Beulah Baker Locher, 1881 – 1978

Beulah Baker Locher was born on January 7, 1881 in Gibson City. She was the daughter of Frank R. and Cordelia Shelton Baker. When she was just a few years old, her family moved to Bloomington to a brick house on West Wood Street near Miller Park. The Bakers then moved to the Franklin Square neighborhood when she was about eight years-old. Her grandfather Hiram Baker built that house for her father. Her father bought the last lot available on that side of Franklin Park, located at 905 N. McLean Street. While living there, the Bakers hired a high-priced Chicago decorating crew for six weeks to redo the house. The house was very ornate and was up-to-the-minute in style. The library was made of cherry wood, the reception room made with quarter-sawed oak woodwork and the dining room had hand-printed, embossed wallpaper. Later in life, Beulah recalled that she used to roller skate on the third floor in the winter because it was so large. Eventually, the Baker house was sold to the Frank Oberkoetter family, who turned the home into three apartments.

It’s believed that her father’s main source of income was farmland, but he didn’t run his farms, he had someone else do it for him. Beulah’s father owned the first car in the neighborhood, even though he didn’t like cars because they were too unpredictable and had to be assembled after they arrived in pieces. He also felt they were unfit for women to drive, so Beulah drove an open cart called a “park wagon,” pulled by a pony with her dog usually sitting with her on the front seat.

Beulah attended public schools. First, when her family lived near Miller Park, she attended the Model School at Illinois State Normal University, which she rode a mule-drawn streetcar to and from school. When her family moved to the Franklin Park neighborhood, she attended Franklin School, which was only two blocks from their home on McLean Street. Her father did not approve of her attending public school and would rather her attend private school like the rest of the family had, but she convinced him to let her go.

Beulah was good friends with her neighbor Adlai Stevenson I, despite the fact that her family was Republican while the Stevensons were Democrats. Beulah’s mother and Adlai’s wife, Letitia Green Stevenson, sometimes even went “calling” together. In an interview with Beulah, she recalled her friendship with Adlai: “I thought he was so lonesome [when his family was up north]. So I’d run over and sit with him. And then if our maid had made anything especially good for lunch or for dessert, I’d take him over some. And what was it he called me, I don’t know, some, his little something, and we got to be chummy, just really chums. I did love him. He was a nice gentleman.” The families of Governor Joseph W. Fifer and Frank Funk were the Bakers’ other neighbors.

After graduating from Bloomington High School, Beulah attended the University of Michigan, but had to leave because of her phlebitis, which is an inflammation of a vein in her legs. She contracted this ailment during an operation for appendicitis in Germany. Before college, she and her mother had attempted to take a Grand Tour of Europe, but ended up mainly in Germany, where Beulah studied piano in Leipzig. Her father had hoped she would obtain rosy cheeks like the German children. Instead, she contracted phlebitis, which she would suffer from for the rest of her life. She was hospitalized for a few months after the operation to remove her appendix. Beulah was encouraged by faculty at the University of Michigan to go to school closer to home, so she transferred to Illinois Wesleyan University to study music and graduated in 1904. She was also a member of the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma while at IWU.

            On January 17, 1907, Beulah married Cyrus Locher from Putnam County, Ohio, and moved to his home state. The two met when he was traveling through Bloomington with an Ohio Wesleyan University choral group. Beulah’s parents put him up at their home because they had a spare room, and Beulah and Cyrus fell in love as the two shared a mutual love of music. They never had children, which Beulah attributed to a serious illness, most likely an ovarian cyst. However, Beulah really indulged her niece Linda Baker as well as bought clothes for other children. Beulah always wore the finest clothes and her mother took her to Chicago to buy them. Her father gave her a ring when she was ten or eleven years-old that had two diamonds and a sapphire, which she wore all of her life.

Cyrus graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, studied law at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and graduated from the law school of Western Reserve University at Cleveland, Ohio. He was admitted to the bar in 1906 and practiced law the rest of his life. Cyrus served as an aide to Newton D. Baker, the “silver-tongued orator” in President Calvin Coolidge’s cabinet. He was then appointed as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Frank B. Willis and served as senator from April 5, 1928 to December 14, 1928. The Lochers lived in Washington, D.C. during those times. On August 17, 1929, Cyrus died in Cleveland, Ohio.

After her husband’s death, Beulah moved back to Bloomington for a short time and then moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado and lived with her brother Fred for 30 years. Beulah’s brother, Fred, graduated from Williams College and went to medical school in New York and at one time, owned a dry ice factory in New York. Beulah then lived in Scottsdale, Arizona for three years before deciding that she preferred Bloomington, saying she “didn’t like the weather, didn’t like the cacti, and had a yen for Bloomington.” She moved back in 1970 and lived eight more years in the city at the Illinois House, which was at the time a nursing home, previously a hotel.

            Beulah was a member of the St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church and was good friends with the priest, Father Lyons. Beulah and her third cousin Becky were the only Episcopalians in their family, for the rest of the family was Presbyterian. Beulah was a devout churchgoer.

Many people had different opinions on her; some called her selfish for indulging in her riches, while others said she had a good heart because she loved to buy clothes for children. She was very witty and a unique character. According to Becky, Beulah would frequently say, “After all I’d had and all I’d seen, there was just one thing I looked forward to each week in the nursing home: a large orange freeze from the Steak ‘n’ Shake. It may not have been long-lasting, but it was good.”

            Beulah lived a long life and was also the fourth woman in the United States ever to survive pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas, at the age of 83. She died on September 15, 1978, at the age of 97, and is buried in the Baker-Champion vault in Evergreen Memorial Cemetery.