Edna Dieterle, 54 Market St. and 10th St.
In an effort to celebrate the people who keep our city interesting, Daily RFT is launching a new weekly blog post, "Bold Types," featuring photos and street interviews with the fashionistas, fresh faces and free spirits of our town.
Are you going for the Mary Surratt look? Thank you I appreciate that, I admire Mary Surratt, and I think she was set up and framed!
Would Mary have been found guilty in today's era? No, she'd been found innocent. She was just giving her son and his friends a place to hang out.
What are you dressed in? This is Victorian mourning garb in the 1860s. Hoops didn't go out of style until the end of the Civil War, so during the war a lot of women dressed like this. There were 620,000 men who died, so there was lots of mourning and grieving going on. The first year and a day after the death of my husband, I'd be dressed like this, which is the first of three stages of mourning. I'd be covered in dull black, with nothing reflective of light. I'd have my face and hands covered in public.
What do you do? I'm on the board and I co-chair the event committee of the Chatillon-DeMenil House.
Do you enjoy it? I came to the house on tour in 1990 and fell love with it. I work full-time as a nurse, but the house is my therapy and passion. I love history and incorporating medicine with history. So it's kind of fun to talk about mourning and death in the 1800s.
What events are coming up? On Oct. 20 we're having an event with spooky stories. All of us volunteers have had things happen to us in that house. We've witnessed things. So we're inviting people to come and hear about our ghosts, and we want people to tell us about their ghosts. Everybody has a ghost story to tell.
Will you dress like that if the Cardinals lose? Yes, I can mourn the Cardinals too.
