A Long-Dead Unionist’s Biggest Fan

If you’re wondering which house in Terre Haute, Indiana has the most followers on Twitter, I think it’s safe to say it’s the one on N. 8th Street, surrounded by Indiana State University parking lots, just south of the marching band’s practice fields. It’s the Eugene V. Debs museum. Long before it was a museum, it was the home of Eugene V. and Kate Debs.
A hundred years ago, Eugene Debs was the most famous socialist in the U.S. He was the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party’s first five attempts, which suggests how well he did on that front. The last time he ran, he was in prison. He got 6 percent of the vote. At the time, it seemed not bad for a convict.
Now it’s a museum, dedicated to the memory of the most popular American socialists before Bernie Sanders, and, along with Larry Bird, who got his start playing basketball for ISU, one of Terre Haute’s most famous sons.
The museum is run, as it should be, by one of Debs’s biggest fans. Allison Duerk started giving tours of the house in college, and, just as she was graduating and looking for her first job, the Debs Museum opened up a search for a new director. She’s been there ever since.
This episode is about Eugene Debs and Allison Duerk. They’ve got some parallels. It’s also about what makes a person devote their career to a house, and a man who died almost a century ago.