A big reason I always wanted to live on the SE side of Cedar Rapids: close proximity to Oak Hill Cemetery, where as a teenager, I used to explore at night in search of Tillie’s ghost. Legend had it she was buried in the potter’s field with an elaborate iron fence designed to trap a powerful witch like her in the ground. My entire childhood, I heard stories of her ghost wandering the cemetery at night, candle in hand, yanking the living into mausoleums. I wanted to see her.
By the time I finally lived close to the cemetery, though, I knew Tillie was urban legend. Staff at Oak Hill have have long since debunked this ghost story that goes back to the 1960s:
An investigation into Tillie’s grave has revealed that the witch Tillie, is not a witch at all. The grave is the resting place of two Czechoslovakian infant girls that died when their parents were passing through the area sometime in the late 1700’s or early 1800’s. The iron fence is common decoration for Czechoslovakian graves and is in no way meant to trap the dead. Tillie’s grave is haunted, not by the two infant girls, but by the living. Over the years, people have tried to dig up the bodies, they’ve pounded wooden stakes into the soil. Evidence of small fires and candle wax surrounds the grave site. When I returned to the grave site a few weeks ago to photograph the iron fence for this article, I found that the fence is no longer there.
Haunted by the living. We were the ghosts, not Tillie, not the dead people who had earned their eternal rest.
But Oak Hill doesn’t need Tillie to be haunted by real history. Just look to the people buried there, like Arthur Collins. As in that Collins — Collins Radio, Rockwell Collins & now Collins Aerospace.
Collins was our local radio genius.
In 1925, 15-year-old Collins achieved what the U.S. Navy struggled to do: communicating with the MacMillan scientific expedition via radio. From the August 4, 1925 Cedar Rapids Gazette:
“The mysterious forces of air leaped the boundary of thousands of miles to bring Cedar Rapids in touch with the celebrated MacMillan scientific expedition at Etah, Greenland, and wrote a new chapter into the history of radio. Sunday, Arthur Collins, 514 Fairview Drive, 15-year-old radio wizard, picked up the message from the expedition’s ship Bowdin, at twenty meters (wavelength), at about 3 o’clock and conversed in continental code for more than one hour. It was the first time the expedition and any United States radio station had communicated at that wavelength. Messages were received by Collins for the National Geographic Society, which is sponsoring the expedition, and for others, and were sent out from here by telegraph. Arthur Collins is the son of Mr. and Mrs. M.H. Collins and is a student at Washington High School. He has been a radio fan for years, and has himself constructed most of his apparatus. His equipment is in a small room on the third floor of the Collins home. His station is known as 9CXX. The local boy told a Gazette reporter today that although he had been in wireless communication with Australia, Scotland, England, India, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Mexico, he never had received a greater thrill than when he talked to his friend on the famous expedition bound northward to explore a mystic continent.”
On November 8, 1951, he bounced Morse code off the moon to reach a station in Sterling, Virginia, exchanging the message “What hath God wrought?” multiple times.
In 1960, Collins Radio participated in Project ECHO, building the Echo Hill station in Cedar Rapids and another in Richardson, Texas. When the ECHO-1 balloon satellite passed over the Midwest, a Collins Radio team reflected a signal off its shiny mylar and became the first to establish two-way voice communication via satellite. Six days later, they transmitted an image of President Eisenhower using the Cedar Rapids Gazette’s wire photo equipment–another first.
Today, Lowe Park in Marion memorializes Project Echo with an interactive installation, including a monument and “two large parabolic satellite dishes engineered to be “whisper dishes” which allow persons to softly speak into one dish and be heard about 150 feet away with another dish. The third part is a six foot “gazing ball” of stainless steel between the two dishes symbolizing the Echo Satellite.”
But that cutting-edge technology had a dark side, too. Collins Radio eventually became a principal supplier of radio & communication equipment to the United States military.
Another urban legend I heard as a kid: Cedar Rapids is a top nuclear target. It turned out this urban legend was sort of true:
True because of Rockwell-Collins.
When I was a kid, I used to confused tornado drills with nuclear ones: hiding under the desk, hands over my head, as if that would protect me from anything.
After derecho hit, so many of us said, “It looks like a bomb hit us.”
And maybe there isn’t much difference anymore: The Doomsday Clock ticks closer to midnight because of climate change as much as nukes.
When Collins bounced that Morse code message off of the moon, he was paying homage to the first Morse code ever transmitted, on May 24, 1844 — terrestrially, between Washington, DC & Baltimore, Maryland. Both times, “What hath God wrought?” was a hopeful message, one of awe, as in the biblical verse from which it comes, Numbers 23:23: Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!
Still, it always seemed strange for scientists to attribute their work to God.
Then again, how many wars are fought in God’s name? How many nuclear warheads made in his name? How many religious zealots see wars & even climate change as a quickening of Biblical End Times, which they welcome?
As we burned the Morse code into this log, it took an ominous tone.
.– …. .- – / …. .- – …. / –. — -.. / .– .-. — ..- –. …. – ..–..
What hath God wrought?
.– …. .- – / …. .- – …. / –. — -.. / .– .-. — ..- –. …. – ..–..
What hath God wrought?
.– …. .- – / …. .- – …. / –. — -.. / .– .-. — ..- –. …. – ..–..
What hath God wrought?