Former Illinois State Police Capt. Francis Mowery, who was inducted into the Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame, died at age 99 last week, reported the Bloomington Pantagraph.
The Illinois Route 66 Association reported Mowery’s death today on its website.
Mowery was among the very first members inducted into the Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame in 1990.
Mowery was living in a nursing home in Fairbury at the time of his death. The funeral will be Tuesday at Trinity Lutheran Church in Fairbury.
His career with the state police started in 1941; according to the Pontiac Daily Leader, he was a member of the first-ever Illinois State Police cadet class. Save for a time when he re-enlisted in the Marines in World War II, his state police career continued through his retirement in 1974. He was a captain the last eight years of his tenure.
The current Illinois State Police District 6 commander, Capt. Sue Jansky, heaped praise on Mowery:
His Illinois State Police career spanned 33 years and is testimony to a living history, Jansky noted.
“He began his service operating a motorcycle and near the conclusion of it, survived a helicopter crash,” she said.
Jansky went on to say that while she is 50 years his junior, opposite his gender and “with a world less experience and he is as gracious and accepting an individual as I have experienced in my career.”
Mowery’s office was the unique, Art Moderne-inspired Illinois State Police District 6 building near Pontiac, built the same year he began his police career. The building also was next to Route 66:
Traffic along Route 66 continued to increase throughout the 1940s, and the headquarters was busy round the clock. In 1944, the route was widened to four lanes through this region of Illinois, and two additional highway lanes were constructed directly in front of the building. Speed limits were imposed during the 1950s. By then, officers drove distinctively marked black and white cars with crackling radios and flashing blue lights. Their work had a clear focus–reducing the rapidly rising death toll from highway accidents.
The construction of Interstate 55, about a half mile to the west of Route 66 during the 1970s, led to a decrease in traffic on Route 66. The Illinois State Police remained headquartered in the building until 2003 when the police moved to a new facility in Pontiac. The historic headquarters is vacant today, but remains an important local landmark. It was listed in the National Register in 2007.
Mowery’s obituary also is posted at the Duffy-Pils Memorial Home website.