherryVale celebrated its official dedication. Miss Illinois 1973, Colleen Metternich, released 1,000 balloons, while marching bands from East High School and Harlem High School performed for the assembled crowd. Congressman John B. Anderson attended the festivities. The opening wasn't treated simply as the arrival of another collection of stores. It was a civic event, something worth celebrating as a milestone in the region's development.

The mall continued expanding almost immediately. H.C. Prange opened its two-level department store in August 1974, accompanied by the Prange Way discount operation. CherryVale offered the enormous Sears and Marshall Field's stores alongside smaller retailers such as Kroch's & Brentano's Booksellers, Disc Records, Chess King, Casual Corner, and Lane Bryant. There were places to buy clothes, records, books, candy, jewelry, and nearly anything else a shopper might want. More importantly, there were things you might never have thought to want until you saw them displayed in a store window.

For people coming from smaller communities like Byron, where I grew up, CherryVale represented a different scale of experience. You could spend hours exploring the building. It was climate-controlled, brightly illuminated, and filled with people who seemed to be going somewhere even when they weren't. There was a certain pleasure in being part of that movement, drifting from one store to another, looking at things, listening to the conversations around you, and occasionally discovering something that made the entire trip worthwhile.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road to WYBR

One of CherryVale's most distinctive attractions wasn't a store at all. It was a radio station. In 1976, WYBR began broadcasting from studios inside the mall, in lower-level suite E-114. The station's call letters stood for "We're the Yellow Brick Road," and the mall took that idea literally. A yellow brick road was incorporated into the shopping center's floor, guiding visitors toward the station's studios, which were located near a series of rainbow arches.

Imagine that for a moment. You're walking through a shopping mall in Rockford, Illinois, and there's a yellow brick road on the floor leading to a radio station where actual broadcasters are producing programs that people throughout the region are listening to in their cars and homes. It seems almost impossibly whimsical now, the sort of thing a developer might suggest during a brainstorming session before somebody from accounting explained why it couldn't be done. But CherryVale actually did it.

The station had an equally unusual history. Originally operating as WKWL, it had broadcast from a building on North Bell School Road before a fire destroyed its facilities. After a change in ownership, the station was rebuilt at CherryVale and returned to the air as WYBR. A 300-foot transmission tower stood in the mall's parking lot, while the studios operated inside the shopping center itself. The original programming concept was called "Theatre of the Mind," with theatrical personalities contributing to an imaginative approach to radio. Early plans even included an Oz-inspired helicopter traffic report called "Ork Reports."

Among the personalities associated with WYBR was Jonathon "Johnny B." Brandmeier, who hosted the morning show from 1978 to 1980 before going on to become one of Chicago radio's best-known personalities. Actress Susan Saint James was also reportedly a frequent visitor and contributor to the station's programming. For a relatively brief period, CherryVale wasn't simply a place where people consumed popular culture. It was a place where popular culture was being produced.

The yellow brick road eventually disappeared, and WYBR moved on from its mall studios. But the memory survived. Ask longtime Rockford residents about the early days of CherryVale and there's a good chance somebody will remember that unusual stretch of yellow flooring. It's the sort of detail that gets left out of conventional histories because it doesn't seem particularly important. Yet those are often the details people remember most vividly.

Helicopter Santa, Movie Theaters, and the Giant Clock

CherryVale's early years were full of the sort of promotional imagination that characterized the great age of American shopping malls. During the 1970s, Santa Claus sometimes arrived by helicopter, landing in the parking lot before making his way inside to greet children. It was a spectacular way to announce the Christmas shopping season, and it must have seemed especially magical to children who had never seen a helicopter up close, much less watched Santa Claus emerge from one.

There were other memorable features. Longtime shoppers recall the giant clock near the escalators, the arcade, and the central gathering areas where children played while adults shopped or rested. These architectural and decorative details helped make the mall recognizable as a particular place rather than simply a collection of interchangeable stores. People remembered where things were. They had favorite entrances, favorite places to meet, and familiar routes through the building.

Movie theaters added another dimension to the experience. The freestanding CherryVale 1-2-3 theater opened near the northeast parking area in August 1975, giving shoppers the opportunity to combine a trip to the mall with an afternoon or evening at the movies. In February 1983, a four-screen theater opened inside the mall itself. For people growing up in the region, these theaters became part of the geography of moviegoing, places associated with first dates, family outings, and the excitement of seeing a new film on opening weekend.

CherryVale also attracted political figures. On March 11, 1976, President Gerald Ford visited the mall during his reelection campaign, speaking before a crowd reported to number more than 3,000 people. It was a reminder that shopping malls had become important public gathering places, capable of attracting crowds that once might have assembled in a downtown square or civic auditorium. The mall had become one of the region's principal stages.

By the 1980s, CherryVale was firmly established as a center of regional life. Families shopped there, teenagers congregated there, and people from surrounding towns made special trips to visit stores they couldn't find closer to home. The mall was constantly changing, with new retailers appearing as fashions, technologies, and tastes evolved. Yet the basic attraction remained the same. CherryVale was a place where you could encounter something new.

Babbage's and the Worlds I Brought Home

Of all the stores that occupied CherryVale during its glory days, the one that meant the most to me was Babbage's. For those unfamiliar with the name, Babbage's was a chain of retail stores specializing in computer software and games. The company was named after Charles Babbage, the nineteenth-century mathematician whose mechanical computing designs helped establish the foundations of modern computer science. Eventually the chain would become part of the business that evolved into GameStop, but during the 1980s, Babbage's occupied a special place in the rapidly developing world of home computing.

This was a period when personal computers were still relatively new, and computer games were something of a specialized interest. You couldn't simply download a game from the internet, watch somebody play it on YouTube, or consult thousands of online reviews before making a purchase. You went to a store like Babbage's, examined the boxes on the shelves, read the descriptions on the back, and tried to imagine what the game might actually be like. The artwork was often far more sophisticated than the graphics the computer could produce, but that was part of the appeal. The boxes invited you to imagine worlds that the technology could only partially represent.

For me, the greatest treasures at Babbage's were the SSI Gold Box Dungeons & Dragons games. Strategic Simulations, Inc. released Pool of Radiance in 1988, followed by Curse of the Azure Bonds in 1989 and Secret of the Silver Blades in 1990. These games translated the rules and atmosphere of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons into elaborate computer role-playing adventures. You created a party of characters, selected their classes and abilities, explored dangerous environments, fought monsters, collected treasure, and gradually uncovered stories that could take weeks or months to complete.

I bought those games at Babbage's, and they became some of my favorite computer games of all time. What I remember most vividly is the sense of possibility they offered. A box purchased at the mall contained an entire world waiting to be explored. There were maps to study, manuals to read, spells to memorize, and mysteries to solve. The games demanded patience and concentration. You could spend an entire evening fighting your way through a dungeon, only to discover that you'd made some terrible tactical mistake and needed to begin again.

There was something particularly satisfying about the Gold Box games because they trusted the player's imagination. Their graphics were primitive even by the standards of later computer games, but the limitations didn't matter much. A few pixels could represent an ancient ruined city, a subterranean temple, or a dragon guarding its treasure. The player's mind supplied everything the computer couldn't show. In that sense, the games weren't so different from the tabletop Dungeons & Dragons adventures that inspired them.

What surprises me now is how well those games have endured. I still occasionally play through Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and Secret of the Silver Blades, nearly four decades after their original release. The interfaces are awkward, the graphics are antiquated, and some of the mechanics would undoubtedly frustrate modern players. But the essential pleasure remains. I still enjoy assembling a party, setting out into unfamiliar territory, and discovering what waits around the next corner.

When I remember CherryVale, I remember Babbage's more clearly than almost anything else. I remember the anticipation of finding a new computer game, the pleasure of examining its packaging, and the knowledge that I would soon be taking it home to begin another adventure. I can't claim that Babbage's was the most important store in CherryVale's history, but it was certainly the most important one to me.

When the Mall Was a Place to Discover Things

One of the things that distinguished the shopping malls of the 1970s and 1980s from today's retail environment was the element of accidental discovery. We now live in a world where algorithms attempt to predict what we want before we've even decided we want it. Online retailers recommend products based on our previous purchases, search histories, and the behavior of people whose interests resemble our own. The system is remarkably efficient, but it doesn't always leave much room for surprise.

CherryVale operated according to a different principle. You walked around and looked at things. You might enter a bookstore because a cover caught your eye, wander into a record store because you heard something interesting playing, or stop at a computer store because the artwork on a game box suggested an adventure worth having. You didn't need to know what you were looking for. Sometimes the most interesting things were the ones you hadn't known existed.

The mall also served as a meeting place for people from communities that might otherwise have had relatively little contact with one another. Rockford teenagers crossed paths with kids from Byron, Belvidere, Cherry Valley, and other nearby towns. Families from across northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin came to shop, eat, see movies, and participate in the busy social life of the shopping center. CherryVale was one of the places where the region encountered itself.

It was also a place that seemed comfortable with a certain amount of silliness. A yellow brick road leading to a radio station. Santa Claus arriving by helicopter. A thousand balloons released during an opening celebration. These weren't necessities of retail commerce. They were attempts to make a shopping mall entertaining, memorable, and perhaps a little magical. And judging by how many people still remember them, they worked.

The CherryVale Worth Remembering

CherryVale underwent renovations and changes over the years, as any successful shopping center must. Stores opened and closed, department store names changed, and the building adapted to new generations of shoppers. But I don't think the history of CherryVale should be reduced to a discussion of which stores eventually disappeared or which retail trends replaced them. That approach overlooks what the mall actually meant to the people who spent time there.

For those of us who grew up in northern Illinois during the 1970s and 1980s, CherryVale was part of the landscape of our lives. It was where we bought clothes for school, discovered music, went to movies, met friends, and sometimes encountered things that would remain important to us long after the stores that sold them were gone.

I think about the yellow brick road sometimes. It's such a wonderfully strange detail, the idea that somebody decided a shopping mall in Rockford, Illinois, ought to have its own little piece of Oz. And then they actually built it. Somewhere at the end of that road, disc jockeys were broadcasting music and conversation to listeners across the region. Elsewhere in the building, shoppers were browsing books and records, children were watching the escalators, and teenagers were looking for something interesting to do.

And somewhere in those years, I walked into Babbage's and bought a computer game that I would still be playing decades later.

I didn't know I was purchasing a lifelong memory. I thought I was buying a game.

That's the CherryVale Mall I want to remember. Not a monument to a vanished form of retail, but a place where ordinary afternoons sometimes turned into something extraordinary. A place where you could follow a yellow brick road, encounter the larger world, and occasionally bring a small piece of it home with you.

 

Be Kind, Rewind: The Disappeared Video Rental Stores of Rockford, Illinois

By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

There was a time when Friday night in Rockford, Illinois, meant going to the video store. Before Netflix, before streaming, before virtually every movie ever made seemed to be available at the push of a button, there was a ritual involved in finding something to watch. You got in your car, drove to your favorite rental store, wandered the aisles looking at movie boxes, and hoped to come home with something worth watching. Sometimes you did. Sometimes you didn't. But the trip itself was part of the entertainment.

For those of us who came of age during the 1980s and 1990s, video rental stores were as familiar a part of Rockford's commercial landscape as grocery stores, record shops, and neighborhood taverns. There were local chains, independent operators, national franchises, and even video rental counters inside supermarkets. Each had its own selection, atmosphere, and regular customers. And almost all of them have disappeared, leaving behind storefronts occupied by other businesses and memories that are becoming increasingly difficult to document.

I was attending Rockford College around 1993 when I frequented a video store near campus that I remember as Cinema Centre Video. For years I associated the store with the Morsay Drive area, although a surviving business directory lists Cinema Centre Video at 2213 East State Street, with Dennis Sharp identified as its owner. Whether the business moved, had another location, or my memory has simply rearranged the geography after three decades remains an open question.

What I remember clearly is the pleasure of looking through the horror section, hoping to find something I hadn't seen before. I was already a devoted fan of zombie movies, and finding an unfamiliar title was no small accomplishment. Every video store carried the standards: Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and perhaps Lucio Fulci's Zombie. But each independent store might have one or two obscure titles that nobody else stocked. At Cinema Centre Video, I remember discovering Zombiethon, a bizarre 1986 compilation of scenes from zombie and exploitation films.

Today, finding an obscure movie takes a few seconds of searching. In 1993, it could take years. If a film wasn't available at one of your local video stores, there was a good chance you simply weren't going to see it. This made the stores more than rental businesses. They were gateways to unfamiliar worlds, and the people who stocked their shelves exercised an influence over our cultural lives that we probably didn't appreciate at the time.

Rockford's Independent Video Stores

Rockford had no shortage of places to rent movies. A 2024 retrospective published by local radio station 96.7 The Eagle recalled several businesses that longtime residents might remember, including Video Outlet, Silver Star Video, Express Discount Video, Logli Video, and Dollar Video. Each occupied its own place in the local video rental ecosystem.

Video Outlet was remembered as one of the area's larger locally operated chains, with multiple locations and a substantial selection of video games. It belonged to an era when movie rental and home video gaming were closely connected. For many families, a weekend trip to the video store meant choosing both a movie and a Nintendo or Sega game, sometimes spending more time making the selections than actually watching or playing them.

Silver Star Video, remembered near the intersection of Harlem Road and North Second Street, apparently made a particular impression on horror fans. The Eagle's retrospective recalled the store's cardboard promotional displays, including a Leatherface figure from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that startled customers as they wandered through the aisles. These displays were part of the theater of the video store. Movie posters, cardboard monsters, elaborate box art, and entire walls devoted to particular genres helped transform a commercial transaction into something resembling an expedition.

Express Discount Video operated on East Riverside Boulevard, in a location the Eagle identified in 2024 as an O'Reilly Auto Parts store. Its name reflected another important aspect of the rental business: price. Video stores competed not only on selection but also on rental rates, membership policies, specials, and the number of days customers could keep their movies. For teenagers and college students, those differences mattered.

There were also less conventional places to rent movies. Logli supermarkets offered video rentals, combining the weekly grocery trip with the opportunity to bring home a film. Dollar Video, remembered along the Route 251 corridor in Loves Park, represented the bargain end of the market. And there were undoubtedly smaller independent operations whose names have almost vanished from the internet.

Cinema Centre Video deserves a place in that history. Its surviving directory listing identifies the business at 2213 East State Street and names Dennis Sharp as owner. That isn't a complete history, but it's a beginning. Somewhere there may still be advertisements, photographs, business records, or former employees who remember its shelves, its customers, and the years it operated.

When the National Chains Arrived

Eventually, the independent stores found themselves competing with national chains such as Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and Family Video. These businesses brought recognizable branding, standardized store layouts, extensive advertising, and the buying power to stock large numbers of popular new releases.

Blockbuster became one of the defining commercial institutions of the home-video era. Its blue-and-yellow signs were familiar across the country, and Rockford was no exception. Hollywood Video and Family Video also became part of the region's rental landscape. For a time, renting movies was such an established consumer habit that multiple stores could operate within relatively short distances of one another.

Family Video proved especially durable. Long after many competitors had disappeared, its stores remained familiar fixtures in northern Illinois. But even Family Video couldn't escape the changing economics of home entertainment. In September 2019, WIFR reported that the Family Video store in the 2700 block of Charles Street was closing, with the property slated to become a Dollar General. At the time, other Family Video locations in Loves Park, Belvidere, and Byron were still operating.

By January 2021, local residents were discussing the closure of the remaining Family Video stores. The industry that had once seemed permanent was reaching its conclusion.

And then there was Redbox, the automated rental kiosk that briefly seemed to offer a way for physical movie rentals to survive without maintaining an entire storefront. Redbox machines appeared outside grocery stores, pharmacies, and other retail businesses, reducing the rental experience to a small selection of discs and a credit card transaction.

Even that business model eventually failed. Redbox ceased operations in July 2024, and a May 2025 WTVO report found that its remaining kiosks had disappeared from the Rockford area.

The video rental store had gone from a neighborhood institution to a machine outside the supermarket, and finally to nothing at all.

What We Lost When the Video Stores Closed

It's tempting to explain the disappearance of video rental stores entirely in terms of technology. Streaming was more convenient, digital distribution reduced the need for physical inventory, and customers understandably preferred watching movies without leaving their homes. These changes were real, and there is no particularly convincing argument that the old rental system was more efficient.

But efficiency isn't the only measure of an experience.

Video stores offered something that modern streaming services have difficulty reproducing: the pleasure of accidental discovery. You could enter a store looking for the latest Hollywood blockbuster and leave with a low-budget horror movie, an obscure foreign film, or a documentary you'd never heard of. You might rent something because the cover looked interesting, because a friend recommended it, or because the clerk behind the counter insisted it was worth watching.

The selection was limited, but those limitations sometimes made discovery more meaningful. A store's inventory reflected the tastes of its owners, employees, distributors, and customers. No two independent stores were exactly alike. One might have an unusually good collection of martial arts films. Another might specialize in horror. Another might have an entire shelf of movies that seemed to exist nowhere else.

For horror fans in particular, video stores were an education. The VHS boom helped create audiences for obscure Italian zombie movies, low-budget American slashers, exploitation films, and countless productions that received little or no conventional theatrical distribution. Sometimes the artwork on the box was considerably better than the movie inside. Sometimes the movie was so peculiar that you remembered it for the rest of your life.

I certainly remember Zombiethon.

And I remember the larger Friday-night ritual. Buy some snacks, pick up a few beverages, rent five or six movies, and spend the weekend hoping that at least two or three were entertaining. For a college student, that was a perfectly satisfactory way to spend an evening. That and doing coursework, naturally.

There was also something social about the process. You encountered other customers, overheard conversations, argued with friends about what to rent, and occasionally received a recommendation from someone whose taste you trusted. A video store was a small public space organized around a shared interest in movies. It wasn't a grand cultural institution, but it was a place where culture circulated from one person to another.

Today, streaming services offer enormous catalogues, personalized recommendations, and immediate access to films that once required considerable effort to locate. There are obvious advantages to that. I wouldn't trade the ability to find an obscure movie in seconds for the necessity of searching half a dozen stores.

But I do miss the search itself.

Remembering Rockford's Lost Video Stores

The disappearance of Rockford's video rental stores is part of a much larger story about the changing American commercial landscape. Record shops, independent bookstores, neighborhood theaters, and video stores once occupied physical spaces where people encountered culture together. Some survived by adapting. Others disappeared almost completely.

What interests me is how quickly the physical evidence vanishes. A store that thousands of people visited over the course of a decade can become almost impossible to research thirty years later. The building remains, perhaps, but the sign is gone, the business directories are discarded, and the people who worked there have moved on.

That's one reason I wanted to write this article.

I would love to hear from Rockford residents who remember Cinema Centre Video, Video Outlet, Silver Star Video, Express Discount Video, Dollar Video, or any of the smaller stores that operated around the city. Where were they located? Who owned them? Which had the best horror section? Did you work at one? Do you have photographs, advertisements, membership cards, or even an old VHS rental case with the store's sticker still attached?

And if someone can tell me whether Cinema Centre Video operated near Rockford College around 1993, I'd especially appreciate solving that little mystery.

Because somewhere in Rockford, thirty-three years ago, I walked into a video store on a Friday night looking for something I hadn't seen before. I came home with a movie called Zombiethon, some snacks, and the expectation of an entertaining weekend.

I didn't realize I was participating in a cultural ritual that would eventually disappear.

I was just looking for a good zombie movie.

And I had to remember to rewind it.

Rockford's New Mayor, the Family Peace Center, and a Conversation Worth Having

By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

When Tom McNamara announced in July 2026 that he was stepping down as mayor of Rockford, the city's official announcement celebrated the accomplishments of his nine years in office. Among them was his role in establishing Illinois' first Family Peace Center, an institution dedicated to helping survivors of domestic violence and their families.

It was an accomplishment worth celebrating. The Family Peace Center, which opened in 2020, brought together services that had previously been scattered among different agencies. Its mission was to make it easier for survivors of abuse to obtain legal assistance, counseling, protection, and other resources without having to navigate an already difficult situation alone.

Less than two months after McNamara announced his departure, Rockford had a new mayor. Janessa Neal, formerly the city's Seventh Ward alderwoman, was selected by the City Council to serve as acting mayor until voters choose a successor in April 2027. Her appointment was historic. Neal became the first woman and first Black woman to lead Rockford.

There was, however, another part of Neal's recent history that deserves consideration alongside these accomplishments.

In February 2025, Neal, then known as Janessa Wilkins, was charged with misdemeanor domestic battery involving her teenage daughter. According to published accounts of the police investigation, the incident involved Neal striking the child with a belt. The matter was reported to authorities through a school resource officer.

On June 30, 2025, Neal pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic battery. Under the terms of a plea agreement, she received one year of court supervision and was required to complete anger-management classes. No judgment of conviction was entered as part of the reported agreement, and she was not sentenced to jail. Court supervision is a disposition under Illinois law that can allow a defendant to avoid a conviction upon successfully completing its conditions.

The case was not a secret. It was reported by local news organizations when the charges were filed and again when the court proceedings concluded. Neal's legal history also became a subject of public discussion when the City Council considered her appointment as mayor.

On August 10, 2026, the council selected Neal over Fifth Ward Alderwoman Gabrielle Torina by a vote of six to four, with three alderpersons abstaining. The appointment followed questions about the legal procedure for replacing a departing mayor, as well as political disagreements among council members.

Fourteenth Ward Alderman Mark Bonne, who ultimately supported Neal, acknowledged that her domestic battery case had influenced his earlier votes against her. Speaking to Rockford News First, Bonne argued that people should not be judged solely by their worst actions and noted that Neal had gone through the court process.

That is a reasonable perspective to include in any discussion of the appointment. People make mistakes, accept consequences, and work to improve their lives. The justice system itself recognizes the possibility of rehabilitation, and completing court supervision is not an insignificant matter.

But rehabilitation and public accountability are not necessarily opposing principles. A person can be entitled to move forward with their life while the public remains entitled to ask questions about the responsibilities entrusted to that person.

And in Rockford, those questions carry particular significance.

The Family Peace Center and the McNamara Legacy

The Family Peace Center was not a peripheral initiative of the McNamara administration. It was among its most visible commitments. In 2017, McNamara and the City Council created the Mayor's Office of Domestic and Community Violence Prevention. The Family Peace Center opened three years later, and its work has continued to expand.

In March 2026, McNamara appeared at a news conference announcing plans to bring specialized medical services for abused children and families into the Family Peace Center's future downtown location. Speaking to the Rock River Current, he described the expansion as a commitment to a coordinated and compassionate response to abuse. He also emphasized the importance of providing children and families with the support they deserve.

The project involves millions of dollars, numerous community partners, and a substantial investment of public and private resources. Its work should not be diminished by the political questions surrounding the mayor's office. The professionals helping survivors and vulnerable children deserve recognition for what they do.

Nevertheless, the Family Peace Center's association with the mayor's office raises an obvious question.

If addressing domestic violence is important enough to be celebrated as a defining achievement of McNamara's administration, what should the public make of his support for a successor who had recently pleaded guilty to domestic battery?

McNamara publicly endorsed Neal following her selection, expressing enthusiasm about her leadership and the historic significance of a woman becoming mayor. In the published comments reviewed for this article, he did not address her criminal case or explain how he reconciled his endorsement with his administration's longstanding commitment to domestic violence prevention.

We found no public statement from McNamara directly addressing that apparent tension. That does not establish that he has never discussed it, but it leaves a question that seems worthy of a public answer.

Why, if the Family Peace Center is an important part of McNamara's legacy, has there been no readily identifiable public explanation of his position on the domestic battery case involving the person who succeeded him?

This is not a demand that McNamara condemn Neal, nor an assertion that she should have been permanently disqualified from public office. It is simply a question about how a public commitment is understood and applied when circumstances become personally or politically complicated.

What Did Rockford Know?

One of the more interesting aspects of this story is that nearly all its individual elements were publicly reported.

Local television news covered the domestic battery charge, the court proceedings, and the City Council's selection of Neal. The Rockford Register Star reported on her guilty plea and court supervision. Rockford News First interviewed council members about the appointment, including alderpersons who acknowledged concerns about Neal's legal history.

In September, the Register Star published a letter to the editor from Olivia Carstens of Roscoe questioning what message the appointment sent to survivors of domestic violence and child abuse. Carstens also acknowledged that people should have opportunities for learning, growth, and rehabilitation.

That letter was an opinion submitted by a reader, however, rather than an independently reported investigation.

The Rock River Current covered the political maneuvering and procedural uncertainty surrounding Neal's appointment. It has also reported extensively on the Family Peace Center and McNamara's advocacy for domestic violence prevention. Our review found no substantive reporting from either the Rock River Current or the Rock River Times examining Neal's criminal case in connection with the city's domestic violence prevention commitments.

This observation is not meant to suggest that local news organizations deliberately concealed information. The individual events received coverage, and reporters have many competing demands on their time. But the distinction between reporting events separately and examining what those events mean together is an important one.

It is possible for a community to have access to information without ever having a sustained public conversation about it.

And this seems like a conversation Rockford should be capable of having.

A Question of Public Standards

Domestic battery involving a child is not identical to intimate-partner violence, and the circumstances of Neal's case should not be misrepresented. But the Family Peace Center's mission extends beyond intimate-partner violence to include the needs of children and families affected by abuse. Its planned expansion includes specialized medical services for abused children.

That makes the relationship between the criminal case and the city's institutional commitments more than a rhetorical comparison.

The question is not whether a person who has pleaded guilty to a crime must forever be excluded from public life. Nor is it whether completing court supervision should be dismissed as meaningless.

The question is what standards a community expects its leaders to apply, how those standards are communicated, and whether they remain consistent when the circumstances involve colleagues and political allies.

The City Council had the authority to consider Neal for the position, and its members made their selection. At least one alderman publicly acknowledged weighing her criminal case against the possibility of rehabilitation. Other council members emphasized her leadership qualities and ability to work with different perspectives.

Those explanations deserve to be heard.

So do the concerns of residents who believe the appointment raises questions about the city's stated priorities.

There is no need to assume bad faith on either side to recognize that these questions exist.

Rockford has invested considerable civic pride, public resources, and institutional energy in helping survivors of domestic violence. That work has real consequences for people who need assistance, sometimes at the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

The city also has a mayor who, a little more than a year before taking office, pleaded guilty to domestic battery involving her own child.

Both things are true.

The question is not whether Rockford should abandon its commitment to rehabilitation or its commitment to protecting people from abuse. A thoughtful community ought to be able to recognize the importance of both.

The question is whether its leaders are willing to explain how those commitments fit together.

And perhaps, before the next mayoral election, Rockford residents deserve an opportunity to hear that explanation.

Sources and Further Reading

• Rockford Register Star. Rockford alderwoman gets court supervision in domestic battery case. June 2025.

• Rockford News First / WIFR. Rockford council member charged with domestic battery after hitting teen with belt, police say. March 3, 2025.

• Rockford News First / WIFR. Rockford City Council praises acting mayor selection despite legal concerns. August 2026.

• Rockford News First / WIFR. Rockford residents weigh in on acting mayor decision at Politics Over Pizza. August 2026.

• Rock River Current. Specialized medical team to join Family Peace Center at new location in 2027. March 2026.

• City of Rockford. Official announcement concerning Mayor Tom McNamara's departure. July 2026.

• Rockford Register Star. What message is being sent with Rockford mayoral appointment?. Letter to the editor by Olivia Carstens. September 2026.

Necromancers Don't Read Toe Tags

 

Bruce Richardson Was on Rockford Television for 35 Years. How Did We Almost Forget Him?

By Thomas L. Vaultonburg | Rockford Blog | October 8, 2026

For thirty-five years, Bruce Richardson came into the living rooms of Rockford-area families and told them what was happening in their community and the world. He was there for the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the moon landing, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. He reported the news through seven presidential administrations, from Dwight Eisenhower to George H. W. Bush. He was, for a substantial portion of his career, one of the most recognizable people in northern Illinois. And today, if you go looking for information about him, you will discover something rather astonishing. There is almost nothing readily available.

Bruce Richardson and Monica Schneider WTVO Rockford

Not literally nothing, of course. His name appears in histories of WTVO Channel 17, where he worked from 1956 until his retirement in June 1992. There are scattered photographs, a few old advertisements, and the occasional surviving piece of television footage. But for a man who spent more than three decades appearing on television, the accessible historical record is remarkably thin. How does someone become such a familiar part of the lives of tens of thousands of people and leave behind so little of his professional life for future generations to discover?

I have a particular interest in this question because Bruce Richardson wasn't just someone I watched on television. He was someone I knew. I grew up in Byron, Illinois, where Bruce Richardson and his family also lived. I went to school with one of his children, Brett, and saw Bruce at sporting events, school functions, birthday parties, and the other ordinary occasions that bring families together in a small town. This is one of the peculiar things about growing up in a place like Byron. Someone could be a television celebrity throughout northern Illinois and still be somebody's dad at a school event. The distinction between the famous person on television and the neighbor you encountered around town was considerably less dramatic than it might have been somewhere else.

Bruce was a familiar presence in both worlds. At home, he was the man delivering the evening news. In Byron, he was Brett's father, someone I might encounter at a basketball game or a birthday party. I didn't think there was anything particularly extraordinary about that arrangement at the time. It was simply part of growing up. Looking back, though, I find it remarkable. Here was a man whose professional life involved communicating with an enormous audience, whose face and voice were familiar to generations of viewers, and whose personal life overlapped with my own in the most ordinary ways imaginable. I don't remember thinking of Bruce Richardson as a historical figure. Why would I? He was just Bruce.

Bruce Richardson joined WTVO in 1956, only three years after the station began broadcasting. At the time, television was still establishing itself as the dominant medium for news and entertainment in American homes. Rockford's television industry was young, and the people who worked in it were helping invent the local broadcasting traditions that subsequent generations would take for granted. A broadcasting industry directory from 1969 identifies Richardson as WTVO's news director. Over the years, he became closely associated with the station's news coverage, and his name was prominent enough that the station used the title Bruce Richardson and the News during part of its history.

Richardson worked alongside other familiar Rockford television personalities, including Monica Schneider, weatherman Bob Kevern, and sportscaster Bob Lewis. For many viewers, these people formed a kind of extended television family, appearing in their homes night after night. Richardson retired in June 1992 after more than thirty-five years at WTVO. The station's historical accounts identify him as Rockford's longest-serving television news anchor. Children who watched Bruce Richardson with their parents in the late 1950s could have been watching him with their own children in the 1980s. Families moved into new homes, changed jobs, married, divorced, raised children, and buried relatives, while Bruce Richardson continued appearing on their television screens. He became part of the background rhythm of life in northern Illinois.

One of my clearest recollections of Richardson's television career is a feature called Bruce on the Loose. I remember the name. I remember that it was part of his television identity. And I know I'm not the only person who remembers it. Recently, while looking through a Facebook discussion in the Rockford Rocked group about Richardson and Monica Schneider, I came across a comment from a former WTVO employee named Dave Charles. Charles recalled meeting Richardson after his retirement and mentioned that a few promotional items for Bruce on the Loose were still at the television station. That was an exciting discovery because it independently corroborated a memory I'd carried around for decades.

The segment existed. At least two people remember it, including someone who worked at the station. According to Charles, physical promotional materials associated with the feature survived at WTVO after Richardson retired. And yet, searching for Bruce on the Loose today produces almost no accessible evidence of the Rockford program. No readily discoverable collection of episodes. No substantial history of the feature. No obvious digital archive preserving its broadcasts. I don't want to invent details about what the segment involved simply because I remember its name. Memory is an imperfect historical instrument, and the passage of decades doesn't improve its accuracy. But the existence of the feature is supported by more than my recollection alone. Somewhere, perhaps in a box of station memorabilia, a private videotape collection, or an old employee's belongings, there may still be something that tells us more.

The Facebook discussion that prompted this investigation is fascinating in its own right. It features a photograph of Richardson and Monica Schneider, followed by dozens of comments from people who remember watching them, working with them, or encountering them around the community. One commenter remembered Richardson riding a Harley-Davidson Sportster purchased at Kegel's. Another recalled seeing him in Byron. Someone remembered that Monica Schneider's dog Buddy sometimes slept beneath the anchor desk during broadcasts. Alan Andersen, who identified himself as a WTVO broadcast engineer from 1984 to 1989, remembered Richardson enthusiastically. Brad Plock recalled that his father had worked at the station for fifty years as a film director. Others remembered Bob Kevern's weather forecasts, Bob Lewis's sports reports, and the personalities who helped make Channel 17 a fixture in Rockford households.

These aren't necessarily the details that make it into official histories of television broadcasting. But they're the details that make history human. A television station's corporate history might tell us when it changed ownership or switched network affiliations. It probably won't tell us about the dog sleeping beneath the anchor desk. And yet, fifty years from now, which detail do you suppose someone will find more interesting? These seemingly insignificant recollections are the little pieces of human experience that give a community its character. Without them, history becomes a collection of dates, names, and buildings, with most of the actual living left out.

One particularly intriguing discovery came from another commenter, Barton Fishoff, who shared a link to a surviving piece of WTVO footage from 1970. According to his description, it was part of an unfinished documentary about the environment, filmed on 16mm, that featured Bruce Richardson. The footage can be viewed on YouTube, a rare opportunity to encounter a fragment of Rockford television history that might otherwise have disappeared. It also raises a larger question: How much locally produced television from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s still exists somewhere, waiting to be rediscovered?

Early television wasn't created with future historians in mind. Much of it was broadcast live, and recordings weren't always preserved. Videotape was expensive, storage space was limited, and stations frequently reused or discarded material that had already served its immediate purpose. A news broadcast might have been watched by thousands of people on a Tuesday evening and then effectively vanished. For those of us who grew up watching local television, this creates a strange historical problem. We remember people and programs that were once ubiquitous, but we have remarkably little physical evidence of them. It's almost as though an entire layer of our shared cultural experience has been erased. Not because it wasn't important, but because nobody anticipated how important it might become.

I keep coming back to the extraordinary length of Bruce Richardson's career. Thirty-five years. That's longer than most people remain in a single profession, let alone a position that places them before a television audience on a regular basis. For decades, Richardson was one of the people Rockford trusted to tell it what was happening. He helped create the public record of a city and a region. His work was concerned, almost by definition, with preserving the events of the present so that people could understand their world. And yet, much of the record of his own professional life is now difficult to locate. There is an irony in that which I find difficult to shake. The man who spent thirty-five years telling Rockford its story now needs Rockford to tell his.

I also think about Brett, and the sporting events and birthday parties and school functions where I encountered his father. Those are memories that belong to an entirely different category from television history. They're memories of a community, of childhood, of people who existed in our lives before we understood that someday we would want to remember them. Bruce Richardson was part of my childhood in two different ways, and I suspect many other people throughout northern Illinois had their own versions of that experience. Some knew him as a colleague. Some as a neighbor. Some as a friend. Some knew him only as the familiar face that appeared on Channel 17. All of those memories are part of the same story.

One of the reasons I started writing about Rockford history was the realization that so much of what makes a community distinctive exists outside the official historical record. The people who ran neighborhood businesses, the musicians who played in local bars, the artists who created things that never traveled beyond Winnebago County, and the television personalities who appeared in our living rooms for decades all contributed to the culture of this place. But cultural memory is fragile. If nobody writes these things down, if nobody preserves the photographs or recordings, if nobody bothers to ask the people who were there, an astonishing amount of history can disappear in a single generation.

Bruce Richardson deserves more than a brief mention in a television station's history. So I'm asking readers of Rockford Blog to help reconstruct the story. Did you watch Bruce Richardson on WTVO? Do you remember Bruce on the Loose? Were you ever interviewed by him? Did you work at Channel 17, or do you have old photographs, promotional materials, videotapes, or newspaper clippings from his career? I'd especially like to hear from people who remember what Bruce on the Loose involved and when it aired. Maybe someone still has a recording. Maybe there's a box of promotional materials somewhere at WTVO. Maybe a former employee has photographs nobody has seen in decades. Or maybe the most important things people have to contribute are their memories.

I grew up in Byron knowing Bruce Richardson as Brett's father, a man I encountered at the same school events and birthday parties as everyone else. At the same time, he was one of the most familiar faces on television throughout northern Illinois. It never occurred to me then that his story might someday become difficult to tell. After thirty-five years on our television screens, surely we can find a way to remember the man who was there for so much of our lives.

---

 

Mr. Mustache: Remembering Bruce Lewis and Rockford's Forgotten Children's Television Show

By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

There was a time when children's television wasn't something produced in Hollywood or streamed from a server halfway around the world. It was something made right here in Rockford, Illinois, by people who lived in the same neighborhoods, shopped in the same stores, and sometimes recognized the children watching them on television. Before cable television offered hundreds of channels, before YouTube, and long before children carried their entertainment around in their pockets, local television stations produced their own programs for young audiences. And for a generation of Rockford children, one of the most memorable personalities to emerge from that era was a man named Mr. Mustache.

Mr. Mustache

His real name was Bruce Lewis, and from 1967 until 1982, he was a familiar presence on Channel 23, the Rockford television station now known as WIFR. During those fifteen years, Lewis entertained local children with drawings, puppets, humor, and personal appearances on his weekly television program. He belonged to an almost vanished tradition of local children's entertainers, men and women who became celebrities within a relatively small geographic area while remaining virtually unknown everywhere else. If you grew up in Rockford during those years, Mr. Mustache might have been as familiar to you as Captain Kangaroo or Mister Rogers. If you grew up somewhere else, chances are you never heard of him.

Who Was Mr. Mustache?

Bruce Lewis was born around 1942 and became one of the most recognizable local television personalities in Rockford during the late 1960s and 1970s. His program began in 1967, a period when local television stations still had considerable freedom to develop their own programming. Channel 23 was then known as WCEE-TV, and the station provided a home for Lewis and his particular combination of artistic talent and children's entertainment.

Unlike television personalities who simply introduced cartoons between commercial breaks, Lewis was himself a creative performer. He drew pictures, worked with puppets, and interacted directly with children who attended his programs. His artistic abilities were an important part of his appeal. Drawing wasn't merely something he did away from the camera. It was part of what made Mr. Mustache Mr. Mustache.

When Lewis died in November 2009, a Channel 23 remembrance described him as Rockford's own version of Mister Rogers. The comparison was particularly revealing. Fred Rogers became a national institution by treating children as people worthy of attention, kindness, and respect. Bruce Lewis, working on a much smaller stage, seems to have inspired similar affection among the children who watched him.

A Television Star Who Belonged to Rockford

One of the most remarkable things about the history of Mr. Mustache is how thoroughly local the entire enterprise was. In researching the program, I discovered that the name Mr. Mustache was actually registered as a trademark by a Rockford company called Tri-Arts Productions. The trademark application was filed on January 5, 1968, and listed September 27, 1967, as the date of first use. The registration was approved on October 29, 1968.

Even more interesting is the address associated with the trademark: 831 North Church Street, Rockford, Illinois. This wasn't a character developed by a national television network and distributed to stations around the country. The documentary trail leads directly back to Rockford, where the name was being used and commercially protected by a local production company. The registration eventually expired in 1992, but its surviving record provides an unusually precise historical marker for the beginnings of Mr. Mustache.

There is something appealing about the idea of a children's television personality being developed in Rockford during the same period that national television was becoming increasingly centralized. While the big networks were building national entertainment franchises, somebody on North Church Street was making sure the name Mr. Mustache belonged to a local production enterprise. It suggests an ambition to make something recognizable and enduring, even if its primary audience consisted of children living within range of a northern Illinois television transmitter.

The Children Who Became Part of the Show

One of the features that distinguished Mr. Mustache from nationally syndicated children's programming was the opportunity for local children to participate. Bruce Lewis didn't simply perform for an invisible audience on the other side of the television screen. Children attended his programs and interacted with him, creating memories that remained important to them decades later.

That participation is central to understanding the appeal of early local television. For a child growing up in Rockford in the 1970s, appearing on television was a genuine event. There were no smartphones, no social media accounts, and no easy way to broadcast yourself to the world. Being invited into a television studio and appearing on a program watched by other children around town could be an extraordinary experience. You might go to school the following week knowing that your classmates had seen you on Channel 23.

The show's combination of puppetry, drawing, and direct interaction also placed it within a long tradition of children's entertainment that valued imagination over expensive production. A talented artist with a drawing surface, a few puppets, and the ability to communicate with children could create an entire world. There was no need for elaborate digital effects or an army of animators. The magic came from watching something happen in front of you.

And because Lewis was a local personality, the boundary between the television studio and the community was unusually thin. Mr. Mustache wasn't a distant celebrity whose appearances were carefully managed by a national publicity department. He was Bruce Lewis, a working artist and entertainer who lived in the community he served.

Fifteen Years of Rockford Television History

The years between 1967 and 1982 were a remarkable period of change in American television. When Mr. Mustache first appeared, television was still dominated by the three major commercial networks, and local stations filled portions of their schedules with locally produced programs. By the time his run ended, cable television was beginning to transform viewing habits, and the economic incentives for producing original local children's programming were changing.

Mr. Mustache survived through much of that transition. Fifteen years is an impressive run for any local television personality, particularly one working in a market the size of Rockford. It meant that children who first encountered the program in the late 1960s could have younger brothers and sisters who were still watching it in the early 1980s.

The show's longevity also explains why it occupies such a distinctive place in Rockford nostalgia. Mr. Mustache wasn't simply a program that happened to be on television for a season or two. He was part of the everyday cultural environment of the city for a substantial portion of an entire generation's childhood.

And yet, like so much early local television, the program has largely disappeared from the accessible historical record. We can document the years it aired, identify its creator, and establish some of its activities, but the surviving online information is surprisingly limited. The precise episode count, complete broadcast schedule, detailed production history, and extent of any surviving recordings remain questions worth investigating.

The Artist Behind the Mustache

Bruce Lewis's artistic talents extended beyond his television character. When Channel 23 reported his death in 2009, the station specifically remembered his drawings and artistic impressions, noting that both his older artwork and more recent creations continued to attract interest. The remembrance also described him as someone who contributed his creativity to numerous local projects.

That part of Lewis's story deserves particular attention. It suggests that Mr. Mustache was not simply a television job performed by a man whose real interests lay elsewhere. Lewis was an artist who found a way to bring his creative abilities into children's lives through the medium of television.

Local broadcaster Andy Gannon remembered Lewis as a friendly and generous individual who made time for other people. It's a small detail, but an important one. Television can manufacture the appearance of warmth and sincerity, but the memories people leave behind among their colleagues and neighbors often reveal more about them than the characters they performed.

Lewis appears to have been remembered not only for what he did on television but for the kind of person he was away from the cameras.

The End of an Era

Mr. Mustache's regular television run ended in 1982. The available historical record doesn't establish exactly why the program concluded, and it would be misleading to attribute its cancellation to any single cause without additional documentation. What can be said is that its departure came during a period when locally produced children's television was becoming increasingly uncommon.

There was a time when virtually every television market had its own children's personalities. Some were clowns, some were cowboys, some were magicians, and others were simply friendly adults who introduced cartoons and invited children to become part of the show. These performers were often deeply embedded in their communities, appearing at schools, shopping centers, charity events, and local celebrations.

Many of these programs were produced live or under circumstances in which recordings were not routinely preserved. Videotape was expensive, storage was limited, and few stations anticipated that people would someday want to study their children's programming as an important part of local cultural history.

Consequently, the history of local television is full of missing programs, forgotten performers, and memories that exist primarily in the minds of the people who watched them. Mr. Mustache belongs to that larger story, but he also represents something specifically Rockford's own.

Remembering Bruce Lewis

Bruce Lewis died of cancer in November 2009 at the age of 67. His death prompted a remembrance from Channel 23, the station where he had spent so many years entertaining local children. The station recalled his drawings, puppets, and the generations of children who had appeared on his program. For many of those former young viewers, visiting Mr. Mustache was still a cherished memory decades after the television show ended.

There is something particularly poignant about the disappearance of local children's television. Unlike a national program, which might survive indefinitely through syndication, streaming services, and commercial releases, a locally produced program can vanish almost completely once it leaves the air. Its host grows older, the children who watched it become adults, and eventually the entire experience becomes a story that one generation tells another.

But that doesn't mean it was unimportant. Quite the opposite. For thousands of children, local television personalities were among their earliest encounters with art, performance, humor, and the possibility that an ordinary person living in their own community could create something wonderful.

Bruce Lewis spent fifteen years doing precisely that.

Today, Mr. Mustache is part of Rockford's collective memory, a reminder of a time when a local artist could become a television star simply by being imaginative, generous with his talents, and willing to entertain the children of his hometown.

And perhaps that's the part of the story most worth remembering. Rockford didn't need Hollywood to give its children Mr. Mustache. Rockford had Bruce Lewis.

Do you remember watching Mr. Mustache on Channel 23? Were you ever a guest on the program? Does your family have photographs, drawings, memorabilia, or recordings from the show? I'd especially like to hear from people who knew Bruce Lewis or remember visiting the television studio. Local history is often preserved not in official archives but in family photo albums, boxes in attics, and the memories of people who were there. If you have a Mr. Mustache story, please share it in the comments so this remarkable piece of Rockford television history doesn't disappear.

 

The Ghost of Kennedy Hill Road

By Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Every small town seems to have at least one road you're supposed to drive after dark if you want to encounter something you can't explain. Around Byron, Illinois, one of those places was Kennedy Hill Road. The story, as I remember hearing it growing up, concerned a mysterious woman in white who appeared along the road at night. Drivers would catch sight of her moving along the roadside, illuminated for a moment in the headlights before darkness swallowed her again.

Who was the Ghost of Kennedy Hill Road?

It had all the necessary ingredients for a proper northern Illinois ghost story: a lonely country road, darkness, cornfields and woods, a figure dressed in white appearing unexpectedly beside the pavement and, most importantly, generations of young people willing to scare the hell out of one another. Kennedy Hill Road didn't need much assistance. Drive the rural roads around Byron late enough at night and the familiar landscape changes. Farmhouses become isolated points of light. Trees become walls. Your headlights illuminate only a small piece of the world at a time while everything beyond them disappears.

Then somebody tells you that people have seen a woman in white out there, and from that moment on every mailbox becomes a person. Every pale tree trunk becomes a dress. Every movement at the edge of the headlights becomes something running alongside the road. That's how local legends work. Somebody sees something. Somebody else tells the story. Details get added. The story passes through school hallways, cars, parties and bedrooms until eventually nobody remembers exactly where it started. They only know you're supposed to look for the woman in white.

The woman in white is one of the great recurring figures in ghost stories. She's usually somebody who died tragically. Sometimes she's searching for a lost child or lover. Sometimes she was killed on the very road where she continues to appear. Sometimes nobody knows who she is at all. The uncertainty is part of what keeps the story alive. If you explain the woman in white, you don't have much of a ghost story anymore.

Except in the case of the Ghost of Kennedy Hill Road, I happen to know something about the ghost.

I went to grade school in Byron, and my first real crush was a girl there. Eventually I learned something interesting about her mother. She liked to jog. She sometimes went jogging at night. She went jogging on Kennedy Hill Road. And when she did, she wore a white jogging outfit.

So while other people may have spent years wondering about the identity of the spectral woman in white haunting Kennedy Hill Road, I've always had a somewhat less supernatural theory. The Ghost of Kennedy Hill Road was probably the mother of my first grade-school crush.

She wasn't searching eternally for her murdered lover. She hadn't risen from a forgotten pioneer cemetery. She wasn't trying to warn travelers away from some terrible fate waiting around the next curve.

She was exercising.

Which, when you think about it, is exactly the kind of explanation a small-town ghost story deserves. Somewhere along the way, somebody driving Kennedy Hill Road at night saw a pale figure moving through the darkness at the edge of their headlights. They went home with a ghost story.

And somebody's mom went home having gotten her miles in.