Clay Stalter

Lucille Werries Lovekamp watches from the cab of her nephew's truck while the house she grew up in, which her father built in 1913, is being moved. The home was moved from their former family property, about four miles west of Chapin, to about a mile farther west along U.S. 67. The move was prompted by the planned expansion of U.S. 67 to a four-lane highway.

Illinois College’s Ken Johnson, of Elk Grove, winds up to heave the shot Saturday at the IC indoor track meet. Saturday’s competition was the first indoor meet that the college could host in the new Bruner Center.

New Berlin’s Joel Burger manages to pass off to a teammate after struggling with Routt’s Devin Vaughn for a loose ball Tuesday at the New Berlin Gene Bergschneider Turkey Tournament.

Greenfield's Sean Berry hands off to teammate Chris Cole in the 4 x 200m relay at the Greene County Track Meet in Carrollton. The Greenfield team placed first in the event.

Jennifer Reif, wife of Morgan County State’s Attorney candidate Chris Reif (center), jumps for joy Tuesday night with other Reif supporters as the results show Reif with a sizable lead over candidate Ken Dobson with 30 of 40 precincts reporting.

Supporters of Jacksonville mayoral candidate and Ward 1 Alderman Jim Hill cruise down Main Street during the Veterans Day Parade. The taxidermied bear was shot by Hill's father and became a pseudo mascot for the campaign.

Out of his mother’s sight, Benjamin Gilpin takes off his clothes and plays in the hammock in the privacy of their backyard. Benjamin has Pervasive Development Disorder – a mild form of autism – and has undergone surgery to control epileptic seizures. Part of Benjamin’s disability is that he has heightened sensitivity in all his senses. He sometimes takes his clothes off to lessen the amount of stimuli to his brain, said his mother, Mary Gilpin.

Illinois Army National Guard, 126th Maintenance Company, Cpl. Jason Briggs, says goodbye to his fiancee Lisa Welch, at the Illinois National Guard Armory in Beardstown. Welch is a specialist in the Indiana National Guard, but her unit has not been called to active duty yet. Welch said she met Spc. Briggs last summer at annual training.

Vernon Graham, known locally as "Father Time," and a fixture on Festus's Main Street for the past 23 years, has decided to retire ... again. His first retirement was at age 54 after a successful career as an electrical engineer. Vernon's love of clocks began in 1961 when his wife bought a broken timepiece from a sale. Vernon's inclination was to get it working.

Since then, Vernon taught his son Mike clock repair and it is Mike who will now run the hobby-turned-business.

"I'm out of work," Vernon said to Mike while they worked in the crowded but comfortably familiar shop. "I just gave my business away. I ain't got nothing to do."

"Doesn't it feel good?" asked Mike.

"Yeah," grins Vernon.

The self-taught clock enthusiast plans to continue tinkering in the shop with his son, but without the stress of running a small business. Mike is determined to make this retirement permanent and give his father back his hobby. 

Father Time Clocks and Antiques is one of the oldest businesses on Main Street. Only a handful of businesses have survived longer.

Mike is focused on letting his father relax after 23 years of running the shop. The new owner/operator of Father Time Clock Shop & Antiques makes sure his dad does no more than he wants to do. Mike discourages Vernon’s ingrained tendency to answer the phone or wait on customers and works to do those things before his father has the opportunity.

Judy Waldorf, Vernon’s daughter, is just as intent as her brother at allowing Vernon to enjoy his retirement. “I just want you to be happy, Daddy,” she says after an admonition, only half jokingly, to relax his work schedule. She plans on taking her father traveling in his retirement.

With a steady and precise hand, Mike finishes repairs and adds a few dabs of oil to the reassembled movement of a clock. Mike began repairing clocks while serving in the military, completing his first in 1986 – the same year his father opened for business.

“You’re happy when you’re doing [clock repairs] now, ‘cause you’re doing it just for fun,” Mike Graham told his father while they worked in the shop. Mike is taking over the business: juggling phone calls, retail transactions, taking repair orders and all the other responsibilities of a small business owner.

Mike works through the shop’s backlog of repairs. The waiting list for repairs is seven weeks or more.

Vernon trained pilots while serving in the U.S. Air Force from 1951-1955 and dutifully posts the colors in front of his Main Street shop before opening for business. Like many veterans of the armed forces he maintains proper flag etiquette and retires the colors at the close of business before sundown.

At age 14, Melissa "Missy" Hendricker was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma – a form of bone cancer. After a year of radiation and chemotherapy the cancer went into remission. She was declared free of the bone cancer by the end of her junior year at Beardstown High School.

In the fall of her senior year Missy became seriously ill. The extensive radiation and chemo treatments had weakened her body to the point she contracted leukemia.

Now in the final months of her senior year Missy is undergoing a bone marrow transplant to save her life. Throughout her hospitalizations, Missy has kept up her studies and is on track to be valedictorian of her class.

Missy lets out a soft moan under anesthesia as her Springfield doctor, Gregory Brandt, puts in a spinal tap and begins drawing fluid for the lab. Her previous treatments for bone cancer leave chemotherapy the only option until a bone marrow donor can be found. Chemo treatments for her circulatory system are an overnight affair requiring hospitalization. Treatments to her central nervous system only take about an hour and Missy says she can not feel them under the anesthesia.

With both hands and a significant amount of effort, Missy throws a pillow back at Melissa Knueven and Beth Epping as the girls spend time together at Missy’s house.

Friends, family and fellow church members pray for Missy at a special healing service for ill members of the church. With hands laid on Missy, the congregation of First United Methodist Church prayed for the doctor’s guidance four days before Missy entered Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in St. Louis in preparation for her bone marrow transplant.

A fellow classmate, Devhan Goerlich, who has attended school with Missy since kindergarten, signs a book for Missy’s hospital stay at a going-away party the day before Missy leaves for St. Louis.

Missy waits with her father, Duane, before surgery to install a large port, called a broviac, in her chest on her first day in the St. Louis hospital. Missy will undergo seven days of chemotherapy to destroy her existing immune system before receiving the donor’s healthy bone marrow.

In high spirits, Missy jokes with her doctor in St. Louis, Michael Kelly, the day after her broviac surgery.

Feeling the effects of the previous six days of chemotherapy drugs, Missy whispers a request for something to drink to her father, Duane, two days before her transplant. The drugs have made her nauseous and prone to vomit. Duane rubs Missy’s shoulders and back to comfort her.

Missy’s physician, Michael Kelly, checks her vital signs after the bone marrow transplant. Missy had not left her room in the stem cell unit of Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital for eight days, and she will not be able to leave the her room until her white blood cell count increases.

Missy applies lip balm to her mouth while her mother, Marilyn, begins to make the bed in the hospital room as another day comes to a close. Either Missy’s mother or her father, Duane, have been staying in the room with Missy 24 hours a day since she was admitted to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital.

Missy and her mother, Marilyn, sit in a courtyard of Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital 34 days after she entered the hospital and 25 days after Missy’s bone marrow transplant. The transplant took hold in the third week and she is healthy enough to venture outside wearing a mask. The two spent 45 minutes talking and people-watching before Marilyn could coax her daughter back to the room to eat lunch, promising to bring her outside again in the afternoon.

Missy Hendricker, wearing her valedictorian medallion, enters the gymnasium past her father Duane and other family members with her fellow graduates of Beardstown High School. It will be one year before the transplant is declared successful and five more years before she is considered leukemia free.

Profile of slave reenactor Angela da Silva for missouriscivilwar.com