Former longtime Lebanon advertiser editor Harrison Leon Church finished printing at the age of 78, on November 8, 2019. He succumbed to heart disease and old age.

He is survived by his wife of 31 years, Harriet Lois Church, nee Feddersen, whom he married on October 27, 1988, in Lebanon. She is a native of South St. Louis, Missouri, then Blackjack, Missouri, and finally Florissant, Missouri from 1960 – 1988. At their marriage, she had been evening supervisor of nursing at Dr. Andrew Signorelli’s Faith Family Hospital in Creve Coeur, Missouri.

Mr. Church is also survived by two cousins: Beverly “BA” (Dennis) Church-Pabich of Chicago and Lee David (Ruth) Saegesser of Florida, and the latter’s three daughters and their families; his brother-in-law and his wife, Dale and Ruth Feddersen of Florissant, Missouri; sister-in-law and her husband, Kathy and Charlie “Hank” Grubbs of St. Louis County, Missouri and two informally adopted sisters: Janice DeLaney of Points West and Donna Sledge Cohen (husband, Clarence and their daughter Jasmine Samantha) of North Charleston, South Carolina.

Harrison was preceded in death by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Leon Harry (Helen, nee Saegesser) Church of Lebanon. She is a native of Granite City, Illinois; his parents-in-law, Arthur and Dorris Feddersen of the St. Louis metropolitan area; uncle Samuel Saegesser and wife Virginia of Virginia, (D.C. suburbs), uncles Emil and Calvin Saegesser who died in youth; aunts Ruby and Elsie and uncle Leroy Church, all of whom died at young ages; aunt Ruth V. Taylor, uncle Virgil Thomas Church and his wife, Frances, nee Logan, of Lebanon and their son, Bruce Logan Church; and brothers-in-law, Robert and Donald (Carol) Feddersen, and brother-in-law and his wife Dale and Ruth Feddersen.

Highlights of Mr. Church’s life include the following: Never an athlete as was his father, Harrison did play some tennis and, with his partner, won the University of Illinois PE department doubles tennis tournament one year. Always deathly afraid of water, he had to forcibly overcome that phobia in order to become an Eagle Scout, which required the lifesaving merit badge. For years he never entered the water except to practice for some such requirement. That took him through the course of Red Cross water ratings, Junior and Senior Lifesaving and eventually become certified as a water safety instructor – still fearful of water!

Besides the Lebanon Advertiser, Mr. Church also wrote and took pictures occasionally, published in a wide range of other publications, including such diverse ones as Together Magazine of the Methodist Church and Pravda of the Communist Party in Moscow, U.S.S.R. Other publications included “How [Explorer] Post 28 Celebrated the Jubilee” (of scouting), a cover story from Heartland magazine, St. Louis, Missouri; two articles in Outdoor Illinois magazine; Quill magazine of the journalism fraternity; Life magazine; News Week and True West; Minneapolis Tribune Sunday magazine; The Dakota Farmer, and “73” amateur radio magazine, plus the Dickinson Press, Dickinson, North Dakota, where he lived and worked in 1966-1969, and again in 1971-1974 before returning to Lebanon to take over the family-owned local newspaper. For a time, he was North Dakota correspondent for Tennis Magazine, based in Chicago. Many of his submissions took the form of letters correcting earlier published errors, or attacking wrong-headedness such as when one state proposed issuing credentials to the press. Harrison replied that any newsman who accepted authorization from government should be considered a former newsman. Harrison said that the press practices journalism on its own authority alone, not by government permission.

A highlight of Harrison’s journalistic life was that he was the last journalist to interview the last surviving member of the expedition to Egypt that discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamen in 1922.
He adopted a journalistic by-line of the “Geofferson,” by joining portions of the names of the great English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the great American political philosopher, Thomas Jefferson. He wrote under a variety of column headings, including his general views as the Prairie Dog, local topics under name of The Churchmouse, plus column titles for civic criticism as “At Odds,” and a political condemnation titled “Lese Majesty” which comes over pretty much as “treason against the government.” Near his retirement, he was beginning yet another column title, “The Naysayer,” for “exploding popular myth”. He sometimes styled himself “Alarmist and naysayer, ‘The Sour Kraut’” (from his German heritage).

He edited The New Voice, student political science periodical at the University of Illinois from 1961-1962, was facility adviser to the McKendree College Review student paper in 1964-1965, and was assistant editor of Caveat, the University of Illinois law school student newspaper. He was also chairman of the University of Illinois’ Conservative Coordinating Council, which sponsored The New Voice. Another member of that “CCC” was Jim Brady, later to be President Reagan’s press secretary.

He was associate professor at Dickinson State College in North Dakota, teaching journalism, freshman composition, photography, the business law sequence, and supervising the school yearbook, during two 3-year periods when he taught there, 1966-1969, and 1971-1974.

As advertiser, editor for 40 years, he enjoyed publishing a number of full-page single topic features, such as the page provided by Dr. Delbert Harris following the trip he and his wife took to China to study the state of medicine there, and the features on such subjects as a photo show, air show, art show, canoe race, organ concert, etc., plus numerous picture postcard pages featuring cards sent by readers from their travels. He also did a page on his own personal television station, with which he exchanged still pictures with amateur radio operators around the world, including Africa and Tasmania.

Harrison held the top grades of radio licenses on both the commercial and amateur sides, and was a private pilot licensed to fly single-engine land aircraft and gliders. He jumped out of an airplane just to have the experience of parachuting. He was licensed to drive vehicles to 16,000 lb. GVW and all sizes of motorcycles.
He has been listed in the Dictionary of International Biography, London, Directory of American Scholars, Tempe, Arizona, Who’s Who in the Midwest, and the International Who’s Who in Community Service, London. He was a licensed attorney admitted to both state and federal bar in North Dakota.

In academics, Harrison won an Illinois State Scholarship, which was deemed “honorary” and without financial stipend since his parents were self-employed and thus judged ineligible for financial assistance, the same has happened when he won the St. Louis Science Fair scholarship division. With five Illinois General Assembly scholarships available by examination to the St. Clair County students, four of them were for student slots for which he did not qualify, such as son or daughter of war veterans or from agricultural households. He won the lone scholarship for which he was eligible, and in competition with those who also qualified for the other awards, for tuition for four years.

At the University of Illinois, he was a member of the Edmund Janes James Scholars in chemistry following completion of the premiere year of the Mark Twain Summer Institute in St. Louis, Missouri, a position secured for him by his high school physics and chemistry teacher, Mrs. Lester Wicks. Besides chemistry, journalism and law, he studied history and music appreciation at the university and completed studies in educational administration for law school credit. After a year in chemistry, he figured that his future there would include only laboratory work or teaching and so expressed himself to his faculty adviser, who agreed. Accordingly, he withdrew from the chemistry curriculum and enrolled in general studies for his sophomore year before matriculating in journalism, a two-year program. Curiously, upon admission to the university, a required aptitude test he had taken declared that he should go into journalism! Subsequently, he received the Illinois Press Association scholarship award.

At the university, he was house president two terms and held two of the three vice presidencies of the men’s dormitory student association. In one of the VP positions, he was head of the student police and the judicial appeals board. In the other, he headed the seven-club hobby program and felt mighty puffed up when an opponent of that program tried to get it cancelled on the excuse that “Harrison won’t be here next year to run it.”
Harrison studied radio electronics from the Extension Course Institute, Air University, Gunter, AFB, Alabama. With B.S., M.S., and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Illinois, he held a single hour’s credit from McKendree College, received for his participation in the McKendree Writer’s Association summer conference in 1961 in which he won the writing contest associated therewith for an article about nearby Emerald Mound.

He was named prose laureate of the American Amateur Press Association in the mid 1970’s, received the Community Builder Award from the Lebanon Masonic Lodge in 1991, and was recognized by Cedar Ridge Health and Rehab Center for his civic pursuits. Considering his best work as pushing others forward, after he received the Masonic Order Community Builder Award, he successfully lobbied the order for Lynn and Connie Laurie to receive the same honor a couple of years later. When a ham radio colleague of his in North Dakota tried but failed to achieve the top grade of amateur radio license and told Harrison he had made the try but would not repeat it, Harrison said he “waxed wroth” and told his friend, “I forbid you to quit.” Next time the federal examiner came through Dakota, some 250 miles away, his friend tried it again and succeeded. When a new school district superintendent was hired “ABD” (all but dissertation), locals were told that they were soon to have a real academic doctor heading their school district. Occasionally Harrison prodded the gentleman about his progress, until one day the superintendent allowed that he might well never finish the degree. Again waxing wroth, Harrison told him, “We were told we were going to have a doctor head our schools, and we’re going to have it!” Seemingly in only a few weeks, Dr. Johnson called Harrison to say he had passed oral defense of his dissertation and would, indeed, get his Ph.D. Degree.

When he learned that his friend Harry Turner of Alton held the world speed record for sending Morse Code with a straight key, Harrison successfully lobbied Guinness Book of World Records editor, Norris McWhirter to enter that in the book of world records, which was duly achieved. In connection therewith, Mr. McWhirter noticed that Mr. Turner lived in Alton, home of the world’s tallest man, the “gentle giant” Robert Wadlow, and asked whether Harrison had anything additional to relate in that matter. He did not, as the giant had died the year before Harrison was born, but Harrison’s father did know the giant, who used to come to Methodist youth summer camps at McKendree. Moreover, Harrison’s wife, Harriet’s father, Arthur Martin Feddersen, had been purchasing agent for International Shoe Company and in that role bought the leather used by the company to make the giant’s size 22 shoe. So Harrison picked one of the several Wadlow names appearing in the Alton telephone book (same one used in Lebanon) and thus got to talk with the giant’s mother more than 50 years after the birth of the giant himself. In like manner, Harrison picked up the telephone and talked with the widow of Philo T. Farnsworth, the acknowledged inventor of electronic television.
In North Dakota, Harrison belonged to the Theodore Roosevelt Nature and History Association, one of whose stellar members was Ralph Hubbard, second son of the celebrated Elbert Hubbard, author of the famed “A Message to Garcia” story. The younger Mr. Hubbard had a career in education with a hobby in Scouting, but he could not be “Dr.” because he discounted work on his doctoral degree to take a paid professional position. So, he was known informally as “Doc.” Harrison lobbied the college where he taught to bestow an honorary doctoral degree on Hubbard, which was duly done and Harrison was allowed to select the title of degree being conferred.

In similar vein, the school conferred an honorary degree on Dorothy Stickney and named it one of the typical honorary titles. Hearing which one, Harrison successfully lobbied the college to change the already-announced degree title to “Doctor of Fine Arts” in recognition of Ms. Stickney’s lifetime in theatre, including performing in “Life With Father,” which show was written for her by her husband, Howard Lindsey, who also collaborated in writing “The Sound of Music.”

While still a relatively young fellow, Harrison recognized that while criticism is often needed, praise is equally necessary. He formulated what he called his, “credit card,” a little bigger than a business card, of his personal thanks for whatever it was he saw and thought was good work by others. One of his first recipients thereof, was a power company crew working to restore electricity in the midst of a North Dakota winter. He told his recipients he realized they were just doing the job for which they had been hired, but still, he appreciated their working near midnight and at near -30 degree temperature.

Harrison’s two biggest hobby interests were the Boy Scouts of America and amateur radio. In about 60 years in the Scouts, he attended two national jamborees, either as camper or leader, plus the world jamboree in England in 1957, where he participated in an Indian dance attended by Queen Elizabeth II. He is an Eagle Scout with three palms for additional merit badges earned and holds the parallel rank for the older Explorer Scouts, the Silver Award. He belonged to the Order of the Arrow honor camping society and attended a week’s voyage in Northern Wisconsin at Scoutings Canoe Base. He was an assistant scout master of the New York World’s Fair Scout Service Corps in 1965. Related through non-Scout activities included hiking the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and hiking 50 miles on Isle Royale in Lake Superior.

In a snafu, to say the least of it and remaining unexplained, after about 60 years of membership, he was summarily expelled from the Scouts, ostensively for non-payment of dues in spite of having prepaid the Lebanon Rotary Club a hundred dollars to keep him registered for life at no cost to that sponsoring institution (dues were around $2.00 a year at that time). No one has owned up to that treatment served him, but the probable suspect has been independently suggested.

Harrison was licensed in amateur radio as K9GCC in 1956 and spent the next two years in the U.S. Air Force Military Affiliate Radio System. Later moving to North Dakota, he received the call sign of WOKXP. There, he was president of the Theodore Roosevelt Amateur Radio Club. In general, he said he looked for clubs to quit, not clubs to join. But he belonged to the American Radio Relay League, the National Geographic Society, and the St. Clair County Historical Society (all life memberships), as well as the Lebanon Historical Society..

Curiously, several years ago, Harrison received an unsolicited invitation to apply for membership at the American Chemical Society. Reflecting on the strong influence that chemistry had actually played in his life, beginning with his sixth grade science fair project on the electrolytic refining of copper, for which he won first place, he filled out and turned in the application. But it went nowhere, no doubt because he was not actually professionally employed in that specific career field. But in his study of chemistry, he learned a mathematical formula that helped him much in later journalistic pursuit, including allowing him to stand first in his class of 99 students entering journalism school’s introduction to typography class. He often said that no education is lost or wasted

He attended a summertime peace corps training project in Milwaukee in 1965.
Sometime after 1974, both Harrison and his father adopted a practice of dressing, English style, in stovepipe hat (actually a chimney sweep’s hat) between Thanksgiving and Twelfthnight. To that, Harrison also wore a long black coat of cashmere that he referred to as his “Mongolian Rat.” One day, upon returning to the office after a walk uptown so clad, he received a telephone call of the comment that the caller was new in town and had just seen a fellow uptown dressed in a top hat and long black coat. “Is that some sort of character around town?” he asked. “I suppose I am,” was Harrison’s reply. When the coat wore out, Harrison searched from here to Minneapolis for a cape to replace it. Finding none, he appealed to Mrs. Richard Rohlf, who agreed to make one of wool for him, complete with red fabric liner. He sought to replace the chimney sweep’s hat with a collapsible “opera hat” but could not find one, even on a trip to London. Returning, he located the very thing almost next door, at Jim’s Men’s Shop in Trenton.

While in Dakota, he set type and did printing at the North Dakota Harold (correct German language spelling) company that grew out of the German-language newspaper there. Harrison bought two printing presses and set them up in his office, where students could print small projects of their own. He termed his hobby venture the Prairie Dog Press, named for the nearby prairie dog villages, and called himself the Prairie Dog Printer’s Devil.

He successfully urged the publishers of North Dakota’s counterpart to the better-known Arizona Highways to include a miniature outline of the state in each issue, marked with the locale of each story featured therein.
A Linotype operator like his mother, in Illinois, for five summers he took over his mother’s role of typesetting at the Advertiser while she completed her master’s degree in librarianship. After nearly 20 years on the Lebanon public library board (second-longest-serving member ever) and as the only professionally trained librarian, another board member began prating that one shouldn’t stay on the board “too long.” She realized she was the target of the gibe and promptly resigned. Her critic did likewise but was soon reappointed (maybe the animosity arose when she told the City Council the library didn’t need the tax hike the rest wanted!). Harrison could set some 35 column inches of type in an hour, while his mother could hit 48-as fast as the machine could run. Union typesetters in big-city daily papers typically set about 18.
Harrison liked to travel and did more than his share for one never in the military, visiting about 42 of the continental United States from Maine to Washington, taking in two World’s Fairs. Upon acquisition of his second car, a fine 1955 Oldsmobile Rocket 88, he drove around Lake Michigan, also seeing the country from top to bottom going to or near New Orleans three times. Most summers he drove to D.C. or New Jersey, and on the other end of the country “sailed” with his wife, Harriet, on the Queen Mary in California – up and down six feet with the tide – while spending a night on the great liner docked there. He visited both Smoky and Rocky mountains. He went to Europe five times, venturing as far southeast thereof as to go into so-called “King’s Chamber” of the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt. On one of his visits to London, Harrison met notable English historian and writer Dulcie Ashdown, author of a dozen and half books and scores of magazine articles – and a religious minister as well – to form a longtime friendship both personal and professional. Miss Ashdown sent Harrison and Harriet a copy of her last book, and Harrison believed he caught an error in the record therein. Always the editor, he suggested to Miss Ashdown that his understanding of the matter had always been opposite from how she reported it. In her reply, she acknowledged the error and stated it would be corrected in the subsequent reprinting. Once, at Miss Ashdown’s home in North London, she and Harrison engaged in a grammatical debate. She referred, for proof, to the dictionary, which supported her while Harrison claimed recourse to Fowler, a more authoritative grammatical work, which supported him, instead.

Harrison often noted that his life had hardly been that of a Lawrence of Arabia, but he did enjoy a long litany of experiences. He was quick to point out that he earned none of it; everything he had or was had been given to him by family and friends, not to mention a probable element of divine intervention – how else to explain the notable run of his good luck! Where requirements existed, he passed them all but never claimed personal credit for anything. He always called himself the luckiest man on earth, following previous claimant of that position, Lou Gehrig, who had Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which Harrison escaped. And instead of traveling on titles as some do, Harrison always adopted the slogan of Popeye the Sailor Man, “I yam what I yam” and let it go at that. But he did often style himself “Benjamin Franklin, printer and patriot” after the name of one of his favorite antecedents, Benjamin Franklin, and identified himself and his tiny newspaper as, “Fiercely for the People,” in the pursuit of which he must have filled a full “google” (look it up!) of freedom of information actions against various taxing and governing bodies. Using money earned and saved by his parents, he established the Leon and Helen Church Family Foundation, an eleemosynary institute from which he has made grants to causes he believed worthy in an amount totaling around a third of a million dollars, up to the time of his potentially life claiming hospitalization for heart failure in 2014. He also established endowed scholarships in honor of his father at Dickinson State College in North Dakota, where he taught and at Cottey Junior College in Missouri in honor of his mother, a member of the PEO Sisterhood that operates Cottey.

A private graveside ceremony of interment is planned at the family plot in College Hill Cemetery, where the family site is marked by a “drum” from one of the columns of the old St. Clair County courthouse, which Harrison’s father, along with others, tried unsuccessfully to save from demolition by the County.
Cutline: Harrison Leon Church, photographed by Karen Lee Titter Maloney, while giving a talk, along with wife Harriet, on the sinking of the Titanic. British Navy cap acquired by Harrison in a trade during 1957 scout world jamboree in England.

Sidebar: Harrison and Harriet’s forbearers:

Harrison’s family is the Harrisons, Thatchers, and McBrides. Because the Harrison name had been lost from the end, his parents put it back on the front of his identity. The family traces its heritage back to a Presbyterian minister, Rev. Thomas Harrison in Virginia, in the 1730’s but believes it must have ancestry to the Harrison family of the 1640’s in England including Rev. Thomas Harrison who was also a Colonel in Cromwell’s Army, sent by Cromwell to capture King Charles in bring him in to be decapitated, which was duly accomplished. One story has it that Col./Rev. Harrison had two sons, one of whom fled to Switzerland, the other two Virginia. Another story has it that both of the Col/Rev.’s sons died in infancy. Descent, if any, may be what is termed “collateral,” meaning from elsewhere in the family tree, not directly from the Rev./Col. Harrison’s mother came from Granite City to attend McKendree College where Harrison’s parents met. Helen Saegesser Church was valedictorian of her 1934 graduating class, and Leon Harry Church was a McKendree “Stalwart” of WWII times, those who kept the college from going under at that time. The pair were three times awarded the Peter Akers Cup for having been judged the most helpful to the college the previous year, the only three-time recipients of that honor.

Harriet’s grandmother came to St. Louis from her home in Detroit to visit the 1904 World’s Fair and there met her future husband, policeman Octa Newton Chrismer, who was on duty as bodyguard to President Theodore Roosevelt. The next year, she returned and married him, then begetting Dorris Belle Chrismer, Harriet’s mother. The Belle of Virginia is part of Harriet’s family tree. Frieda Hoffman, of the Detroit Family cooperage, always called her husband “John” or “Jack” instead of Octa or even “Newt.” A story prevails in the family that a Detroit industrialist once appealed to the Hoffmans for money for his start-up business venture, but Mr. Hoffman refused to thus participate with Henry Ford. Another story in the family has it that they are descended from either Daniel Boone or another Boone of that family tree. A cousin of Harriet’s carries the middle name of “Boone” to that end. Octa Newton Chrismer rose to be precinct captain in three different St. Louis precincts and was for a brief time interim police chief while a permanent appointee to that post was being sought. “Cap.” as he continued to be called the rest of his life, was at one time demoted to lieutenant for the offense of having talked to the press!

Both Harrison and Harriet’s German forebears came from near the same part of Germany in the 1880’s, settling in South Dakota during a particularly harsh period of fierce wintertimes. Both families subsequently relocated to the St. Louis area, and the Reimers family in Harrison’s line then crossed the river to settle in Granite City, where Harrison’s grandfather became personal secretary to one of the Niedringhaus brothers who founded St. Louis Stamping Works, later to become Granite City Steel. With this connection, it is no surprise that Harrison’s mother’s uncle owned the first airplane in the area, tragically to die in it when it crashed about 1920.

Harriet and Harrison met on the KMOX radio show “Dateline” conducted by Jim White. At that time, Harriet was evening supervisor of nurses at Dr. Andrew Signorelli’s Faith Family Hospital in Creve Coeur, more recently known as Barnes West or “Little Barnes” Hospital.
Memorials may be made to Mermaid House in c/o Lebanon Historical Society, Messiah Lutheran Church, Lebanon. Helen Keller Home, Tuscumia, AL. and the Black History Museum in Corinth, MS. Condolences may be extended to the family online at www.schildknechtfh.com.

Visitation will be held from 4:00-8:00 PM on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at Schildknecht Funeral Home 301 S. Lincoln Avenue, O’Fallon, IL 62269 and from 9:00 AM on Wednesday November 13, 2019 until the time of service at Messiah Lutheran Church, 801 N. Madison Street, Lebanon, IL 62254

Funeral Services will be held at Messiah Lutheran Church, 801 N. Madison Street, Lebanon, IL 62254 at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 with Pastor Karl W. Gregory officiating. Burial in College Hill Cemetery, Lebanon, IL.

Arrangements have been entrusted to Schildknecht Funeral Home.