Day 4: June 23, 2022
The Final Day

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After a group breakfast, President Kay Shelton Kozak got the annual membership meeting underway. The financial report was presented by Treasurer John Jackson who was also filling the role of Secretary during the conference. The meeting ended after several questions and comments were heard from the floor.

MC Ed Kozak got the presentations started by introducing his friend Dennis Doyle for "History of Joliet". Then Kay was back up front for a presentation titled "Stagecoaches in Illinois? Muddy Trails to the Lincoln Highway". After lunch, James R. Wright told us about "The Dixie Highway in Illinois" and Larry McClellan presented "Getting Illinois Out of the Mud! The Emergence of Highways with Names".

The presentations were followed by a break that allowed the room and the attendees to be prepped for the closing banquet. This included the first Annual Awards Presentation in three years. I took no pictures at the banquet and photographed the item at right, which I received at the banquet, much later. Receiving it was very much a surprise.

Kay began to talk about story telling and said that there was a teller of true stories in our midst. I was stunned a bit when she named a couple of those stories. By Mopar to the Golden Gate was one and A Decade Driving the Dixie Highway another. She told about her ride in the Mopar as it started for the Golden Gate. I don't think she mentioned the names of any of my other books but did note that there were several and stressed that they were all true stories of road travel. I was really knocked off balance by the endorsement and ego boost.

This is my second "Friend of the Highway" award. I received the first in 2014 at the first conference following the publication of By Mopar to the Golden Gate. I'd like to think that this second award was not a mistake and that the committee was not unaware of the first one. The Dixie and Lincoln Highways are a little intertwined in the area and the Dixie was part of pre-conference activity as well as the subject of one of the morning's presentations. My guess is that the DH-LH connection brought some attention to my other books. This felt almost like a "lifetime achievement award" although I'd also like to think that I have a fair amount of lifetime left.


Thoughts about "lifetime" are also connected to this picture. After the first post of this trip, a friend suggested that "It’s time to include one picture of yourself per day in your journal entries!" In that comment, I detected concern that my advancing years might lead to a bot or imposter taking over my journaling although why anyone would want to do that is certainly beyond me. I probably won't really do this every day and I'm not even sure that it accomplishes the "proof of life" implied in the suggestion but here 'tis.

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