The Montgomery County Historical Society describes the Sunshine House as,
"THE HOUSE OF SUNSHINE is a symbol of goodwill.
It was in the early 1920's that a small publishing business was started in Litchfield, based on the theory that goodwill is more surely the basis of success for the business and professional man today than it was two thousand years ago, when the Man of Galilee went about spreading sunshine."
This little shrine of goodwill was situated in a small park in Litchfield, Illinois; a location that I never had any real cause to visit had it not been for a broken down bus.
The St Louis Bruins Hockey Club scheduled an outing to see the Lincoln sites in Springfield, Illinois as a fun summer activity for any families who wanted to go. Our family quickly signed up to go.
We loaded everyone onto the hockey club's old school bus and headed out for Springfield early one morning. The bus was filled with families enjoying the day together. Mr. Rancillio drove while the rest of us participated in various activities in the back. I'm not sure what the adults or girls were doing, but the group of hockey players were having a great time!
Everything was going great until the bus broke down on Interstate 55 just North of the city of Litchfield, Illinois. There we sat on the shoulder; stuck. While I'm sure the adults were busily working to figure out how to handle the situation, the rest of us were having a dandy time in the back. So we had a minor change of plans. We could live with that.
Mr. Rancillio managed to arrange to have the bus and passengers towed back to Litchfield where a small garage opened and allowed him to use their facilities to work on the bus. The rest of us unloaded the picnic supplies from the bus and made our way to Sunshine Park on the eastern edge of town.
There really wasn't a lot for us to do in this park. None of us had brought baseball gloves or balls or other recreational equipment because this trip was supposed to be somewhat "educational" in nature. So we were stuck in the park.
It wasn't a large park. In fact, you could stand in one spot and see the entire park; including this building in the middle known as The Sunshine House.
The Sunshine House had been the headquarters of Sunshine Publications; a company dedicated to producing newsletters designed to encourage people and promote love and goodwill. The house was no longer serving as the publisher's office, but was open to the public for free tours where their message of goodwill and encouragement was espoused by the elderly woman who served as the tour guide. Having nothing else to do, we made our way to The Sunshine House for a tour or two or three.
The Sunshine House was filled with knick-knacks and trinkets that the tour guide took very seriously - way too seriously, if you ask me. Now you can probably imagine what a small group of hockey players anywhere from six years old to sixteen years old would do when put into such a situation. The Coon twins, Danny and Dennis, and I decided to visit The Sunshine House.
We were little angels.
Well, perhaps we may have been counted among the number of the fallen angels that summer. We laughed and joked and generally entertained ourselves in The Sunshine House to the point where the elderly woman whose whole life was devoted to spreading love, cheer and goodwill threw us out of the place. She pointed us right out the door and sent us back into the park.
That certainly wasn't very Sunshine-y of her.
We were not a group to be easily dissuaded, so we did what every group of boys would do in the same situation - we went back. It did not take very long for her to decide that we had not repented of our ways during our absence so she threw us out of the house again.
Now she was really beginning to get on our nerves!!! She was, after all, the self-appointed ambassador of goodwill! How could she not be tolerant of the horrible fate of being trapped in this park with nothing to do but visit The Sunshine House?
Our return visit was not met with much love, cheer or goodwill, I'm afraid. Danny, Dennis and I were thrown out of The Sunshine House for a third time. We were beginning to think that she really didn't like us very much.
Our transportation situation eventually resolved and we loaded up to return to St. Louis; our plans to visit the Lincoln sites in Springfield ruined for that day. I'm sure the elderly woman in The Sunshine House was never so happy to see a group leave the park as when she watched us make our way out.
We were able to reschedule our visit to Springfield at a later date, but we never made it back to Litchfield or that monument to goodwill, The Sunshine House. The Sunshine House is still there; although it is no longer part of the park. It now operates as a coffee house and religious bookstore. I wouldn't be surprised if, hidden somewhere in the bowels of that building, there are pictures of Danny, Dennis and me with a warning to never allow us to set foot in the building again.
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