Town Hall Meeting at the Hoopeston Public Library

Hoopeston was home to a German POW camp where prisoners were taken to area farm fields and factories to work. Eighty people attended a community conversation October 25, 2007 at the Hoopeston Public Library in Hoopeston, IL featuring local stories of the former POW camp in Hoopeston during WWII. Speaking were brothers Tom and Ed Layden who worked side-by-side with captured German soldiers; Carol Hicks, a historian who has researched and written on the Hoopeston POW camp; Curt Campbell, who was a POW mistreated by German soldiers; and Larry Coon, who has a child visited the German POW at the Hoopeston camp. The event was co-sponsored by WILL AM-FM-TV and the Hoopeston Public Library. The panel and audience discussion were moderated by Tom Rogers of WILL AM-FM-TV.