PEG DONOHUE

Peg Donahue’s involvement with education, the arts, and local government has marked her life in Park Forest.

She was a member of the Women's Conference, a group seeking to increase the numbers of women in public life. As a member of the Park Forest Public Library Board for 12 years, she helped develop the Library's plans for improvements and renovations. First elected to a six-year term on the Board of Trustees of Prairie State College in 2005 and re-elected in 2011, she worked to ensure fiscal responsibility and openness in contract negotiations.

In the early 1980's Peg was a member of the Office of Special Programs and Continuing Education at Governors State University, helping to coordinate one of the first off-campus programs offered by a state university in the Chicago area. In 1992, Peg became the organizing Director of the South Metropolitan Higher Education Consortium, consisting of public, private and for-profit institutions as well as research and teaching institutions. Her involvement with the Tall Grass Arts Association stretches back for decades. She served as director of the Tall Grass Art School and later on the Board of Directors. She was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra and served a term as President of the Friends of the IPO.

In 2014 Peg Donohue was recognized by the Abby Foundation as Woman of the Year. The foundation raises money for organizations that serve women and scholarships for young women.

JACK DONOHUE

After moving to Park Forest in 1965, Jack and Peg Donohue contributed huge amounts of me to the betterment of the Village.

Jack Donohue worked as an advertising account executive in Chicago but was also an enthusiastic member of the Park Forest Junior Chamber of Commerce. Park Forest’s non-partisan elections are supported by the Committee for Non-Partisan Local Government which schedules debates and publishes biographies of candidates. Jack served on the Committee's Board of Directors from April 2004 to January 2005 but resigned when Peg ran for the Park Forest Public Library board. He was again a member of the Committee in 2005, serving as its chairman from 2013 to 2016.

Jack was a member of Parkforesters.com, a group established in 1997 and supported by a special community technology grant at Governors State University. The organization offered workshops to assist local groups to gain an online voice. Prior to the introduction of cable television, he chaired the committee that investigated the various companies involved in seeking to serve the village. He also chaired a select committee that was able to keep alive Park Forest’s Jolly Trolley service. Jack served as a counselor for SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) at the Small Business Development Center at GSU, providing counseling for start-up and existing businesses.

The Donohues now reside in Fennville, Michigan.

PEGGY GLASSFORD

In the 1970s, Peggy Glassford joined the League of Women Voters of the Park Forest Area, serving as president from 1975 to 1977. While president she helped prepare the nomination of Park Forest for the National Civic League All-America City Award and present it before the National Civic League in Williamsburg, Virginia. Park Forest was one of 10 communities honored as an All-America City, one of the few to achieve the honor for a second me.

In 1977 she was elected to the Park Forest Village Board, serving as Village Trustee from 1977 to 1980. She was also a Fellowship student at Governors State University, receiving her Master's Degree in Public Administration. From 1980 to 1984 she served as Flossmoor’s Assistant Village Manager and was its Village Manager from 1984 to 2005. While there, she spearheaded work to resolve the problems that affected Flossmoor and seven other suburbs from the flooding of Butterfield Creek. She authored “Teaming Up to Save a Stream,” which described that coordinated effort and was published in the Illinois Municipal Review and featured at the 1993 National Conference on Watershed Management held in Alexandria, Virginia.

Peggy and Carl were both longtime members of the Tall Grass Arts Association and founding members of the Friends of Thorn Creek Woods, working hard to preserve nearly 1,000 acres of forest as a resource for everyone. Peggy was the first woman manager to receive the prestigious Robert B. Morris Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois City Managers Association.

CARL GLASSFORD

Carl and Peggy Glassford grew up and married in Michigan. After Carl served in the U.S. Army, they moved to Park Forest in the early 1970s with daughters, Kae and Jennifer.

Carl was very active in the Tall Grass Arts Association, serving on the board of directors from 1977 to 1983, and as president in 1979–1980. He served the Art Fair Committee for five years, as Beaux Arts Ball and Art Fair volunteer for years, and was chair of the Beaux Arts Ball in 1979. His passion for the outdoors led to his commitment and significant leadership in the Friends of Thorn Creek Woods, where he served on the board from 1977 to 1978 and as treasurer from 1983 to 2004. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Carl, working with Jim Marzuki and Jon Mendelson, reformulated the Thorn Creek Preservation Association into the Friends of Thorn Creek Woods, keeping it a vital organization that worked for preservation, management, and development of the nature center, and its programming, while expanding studies of the natural communities and species.

He was appointed to the Citizens Advisory Board for the Cook County Forest Preserves. Organizer and first chair of the 20-year campaign to create the Old Plank Road Trail opened in 1997, Carl was the first president of the Old Plank Road Trail Association. He served on the committee to establish the Illinois Chapter of Rails to Trails and was a founding member of the Sauk- Calumet Group of the Sierra Club, and political chair for many years.

WILLIAM "BILL" SIMPSON

In a 1981 interview for the “OH! Park Forest” Oral History of Park Forest, Bill Simpson recalled the day in late December 1963 when he, wife Juanita and their children – Bart, Cathy, and Dorothy moved here. “I just thought it (Park Forest) was a beautiful place,” he said. But to Bill, the beauty of the place was soon disfigured by the program of Integration Maintenance, a plan by which the village sought to promote a racially diverse community by balancing move-ins. He was offended that such an ensemble plan on its face could only be implemented through village policy and that an all-Black community was considered such a negative.

In 1973 Simpson resigned from the Village’s Human Relations Commission because of objections to those community-oriented integration plans. He later helped establish the Far South Suburban chapter of the NAACP and went on to found a Park Forest chapter of the NAACP for which he became chapter president. In leers to the Park Forest Village Board of Trustees, and to state and federal government agencies he wrote that African-Americans then were seen as deterrents to integration. It is estimated that more than 900 of his leers to newspapers were published during his life.

In 1993, feeling it would give beer representation to neighborhoods, Bill was the proponent of a failed village-wide referendum that would have divided Park Forest into six separate districts. By courageously and passionately raising these issues publicly, he and Juanita forced the Village to respond more publicly to a view they had not considered.

Simpson died in 1996 at the age of 71.

JUANITA SIMPSON

Three things guided Juanita Hatchett Simpson (1923- 2006) throughout her life. She was a talented musician, a devoted mother and a dedicated and determined advocate for her husband Bill Simpson. Born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1926, and raised in Chicago along with her two sisters and a brother, Juanita displayed an exceptional musical gift at an early age. The piano was her instrument and at the age of 23, she graduated from the School of Music at Northwestern University and soon after married William Simpson. In 1963 the Simpsons and their three children – Bart, Dorothy, and Cathy – moved from the Lake Meadows Apartments in Chicago to Park Forest.

Juanita, a teacher at the Carver School in Chicago was also a caring mother. “She was kind and compassionate,” recalled her daughter Cathy. “She told me always to be nice and never expect someone to be more than what you are.“ With the children off to college in the 1970s, Juanita began an active role in the life and politics of the community. She successfully ran for a seat on the School District 163 Board and both she and Bill campaigned relentlessly against Integration Maintenance, which she claimed was merely a method to keep African-Americans out of the community after their population reached a certain number.

In 1979, on the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision banning segregated schools, Juanita Simpson debated Don DeMarco, Park Forest Assistant Village Manager, on the merits of Integration Maintenance on PBS national television’s MacNeil-Lehrer Report. The Archive has the original reel to reel tape of the debate, which they hope to digitize.

HELEN D. WARD

Along with her husband, Helen Davies Ward (1915- 2008) was a gift to the Village of Park Forest. Throughout her 93 years, she was active in Village life, taking part in a truly remarkable number of volunteer activities. She received a Delivery Volunteer Award from St. James Hospital; the Volunteer Award of the 4-H Program in Park Forest/Richton Park in 1986; the Volunteer Award of the J.C. Penney Foundation; and the Distinguished Service Award from the Park Forest Jaycees as Outstanding Volunteer for the year 2001.

With Reverend Roger LaWarre, she helped to found the Rich Township Pantry in 1984, where she also served as a Board member and Treasurer. The Pantry now serves over 30,000 clients a year. When Good Shepherd church was sold, $100,000 went to the Pantry. Her undertakings reflected not only her enthusiasm for helping others but also the deep commitment to the growth and quality of life in Park Forest which she shared with her husband. These activities included a committee member of School District 163 PTA, Assistant leader for Girl Scout Troop No. 184; Vice-President and 50-year member of the Park Forest Woman’s Club; United Way Board member; St. James Hospital “Meals on Wheels” volunteer; Friend of the Park Forest Public Library; Treasurer of the local Salvation Army Board; and organizer of the Good Shepherd United Protestant Church volunteers for the Repeat Boutique, which benefits Grand Prairie Services.

HERSCHEL W. WARD

Herschel Wayne Ward (1907-1970) was not only an early Park Forest settler, coming to the new community in 1952, from Chicago with his wife Helen. They raised their family in the Village, remained living on Winnebago Street throughout their lives, and were deeply committed to the growth and excellence of Park Forest. His activities spanned the areas of faith, business, recreation and safety. Along with his wife Helen, he was a founding member of Good Shepherd United Protestant Church and was chair of the church building committee. He influenced ten of his business friends to provide substantial donations to the capital campaign, and the church, at Winnebago and Lakewood, was completed by the late 1950s.

Herschel Ward became an early proponent of the home-based enterprise when he added a spacious office to the back of their home in 1960 and moved headquarters of the Council for Industrial Security, his business, from downtown Chicago to Park Forest. He soon found room to start another venture, Rubber Stamp Specialties, which supplied custom rubber stamps to numerous area businesses. Herschel and his son Bud ran this business until his death from a heart attack in 1970, at the age of 63.

He was a holder of an inial bond for the Park Forest Aqua Center and was a proud supporter of Girl Scouts, 4-H, Lile League, and other village activities for his three children, Helen “Lyn”, Bud and Bill. He was also a member of the Civil Defense team which was called on during tornadoes and other disasters and was active in the use of Citizens’ Band radio for communication during those events.

ILLINOIS PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

On the afternoon of May 25, 1955, after a year of planning, recruiting and rehearsals, more than 750 people attended the first public concert of the newly-created Park Forest Symphony Orchestra in the newly constructed Rich Township High School in Park Forest. For the first few years concerts were held in various venues —Faith Church in Park Forest, Temple Anshe Sholom in Olympia Fields and Bloom Township High School in Chicago Heights. In 1961, the orchestra even held an outdoor concert as part of the Park Forest Art Fair. The orchestra was renamed the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra in 1982 to beer reflect its regional mission. Instrumental in its early success was the naming of Carmen DeLeone as music director in 1986. During his 25-year tenure, the IPO expanded to include its Artists-In-the Schools educational program and youth concerts which now reach more than 3,000 students. In 2011, DeLeone was named conductor laureate of the orchestra. In the 1980s, the orchestra held concerts in the Center for the Performing Arts at Governors State University and in 2008 the orchestra began a new residency with the Lincoln-Way School District 210 high school system. Each season the IPO performs a classical subscription series as well as a holiday pops concert. Over the years the IPO has received coveted awards for arsc excellence. It was named the “Illinois Orchestra of the Year” in 1992 and again in 2010.

• Prev
• Next