PEORIA
Norman V. Kelly
I started researching the history of Peoria, Illinois
back in the winter of 1982 by reading the 1845 newspapers. It dawned on me then
that the real historians initially were newspaper reporters. After all, where do the historians get their
initial material? That’s right, from the
newspapers and then a more in depth search is made of the subject. I certainly
started with the local newspapers, and from there I went to the criminal
archives in our courthouse. In
researching murder cases I headed to the coroner’s office for the inquest and
to the old court files for court testimony. I spent a lot of time researching
the man that lived here in Peoria and was known among other names as the
“Railroad Man.”
The man’s name was George Plummer McNear Jr. He was
born in Petalum, California in 1891 and a graduate of Cornell University in
1913 with a degree in engineering. Mr.
McNear was an excellent student, and a member of the school’s rowing crew.
After college he was employed as a broker in New York City, where he married
Elizabeth McKenzie, the daughter of a New York architect. He served in France
during World War 1, including some activity in local railroads. Once his tour
was over he headed back to New York where he worked for the Guaranty Trust
Company. George started on the bottom and worked his way to the top. He headed the division in the bank that dealt
with reorganization of companies that went bankrupt. What possible reason would
this man want to come to the small town of Peoria, Illinois? Why indeed.
JUST ANOTHER
COMMON MAN
No, I am not talking about George McNear, he was far
from just a common man, but Irwin Paschon was a railroad man, not in the
rarified air of George McNear, but a railroader just the same. Pants, as his
friends called him was born in 1918 to a coal miner father and a church welfare
worker here in Peoria , Illinois
The workers within the offices of the TP&W were
not unionized and during the strike of 1941-42, McNear called upon his office
workers to take over the movement of the trains. Pants and his co-workers
reluctantly obeyed. For Irwin ‘Pants’ Paschon it worked out rather well. Before the strike ended, the United States
Government took over McNear’s railroad and Pants was named the head timekeeper,
the youngest man in that or any other department. An expert at his job, he was
torn between that duty and an offer the union had made to him. With some trepidation he agreed to take over
as treasurer of the local union. In early February 1944, Pants married Gloria
Peck, a pretty seventeen-year-old in the office where he used to work.
McNear and Paschon had another thing in common besides
the TP&W Railroad. They both loved sports, and rarely if ever missed a Bradley
basketball game here in Peoria, Illinois. Gloria and Pants had a baby and just
one month after its birth the railroad was again struck by the unionized
members of the TP&W. Pants pulled picket duty and spoke on behalf of the
railroaders, telling the press how terrible the lives of the section hands were
out on the prairie and their low pay. Pants felt that they needed him because
the members were just too weak to intelligently fight against McNear and the
other rich and politically powerful railroad owners.
That Christmas was far from a merry one for Paschon
and the striking workers. It was bitter cold and the only way the picketers had
to keep from freezing was their barrels of burning wood. When the strike began Pants had less than a
thousand dollars in his bank account and by January it was all gone. Things looked desperate here in Peoria for
the Paschon family and all the other workers as well. As it turned out Irwin Paschon would not live long enough to see his baby
girl grow into womanhood.
WHY GEORGE CAME TO PEORIA,
ILLINOIS
In New York, McNear was a successful, handsomely paid
broker, the next day he was an unemployed owner of a broken down, bankrupt
railroad called the Toledo, Peoria & Western, TP&W for short. He called his wife and said, “Hang on to your
hat, sweetheart; we are going into business for ourselves.” The TP&W started in Effner, Indiana and
ran 239 miles through Illinois to Keokuk, Iowa, with its offices in Peoria, Illinois. Folks that knew anything at all about
railroads called the defunct line the ‘tired poor and weary’ road. Peorians
remembered the TP&W railroad and its excursion trips to Niagara Falls, a
very popular trip for folks in this area. One fateful day a horrific wreck
caused the deaths of eighty-one people, and the subsequent death and injury
claims destroyed the road’s assets.
The week that McNear bought the line, it was
struggling along, losing money but still maintaining 28 engines and a small
amount of business. His past knowledge of bankruptcy put him at an advantage as
he discussed the possible purchase of the company. Finally, he agreed to put up $65,000 in cash,
which was only 5% of the total cost. This left him virtually broke and he
eventually borrowed some money from his father, packed up and left New York for
some place he knew nothing about, Peoria, Illinois. So there he was, like he said, running his
own business, but his future was far from secure. Challenge never bothered
George McNear, so he forged ahead.
One advantage McNear understood was that the line, all
239 miles of it was a long way from the bottleneck of railroads in
Chicago. It was a clean shot to the
western hook-up and could save shippers time and money. That is the one fact that convinced him that
the TP&W was a viable line and that he could run it and make money doing
it. George was a man on a quest and his
endless trips across the United States selling the TP&W brought him
customers even he didn’t know existed.
All during the Great Depression he worked and his line was one of the
few in America that thrived during that terrible time. Once the economic
situation recovered in America, George McNear’s TP&W netted him very nearly
one million dollars a year.
George McNear grew in reputation and authority as he
dominated his employees, his company and in many cases his customers. He was a big man, intimidating in his 200
pound, six-foot three imposing figure, with a
no-nonsense attitude.
He worked from six in the morning, granting himself a half-hour for
lunch, and working well into the night.
He knew what it took to be successful, and over the years stuck to his
work ethic and plan for total success. That was George Plummer McNear: take him
or leave him, it mattered little to him. Certainly many people did not take him
and found him difficult to deal with and in some instances obnoxious. As far as McNear was concerned folks around
him should do the changing not him.
He worked long hours and expected everyone to do the
same. Hell, he knew he was stubborn and self-righteous and he felt no need to
change.
McNEAR’S
LIFE IN PEORIA
Remember here in Peoria, Illinois there was always an
upper crust, the elite, the society, which simply means that we had and still
have a hell of a lot of rich people living here. Of course it all started with
the distilleries, which Peorians called the “Booze Barons” and the wealthy men
that owned and ran the beer brewing companies. Peoria got its start from these
rich and powerful men and the growth of the city can be traced back to
them. The money people in town…the
society folks, welcomed Mr. And Mrs. McNear, most assuredly. George’s wife was
a tall, stately woman, well educated and certainly was genuinely well liked by
the country club elite.
George built his own tennis court on the property that
he owned out near the Peoria Country Club, and it was glassed-in so they could
play in nearly any kind of weather. He also had a beautiful home up on Moss
Avenue, an old, wealthy neighborhood on the west bluff of Peoria. The couple was extremely active, with long
walks and vacations to dude ranches out west.
George was a health conscious person and never smoked or drank. The McNears
loved their five children, and although George was a strict father, their home
life was a happy one. When the news came that their oldest son was killed in an
airplane crash in the Pacific during the war in 1945 the family was devastated.
Peoria was a union town, and there have been incidents
in town that I wrote about in some of my books that included some pretty rough
treatment of their opponents. That did
include some bombings that were meant to intimidate rather than kill or destroy
property. The strikes in our town were
also threatening and more than one beating was administered on both sides.
I remember in my little subdivision in El Vista men
standing guard with rifles in their hands to prevent damage to their homes by
tar or creosote. A common practice when
union members felt that ‘scabs’ or non-union work was being done. Over at
Keystone there was a violent exchange of gunfire as well. Caterpillar’s strikes
were notorious for violence and that was simply the way it was here in Peoria
before and after WW 11. George McNear
would soon learn of that tendency and many people feel to this day that that
was what finally took his life.
Right after the purchase of TP&W the railroad
unions went along with McNear, agreeing that they would help him get the
railroad up and running and making a profit. In 1929 they finally had had
enough and demanded of McNear some raise in pay and other benefits. After all they had helped him
and the least he could do was show some appreciation.
Being the stubborn man that he was, he simply refused. Immediately they struck his precious railroad, leaving him high and dry. Not to worry, McNear used his office force
and new employees to break the strike.
History shows that here in town the thought was that that was a fatal
mistake for George McNear.
The union even battled among themselves as far as
McNear was concerned and in 1940 two brotherhoods won the right to represent
the railroad workers. Did that even faze our Mr. Railroad man? Hell no! George objected to the union’s new
‘featherbedding’ rules telling them that he had no intention of paying men for
work they did not do. He also added that
he would much rather scrap the railroad than comply with their demands. The
union countered telling McNear that all the other railroads in the United
States considered these demands reasonable and that they were simply ‘standard’
for the industry. McNear in his typical
stubborn and rigid attitude told the union that the other railroad executives
were “spineless.”
The truth is that in 1941 McNear lowered some salaries
and become even more relentless in his attempt to force the union out of his
life. The union fought back and voted to
strike and vowed that no railroad worker would touch his freight cars. That of
course brought McNear’s business to a halt. Even the local newspaper, the
Peoria Journal-Transcript
wrote: “Both sides are wrong.” Big
brother, the United States Government stepped in, claiming the TP&W was
essential to the war effort and George McNear lost the right to run his own
railroad. Incredibly during the two and one-half years the government ran the
railroad it made just over seven millions dollars for Mr. McNear. Did that satisfy the tycoon? Hell no, he even refused to take the money
until a dispute with the government was ironed out over taxes. Of course the folks in Peoria thought the man
must be demented. On October 1, 1945
George got his beloved TP&W back and the government was out of his
hair. Now George had a bright road ahead
of him…right? Wrong. That very day the brotherhood walked out on
him leaving him totally alone to run his business.
BACK TO
PANTS PASCHON
Irwin Paschon had been a happy man since he married
Gloria Peck and had their beautiful daughter.
He had had his ups and downs with the job and certainly lived the
failures with the brotherhood, but overall he did rather well. He helped guide
his union during the days the government had taken over the TP&W and he was
pretty content. The trouble would start,
he thought, when McNear took back the leadership of the railroad. Of course he was precisely correct and now he
was leading another strike.
So, even though he had no real requirement to walk the
picket line, he was out there with his brothers on February 6, 1946 bright and
early. He left his home assuring Gloria that there would be very little trouble
and she was not to worry. Paschon was doing enough worrying for both of them.
The night before his picket duty he had gotten a threatening telephone call
from a man telling him to back off. The caller told him that he would get what
the picket shack got, and that was shot gun pellets. Threats were always flying during strikes,
and instead of worrying, or telling Gloria he went bowling that night with his
pals.
Once he got to the shack and got a roaring fire going
he heard that there had been some trouble around the picket line and that they
should be very cautious. At noon a
neighbor told Gloria that she had heard about a shooting over at Gridley,
Illinois, a small town on the line about forty miles east of Peoria, Illinois. It worried her and when someone knocked on the
door she almost jumped out of her skin. It was her parents and as they were
gathered outside to go to her parent’s house two men drove up and talked to her
father.
GRIDLEY,
ILLINOIS
It was eight in the morning when Pants and his
brothers found themselves at East Peoria, Illinois trying to hold down the
picket line with some authority. Engine 41 fired up at 8:00 a.m and began
pushing a gondola car rigged with armored steel on its sides along with two
boxcars. Behind this protected area and in the caboose were armed TP&W
guards hired by McNear to keep his line running. Now this TP&W ‘crew’ numbered fourteen
men, all armed and ready for trouble.
Normally a crew of five men would have handled the ‘work train’
duties. The fact that these men were not
even railroad men convinced the union during the hearings that these men were
there to provoke a shooting incident, which was exactly what happened.
Engine forty-one left the station without incident
heading for Eureka, Illinois. Once there the crew tried to detach one of the
boxcars when they were attacked by union members, including Pants Paschon. They
threw rocks and anything they could get their hands on at the workers. The armed guards fired their weapons, and
Paschon and his men raced to their cars to continue following the engine.
At El Paso engine 41 was greeted by Paschon and his
brotherhood in the same manner, only this time they beat up a scab. Although
the man was certainly beaten he did not have life threatening injuries. Next
stop was Gridley where the engine was to have taken on water. Four guards walked between the tracks to the
rear of the train, rifles at the ready as it backed slowly toward the switch. Paschon and his men had already surrounded the
switch and stood defiantly yelling threats at the oncoming, armed men. The
switchman threw the switch and at that moment, Paschon and his group moved
forward a bit. A shot rang out! Who
fired the first shot, one of the guards or one of the pickets?
IN A
HAIL OF BULLETS
All hell broke loose as shots were fired going and
coming in all directions as the pickets fled for their very lives. Almost
immediately Tom Tracy and Pants Paschon had gotten across the tracks and were
running very closely together. Tom Tracy
later would testify that he heard Pants cry out in pain. “Boys I am hit.” Tom grabbed his comrade as more shotgun
pellets hit Paschon. “Tom! I am hit hard.”
Mr. Tracy testified he had to let go of his friend to save his own life.
“When I let him go I heard Pants say, ‘Oh!’” Irwin ‘Pants’ Paschon was
dead. Seconds later, another picket,
Arthur Brown died of his wounds. In all two men died and three others were wounded
in that withering gunfire. All of them were shot in the back or the side.
JUSTICE?
Needless to say this story was major news in this part
of the country and was covered by a dozen or so reporters from all over.
Threats, accusations, finger pointing and blame flowed back and forth from many
factions here in this area. The FBI, the
County and state police departments interviewed every living soul that had
anything to say. The grand jury delivered indictments against the
shooters. At the sensational trial, the
jury heard from every witness that could make their way to the courthouse. Result?
NOT GUILTY. The men that were
hired by McNear claimed self-defense and the jury bought it.
McNear was quoted as saying that the Gridley affair
was, “a regrettable incident.” He then
contacted the Governor of Illinois demanding that troops be sent in, but his
demand was refused. McNear then sent another train to Gridley and announced
that he would continue his business. The
union backed off and allowed his trains to run on the rails, but not one of
them would aid in unloading his trains or help in any way shape or form.
On June 6 a Federal Court threw the TP&W into
receivership. So that was the end of George McNear and his beloved railroad.
Right? Wrong. In September he won his legal battle to get his railroad
back. Old George was not finished yet.
In early October of 1947 Mr. McNear was a key witness in Washington, D.C. when
the House committee on Labor held hearings into the railroad business. The
union continued to picket McNear’s railroad, but on January 10, 1947 a federal
judge ruled that they could no longer picket the TP&W. So McNear, with
apparent clear sailing would continue with his railroading, nothing or no one
could stop Peoria’s railroad man. Or so it would seem.
March 10, 1947
As I mentioned George McNear was an athletic person
and an avid fan of sports, especially Bradley Basketball. The Braves were
playing a game against Colorado College down at the Armory. George left his car
in his garage picked up his cane and walked down Main Street hill to the game.
It was a Monday. It was a little cool and a bit foggy
as he made his way that early evening. It was also a bit darker than usual
because in some parts of town there was a power outage. George enjoyed the
game, a bit remorseful that this game was the last home game of the season for
the Braves. Bradley won the game in a whirl of controversy concerning a stuck time
clock, 66 to 65. George left his
reserved seat assuming the Braves had won as did all the other fans. Bradley was on the way to the NIT and George
was a happy man as he made his way back up the hill to his home at 202 Moss
Avenue.
Later the Braves win was taken away by officials that
had studied the controversy over the clock and decided that Colorado had the victory.
On the way up the hill, McNear stopped to chat with Cornelius
O’Brien, about the loss of power. As he turned on High Street the darkness was
more pronounced than when he was on Main Street. Once on High Street he saw the
night watchman that patrolled the Bluff. The two men waved at each other as
McNear, now close to his home disappeared in the fog of the night. Just moments later a sharp crack was heard in
the darkness. The guard told reporters
later that he “thought it was a car backfiring.”
Two Bradley students renting an apartment from a
doctor heard the sound and peered out the upstairs window. They saw the body of a large man lying in the
street. The two students, Bob Cheek and Bill Johnson stared for a moment longer
as they saw the car lights shine directly on the man. They ran out of their
apartment just as Dr. Sutton was coming out. Carl DeWeerth, the man in the car
continued down Main Street to city hall, where he informed the police of what
he had seen. A neighbor, LuAnne Overstolz later told police that she had heard
the sound of running footsteps just outside her kitchen door. The three men had
now reached the man and when the doctor turned the body over he exclaimed, “My
God! It’s George McNear.”
WHO KILLED
GEORGE McNEAR?
“Why the union…who else?” That was the opinion of most Peorians, and
that quote was often repeated. One of the men noted it was 10:37, the estimated
time when they had all heard the shot. Within a few moments the place was
crawling with cops and the news the next morning shocked the city of Peoria,
Illinois. That’s what the newspapers said,
but I can tell you that I was here and I have talked to many, many people who
sure as hell were not ‘shocked.’ The newspapers had played up the McNear vs the
unions for years, and as I said this was a union town. Many men that I talked
to told me that they had expected someone to “bump off old George a long time
ago.”
The reporters from a couple dozen papers were in town
and they gleefully reported every gory detail of the murder. Why not, hell that was their job but along
with that they reported all over again the “Gang related murders”, all three of
them in 1946. So for weeks the
newspapers had a lot to write about and there was more than one EXTRA on the
street to the delight of the people who sell papers. As I mentioned in my other books Peoria’s
reputation for 101 years was that of a bawdy, wide-open town. In 1946 we had
those three murders I just mentioned. In
1947 we had the murder of George McNear and the kidnapping and murder of Flavel
Feuger. After that, thanks to the out of
town reporters, Peoria’s reputation changed to a “Dangerous gangster
town.” Hell, we never really got over
that until we were named All American City in what…1953?
CLUES,
CLUES WE GOT
CLUES
If opinions were clues then the police would have
solved the murder of McNear the very next day. However what they found at the
scene was the dead man’s cane some sixty feet from his body. The police surmised that George had thrown
the cane at his killer. They found the wadding that apparently had come from
the shotgun that killed McNear. There was an article in Reader’s Digest by some
jerk that illustrated above the story a Machine gun and a train engine. God, but they loved that machine gun, and
every damn writer who ever came here wanted to talk about gangsters and machine
guns. Most people know my attitude on that phony myth. I swear to you that
there were people in this town and visitors as well who would have preferred
the use of a machine gun instead of a shotgun.
There’s so much more ‘gangster’ thrill that way.
George was killed by a single shot from a twelve-gauge
shotgun firing
Double .00 slugs. Police found two very good foot
prints and a scuff on the bark of the tree where the gun had rested. This type
load usually has nine BB like slugs and poor George had been hit with six. Since
there were six holes in McNear’s body it had to
be a machine gun…so the articles went. Some fools said that the union had
arranged for the lights to be out so the killer could hide more readily. Trouble with the union theory is that there
were 313 in that union and I wonder if you can even imagine a plot like that
among so many being kept secret? McNear
had a lot of other people that would just as soon see him dead as alive. So who
killed McNear? Well, why don’t you give
a guess… everyone else did. Rewards were
offered up to $52,000.00 and nothing ever was presented to police to warrant
the rewards. The case grew cold and then
slipped off into oblivion.
There were 6 murders during
1946, 1947 and 1948 and only one, the murder of Flavel Feuger was ever solved.
In 1948 our pet gangster Bernie Shelton was gunned down here as well. As I
said, those 6 murders changed our reputation forever. About the only thing I am
sure of is that they sold one hell of a lot of newspapers. norman.kelly@sbcglobal.net
Norm Kelly is a Peoria
historian and author of 12books on the history of Peoria, and is a Playwright
and author of hundreds of Short Stories, some fiction.
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