Irma: A Chicago Woman's Story, 1871-1966

Rating:
Summary: A Chicago Woman's Story to share
Review: Ellen FitzSimmons Steinberg literally tripped over a collection of Irma Rosenthal Frankenstein's diaries in a Southern Illinois used bookstore where they had languished for years (Happily today they are now in the collections of the Chicago Jewish Archives). She weaves together a delightful biography of a woman who hadn't thought herself important; and yet Irma corresponded with Carl Sandburg and partook in nature walks with Jen Jensen and the likes of Laredo Taft. She was a mother and a middle class housewife who took time from her day to keep a diary. Her notes are invaluable glimpses into the past of a city on the make, and from the time of the great Chicago fire to the post World War period.

At age 88 when most women have resigned themselves, Irma Rosenthal Frankenstein was an active part of a grass roots movement to save the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as a National Park. She published a story about an outing to the dunes she had taken many years before in November 1917, and back when the movement to save the dunes as a park from Gary to Michigan City was in its infancy.

Alas the movement to save the Indiana dunes was tabled with the outbreak of WWI. The slogan `First Save the Country then Save the Dunes' was a battle cry that was forgotten as soon as the war ended and after a tiny state park was established in 1923. By mid century with Big Business about to gobble up the most precious part of the remaining un-saved dunes, several ladies from Ogden Dunes began an effort to rescue the enchanting bald and forest covered sand hills, and that had from time immemorial been a beach retreat for Chicagoans who lived up the lakeshore and across the state line in Illinois.

It was during this last big push to save the lakeshore dunes that in1958, the widow of Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who had suffered a heart attack and from her hospital bed in Chicago orchestrated the publication of "The Chronicle of the Befogged Dune Bugs." Her adventure story became a fundraiser for the Save the Dunes Council; the group that battled the big steel companies and other intimidating interests in the halls of Congress. After several years the ladies won the war, when Congress established the creation of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in November 1966 but in the battle had lost the most important part of the dunes. Irma had also died the previous January 1966.

Her interesting life story lives on because of the good fortune of a contemporary who stumbled onto her notes and charitably published a story Irma had always hoped to.

Trent D. Pendley, President, Indiana Jewish Historical Society