PEORIA MAGAZINE December 2022

B arb Drake relishes discussing her interview with feminist icon Betty Friedan. Please. If anybody is a feminist icon, it is journalist Barb Proctor Mantz Drake. Her impact may be more local than global, but her tale of tenacity and intelligence is every bit as riveting. More on that later. Barely five feet tall and 100 pounds — even when toting a reporter’s notebook and research tomes — Barb Drake can dominate any room by sheer will. She earned it. Her parents were radio personalities in Dubuque, Iowa, and Barb’s birth was announced on air. Her biological father, Hal Pearce, died when she was a baby. She was 8 when mother June was remarried to fellow station employee Paul Proctor, whom Drake thinks of as her father. Theymoved to Peoria in 1955 so he could work at WEEK-TV. Brother Doug joined the family in 1957. Paul was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) when Drake was midway through her four years atWoodruff High School. When he could no longer work, June supported the family on a teacher’s aide salary. Money was tight. Barb has always touted alma mater Bradley University – she graduated Class of '67 and is a member of the Centurion Society in recognition of extraordinary achievement — for making it possible to get her degree. In her 20s, then-Barb Mantz battled Bell’s palsy, which manifested when she was pregnant with her son, JB. Her husband died when JB was 4 years old, and she was a single mother throughout her 30s. At 40, she married Bernie Drake, likewise widowed, who had his own teenaged sons, Todd and Brent. In their 50s, the Drakes were running two households as Bernie commuted from his job with Komatsu in the Chicago area. While there, he suffered a heart attack while taking a stress test on Valentine’s Day. Into A LIFETIME OF OVERCOMING

her 60s, Barb helped care for brother Doug, who was disabled by lupus and died at 56. Now 77, Drake herself has dodged death more than once. That includes two ser ious cycl ing accident s which put her in the hospital with a combination of collapsed lung, broken collarbone, smashed elbow, broken arm and back injuries. The woman literally was hit by a bus and, again, battled back. “The bus driver was making an illegal turn,” she clarifies, making her usual larger point. “People always want to think it’s the bike’s fault.” Banned from the bike by family, she remains committed to fitness, walking the Rock Island Trail she once championed as an opinion page editor. Despite ongoing therapy and back treatments, she continues to add exotic destinations to the long list of places she’s traveled to with Bernie: Europe, Russia, Scotland, China, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Southeast Asia and, this October, Egypt. Perhaps most remarkable, over nearly 50 years of friendship, Barb Drake has been sad sometimes, but never self pitying. She prefers to focus on facts — like a laser. PUBLIC IMPACT Once upon a time, journalismmade a difference and Barb Proctor wanted in. Not only did she publish her own neighborhood newspaper when she was 6 or 7 years old — 5 cents! — she became editor of the Woodruff Warrior student newspaper and, later, held the same position at the Bradley Scout. While she could have used one of the Journal Star scholarship/ internships awarded by the newspaper annually, she was ineligible at the time: She was female. “A few years later, I was sitting on the committee that gave the scholarships,” she said, with no small satisfaction. “That’semblematicofhowthingschanged.” Drake was not the first female reporter or editor at the local newspaper

of record. But once hired, she kept pushing the glass ceiling. Hard. As consumer affairs reporter, she did an exposé of local car dealers’ pricing that caused them to pull their advertising en masse — requiring the (male) editors to apologize. As assistant city editor, her unrelenting questions and requests for improvement may have driven some reporters to the verge of drink. As assistant and then senior editorial page editor – the latter from 1990-2005 — she advocated for Peoria, armed with facts and context and endless curiosity. Former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar recalls “a bunch of crusty old men” on the editorial board when he first ran for Illinois Secretary of State. In his view, they didn’t like Springfield. Their concerns were Peoria-only provincialism. That changed by the time he opted for the top job. “It was quite a transition when you went from them to when Barb was running the show,” he said. Edgar called Drake the overall best-informed editor in the state. That included Chicago’s newspapers, which tended to have their own us first attitudes. “Barb knewwhat affected Peoria, but she also knew what was going on in Chicago and how it played in the rest of the state,” he said. “That was a breath of fresh air.” Back then, politicians regularly visited newspapers to advance their agendas and plead their causes, especial ly around election time. Edgar said he always braced himself for a challenge at One News Plaza. In a two-party system, independent journalistic checks and balances made everything better, himself included, he said. Peoria was “very fortunate” to have Barb Drake. “I think it kept me and a lot of other people in the straight and narrow. . . You didn’t just want editorials. You wanted the endorsement,” said Edgar, recalling the polling places littered with newspaper clippings that voters used for guidance on Election Day.

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