At a Jackson Day event in Springfield in 1936, the quartet performed a song called "Be It Resolved" that largely praised the governor but also poked fun at his unmarried status, urging him to "pick out a handsome old maid and get himself a wife.
[1][4] Austin continued to write poems for performance, and as he grew older, increasingly, for private purposes or circulation within his family.
[3] Governor Kerner was evidently unaware that Austin had been granted the honor years before; he believed that Sandberg was the state's first poet laureate.
The Illinois State Journal published an article the next day to correct the governor and highlight Austin and his poetry.
In 2000, following the death of Sandberg's successor as laureate Gwendolyn Brooks, Austin was still forgotten in press reports and the state government website, prompting another feature in the same newspaper.
[2] By 2003, when a Governor's Illinois Poet Laureate Review Committee was established to regularize the position, Austin's name was restored in official reports as the first in the state.