O’Fallon Cemetery Walk on hiatus until 2017

The O’Fallon Cemetery Walk will go on hiatus for 2016, to resume in 2017, according to Stephen Brown, chair of the O’Fallon Historic Preservation Commission, which is the event’s sponsoring organization.

Two factors led to the decision, according to Brown.

“First, we have been concentrating our efforts on designating the St. Ellen Mine site as an historic landmark, and second, our ranks have recently been thinned through illness and retirement. We didn’t feel ready to do justice to the cemetery walk in these circumstances,” he said.

Brown indicated that when the walk resumes in 2017, it will include several new figures who were important in O’Fallon’s history, including a newspaper publisher and the widow of a local mobster.

“It will be a stimulating program,” Brown said.

The Historic Preservation Commission is actively looking to recruit new members.

Anyone interested can contact Brown at sbrown@siue.edu, or Justin Randall at jrandall@ofallon.org.

This story was originally published August 9, 2016 at 2:49 PM with the headline "O’Fallon Cemetery Walk on hiatus until 2017."