Third-grader Larry Sapp in the Sapp family’s basement shelter off rural Peoria Roadin 1961. “They’re not just looking at them now,” Strongman commented. The Illinois State Journal reported the fair display attracted “soaring interest compared to other years.” erected a demonstration shelter near the Poultry Building. It was positioned in the family backyard, much like an outhouse.įor the 1961 Illinois State Fair, the Barker-Lubin Co. One cost-conscious Cold War shelter manufacturer sold a model made from the wood of a Douglas fir tree.

Meanwhile, a number of people built private shelters in backyards or converted basements. The smallest public shelter – capacity five people – was inside the Mode O’Day clothing store on East Adams Street. Other public shelters were in the Sangamon County Building, the post office, the State House Inn, the Myers Brothers store, and inside several public schools. The largest could hold 7,000 residents at City Water, Light and Power, while, downtown, the Franklin Life Insurance building would have accommodated another 7,000. A 1965 survey revealed 196 public shelter locations in Springfield alone.

Nuclear bomb shelters, both public and private, were once located throughout Springfield and Sangamon County. In fact, severe weather – especially two tornadoes that hit Springfield in June 1957 – was one of the reasons Sangamon County bolstered its Civil Defense system in the early 1960s. Some of the air raid sirens installed under Strongman’s directorship during the 1960s continued to alert people of tornados into the 2000s. One of the coordinators of the Springfield drill was Vernon Strongman ( 1912-76), a former shoe repairman who had been named coordinator of local civil defense programs in 1957.

Similar exercises were performed across the nation. Yet for those who grew up during the early stages of the Cold War, a Civil Defense drill of the magnitude undertaken in Springfield in 1964 wasn’t out of the ordinary. The exercise, of course, was a large-scale drill, something that sounds extreme today. Dave Roscetti, left, and Bill Marsh stack sanitation kits (cardboard drums that served as toilets) during the 1964 State Office Building drill.

Original fallout shelter sign