WALTER REEVES
WALTER REEVES was born near Brownsville Pennsylvania, September 25, 1848, and died April 9, 1909. His parents, Harrison and Maria (Leonard) Reeves, moved to a farm in LaSalle County, Illinois, in 1856, and the son grew up in that county and was a teacher before he qualified for the law by examination before the Supreme Court in 1875. His home throughout his professional career was Streator.
Walter Reeves was a splendid type of the political leader when the Republican party was supreme in Illinois. In 1894, he was nominated to succeed the late Gen. Thomas J. Henderson as candidate for Congress for the Eleventh Illinois District, and in the election received a plurality of nearly 5,000 votes, and a majority over his three opponents. His majorities were increased in the succeeding elections. Of his work in Congress the following has been said: "Regarding himself as a public servant whose duty it was to advance the best interests of those he represented, he began devoting his energies to the work of internal improvement in the country and was appointed a member of the committee on rivers and harbors. In the river and harbor bill passed by the Fifty-fourth Congress he obtained from the general government for improvements in the State of Illinois between eight and nine million dollars. His position was that in the midst of exceedingly hard times the laboring people should be assisted through providing work in these internal improvements and that the farmers and business men would also be benefited by the internal development of our country."
Rev. HELMER T. HAAGENSON
Rev. HELMER T. HAAGENSON is a gifted educator and minister of the Lutheran Church, and well known in the Illinois River Valley, where he has been pastor and is now the president and executive head of the Pleasant View Luther College at Ottawa.
Rev. Mr. Haagenson was born at McIntosh, Minnesota, September 8, 1887. His parents were Norwegian pioneers of Minnesota, Lauritz and Kjersten (Rudshaugen) Haagenson, both natives of Norway. His father was a sailor and fisherman and in 1881 came to America, locating in Ottertail County, Minnesota, where he took up a homestead and improved a good farm and made himself one of the sturdy and trusted citizens of that state. He died June 9, 1900, and the mother died in November, 1929. They are both buried at Haagenson. Besides Helmer T. there are two other children, Martin, of McIntosh, and Mrs. Lena Berg, of McIntosh.
Helmer T. Haagenson spent his early life in rural localities in Minnesota, was educated in a country school near McIntosh and in 1909 graduated from high school. All through his school course he worked on a farm, made a good record as a student and participated in athletics and literary affairs in high school, playing basketball. After high school he entered St. Olaf College at Northfield, Minnesota. During 1911 he was on a farm, and then resumed his studies, taking his A. B. degree at St. Olaf in 1914. He was a member of the Sigma Tau fraternity. During summers he made money for his college expenses by work in a real estate office with his brother at McIntosh. Following his literary education he entered the United Church Seminary, now the Luther Seminary at St. Paul, and was graduated with his degree in theology in 1917. For one or two summers he taught in a vacation Bible school, and was pastor of a church at Bainville, Montana, until 1921.
WILLIAM H. LEISER
WILLIAM H. LEISER, one of the publishers of the Mendota Reporter, went to work in a print shop as soon as he left school and has never for any length of time been away from the smell of printer's ink and the activities of a printing and publishing business. He has built up a splendid paper in the Mendota Re porter and most of his experience in news paper work has been in his native city.
He was born at Mendota, October 10, 1882. His father, George W. Leiser, was born in Hamburg, Germany, learned the trade of shoe maker in the old country and coming to America before the Civil war, lived for two years in Pennsylvania, then settled in Peoria and later in Mendota. He was a pioneer shoemaker and continued active in the shoe business throughout the remaining years of his active life. He died at Mendota in 1900 and his wife in 1907.
He married Miss Adelheid Harnesser, of Alsace-Lorraine. Of their four children three are living, William H., George, of Mendota, and Mrs. Emma Elsesser, of Chicago.
William H. Leiser attended the common schools of Mendota and had several years in high school. When he quit school, in 1897, he became a printer's devil in the office of the Mendota Reporter. It was with this paper that he completed his apprenticeship. For one year he was employed as a printer with the Old Bureau County Republican at Prince ton and returned to Mendota to become press foreman of the Mendota Sun Bulletin. He was with the Sun Bulletin twenty-one years, until 1919, when he and George W. Nisley bought the Mendota Reporter. Both are practical printers and newspaper men, and their efforts have been responsible for making the Mendota Reporter the third largest country paper in Illinois. In 1927 they bought their chief rival, the Sun Bulletin, with which Mr. Leiser had been connected for so many years, and consolidated the good will and plant of this with the Reporter.
Mr. Leiser is a Republican, a member of the Catholic Church, Knights of Columbus, B. P. 0. Elks and Izaak Walton League. He is editor of the local Elks paper. He has always been interested in politics as a news paper man but has never aspired to any public office. He is a member of the Illinois and National Press Associations and is a stock holder in the Mendota National Bank.
Mr. Leiser married, May 28, 1906, Miss Gertrude Sonntag, of Mendota. They have two sons, Richard J., born May 17, 1908, and William R., born in 1914.