Reflecting history: County board considering update to DuPage Heritage Gallery

Strolling through an exhibit at the DuPage County government administration building in Wheaton, visitors can learn about county history through the stories of some of its residents.

The DuPage Heritage Gallery, in a first-floor atrium hallway at 421 N. County Farm Road, has several artifacts on display. There’s a bible from evangelist Billy Graham, a salt container for Morton Salt and Morton Arboretum founder Joy Morton, a costume for opera singer Sherrill Milnes, and a typewriter for Margaret Landon, who wrote “Anna and the King of Siam.”

In all, the gallery highlights the accomplishments of 12 people — 11 men and one woman. All of them are white.

County officials want to change that.

“That certainly is not the wonderful tapestry of community that we have here in DuPage County,” county board member Dawn DeSart said of the exhibit, created in 1980.

County board member Michael Childress, who chairs the county’s public works committee, agrees.

“That is not representative of what DuPage County is,” he said.

The county board has budgeted $150,000 this year to reimagine the gallery. Members of the public works committee will host a meeting at 1 p.m. March 4, to discuss the plans and seek input from residents.

An online survey will be available after the meeting for residents to provide feedback on who should be included in the reimagined gallery.

A privately funded group created the gallery, which features a special section dedicated to Harold “Red” Grange and his football career. The gallery was updated in the 1990s and rededicated in 2000.

The push to reenvision the gallery has drawn some criticism in the aftermath of the county board’s controversial decision to remove the late Congressman Henry J. Hyde’s name from the county courthouse in Wheaton.

DuPage County Board member Jim Zay is concerned a reimagined DuPage Heritage Gallery could erase the 12 people already featured from the county’s history.

“I don’t understand what we’re doing here,” said Zay, who holds a history degree from Elmhurst College. “We’re just going with people’s personal opinions on how they want to shape the history of DuPage, which probably isn’t the right thing to do.”

Supporters of the effort to revamp the gallery, however, note the existing display doesn’t recognize contributions others have made to the county’s history.

“If you don’t present the history of all of DuPage County, you’re erasing it,” said Becky Simon of Naperville, president of the League of Women Voters of Illinois.

Simon contacted DeSart about the gallery in 2019.

“If you don’t present the history of women, of people of color, of Indigenous people you’re erasing that history,” Simon said.

For example, Simon and DeSart say they would like the gallery to include Ellen Annette Martin, a Lombard attorney who is credited with being the first woman to vote in Illinois.

According to the Lombard Historical Society, Martin led a group of 14 women on April 18, 1891 — 29 years before women were allowed to vote — to a polling booth and argued that the village’s code only indicated that all “citizens above the age of 21″ could vote and did not specify gender.

Childress said he would like to see Wheaton resident Bernard Kleina included in the exhibit. Kleina is credited with taking some of the first color photographs of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“He’s actually a jewel of DuPage County that nobody knows about,” Childress said.

Zay said he would not object to giving the existing display and funding to the DuPage County Historical Museum in downtown Wheaton to create a new exhibit that includes the original display and other figures from the county’s history. He noted moving it to the museum, or creating a mobile display as one board member suggested, would be more accessible for the public and draw more people.

He suggested the space left at the county building could be transformed into an area for employees or for public use. “We’re a government, not a museum,” he added.