 His legacy |
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What Dad would say:
"I do not want anyone to be sad, I want everyone to be happy, healthy and strong. I love you all! I had a great life and we will be together again."
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John remained Mayor until October 5, 2005
By mid year of 2005 John had Doe Run Smelter in compliance for the first time in 110 years! GOOD JOB and WELL DONE :)
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2000's In Herky
Herculaneum History
2000's
2000
Herculaneum residents vote to become a member of the Jefferson County Water Authority.
2001
John Chamis is elected Mayor of Herculaneum.
2001
Herculaneum Fire Department celebrates their 50th anniversary on October 20th.
2006 A Street dedication was made by the Mayor of Herky by adding a sign "JOHN CHAMIS MEMORIAL AVENUE" at the beginning of the longest street in Herculaneum.
2007 The second sign in your Memory and Dedication
"JOHN CHAMIS MEMORIAL AVENUE" was placed at the new bridge that you worked so hard on.
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One of the BEST articles ever in the RFT! 12/26/2001
The Link is RFT (River Front Times) http://search.riverfronttimes.com/2001-12-26/news/heavy-metal-racket/1
The best part of the whole article is right here:
Heavy-Metal Racket
John Chamis and other residents of lead-contaminated Herculaneum are tired of getting jerked around by regulators and by Doe Run. They're demanding answers -- and results.
By Roland Klose
Published: December 26, 2001
Seemed like Wilma was always hollering about John's smelly shirts and pants, especially after his Wednesday volunteer-firefighter meetings, when he'd come home with a distinct rotten-egg odor. John wasn't happy about it, either: "I can smell it myself, and I don't do nothing to get in the dirt or nothing."
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There was a picture of John with a 'smelly shirt on' here but I couldn't get it to paste SORRY!!
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Warning signs went up in Herculaneum in early September.
But after Wilma returned from a recent function at fire-department headquarters in Herculaneum, she stopped griping. "I know why your clothes stink," Wilma told him. "I was at the firehouse -- smell my blouse."
After he retired from his truck-driving job, John Chamis decided he and Wilma would move from South St. Louis and find a safe, quiet community in which to spend the rest of their lives. John thought he'd found just the place. On the job, he'd often driven to Herculaneum, making deliveries to the old lead smelter on Main Street, and the more times he made the short trip to Jefferson County, the more he liked what he saw. With its inexpensive old homes, schools, churches, parks and creek, Herculaneum -- the locals call it "Herky" -- felt like a village untouched by urban sprawl and developers. "I seen this as a nice, peaceful town," Chamis says.
In December 1994, the couple paid $77,000 for a two-bedroom ranch-style house on Jefferson Street, then started fixing up the place and making friends. "It was just a great place to retire," Chamis says.
That was then. Now, the couple's house is up for sale, and they've already shown it to a couple of prospective buyers.
Chamis says he and his wife had no idea the town was so polluted -- no clue that when he'd go to the firehouse, his clothes would pick up the smell of sulfur dioxide emissions from the smelter; that their yard, located about a mile north of the smelter, would be contaminated with lead; that he and Wilma would end up with lead in their bloodstreams. "I'm sorry, I don't want to live around stuff like that," Chamis says.
In recent months, as more information has trickled out about the smelter's operations, other residents have put their homes up for sale or moved away. But Chamis insists he's not leaving Herculaneum, just moving farther away from the smelter.
It's a good thing Chamis isn't leaving town, considering that he's the mayor of Herculaneum.
When he ran in April, his campaign motto was "Watch Herculaneum grow." Until recently, Chamis was convinced he could deliver on that promise; today, he compares his town to a place that has disappeared from Missouri's map.
"This lead stuff is terrible," he says. "It's really worse than Times Beach."
(If you want to read the rest of the article, click on the link at the top of this news clip)
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Journals of the Mississippi July 1, 2005 ~John is always REAL~
Chester, Illinois
1224 miles
We dropped into the town of Herculaneum, MO yesterday to pick up some water and grab breakfast. Honestly we also wanted to go to the town just because of the name. How can you go wrong with someplace called Herculaneum?
We hid the canoe as best we could then hoofed it into town. The beach area looked like the local hangout, with beer cans and exploded firework scattered all over the place.
After passing an old industrial area we arrived at the combined city hall/police/county business office. We asked for directions to the closest breakfast joint and were walking off when the mayor (John Chamis) flagged us down. Not ten minutes later we were being shuttled to a Jack-in-the-Box and brought back for the royal treatment.
When we got back from our breakfast run we were given a copy of the history of the city, t-shirts, pens, and neckerchiefs with the city logo. Just twenty-four hours after being stood up for three interviews in St. Louis I’m sitting in mayor’s chair calling home. The only thing that could have topped that would have been to grab a beer at the Bucket of Blood Saloon. Too bad that place closed in 1850. Great name for a bar though.
Seeing the confluence of North America’s two largest rivers was an incredible sight to see. The silty waters of the Missouri combined with the brown of the Mississippi over the course of a mile. The Ohio River is the next large river the Mississippi takes in, and we’ll reach that in about three days.
I can’t get over the expanse of land that the Mississippi drains, and the amount of water that eventually ends up in its channel. There are no more locks and we are now making about six miles per hour. I think we’ll be able to pull off some of these fifty-mile days without killing ourselves if the river stays like this for a while.
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