[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.” The executive director of the bureau predicted that“a Dillinger festival would spark the interest of the Midwest, as wellas sparking an economic boon for Lake County.” The Crown PointChamber of Commerce appointed a committee to study the possi-bility of a Dillinger celebration.Some objected to making a notori-ous criminal the town’s poster boy, but the city of East Chicago wasalready considering an annual reenactment of its Dillinger robbery,and a member of the Crown Point Chamber’s executive board declaredthat it would be a shame for his town to be left behind: “We glorifyevents in our history all the time, good and bad.People come toour town every day asking where it happened.If they want to ask thequestion, we should be providing the answer.” Northwest Indiana hadsuffered an economic cataclysm during the deindustrialization of the1980s and 1990s.Factories folded and unemployment rates soared.Perhaps tourism was the answer, and maybe the first Public Enemy_SNumber One, the man whom the Hays Commission banned from_E_L194 | Dillinger’sWildRideAmerican theaters and J.Edgar Hoover called a rat, could help bolstercivic pride and boost commerce.52Lake County got its attraction when the Visitors Bureau openedthe Dillinger Museum in 1999.Hammond, however, not Crown Pointor East Chicago, was the winning town.In 1975 the Dillinger chroni-cler Joe Pinkston had used his extensive memorabilia collection asthe basis for the John Dillinger Historical Wax Museum in Nashville,Indiana.On display with typewritten labels were Dillinger’s base-ball spikes, his original headstone, yellowing newspaper clippings, acopy of his death mask, the infamous wooden gun, his 1933 EssexTerraplane-V8, and the blood-stained pants he wore on his last nighton earth.The museum had something of a carnival sideshow atmo-sphere.Pinkston commissioned several wax figures depicting gorymoments in Dillinger’s life, as well as effigies of Pretty Boy Floyd,Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker, and others.53When Pinkston died in 1996 his family sold everything to the LakeCounty Convention and Visitors Bureau for four hundred thousanddollars.For another one million dollars the Bureau hired the ICONExhibits Company, which specializes in creating trade shows, to designa “hands-on historical adventure.” The new museum is located in theLake County Visitors Center, at the Illinois-Indiana border on theinterstate highway to Chicago.It has not been without controversy.Just before the museum opened, the Lake County sheriff—LillianHolley’s successor almost three generations later—denounced thewhole idea as a monument to a criminal and a cop killer.Other LakeCounty officials reassured him that the place would be as much aboutcrime fighting and crime’s victims as criminals.The sheriff relented.Then Dillinger’s grandnephew sued the museum, arguing that theanticrime tilt slandered his uncle.He claimed that under Indiana lawhe had the right to protect the Dillinger family name and that themuseum defamed it by calling Dillinger a murderer, when in fact hehad never been charged with or convicted of homicide.The courtstook the suit seriously, and the museum closed for a few years.Theparties finally reached an out-of-court settlement in 2008, and theDillinger Museum reopened that year.54Tucson too got on the Dillinger heritage bandwagon.Beginningin the 1990s the Hotel Congress began sponsoring special events toS_commemorate the gang’s apprehension, and by the next decade theE_whole town was involved.“The capture of outlaw John Dillinger atL_the historic Hotel Congress in downtown Tucson is one true tale thatDillinger’sGhost| 195is celebrated every year,” Rio Productions, the company responsiblefor inventing the tradition, declared in a 2005 press release [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
  • zanotowane.pl
  • doc.pisz.pl
  • pdf.pisz.pl
  • trzylatki.xlx.pl