Roald Tweet
Writer and Narrator of 'Rock Island Lines'Beginning 1995, historian and folklorist Dr. Roald Tweet spun his stories of the Mississippi Valley to a devoted audience on WVIK. Dr. Tweet published three books as well as numerous literary articles and recorded segments of "Rock Island Lines." His inspiration was that "kidney-shaped limestone island plunked down in the middle of the Mississippi River," a logical site for a storyteller like Dr. Tweet.
It was from Rock Island’s rich heritage that Dr. Tweet spun his histories, biographies and "stretchers." Among his favorite topics were railroads and riverboats, which he combined on a CD in celebration of the Grand Excursion in 2004. "Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet" received awards from the Illinois Historical Society as well as the Towner Award from the Illinois Humanities Council.
Dr. Tweet was professor emeritus, retired from the Augustana College English department, where he was professor and Conrad Bergendoff Chair in the Humanities. A writer and radio personality, Dr. Tweet was also an accomplished woodcarver and whittler.
Dr. Tweet left us in November of 2020, but his legacy lives on. You can hear many of his Rock Island Lines in podcast form here and also in a forthcoming book from WVIK and East Hall Press.
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Animals who kill people are often shot. Humans who do so are tried in court. But what does one do with an inanimate…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.The following story about the Mississippi River is not worth telling. Unlike those river events that make the six…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.By the time the famous evangelist, Billy Sunday, came to the city of Rock Island for a six-week crusade in the fall of…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island."Timing is everything," as Reverend James L. Delk could tell you after a summer of revival meetings in the city of Rock…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Before Billy Sunday moved into the big time as the evangelist to America's great urban centers, he practiced his…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Had a Rock Island County man not lost his temper back in 1895, the American cattle industry would have taken a…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.I see that the starving artists are back at the Holiday Inn again for their annual sale, room 211. What would those…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Back in the 1850s, Chicago challenged St. Louis to a duel—a duel that was fought at Rock Island.Chicago was an upstart…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Between 1831 and 1846, the Sangamo Journal in Springfield, Illinois, published seventy-one poems by a poet who signed…
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CommunityThis is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.The communities clustered along the Mississippi around Rock Island have contributed their share of sports heroes to…