I didn’t know that Mr. Volkel was not with us any longer. I had never heard of his death until yesterday. He was my all time favorite teacher. Many of us will remember his years in the Danville School system from Edison Grade to North Ridge to DHS. This belated news of his death is like “Mr. Chip’s has passed on. He was only 56 when he died.
Born in 1936, Lowell Volkel was a Danville, Illinois High School teacher whose interest in genealogy began at an early age. He moved to Springfield in 1970 to become an archivist at the Illinois State Archives. Few know how much influence he had with his work there. From the time he joined the Archives staff in 1970 until his death, he worked with the Illinois State Genealogical Society, the Illinois State Archives, and various record keepers, to make Illinois records available for research. He set a precedent for other states to follow and influenced their attitudes towards record access.
In addition to his many publications, Lowell was also founder and first president of the Illinois State Genealogical Society, and was inducted into their Hall of Fame in 1993. He taught genealogy classes and was a frequent genealogy speaker and lectured in the 1970s at the National Archives Institute on Genealogy in Washington, DC. He died in 1992 at the young age of 56, but his efforts for over three decades had an impact that would shape the future of records access nationally.
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