Before providing a tour of Beloit’s Grinnell Hall Senior Center, Ashley Cooper addresses the elephant – or in this case, canary – in the room.
“I haven’t met Dickie yet,” the center’s coordinator confesses.
Dickie, the canary in question, is an avian apparition that flew the mortal coop in 1886. To this day stories of, and songs from, the little bird reportedly fill the halls. When Beloit resident Nellie Tuttle Clark’s beloved bird died, she placed him in a tin marshmallow box with a heartfelt note and hid Dickie in her home’s wall. Decades later, when her house was demolished to build Grinnell Hall, workers found the tiny coffin and, honoring Nellie’s wish, reburied Dickie within the new building’s concrete walls…