Park Forest Historical Society Annual Meeting September 10, 2006

Report of the Archivist, Jane Nicoll

   The lack of electricity to the computer has hampered the work on the digital site this year.  When I had a summer off to work on it last year, we were denied access to it.  By the time I had access, I had a new job to deal with.

   I have spent time at home trying to launch transcripts I had edited last summer.  Since the Illinois Digital Archives site which is our web host was down for construction, there were problems doing that.  Please understand that I now do all of this as a volunteer, and it is quite time-consuming.

The Park Forest Plan of Town from 1946 has been ready to go for almost a year.  I have even sent the document twice as an attachment to our web designer and his system blocks it for some reason.  My time to keep trying is very limited.

    Helen Lawrence has continued to volunteer in the archive, clipping, photocopying and filing articles and documents.  She would really like help with that.  We would like some other volunteers to step forward to learn how to do that.  For the time being, we are still allowed to do that copying at the library.

    Much time was taken up by the move of the collection to “The Dark Side.”  Boxes were put on shelves with the labels to the back, and rearranging was necessary to make things more accessible.  There have been some major water problems with the area near where the collection is now stored, due to a leaky water pipe in the ceiling just a few yards from the collection, and also from water problems with the large rainfalls surrounding Labor Day.  The microfilm to the Park Forest Star and the Park Forest Reporter is still sitting immediately next to the area where the water from leaks runs along the floor.  [I think some Librarian warned the library board about this in the recent past before she retired!]

    Other than going in to answer questions for patrons, and to photograph the collection’s new home, I have had very little free time to go in and process the collections.  I have worked on some collection documents from home.  A brief description or finding aid was written to tell people about the important records in the collection.  The library typed a list of all of the 126 subject files in the cabinets in the reference room, for those who can’t use a card catalog.  We can launch that on our website.

    We have no record of questions the library receives and answers.  They are not consistently recording users’ names.  People either do get referred to us, or they know enough to call us.  They still are being referred to call us for materials which could have been found in the file cabinets or in catalogued manuscripts by library staff.  The staff does not carry questions much beyond the files.  They have made little effort to learn the contents of the archive so they can help the public use it, but they do call on the society board and archivist, or refer patrons to us.  The Oral History Transcripts the public copies of the Photograph File and the Ready reference history packets were moved to the basement after I left the library. The public will never know there is more to learn if they are not offered these resources.  [When the collection was moved to storage in January 2007, these materials were moved back up to the Reference area by our president. The unbound transcripts were not in the Reference area, but had been moved from the museum to the library in May 2007, and staff could locate them.]    

I have been contacted by people trying to preserve Keokuk Park as a wetland, and by people trying to connect with our website to put memoirs on it or read those that are there.  I have had a number of calls from Baby Boomers who grew up here, or who lived here for a few years in the 1950s, who want to reconnect with their memories of that time.  Several try to find their rental unit address.  I was able to connect one woman with neighbors who knew her parents, and one, by Kismet, with the person who bought her parents’ home on Merrimac.  Often people are passing through Chicago, and drive down for a day to reminisce.  They see the Museum and either arrange to get in, or call later to talk about their life here.  Most of them are waiting for the virtual tour [which is finally back up!].  Several ask for the brochure so they can come during their next visit. Some want information to share with parents whose memories are fading, to help them with visual reminders.  One person was looking for information he had donated on Anton Krotiak, one of the Medal of Honor winners. That information was in the “Streets” file. One person wanted information on a Floor Hockey League.

Another woman was looking for her address.  She attended Forest Boulevard School.  She visited once, and returned later with her mother.

   One of these people was Marion MacLean whose father, Dr. Lester MacLean drowned in 1951 at age 33 when she was two.  He was involved with District 163 school board, and helped hire Robert Andersen.  Her mother, Mary McDonald MacLean lived here for another two years before moving to live near her parents.  Marion is trying to find the name of the woman who babysat her during the two years after her father’s death.  Her mother was a nurse and went to work in a Chicago hospital.  Jack Star was the neighbor I connected her with, by looking up her court in our list of the names from the first several courts which appeared in the March, 1949 phonebooks published in the Reporter.  We can provide her with a map of the courts and with the list of names from the courts.  She hopes we can search the Reporters for some mention of her father before his death.  She has his obituaries.

    I had a group of Northwestern students researching the Shopping Center and a Governors State student researching grade schools in Rich Township. A professor at Keane University was researching how the culture of World War II shaped the culture of the 1950s.  We referred her to people to interview and to transcripts to read.  A resident wanted information on “America on the Move.”

   When the Park Forest Woman’s Club disbanded this summer, they offered us a two-drawer filing cabinet and two boxes of their scrapbooks and records.  They also offered a $500 donation to help with finding a new home for the collection. 

Park Forest Historical Society   Annual Meeting September 10, 2006

Report of the Curator of the House Museum, Jane Nicoll

  We have two priorities with the Museum at this time.

We all need to be promoting the museum via word of mouth and by passing out museum brochures to our friends and neighbors to get more visitors into the museum.  I have put brochures at the back of the room.  Please take some and be sure to share them with people you think might be interested.  Do not assume that your fellow longtime residents or fellow early residents of the Village have heard of or have been to the museum.

    The second priority is to get volunteers interested in serving as docents for the museum.  That burden is falling on too few people right now.  Think of young people in your families or that you know.  Some young people here have community service hours to put in.  They can be trained to put in those hours for the museum.  We all know people who have retired and are looking for meaningful projects.  The museum can use not only docents, but also volunteers to be trained to mark the collection and accession it in detail into a log of what we own.  I can certainly use volunteers to help decorate for the seasons and for Christmas.  For the seasons, I just rotate a few decorations.  For Christmas, I put things all over the house, including decorating a small tree in the living room with vintage decorations.

  I have small slips of paper at the back of the room with a volunteer appeal.  Please take them to your churches, retirement homes, scout groups, bridge groups, etc.  Let’s talk this up and try to get more people involved in sharing the positive news the history of this community.

    This year we have had the generous donation of the use of a second unit, the 395 Forest unit, immediately next door to the House Museum.  The public use of this is for rotating exhibits.  When a museum remains a static exhibit, people who have seen it do not come back.  We hope by offering changing exhibits, we can attract return traffic, and that we can appeal to the different interests of people who have not been attracted to the House Museum on its own merit.

    Soon after we got 395, we received a donation of blond Fifties furniture from the estate of Jerome and Nita Aprill. Last October, my family and some hijacked students on their way to Eastern, and Nita’s daughter and son-in-law, loaded the furniture in Urbana.  Carl and I drove it here, where it was unloaded in very quick order by some wonderful impromptu volunteers.

    The Aprill’s were never Park Forest residents, but they were South Siders who shopped in Park Forest and socialized here.  The concept of the museum fascinated them.  Their daughter Karen facilitated the donation which has given us real living room and dining room furniture, and some bedroom furniture which can also be used as display furniture.  We also got household items and jewelry, hats, greeting cards and linens, and a large grey marble formica kitchen table with chrome Duncan Phyfe legs, which could use a volunteer to give it a very thorough cleaning.

   If you have not visited the museum, please go see the Library History exhibit in the 395 unit so you can see how nice this unit looks.

    The Village of Park Forest donated a truck and labor to help move stored donated furniture, dishes, and other pieces from the library basement, along with the Sears Tower exhibit photos and some shelves.  We now have a beautiful blond TV cabinet with rabbit ear aerials, which had been donated by Mrs. Piguitch.

    Evelyn Simack(sp) donated furniture and household items from her family home, oddly enough in Beverly, giving us our own set of  stainless steel silverware and two enamel kitchen tables—one  used to hold things off the floor in the basement.

   When the library dismantled its collection of Life Magazine from the 1930s on, Carl and Jane Stover bought over $100 worth of issues illustrating the world as experienced by the pioneer settlers of the Village, and illustrating fashion trends and major news events which took place during its first few decades.  These will be used best when the archives are moved to their new home.  They were used at the library frequently to answer questions on, and to illustrate recent history. The photographs and stories illustrate the lives of the citizens of Park Forest in a way no other resource can. Illustrations can be scanned and used in exhibits at the museum.  The collection is on permanent loan by the Stovers.

    The private use of the 395 unit is as an office for the society.  Last week, Pete Lawrence and my two oldest sons helped move a desk to that office, donated by the family of Annette McNulty of Minocqua Street. Annette passed away in late July.  Pete and I and another young man then moved the digital computer lab from the library to that office. The computer, two scanners and a printer had been dismantled and we had been denied access to electricity.  I hope to have Pete help set up the computer connections and get it operational very soon.  The society now has a small phone system with an answering machine so we can have phones in both units and can take messages and answer them remotely.  We will get internet service to get the society’s website back up.  Lincolnnet was our web host.  When their server went down last spring, they never alerted the many groups that were served by them.  We have been waiting for their new server to reconnect to the world.  We can get much better service from other sources and will be connecting to a new web host as soon as we can to relaunch our site.  We hear from people around the country who have seen the site and want to see it again, or who have found the site but can’t connect, or who would love to see the virtual tour of the museum on our site.

    The office already contains some boxes of archival copies that can be sorted there and returned to the collection.  It gives the society board a place to store magazines and newsletters from helpful associations we belong to.  We use the closets for storage of unprocessed donations, our boxes of publications, decorations, and a spare set of Reporters from Robert Dinerstein, which can be used for research and illustrations.  Some oversize maps are there, and the large mounted photographs from the Sears Tower Exhibit.

  Please make all of this effort worthwhile by encouraging people to visit.

Note:  This is from our newsletter.  We hope to include our newsletter on the website.

In the meantime, this gives everyone an update on what has been happening.  For the official pr on the museum closing go to Current Programs. 

In My Own Little Corner, by Jane Nicoll, Archivist and Curator

May 2007 Newsletter

“When one door closes, another door opens…..”

The bad news is that we have lost our lease on both units of the museum and are packing

this month to put our collection in storage.  We will have some access to our collection and  photographs while they are in storage. Therese Goodrich and the Executive Board are making a tremendous effort to protect our collection.

 Remember there are still documents and oral histories, books and some photographs available at the Park Forest Public Library and we are available to answer questions at parkforesthistory1atyahoo.com!

The good news is our website is up at a new address, www.parkforesthistory.org.  The 1950s Park Forest House Museum will exist as a virtual tour while we search for a home.  As indication we are getting better known, we had three sets of visitors on May 8 while we packed.  Two were college students researching Park Forest —one from Alsip; and one set of sisters who grew up in the 1950s. 

Earlier in the week, we had repeat visitors from Homewood, with a former Park Forester visiting from Norway, Ann Thune.  Ann was making a return visit to the museum to donate copies of the Teen Topics column she wrote for the Park Forest Star newspaper before graduating from Bloom H.S. in 1951.  It was affirming to see the positive reactions of visitors, and it inspires us to forge on with finding a new home so we can continue to share this very special experience with the public.

The week before Hall of Fame, I showed the museum to planners with the Lincoln Highway Coalition.  They came all the way from Univ. of Wisconsin—Stevens Point.  They were going to recommend to the Coalition that Park Forest and our museum be in the next edition of the Lincoln Highway Historic Byway travel literature.  I have informed them of our “hiatus”, but offered to work with them on providing information to keep Park Forest in their literature.  Hopefully, we will have a new address soon enough to get the museum listed.

Becoming a destination for Heritage Tourism has been my goal for many years, and with or without a museum, we can achieve that.

Another positive move in that direction is Park Forest’s being listed on the American Institute of Architects Illinois chapter’s list of 150 Great Places in Illinois.  We made that list in April and the society provided photographs and brochures which are shown on the website.  Other photos are by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, I think from a tour I led in April 2006. 

There should be more exciting news to share by the next newsletter.

Be sure to join us on June 3 at Village Hall for Don De Marco and Barbara Moore discussing Integration Maintenance and their work as Community Relations directors for Park Forest.

“Think lovely thoughts” for the society’s future, with the archive and the museum open for use.