Memories Announcements
"Grew Up in Park Forest" group formed on Facebook
We are on Facebook! Become a fan of "Park Forest Historical Society" and of "1950s Park Forest House Museum!" We have joined Facebook (like us!) and have a Facebook page for the museum (like our museum page!). (Active links are further down the page.) There is a Facebook group, "Grew up in Park Forest". It formerly had some wonderful memory streams going, but that changed with Facebook's new format. It is still a place to reconnect with people who grew up here. We still accept memoirs sent to us via email. We hope to get a "Park Forest Memories " group started sometime to capture those entries, but are looking at other social networking sites. If you are interested in helping with that, contact us. We have joined Facebook (like us!) and have a Facebook page for the museum (like our museum page!).
Remember to make a copy of your memory and submit it to us, too. And, you will notice, you can write a much longer memoir to be put on our website to share with people.
If you see a topic there and want to expand on it, please share it with us! Remember, many people are not on Facebook and don't read memories, there. We may know something about your question.
Have you tried to contact our email and not received an answer?
I think the absence of emails to us is a result of the Facebook page, BUT if you have tried and we have not answered your email, please try again and put something in the subject line to draw attention to the fact. I have gotten some legitimate messages but a fraction of what I formerly received. I receive a lot of spam messages. I worry that I am missing some that don't come through as legitimate.
Thanks to all of you who have been submitting memories!
I will be adding the memoirs and sending you emails to let you know that yours is online. Hopefully this will go smoothly. When you get your email, please be sure to notify friends and relatives to come look at our site.
Let us hear from YOU!!
If you are reading and enjoying these memories, (and I can tell that you are by the web statistics) send yours along. You do not need to add your contact information for the website. Please let us know what information you want to include. Your memory can be a few sentences or an essay. Our Memories stay up for years to come.
Exploring the Park Forest Area Farm History
Be sure to read our story on this year-long project with South Suburban Genealogical and Historical Society. Our program on September 20 will be on this. Read more in News and Programs. Be sure to contact SSGHS or PFHS if you have any information on farms in the Park Forest area.
St. Irenaeus School
Do you have photos of St. Irenaeus School or your class photos from your time there? Please contact us through our link. The Class of 1959 recenetly had a reunion in Chicago and we discovered St. Irenaeus School history files at the church had inadvertently been thrown out. Please help us and St. I's reconstruct the files.
St. Anne's Catholic Church Sauk Trail and Westwood Drive
Did you or your family attend St. Anne's Catholic Church before St. Irenaeus was built? We have people looking for history and photographs of the church. Do you know what happened to the original building? The museum has a lovely painting of the church hanging in the bedroom, donated by Terry Ruehl who moved to PF in October 1948 and attended the church. Terry has since moved and passed on. If any of you can help reconstruct the history of St. Anne's please contact us.
Rich High Class of 1959 Tour
On June 13, 2009 thirty-nine or more people came through the museum on a special tour arranged by Jack and Becky Black. The reunion first went on a tour of Rich East High School, then came to the museum on a bus provided by the high school. Everyone enjoyed sharing memories of their years growing up in Park Forest.
We have since had tours for the Classes of 1960, 1962, 1964, 1966, and 1967.
Having a reunion? Be sure to book your tour of the museum as part of your activities!
1950s Museum in the News
The 1950s Museum is in GroupTour eMagazine, Spring 2013 issue, page 26. You can download the issue here.
The 1950s Museum was in the Chicago Tribune Metro section on Sunday February 3, 2008. We had a color photo and text on the front page and more photos and text on page 5. If you go to chicagotribune.com, put "1950s Museum" in the search box, and you can go to the article, but now you have to pay to read it there. If you Search the internet for "1950s Museum" the article should come up in another site where you can read it for free.
Dreams Past and a Dream Reborn
Park Forest--Dreams Past and a Dream Reborn by Alan Fried December 29, 1997
When you walked through certain neighborhoods in Park Forest, the air would grow breathlessly still and the sunlight would shimmer in a strange and almost magical way. Almost magical, because Park Forest is not a product of fantasy but of science fiction. And I always thought of those quiet places as a doorway into another dimension, what Robert Heinlein called the door into summer. When I was growing up there in the 1950s, I thought it was the Village of Tomorrow, I remember I was getting a free cookie in the Park Forest Bakery, located across from Wayne Howorth's music store, when I first heard about Sputnik being launched. For the rest of America, the launch of Sputnik meant American kids would begin getting an education in science and math. But not for Park Forest schoolkids like me. We were already getting a great education.
Our parents, the middle managers from Armour Star and the bird colonels from Fifth Army, were seeing to it that we would learn in modern classrooms, that our teachers would be well-trained and that we would have plenty of books. We were a model community and we were studied like a sociological prototype. Social scientists came to examine the curves in our streets and the rhomboid designs on our storefronts and predicted social trends based on our behavior. After I went away to college, I was amazed to learn that other kids had not taken a battery of sociological and psychological tests as part of their elementary school work. For kids growing up in Park Forest, that was the norm. We received plenty of publicity. The Organization Man was written about us, Look Magazine studied our attitudes about racial discrimination and the village was designated an All-American town.
The next decade, the 1960s, would be hard for America. War, assasination, the bared fangs of racial intolerance would reveal the cold, mechanical side of scientific thinking. Suddenly, progress had a downside and Park Foresters did more than watch it, from afar, on our new color television sets. We became involved, and perhaps, we became a little disenchanted. Like most of my friends, when I graduated from that great and good education in Park Forest high schools, I left for Chicago and then the world beyond.
Now I have a super-scientific link to my old hometown. I read The Star on the Internet and I hear from schoolmates who have looked up my e-mail address. I look at the new plans for downtown Park Forest with a pang of nostalgia but also with a smile. It may not be exactly my dream, but for some smart, science (and science fiction) loving kids back in Rich Township, the door into summer is re-emerging from the mist and the dream is being reborn.