MAROA - King Charles V once said something like, "To speak another language is to possess another soul."

So what happens when you adopt someone else's underwear?

Quite a lot, in the case of DaLette Stowell from Maroa, who found circa 1900 white bloomers, blouses, petticoats and skirts in suitcases of old stuff going cheap at a local flea market four years ago.

Everything fitted like it had been made to measure for her, and she looked so good she wound up winning a vintage clothing contest during Maroa's sesquicentennial in 2004. It was the start of a journey of discovery that would see her come to discover, cherish and admire the late Miriam Reid, the original owner of the lacy and beribboned glad rags.

Stowell has since written a book about her experiences titled "Miriam's Time Capsule," and is working on another chronicling her adventures in pursuit of a stranger she believes calls to her from beyond the grave.

"And I've even found out I can trace Miriam to my own family tree in three different ways," says Stowell, 53. "Twice on my mom's side and once on my dad's side. I feel like I am discovering my own roots."

And it all began, by chance, with the discovery of those unwanted cases of old clothes, stained with raccoon droppings and bird poop. Anyone else would have walked on by, but not Stowell. In her day job, she works with the DeWitt County Human Resource Center teaching gardening to developmentally

disabled adults, and has come to know the value of gentle patience. She peered beneath the clothing yuck and liked what she saw. Then she took the ancient garments home and laundered each item by hand.

Mixed in among the clothes, she also would discover charming turn-of-the-20th-century textbooks from the one-room schoolhouse in rural Argenta where a smart little Reid learned the three Rs and once got 93 on a grammar test. There were also lots of hand-drawn pictures, letters and keepsakes that followed the life of Reid - who was born in 1890 and died in 1967 - all the way into adulthood.

Stowell even would track down and explore the abandoned farmhouse just northeast of Argenta where Reid was raised and spent most of her life. Open to the sky and in the process of being demolished, Stowell salvaged a few items, such as Reid's sewing machine and a beat-up walnut dresser, which refinished so well it looks like it was made last week.

Walking into other people's houses, even abandoned ones, isn't Stowell's usual style and, guilt-ridden, she located Reid's relatives to square it with them and explain her strange fascination with their ancestor.

"I went to see them and told them what happened, and they were just the sweetest people," she says. "They said if there is anything I wanted there in the house, to just go ahead and get it because they were in the process of tearing the place down. As a matter of fact, they were just thrilled to death that I was taking such an interest in Miriam."

There will be more of all this in the second book, due out hopefully this year, along with some revelations about how the search for Reid's history twisted and turned, taking Stowell all over Central Illinois. But the central theme of her devotion to a dead woman she never met always remains the same: Reid's obscure life deserves remembering.

It turned out that Reid had never married and spent her best years living on the family farmstead while looking after her mom, who had Alzheimer's disease. "She had sacrificed her whole life, or any life she might have hoped for, to stay home and take care of her mother until her mother died," Stowell says.

"And the family told me she had left a stack of uncashed Social Security checks when she herself died because she had said she was living comfortably and other people might need that money more than her. She was a good person."

Stowell has since found Reid's grave - surprisingly, it lies in Ridge Cemetery, only two miles from her Maroa home - and shed a few tears there for the completed life she can only know vicariously. And she believes the rapid rate at which she continues to discover new facts and information is no accident: "I am being pulled to do this," she adds. "I can feel it."

She has several close friends who often get pulled right along with her and offer encouragement as Stowell assembles more and more of Reid's story. "I think it's wonderful the way all this has transpired," says one of those friends, Chris Berry, 51, who lives in Decatur.

"When Miriam put those clothes and things in the cases, she dreamed what every little girl dreams about: that someone would remember who they belonged to and take notice of her. DaLette is making those dreams come true."

Stowell has set up a Miriam Reid trust and says she will donate half the proceeds from her self-published books to offer student grants and help fund educational programs in Reid's memory.

"People are going know who she was," Stowell says. "They are going to know her life had value."

treid@herald-review.com|421-7977

CONTACT

You can order copies of "Miriam's Time Capsule" by going to www.freewebs.com/revdalette. Scroll to bottom of chapter one for information; the books costs $12, plus $4.80 shipping. Some copies should be available at the DeWitt County Historical Society Museum in Clinton and the Macon County Historical Society Museum in Decatur.