Where did Gary Chilcote get his passion for St. Joseph history?
That’s the question an anonymous sponsor wanted me to find out.
In asking Gary, he shrugged, his son Doug scratched his head and daughter Caroline smiled, but I knew.
Gary Chilcote, Suzanne Lehr, Milt Toratti, Sharon Kosek, Megan Wyeth and a myriad of others donate their time and talents not for profit or praise but because they, “had a calling.”
These people and many others make this community a more interesting and pleasant place to live.
A calling, “is a strong desire or feeling of duty to do a particular job, especially one in which a person helps other people.”
Once you start on a project and are knee deep in it, before you know it you’re waist deep and probably “hooked,” for life. At that point one wonders, how did this happen? Well, consider “divine guidance,” it’s almost like you didn’t select the project, it selected you!
In 1962, Chilcote was a cub reporter for the Gazette, the same news organization his father Merrill and Arthur Burrowes worked for.
One assignment, he and a couple others went down to the dilapidated and abandoned old Patee House Hotel. They scoured through the basement looking for any relic that could be tied to the headquarters of the Pony Express that had been located in the Hotel some 100 years earlier.
Nothing of note was found, the building, however was in such bad shape the City wanted to raze it. A few good-willed but under-financed people worked to save, “the Waldorf of the West,” once a magnificent structure from the wrecking ball.
A couple editorials written by Burrowes joined in the chorus to bring down the blighted building.
“Quit living in the past!” “Must St. Joseph forever bleat to the world that a century ago we were quite something!”
“The place is junk. It long has been junk and should be razed. It’s a fire hazard. To make it anything worth preserving would take more than a half a million dollars. And for what? So that a postcard company in New Jersey or California could sell picture-postcards that this old shirt factory was once a hotel. Bah! Take it away,” Borrowes was relentless.
Reminds me of the stalemate involving the Stockyards Exchange Building, but this icon has a better fate.
Enter Gary Chilcote, the Pony Express Historical Society and banker Robert Keatley.
Nothing comes easily on a project like this. Board members butted heads, fracturing leadership causing litigation.
Lee Starnes, a respected artist and activist, led one faction, while Gary headed the other, questioning expenditures and personal benefits.
Starnes ended up moving into the second floor of the Patee House once his spacious apartment was completed. This blatant misappropriation irked many on the board, causing lawsuits and frustrating delays.
Chilcote’s side lost the first round in local court, banning Gary from even entering the building for three years. Not until an appeals court in Kansas City overturned the verdict did the project resume its original course. To become a premier museum dedicated to highlighting the headquarters of the Pony Express and preserving how life was lived in St Joseph’s celebrated past.
Taking two years to clean the place up, it was a “hands on” calling for Gary. Not only did he hold down his job at the paper, he was a skilled electrician. Gary and fellow board member Ray Waldo basically rewired the building.
Then there were the windows. The street to the east of the Hotel was gravel, over 100 windows had been broken with vandals destroying fixtures, defacing walls and carving initials throughout.
Gary is a perfectionist, you almost have to be in maintaining a building that’s 167 years old. “It wasn’t much when we started,” recalls Chilcote.
Once the Museum was up and running, Gary didn’t rest. What would make this Hotel-turned-factory- turned-Museum stand out? How about a 140-year-old train in the old Hotel’s atrium?
St Joseph, of course, was the western terminus of all rail in the United States as the completion of the Hannibal-St. Joseph Railroad took place in 1859. With the railroads connection to the east and the creation of the Pony Express, mail could now be sent coast to coast in days not weeks.
Burlington Railroad had an 1890, coal-burning locomotive, tender and mail car all depicting what rail travel would have been like in the 19th century. The railroad was willing to donate it to the Patee House Museum.
To get the 94,000-pound locomotive into the museum was a monumental task. Gary, first of all had to raise the atrium's roof and lay tracks from a close feeder line that could support the weight, no small feat.
“I was just a kid, but I remember playing on those tracks, running up and down them, having great fun, then they brought that train in,” reminisces Caroline.
What a sight, having that landmark period locomotive looking so out of place in the middle of a museum.
Gary Chilcote isn’t through, now in his 90’s, having dedicated a lifetime preserving St Jo history, he continues to make the museum better. That’s the thing about “callings,” once you sign on, most never let go, thank you Gary, you have St. Joseph’s sincere gratitude.
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Bob Ford’s History will appear in each edition of the Weekender, Midweek and Corner Post. To look at more of Bob’s work go to his website at Bobfordshistory.com or videos on YouTube, TikTok and Clapper.
