Click Here for Past News & Programs
NOTE: If the photos on the site don't download for you, don't blame your computer.
I am trying to change and add photos for the first time. They may not be working.
Visitors to the museum in the past month
It has
been a busy month at the 1950s Park Forest House Museum. We
hosted a tour of the Rich East Class of 1966 Reunion the last weekend
in September. On October 11, the Rich East Class of 1964 Reunion
came through and took themselves on a driving tour of the village. Each
of these classes had a member who was a daughter of Park Forest
Reporter publisher, Irwin "Pappy" Schechter. Both enjoyed seeing
the stack of early issues of the Reporter our "tenants" keep on the end
table in the living room, and the assorted Reporter stories used as
exhibits around the house. We enjoyed meeting everyone who came,
and I think they really enjoyed stepping back into the 1950s with us!
Keep us in mind if your reunion is coming to the area.
There was a private tour for women from the South Suburban Newcomers
Club on October 15. They all had fun talking about their lives in
the 1950s and while looking at the museum.
But, the person woh wins for traveling the furthest to see the museum is Tess Johnston of Shanghai, China!
Ms. Johnston is an author, notably of books on Shanghai Art Deco.
She was making a speaking appearance for the Chicago Art Deco
Society on October 11. Last Spring, she told her hosts for that
engagement that the one thing she wanted to see while she was in
Chicago was our museum!! We thought she had seen the AARP
Bulletin of March 2008, but Ms. Johnston says she had read about the
museum earlier than that, and thinks she had known about it for two
years or more. We arranged a private tour for Tess and her
traveling companion and her host, Joe Loundry. We actually had
two visitors from Shanghai, since Ms. Johnston's traveling companion
was along, too.
I hope to post some more details and photos of the reunions and Ms. Johnston in the near future.
OUR NEXT PROGRAM
"Up Front and At Home" November 9, 2008 2:30 p.m. PARK FOREST PUBLIC LIBRARY 400 LAKEWOOD BLVD.
On Sunday November 9, 2008 at 2:30 p.m. in the Ringering Room of the Park Forest Public Library, the Society will present
another program in its series, "Up Front and At Home." In this
program, for the first time, wives of some of the World War II veterans will tell their
stories--describing life on the Home Front. Over 90 Park Forest's World
War II veterans have been interviewed by Suzanne Brown for the oral
history project, "GI Stories from a GI Town."
Speakers will be Barbara Brown, Georgianna Delehanty, Jean Pickens, Leona DeLue, Helen Lawrence and Marge Weicker.
Barbara Brown was living in Gloucester, MA and was still in high school
during World War II. She married Bob Brown in 1948.
Georgianna Delehanty lived at 79th and Paulina in Chicago.
She worked for the Navy during the war and married John in 1948.
Jean Pickens was attending St. Lukes Nursing School in Chicago.
She graduated in 1948 and married Arthur in the same year.
Leona DeLue was married and lived with her husband, Ross, for a
time at the Rome, New York Army Depot, there. They later moved to
Utica, New York. Helen Lawrence was attending Smith College in
Massachussetts. She and Bo were married in 1945. Marge
Weicker was married in December 1943. She lived in Dwight, IL and
then came to Chicago Heights.
Ross and Leona DeLue are considered the first residents of the then
primitve community of Park Forest, moving to the rentals in August
1948. Each speaker will also tell how the couple came to live in
Park Forest and talk briefly about early life in the village.
We hope you will
join us for an entertaining and informative afternoon of remembering
life during World War II and the sacrifices made by the families on the
Home Front.
Note the change from our usual meeting place!!
Cynthia Ogorek has been
re-scheduled for February 8, 2009 at 2:30 p.m. in Village Hall.
Annual Meeting September 14, 2008 The Lincoln Highway Around Chicago
Unfortunately, Cynthia could not get to us to present this program.
The board did hold the Annual Meeting, as scheduled. We
hope you are all dry and safe after the Hurricane and resulting heavy
rains and floods in our area. Cynthia Ogorek has been re-scheduled for February 8, 2009 at 2:30 p.m. at Village Hall.
On Sunday, September 14, 2008 at 2:30 p.m., the Park Forest Historical Society will hold the kickoff to its
2008-2009 program season. The program will be held in the Village Board Meeting
Room of the Park Forest Village Hall, located in Downtown Park Forest at 350 Victory Drive. A brief annual
meeting where the members of the society will vote on the Board of Directors,
and reports will be heard from the officers, will be followed by a program on
the history of the Lincoln Highway. Meetings of
the society are open to the general public.
Cynthia Ogorek's new book, The Lincoln Highway Around Chicago,
published by Arcadia in March, will be featured in an "armchair
tour" of the Highway from "The Ideal Section" in Schererville
and Dyer, IN, to Geneva on the Fox River in Illinois. Find out how the nation's first
hard-surfaced, transcontinental highway developed in the southern and western suburbs of Chicago. See what makes our stretch of the 3300-mile
Highway unique. Photographs from the Park Forest Archive and several
regional collections are included in the book. Cynthia will be selling and
signing books after her talk.
Cynthia Ogorek, The Public Historian, is
a native of the Calumet region and has been a practicing historian there for
over twenty years. Since receiving her masters in history from Purdue University, she has published many articles and books on
historical topics, including entries in Women Building Chicago 1790-1990 and
The Encyclopedia of Local History.
She has offered an array of historical programs since 1996. Ms. Ogorek
was involved in the Lincoln Highway Coalition which worked to gain the Historic
Byway designation for Lincoln Highway. Cynthia can be reached at 708-862-8662 or at sealuna@juno.com.
For more information on this
meeting, or on the work of the Park Forest Historical Society, contact Jane
Nicoll at 708-481-4252, or at parkforesthistory1@yahoo.com. The society is on the Web at
www.parkforesthistory.org.
Park Forest Loses a Pioneer and
Public Servant
Robert A. Dinerstein passed away on August 30, 2008 in his home in
Minneapolis, MN. For more information on this, please go to
enewspf.com to read Jane Nicoll's Tribute to Robert A. Dinerstein., and
to the SouthtownStar to read Jerry Shnay's article of September 11, 2008
From Jane Nicoll's tribute:
Robert and Mary Dinerstein moved into the second court
occupied in Park Forest in October 1948. In 1998, they moved to Minneapolis
to be near their son, Jim. For many of the fifty years they lived here, Robert
Dinerstein led a life of dedicated public service, one of the most influential
in setting the course taken by the Village
of Park Forest.
August 30 Marks 60th
Anniversary of Residents Moving Into Park Forest
Rentals 
August 30 is the 60th Anniversary date of the first three
families moving into the rental units in Park Forest.
The first three families to move in were Ross and Leona DeLue with their five
year-old daughter, Mary, William and Jane Heckman, and Manuel and
Madeleine Kanter. Each family was
received by a different ACB employee, so at different times, each was
recognized as the First Family. The ones who stayed the longest were Ross
and Leona DeLue, who were often recognized as the First Family of Park Forest.
They were honored along with the first 100 families on the plaque the Village
of Park Forest dedicated in the
Downtown on July 30, 2008,
located at Founder’s Way and Main Street.
Leona, at 94 years young, still lives in
the area, at The Park in Olympia Fields.
She helped cut the ribbon for the mural dedication on July 30. Ross
DeLue, William Heckman and Manuel Kanter have all passed away. When we did a public relations photograph
event of the earliest residents watching the furniture being moved into the
original 50th Anniversary House
Museum unit, ten years ago, The
DeLues and Mr. Kanter were among the people we had there. Photographs of that event are on the dining
room wall in the new building for the 1950s
Park
Forest House Museum at 141
Forest Blvd, open from 1-3 p.m. on
Saturdays, including Saturday August 30.
There is also a copy of the DeLues lease. In binders in the dining room, visitors can
read rental brochures and see typed memos from American Community
Builders. In the living room of the
museum is a binder with the list of the families who lived in the first six
courts occupied. A scrapbook in the
classroom contains an article listing the first 100 families to sign leases for
rental units. Also in the classroom are
news stories about the November 27,
1948 tent meeting where residents and those who had signed leases
voted to incorporate as a Village.
On a bookcase in
the living room, under a sign listing all of the OH! Park Forest Oral Histories available online or at the Park Forest
Public Library, is a copy of Leona DeLue’s interview about what it was like
to come to Park Forest and what life was like here. Transcripts from OH! Park Forest
are available for checkout from the Adult Services Department of the
library. There are 26 of the 77
transcripts, fully-edited, online on the Illinois Digital Archive, in “Park Forest: An Illinois Planned Community.” They can be directly accessed through the
Park Forest Historical Society website at www.parkforesthistory.org. A tour of the museum and the history and
programs of the society can be viewed on that site, as well. The society urges people interested in the
unique history of Park Forest to check out transcripts
from the library and hear about the village from those who made it the special
place it is today.
3010 rental units were built between October 1947 and October
1949, and all
are still standing today. All of
the first couples moved in to Court B-1, the same
court that Philip Klutznick and his
family lived in. Klutznick was the
President of American Community
Builders. Mr. Klutznick said later, that
he actually had partially moved his family’s things into their unit, and could
have claimed to be the first move-in, but his wife, Ethel, gave birth to their
fifth child, preventing them from moving down that day. He was happy to give the honor to his
tenants.
If you have not yet,
visited the 1950s Park Forest
House Museum, this is the perfect Saturday to do it. Help commemorate the beginning of the 60th
Anniversary of the village by learning more about its history, and by taking a
step into the 1950s with us!
The 1950s Park Forest House Museum, at the corner of Forest and Fir, is open Saturdays 1-3 p.m.
Donation is $5 for adults; children 12 and under are free with a paying
adult. The museum is in an original
rental unit, furnished as it might have been in the first five years of the
village, 1948-1953. Guides are available to tell how the village came to be
built, and to describe social and fashion trends of the era. One room depicts Forest
Boulevard School
the first of several rental area schools built as the school buildings were
being constructed.
For more information on the museum, contact Jane Nicoll by email at parkforesthistory1@yahoo.com. 8-28-2008
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We are on the web in a pretty impressive article
from Cotton and Quail Antiques Gazette,
reprinted on Antique Trader website, July 3, 2008.
The article title is, "Step into the 1950s at Park Forest House Museum," by Alan M. Petrillo.
I will try to link to it, but If I don't succeed, you can search 1950s House Museum and find it on the web.
"Step into the 1950s at Park Forest House Museum"
We apologize for not updating the site in several months. We have now changed webhosts.
With much patient help from Gary Kopycinski of Shire Enterprises we should be
back in business! We had a scripting incompatibility with the previous webhost,
i.e., I could not edit anything, or add anything.
Now that I can add things, keep watching the Memoirs section as I add the many wonderful
Memoirs people have been sending us.
We may have one more webhost change, September to November.
There will be some downtime if we switch.
Our thanks to Gary Kopycinski of Shire Enterprises for his patient help!
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On February 3, 2008 the Chicago Tribune ran a wonderful story by Joel Hood on the museum in the Metro section,
Page 1 and page 5, with color photographs by John Smierczak (a former
resident!). You have to pay to read it on their official site,
but there is another site which still had the text for free. The
article has brought many visitors to our doors in the past few months.
That article attracted the attention of the editors of AARP Bulletin.
In March on Page 6, they ran a paragraph long story with our web
address. We have heard from people all over the country, and even
from folks in other countries!
Our website had over 10,000 unique visitors in March 2008, with over 360,000 hits on our pages.
People who never lived in Park Forest found the idea of the museum exciting, and were sending
the story to social networking sites, where 70-80 more visitors would come check us out online.
The museum is booking tours for seniors groups, small groups of friends who want to see it together and for
intergenerational family groups. In the next few weeks we will have a reunion group come through.
Visitors have come in person from San Jose, CA, Cleveland, Ohio,
Wisconsin, Scottsdale, AZ, Silverdale, WA, and State College, PA.
Schedule a tour for a group you belong to, or grab some friends and family and come during our regular hours!
Historical Society Urges Support Through Membership
The Park Forest Historical Society urges people to support the society by joining its membership. Membership is open to people living in Park Forest, those who have lived in Park Forest, or to those interested in the history of Park Forest-even as it is being made. In
other words-anyone interested in the village-any facet of it-is urged
to join. The society always accepts donations toward its mission, but
at this seminal time, they really need the support of a large
membership.
Archivist Jane Nicoll says, "As I rode in the Hall of Fame car in the 4th of July Parade, I saw whole families of long-time residents and enthusiastic faces of new residents. I know many of these people have never joined the society, even though they treasure Park Forest. Now is the time for everyone who loves Park Forest to show that support by joining the society."
The Park Forest Historical Society has faced many challenges in the past year.
The
Archive which has been owned by and housed at the Park Forest Public
Library since 1981 is to become the property of the historical society
when they can secure a permanent home for the collection.
In
January 2007, due to flooding of the library's basement, the Archive
was packed and stored in two PODS units and put in remote storage. There is no access to this valuable collection of primary resources on Park Forest history.
In May 2007, the society lost its lease to the 1950s Park Forest House Museum, formerly known as the 50th Anniversary House Museum. The museum collection is now in PODS storage. The society also lost use of the unit they were using since 2006 for rotating exhibits and office space. When
the library collection was packed up, the society moved the Digital Lab
equipment and the boxes containing the extensive photograph collection,
and some of the most often consulted files to the office unit. Those boxes are now in PODS storage, but were packed in such a way that the society can gain access to most of them.
Moving the museum collection cost $3,000. Storage of the two society PODS costs more than $300 a month. The society needs the financial support that simple memberships can give them.
The
Local History Collection which contains copies of a fraction of the
materials in the Archive is still available to the public in the
library. There are oral history transcripts
which can be checked out, copies of early scrapbooks made by the
developers and by District 163 personnel, and books written about Park Forest or about city planning in the mid-Twentieth Century. For people wanting an introduction to Park Forest
history, there are two large boxes of things like articles and village
anniversary commemorative issues of newspapers full of stories to get
you started. There are 200+ files in the
library on topics like, American Community Builders (the developers),
Architecture, Churches, Biographies, Organizations, Schools, and the
history of the Shopping Center and Downtown. One box of photographs is still at the library. You can sit in the reference area and browse the photos of the early days of Park Forest's development, including construction photos. If you are researching Park Forest,
and the library staff can't find what you need, they will refer the
question to the archivist or to another society board member.
The
society now faces the task of not only finding a permanent home for the
Local History Collection and Archive but also of finding a new space
for the museum and an office space to headquarter the society.
If you lived in Park Forest in the early days, if you have just moved here and can tell it is a special place, if you study or teach Park Forest history, or you believe in what Park Forest stands for, JOIN. Your membership dollars will help the society preserve the history of this unique place. The society needs a much larger membership base to remain viable and to accomplish the tasks ahead.
If
you have a talent or time to offer to the society, call President
Therese Goodrich or Vice-President Jerry Shnay to volunteer. The society needs the second and third generation of Park Foresters to "get on board" to carry out its mission of making Park Forest history available for many generations to come.
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YES! I want to join the Park Forest Historical Society
PLEASE CHECK ONE OF THE YEARLY OPTIONS:
_____$20 Individual _____$40 Family _______$75 Contributor _____$150 Benefactor
_____ Check if this is a membership renewal. (one month's rent)
NAME______________________________________________________________
ADDRESS___________________________________________________________
CITY_________________________________STATE___________ZIP__________
TELEPHONE (_____________)__________________________________________
EMAIL______________________________________________________________
_______The society may send me notices or newsletters via email.
_______ I have something to contribute to the Local History Collection and Archive.
(We are limited in what we can accept at this time, but would love to know if you have something to donate.)
Please mail to:
Park Forest Historical Society
400 Lakewood Boulevard
Park Forest, IL 60466
