Moline’s Curt Roseman Made Quad-Cities Come Alive for Many
Curt Roseman loved history and made history in the Quad-Cities. More importantly, the 79-year-old Moliner, who died Dec. 13, made history come alive for so many others.
A prolific writer, historian and university professor who taught around the world, Roseman died at UnityPoint Health – Trinity Rock Island, with his loving wife Elizabeth by his side.
Curt Roseman and his wife Elizabeth.
There will be a gathering of friends and family to celebrate his life at Moline’s CityView Celebrations at Trimble Pointe in the future, when we are able to do so safely. Cremation will take place at Trimble Crematory, Moline, under the direction of Trimble Funeral Home. Memorials may be made to the Moline-Mahaffey Fund at Augustana College or The First Bridge Fund at River Action in Davenport.
“Moline and the Quad-Cities lost its greatest ambassador of its history with his passing,” Moline Preservation Society president Diann Moore said Sunday of Roseman. “Curt gave many programs for the Moline Preservation Society and then served on the board of MPS.
“Through him, I became involved with a project being done by Heritage Documentaries on the history of Riverside Cemetery and the history of some of the people buried there,” she said. “Curt taught me so much on organizing information and putting together a book. He loved Moline High School sport and especially Wharton Field House and Browning Field. We had conversations about the history and importance of these places to the people in Moline.
“I told him he needed to write a book and kept reminding him. He did such a great job putting this and his many other books together,” Moore said. “Curt was always a teacher and enjoyed imparting this information so that others could learn and appreciate what was around them. The best example was his many walks around downtown Moline and sharing with people the history of the city as it grew.”
“He was an avid Moline supporter, not only of the city, but of its athletic teams,” she added, “He would ride his bike to high school events at Wharton or Browning even when there was snow or ice on the roads. He was a very gentle and kind person. Many lives of people in Moline and the surrounding area were touched by him.”
“He was such a wonderful, helpful person who did a great job of researching, presenting, publishing works of history,” retired Black Hawk College professor Arthur Pitz (another expert historian now living in Elmhurst, Ill.), posted on Roseman’s online tribute wall with his obituary.
“He and his wife were very important in keeping the QC’s history alive and relevant,” Pitz wrote.
“We have lost a dear friend with the passing of Curt Roseman,” Barb Sandberg of Moline, a longtime historic preservation advocate, said Sunday by e-mail. “With his numerous books, he documented the history of Moline’s neighborhoods, buildings and bridges making people aware of how import they were to our history and therefore important that they be preserved.
“His public historic walks in the downtown brought history to life on how Moline grew from an early pioneer village to a thriving industrial city,” she said.
“I had the pleasure of working with him on Moline’s Downtown Heritage Tour website, which allows people to use their phones while walking in the downtown and pick up the history of that site,” Sandberg said. “It is also available online for those wanting to take a virtual
Roseman worked with fellow Moline historian Barb Sandberg to create a historic walking tour of downtown Moline.
tour.”
That site – produced with the city of Moline – is available HERE.
Sandberg said that Roseman also “introduced many of us to the early settlement of Stewartville, what we might call today a suburb of Moline. He became known as the Mayor of Stewartville, with weekly coffee chats with friends always arriving on his bike, in good weather or bad.”
Roseman was regular at Moline’s Dead Poets Espresso.
He was born Feb. 3, 1941, in Moline, the son of Clifford Charles and Dorothy Marjorie (Johnson) Roseman. He graduated from Moline High School in 1959 and later married Joanne Darras, with whom he had a daughter, Suzanne, before separating. He then married Elizabeth Mercer on November 2, 1974, in Champaign, Ill.
Curt earned a bachelor’s degree from Augustana College in Rock Island, a master’s degree from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He was a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Southern California from 1985 to 2004, serving as Department Chair from 1985-1992.
He also held appointments at the University of Nebraska Omaha, University of Kansas, University of Auckland, New Zealand, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
During his academic career, he did research in population geography, human migration, geography of ethnic populations, and the upper
In fall 2019, Heritage Documentaries held a trivia contest about how well people knew the Q-C area.
Mississippi River. He belonged to the Association of American Geographers and the Population Association of America.
Among the many honors and awards he received over the years were the USC Community Service Award, the USC Faculty Volunteer Good Neighbor Award, Distinguished Scholar Award from the Ethnic Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of American Geographers, and a Fulbright Fellowship.
Curt was a prolific writer in both academic and public spheres. With colleagues, he edited or wrote nine academic books, eight popular and local history books along with numerous articles in academic journals and books as well as newspaper pieces. He supervised the dissertation research for 15 students who were awarded doctoral degrees and was a respected instructor at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
In 2006, Roseman co-founded Heritage Documentaries, which has produced several books and video documentaries, in addition to sponsoring various local programs. They tell stories of interesting people, places, and events, some based in the Quad-Cities of Iowa and Illinois; and most with broader regional or national importance.
Roseman enjoyed traveling and exploring new places, riding his bike, and playing racquetball at the YMCA, according to his obituary. He also loved local history and gave walking tours in both downtown Moline and Los Angeles. He was an avid Ham Radio operator with call sign K9AKS. He was known to have a dry sense of humor.
One of his many passions was traveling Historic Route 6 across America with Elizabeth, said documentary filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Moline-based Fourth Wall Films. The Rosemans criss-crossed the country many, many times, documenting, photographing and noting the highway’s ever changing story.
Their collaboration with Kevin J. Patrick, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Professor of Geography and Regional Planning, led to the monumental creation of an interactive website, http://www.heritagedocumentaries.org/Route6/index.html — dedicated to collecting and compiling information on Historic Highway 6, which runs across the state of Iowa.
“Our ongoing investigation of Route 6 emphasizes not only the road itself, but also its roadside landscapes and its regional and historical contexts,” the website states.
In 2013, the Rosemans sat down with the Rundles for their documentary, “River to River: Iowa’s Forgotten Highway 6.” They spoke on camera about their research, experiences, and massive archive of Route 6 maps, postcards, photos and memorabilia they gathered over the years traveling the 3,662-mile transcontinental highway.
Roseman interviewed for the Fourth Wall documentary on Historic Route 6.
You won’t find Route 66 memorabilia in the Roseman home. It’s all about 6. “Half the digits and twice the kicks,” Curt smiled during his interview.
The Rosemans attended the sold-out premiere of “River to River” at the Putnam Museum’s National Geographic Giant Screen Theater in Davenport in September 2015. The documentary was a crowd-pleaser and went on to receive a Mid-America Emmy nomination and won several film festival awards.
“We are grateful that our ‘road’ crossed with the Rosemans and honor the tremendous legacy that Curt Roseman has left in his research, writing and preservation of the stories imprinted on America’s landscapes, roads and rivers,” the Rundles said on their “River to River” website.
Roseman produced his last book in September 2019 – a 128-page paperback, “Historic Bridges of the Quad Cities Area,” compiled with Rock Island geographer Robert Replinger, published by Moline-based Heritage Documentaries.
“We believe it has particular relevance at this time with the new bridge being under construction,” Roseman – professor emeritus of geography from the University of Southern California – said last year.
The new book tells the stories of a diverse set of bridges (past and present) that extends from Muscatine to Savanna, Ill. Included are bridges that cross both the Mississippi and Rock rivers, and photos or other images of each bridge are included. The origin of each bridge is described, along with the geographical and historical context. Bridges date from the 1850s and include the first railroad bridge on the Mississippi, which linked Rock Island and Davenport.
In the book’s foreword, River Action executive director Kathy Wine wrote that Roseman is “a preeminent scholar of historic bridges in our region,” and a popular speaker on River Action’s Channel Cat talks and Riverine walks.
One of her nonprofit’s current projects is to build a full-scale replica of one span of the first 1856 railroad bridge to cross the Mississippi and it has benefitted from Roseman’s unique insight, Wine said, “The places that look ordinary to us are actually extraordinary when viewed in
Roseman’s last book for Heritage was on historic bridges in the area, released in September 2019.
context.”
She wrote that the new book on bridges combines observation, history and a love of historic bridges. “Reading it makes us fall in love with them, too,” Wine said.
A section on the I-74 bridge notes the original Iowa-Illinois Memorial Bridge, connecting Moline and Bettendorf, opened in 1935, with the second identical span opening in 1960. Its history dates back to 1906, when a federal bridge act was passed, allowing private citizens to build and maintain bridges. William Bettendorf, namesake of both a major manufacturing company and his city, proposed to build that first bridge, but he died in 1910.
The original 1935 bridge had a 15-cent toll for automobiles to cross, which remained until the 1960s. The first span’s cost was $1.46 million, of which $330,000 came from the federal Public Works Administration. The new 74 bridge is being completed at a cost of over $1 billion.
The book’s authors say it’s notable that famed bridge architect Ralph Modjeski (1861-1940) of Modjeski and Masters participated in the design of the 74 bridge, “the last project of his distinguished career,” the book says.
Though the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was the last of Modjeski’s to be completed, his design of the Moline-Bettendorf bridge and his work as chief engineer on the 1896 Government Bridge “gave the Quad-Cities the distinction of hosting Modjeski’s first and last bridge projects,” the book says.
Curt is survived by his beloved wife, Elizabeth; three children, Suzanne Badertscher of Joliet, Illinois, Charles Roseman of Champaign, Illinois, and Eric Roseman of Burbank, California; three grandsons, Tyler (Mallory), Chad (Riley), and Shane Badertscher; one great grandson, Tyler and Mallory’s son Elijah Badertscher; and siblings, Cynthia (Ray) Wright of San Francisco, California, and James (Barbara) Roseman of Moline.
