Bill Kelly didn’t expect the onslaught of job-seekers when his company decided to set up a booth at the Illinois Workforce Council’s Third Annual Job Fair last week at Danville Area Community College’s Bremer Center.
But within an hour of the doors opening Thursday, he had already almost run out of applications.
“I guess if we run out of applications, that’s a nice problem for us,” said Kelly, operations manager for Illini Drilled Foundations, Inc., based in Danville. The union-labor company does work all over the Midwest and pays hourly rates in the double digits.
“Most of the people we’ve talked to are unemployed or looking at a layoff,” he said. “We didn’t know there would be this many people here. I knew the area had its problems, but this has been a real eye-opener.”
Not to employment officials who organized the event.
New statistics released dating to August shows the jobless rate in Vermilion County continues to rise, going up almost 2 full percentage points last year to 8.9 percent. The Danville unemployment rate rose from 8.5 percent to 10 percent.
“It’s been tough for anyone looking,” said Cheryl Bradfield, of the Illinois Department of Employment Security, organizer of the event. “We’re just trying to support anyone who’s out there looking for a job.”
The Workforce Council is a conglomeration of local government agencies and employers who try to match the county’s employees with available jobs. Several dozen employers were on hand at the job fair, the result of months of planning by job-training officials.
“The logistical part of finding work can be difficult, so this gives them a chance to come to one place and work up and down the room,” she said.
Organizers had hoped to serve up to 500 job-seekers during the four-hour fair, but Bradfield said she expected more as more than 100 had come through the doors in the first hour. She predicted it would be the most-attended job fair since it was started three years ago. Around 60 employers had booths.
“It helps because they’re able to answer questions directly from employers,” she said. “We bring the employers here.”
This year’s fair offered additional services for veterans, who face particular challenges in finding a job that compare in benefits and salary to the ones they held in the military.
“We’ve got a professional military and they make a pretty good living,” said Randy Van Vickle, who works in the veterans-employment division of IDES. “Sometimes they might get a little sticker shock (as civilian job-seekers.).”
He said part of his job is reminding employers all the skills an employee who has served in the military can offer a local company.
“The hard skills are always nice,” he said, “but veterans bring with them soft skills that are very valuable.”
Among them, good attendance, being on time, working as a team and taking orders.
He said efforts are coordinated through the local Veterans’ Administration office, one of the partners with the Workforce Council. He said older veterans face particular challenges with the loss of longtime jobs due to lost, local manufacturing jobs.
“I don’t think employers always realize all of the skills a veteran can bring” regardless of age, he added.
Both said the state had made the process of local job-seeking easier, with applicants signing up for the state job bank online at http://www.illinoisskillsmatch.com/
and through a local link at http://www.442jobs.com/. The state site offers jobs across Illinois.
But Illinois jobs weren’t the only ones available at the job fair. Two uniformed Indiana State Police officers manned a booth that offered not only professional and law-enforcement opportunities in the neighboring state, but also hundreds of civilian and office jobs.
“They look at us in uniform and think about police jobs,” said Sgt. Brian Obehy, “but we’ve got a long list of jobs from all over the state. The government’s not going anywhere.”
Many of those attending said they, too, were surprised at the number of employers with available jobs to fill.
Keona Montgomery, there looking for a temporary office position, said she had already filled out several applications.
“I’ve been to various job fairs recently, but this the best, definitely,” she said.
Andrew Scott of Danville, who already has a job but was watching stepchildren while their mother was filling out applications, said he was surprised at some of the opportunities available.
“His mom came here looking for a job and I came along to help,” he said, pointing to a child with him. “I’ve had a good, temporary job for 18 years, but after coming here I’d be tempted to look. There’s a lot here.”

“His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking, best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien

There aren’t many shortcuts to Dannel McCollum’s forested riverfront property. His road begins where the county road abruptly stops, a two-line strip leading over a bluff top overlooking the Vermilion River. The narrow path is carved only by frequent use, and covered with a few scattered bricks and concrete blocks to keep it stable.
Halfway through the tree-canopied drive, the realization of silence hits with a certainty that is hard to ignore.
At the end of the path McCollum sits on the front porch of his “pre-electric” house, surrounded by hundreds of acres of timber, sifting the coffee grounds he has used to coax back the natural beauty of property destroyed after years of it being used to cull lumber.
Bees burrow into the barn-beam porch roof above him, and a wasp leaves from and returns to a space between patio bricks at his feet.
Neither they nor he seem to notice each other, the human’s concentration breaking only with the opening of a visiting vehicle’s door, its bell sounding as loud as a siren.
And just like that, McCollum, the mayor of Champaign for 12 years, snaps back to the real world, getting up from his stoop with a broad grin and a wiry arm extended in welcome.

“A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step downward, is a step upward. The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I always wanted this to be a primitive place,” he said, leading the way through a hand-built house he and architect friend Dick Canon started 36 years ago from the remnants of an old barn near Fithian.
“I didn’t even put in lights,” he said, rinsing his coffee cup from a bucket of water that sits on the counter beside a fully functional kitchen wash basin. The wash basin isn’t connected to a water source and the downspout under the sink leads to a plastic collection bucket. Potable water is literally potted just outside the window, with a series of plastic buckets lined up awaiting rain drippings from the metal roof.
“I wanted to have a place that was totally self-sufficient,” he said.
The best description of McCollum’s place is not “earthy,” but “earthen,” as in a part of the earth. The pockets of dirt that collect at the corners and windowsills look like they belong there.
“If it were just up to me, I’d live out here,” he said, though his wife in Champaign isn’t particularly intrigued by the idea. “The worst day out here is better than the best day in town.”
McCollum waited for years to put together his dream property, finally connecting the full acreage after the family of the deceased owner sold off their pieces. The land sits in the middle of several hundred acres owned by the University of Illinois. The U of I land was initially the site of the world’s largest radio telescope in the 1950s, a structure that was built into a concave portion of the bluff.
His 200 acres used to be a logging site before that and the remaining trees were old-growth timber or trees that held no value to the lumber company. He said more than a half-dozen trees were falling each year and piles of wood debris were scattered across the property.
“This was a total mess when I bought it,” he said.
He has cleared almost all of that and continues to foster the return of grass over a several-acre spot that has become a navigable clearing for his homestead. That’s where the coffee grounds come in, mixed with grass seed and almost continually added.
“You are looking at the results of hundreds and hundreds of pounds of coffee grounds,” he said, adding that a local coffee shop supplies the grounds daily.

“I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made ... and at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.”—Henry David
Thoreau
McCollum’ rustic house is not the only thing that can be described as “earthen.” He, too, has collected his share of trail dust over the years.
At 70, he continues to bike and canoe, though less frequently than in the days he and Jim Smith wrote “A Guide to the Big Vermilion River System” back in the early 1980s.
That guide was an attempt to share a love of the river system in the area dating back to a childhood spent fishing and exploring with his father.
“There’s not a piece of running water in this area (from Champaign to western Indiana) that he didn’t know,” he said. “He was very meticulous when he went out and it’s become an obsession of mine.”
Just 3,000 copies of the book were printed, and even McCollum had a hard time coming up with a copy upon request. He said he had been asked to revise the book for a reprint but hasn’t had time between work on the property and other historical publications he’s worked on, which includes a book on the history of Champaign County. He said he has always wanted to pursue a book on Vermilion County history, but time has been a factor in tackling that project as well.
“It was not a big, commercial success,” he said of the Vermilion River book. “Someone said it was unfortunate that I wrote it 30 years too soon. I contend I wrote it 100 years too late.”
Danville Public Library still has two copies of the 103-page book, though one has had tape added to the binding. A photo of a smiling McCollum and Smith sitting aside their canoes graces the back cover.
“A canoe provides us a method of enjoying and sharing our natural environment, while at the same time, disturbing the ecosystem very little,” the men wrote. “…We can canoe upon a stream and leave no footprints. There will be no trail of broken branches and picked flowers. The water supports and carries our canoe, and we leave only temporary ripples which soon dissipate.”
The guide goes on to give a geologic description of the area (the bluffs are in fact moraines created by glaciers 10,000 years ago and now funnel the runoff of the region), a fishing guide and a bridge-by-bridge description of the Salt Fork, the Middle Fork, the North Fork and “Big” Vermilion — all seen by canoe.

“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,
“I keep it staying at Home
“With a bobolink for a Chorister,
“And an Orchard, for a Dome.”
— Emily Dickinson
It’s this love for the area’s natural features that saddened McCollum when he heard the news about the closing of Kickapoo State Park.
“In a time where people are staying closer to home for their entertainment, it doesn’t make sense,” he said with a spark of anger in his voice. “It’s a terrible loss.”
He also lamented the loss of canoeing opportunities with the closure and the dwindling outdoor opportunities it heralds. He said instead of retreating, the area should be capitalizing on its natural assets.
“I think the biggest single asset is the Salt Fork and the Big Vermilion rivers. I’ve been saying it for years: It’s the biggest untapped resource,” he said.
McCollum has always been involved as much politically as ecologically over the years and said he has pushed for several changes that he thinks would be a major tourism draw to the area. He said he had hoped to put a few of those ideas into practice in a failed state senatorial run after he left the mayor’s office in 1999..
“For one, the dam at Danville presents a problem for canoeists,” he said. “For the inexperienced, you need to get out at Ellsworth Park. I point out (in the book) that going farther should be done with a great deal of caution. For most, Danville is the end of canoeing upstream.”
He said he was hopeful a solution to keep Kickapoo open could still be found.
“You have to take a look at what your assets are now, and not only save them, but enhance them,” he said.
He said he still feels the area missed an opportunity years ago when the old Milwaukee train line pulled its tracks and left a trestle, remnants of which can still be seen throughout the area southeast of Danville.
“We could have had a bike trail that connected Danville to Forest Glen,” he said. “When companies come to a town, they also think about, ‘Would our employees like to live here? We need to develop and promote these assets.”

“We need to learn that life is a process, not a series of isolated events.” — Dannel McCollum
McCollum doesn’t plan to hoard the piece of heaven he’s been lucky enough to collect.
In addition to the clearing he’s made for the homestead, he plans to add a primitive campground big enough for just a handful of campers. With the addition of an outhouse by fall, he hopes to have it open by spring.
“I’d like the property to pay for itself, but I’d like to share it,” he said.
He knows that means exposing it to the very humans that threaten it elsewhere, but it also poses another chance to educate people on the importance of conservation.
“If you let people know what they lost, they are more likely to appreciate that which they have,” he said. “And do the things they need to do to save it.”
If anything positive does come out of the Kickapoo issue, he hopes that it’s residents rally around the need to protect the area’s “wild” spots.
“Vermilion County is still a county you can get lost in,” he said. “There are no mountains and there are no seashores, but there are rivers. I’m not a formally religious person, but this piece of real estate (the Earth) is the greatest thing in the universe. It’s much too wonderful to treat it the way we do. It’s home.

State forestry officials hope to run rings around the tree-killing emerald ash borer beetle before it makes its way into central Illinois.
“They’re very difficult to detect,” said Julie Ann Heminghous, the Illinois Department of Agriculture’s emerald ash borer outreach coordinator. “You can have it for five to seven years before you seen any signs because it’s so stealthy.”
The beetle, suspected to have come from Asia with a wood shipment, has infested ash trees as far north as Canada, as far east as East Coast states and in Illinois, as far south as Peru.
In a concentric-circle map showing Illinois counties at risk, Vermilion is in the second zone, just two counties away from the state’s “quarantine area.”
It also is the zone that agriculture officials are targeting with a new trapping system they hope will detect the beetle’s migration.
The “sticky traps” resemble purple-colored box kites and are hung in ash trees. In some locations, traps are set every 1.5 miles. The traps are set less frequently in lower-risk areas. All have a flyer attached to the tree explaining what the strange-looking apparatus is for.
“The ash tree is like a buffet to them,” Heminghous said, “and there is nothing we can do right now to stop them. For now we’re concentrating our efforts on a 100-mile band.”
There are an estimated 130 million ash trees in Illinois alone, she added, and so far the beetle has killed about 25 million trees on the continent.
Phil Nixon, an Extension entomologist with the University of Illinois, said the traps, set this spring, are a relatively new tool in detecting the beetle.
“It’s just a matter of time before they get here,” he said. “The insect moves on its own about a half-mile per year.”
Previously the only method of testing for the beetle, whose larvae burrow into a tree and basically devour its nutrients, involved stripping the bark off a suspect tree.
“The problem with that method is you’re killing off a tree,” he said.
Under the trapping system, the bags will be collected in August and analyzed to see how far south the beetle has traveled.
Detection
Heminghous said the Agriculture Department had received several inquiries from residents wondering if their trees might be infested already.
“It’s a very important tree to people because, first of all, it’s a beautiful tree,” she said. “It’s also a hardy and healthy tree. We’ve been getting a lot of suspect calls because people are starting to take inventory.”
The insects make a very small, D-shaped entry hole no larger than the tip of a pencil. That’s where they lay up to 100 eggs, which hatch and feed off the tree.
Nixon said once the tree is stressed, its produces a chemical that attracts even more beetles.
He said even finding the beetle’s telltale hole is difficult because they are usually made high in the tree, with flying beetles hidden by the ash tree’s bountiful canopy. Other symptoms include S-shaped tunnels under the bark of the tree, sprout growth at its base, unusual activity by woodpeckers, “die-back” on the top third of the tree and vertical splits in the bark.
He suggested calling members of the local Master Gardeners’ association if residents suspect an infestation. The Vermilion County Master Gardeners’ hotline is manned from 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Thursdays during growing season at 442-8615. (The group’s Web site encourages callers to leave messages at the same number on other days).
Heminghous said reports of infestation should be made through local
municipalities.
Remedies
State officials are working on remedies, though no one anywhere has found a way to kill the bug.
Heminghous said research has included a chemical to kill them and natural parasites in Asia that might be used to target them. Right now the research has pointed to an Asian fly and wasp that might serve in that role.
“They’re as far north as Toronto, so it’s certainly not going to get too cold for them,” she said. “They seem to like it here.”
However, introducing a foreign organism into a new environment has historically had the problem of producing unintended consequences, Nixon said.
“What you’re trying to do there is open Pandora’s box a little bit so that you can close it,” he said. “That’s not something that has been exhaustively researched. You’d have to see what else they might attack.”
Heminghous said, for now, the state will continue implementing campfire wood restrictions at start parks in an effort to slow the beetle’s migration here. Other states, including Indiana, have implemented similar rules.
“People who are camping can add to the artificial transplant of the beetles,” she said. It is also recommended that ash trees used for firewood be burned before next spring to ensure infected trees are destroyed.
“When you’re a tree and under attack from something, you can just get up and run away,” Nixon said.
He added, the state had been monitoring the sale of firewood to prevent local vendors from overcharging campers unable to bring their own wood in.
“There has been a considerable amount of work down to make sure the prices at the campgrounds are not being gouged,” he said.
Pulp history
It’s not the first time Americans have had to battle a widespread attack on one of its favored tree species.
When Mel Torme penned “The Christmas Song” in 1944, he wrote out a list of his favorite childhood Christmas memories.
One of those memories was “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire …,” a tradition that had disappeared after an Asian-imported fungal disease killed almost every chestnut tree in America at the turn of the
century.
The chestnut blight was first found in trees inside the Bronx Zoo in 1904, but within just a few years, almost all of the 3 billion trees in eastern North America (including some 25 percent of the trees that made up the Appalachian forest) were dead.
The wind-born disease, introduced to America via imported transplant trees, traveled an estimated 50 miles a day, infecting almost every tree along the way.
In 1930, Dutch elm disease was discovered in Ohio, the fungus brought over in a wood shipment from France.
By 1970, the shady canopies of elm trees lining main streets across the U.S. had disappeared, with almost 80 million trees dead.

Associated Press photos

 State Rep. Bill Black, R-Danville, announces that a $2,842,505.16 contract has been awarded to Halverson Construction Company of Springfield to remove and replace the existing bridge carrying Route 49 over Interstate 74 in Vermilion County (Milepost 200).

The l-74 pavement under this bridge will also be replaced during the construction.

“This overpass is more than 45 years old and it needs to be replaced,” said Black.

“This project will begin Aug. 4 and is expected to be completed in early December of 2008. Traffic lanes will be reduced on I-74 and Route 49 will have a detour,” Black said.

Motorists should plan now for delays and traffic congestion and slow down in the construction zone.

 

The Committee to Elect Darla Cruppenink for Vermilion County circuit clerk will hold a fundraiser from 3-7 p.m. June 8 at Kickapoo Landing in Kickapoo State Park.

A catered meal will be served along with music and a brief auction. The meal includes grilled chicken breast or catfish fillet, two sides, desert and a drink.

Donations requests are $20 per adult and $10 per child, 16 or younger. RSVP by Thursday, June 5 by calling 267-7116 or e-mail kurcrupp125@yahoon.com.

The Vermilion County Emergency Management Agency will test warning sirens at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 4.

The test will be in Danville, Allerton, Alvin, Armstrong, Bismarck, Catlin, Fairmount, Georgetown, Henning, Hoopeston, Indianola, Oakwood, Potomac, Ridge Farm, Rossville, Sidell, Tilton and Westville.

The alert signal will sound at 10, followed by the attack signal at 10:02. No public participation is required, but residents should be familiar with the two different warning signals.