Georgia Herrera and Tanilo Sandoval remember life as children living in the Silvis railyards in the documentary Riding the Rails to Hero Street.
The documentary “Riding the Rails to Hero Street” by award-winning filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films will screen at the River Valley District Library-Port Byron, 214 S. Main Street, Port Byron, Illinois on Thursday, February 27 at 1:00 p.m. The program is free to the public and includes a discussion with the filmmakers and others following the 30-minute film.
The film premiered on the Putnam Giant Screen last Veterans Day eve to a standing-ovation by a sold-out crowd.
“Riding the Rails to Hero Street”, part one in the Rundles’ Hero Street documentary series, tells the story of the immigrants’ journey from Mexico to Cook’s Point in Davenport, Holy City in Bettendorf, Iowa, and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad train yards and boxcar homes in Silvis, Illinois. The families experienced both acceptance and discrimination in their new communities. Around the time of the great depression, the families were removed from the rail yards and some moved box cars or built new homes on 2nd Street in Silvis. Only a block and a half long, the street lost six young men in World War II and two in the Korean War, more than any other street in America. Hero Street, as it is now known, has provided over 100 service members since World War II.
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