📍816 South Hennepin Avenue, Dixon, IL 61021, USA
1920 – 1923“My father, Jack, was a shoe salesman who struggled with drink, and we moved from town to town across Illinois until we settled in Dixon, a small town on the Rock River, when I was nine. I always called it my hometown. In 1920 we rented this white clapboard house on South Hennepin Avenue, and my brother Neil and I shared a bedroom; my mother, Nelle, was the steady heart of the family, devout and theatrical, and she gave me my love of performing in church readings and recitals. One snowy night when I was eleven I came home to find my father passed out drunk on the porch, and I dragged him inside to bed; I learned to forgive and to keep going. As a teenager I spent seven summers as a lifeguard at Lowell Park on the Rock River, and I was credited with pulling seventy-seven people out of the water. Dixon gave me an optimism I never lost. The house has been restored to how it looked in 1920, and a statue of me stands outside.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today