The past comes alive in cemetery

Putting the past in context was one benefit for Jennifer Somerlott as she listened and watched re-enactors portraying people in Kenosha’s maritime history during Saturday’s History Walk.

“It’s good to know where you came from and where you live now and the different roles people played in history,” said Somerlott, who was part of a group of local Red Hat Society members at the event. “To know that stuff happened where you lived and had an effect on the rest of the world is important.”

The annual History Walk included several free, 45-minute tours through Green Ridge Cemetery, 6604 Seventh Ave., to gravesites of four historical figures. About 180 people took the tours.

The walk was arranged through the Kenosha History Center and the Kenosha Cemetery Association, custodian to the cemetery.

Each historical figure was played by a local resident in period costume:

— Don Jensen, portraying Charles O’Neill, appointed as local lighthouse keeper in the mid-1800s.

— Don Moldenhauer, playing Stephen Jackson, a steamship captain who after retirement in the 1880s became chief of Kenosha’s lifesaving station.

— Ed Godula, acting as Rouse Simmons, a Kenosha businessman and politician who helped pay for construction of an 1868 ship eventually named after him and known as the “Christmas Tree Ship.”

— Carol Knudson, portraying Lorinda Merrill, Kenosha’s only female lighthouse keeper, succeeding her late husband in the job in 1871.

Tom Schleif, Kenosha History Center director, said the walks have had themes such as the Civil War, local scoundrels and eccentrics. The cemetery setting also encourages visitors to browse the ancient headstones, he said.

The first walk was in 2003 after being suggested by Jean Hoffman, Kenosha Civil War Museum resource center clerk.

“Sometimes we think of history as names and dates of past events and people who are dead,” she said. “We don’t always recognize how their lives impact our lives today.”

Hearing and seeing re-enactors makes learning about history easier, she said.

“It puts flesh and bones on the story,” she said. “You can look the re-enactors in the eye and hear their story, and it brings you a little closer to what it was like to be that person. It makes a big difference as to how much people remember.”

Somerlott, with the Red Hat Society, agreed.

“The re-enactors became the people they represented, and you felt you were getting the information firsthand,” she said. “Sometimes it all sinks in better than when you’re reading about it.”