John A. Oremus, 88, known as “Mr. Bridgeview” by the residents he served for more than 40 years as the straight-talking mayor of the southwest suburb, died Thursday in his home after a long bout with Parkinson’s disease.
After starting out as a teen delivering coal door-to-door, Mr. Oremus became a multimillionaire by founding one of the largest ready-mix concrete firms in the U.S., Bridgeview-based Prairie Material Sales.
The company began in 1948 with just a couple of family members and his wife, Angeline, as dispatcher. It now has more than 2,500 employees with building contracts everywhere from McCormick Place to Millennium Park. Mr. Oremus also founded a bank, Prairie Bank and Trust, with branches in Bridgeview, Joliet, Mokena and Plainfield.
But what left the most indelible mark on Bridgeview was his long political career.
Mr. Oremus began his tenure as village president in 1955, the same year Richard J. Daley won his first term in Chicago. Except for a four-year hiatus in the mid-1960s, Mr. Oremus ran Bridgeview until 1999, when bad health caused him to decline an 11th term.
During that time he expanded village boundaries with land annexation, built streets, extended sewers and established full-time Police and Fire Departments. He also helped attract more than 600 business to Bridgeview.
“When he started as mayor, Bridgeview was just farm and prairie. Harlem Avenue was a little two-lane road,” said his granddaughter Sheri. “He helped turn it into the place it is today. He loved Bridgeview. He never wanted to leave.”
The son of Croatian immigrants, Mr. Oremus grew up on a farm in Summit and had to drop out of Argo Community High School to work to help his family. At age 73 he was given an honorary diploma by the school.
Mr. Oremus worked for years as a coal deliveryman, shoveling it into people’s basements. Thanks to a loan from a customer, he started his concrete business, which took off.
“He was able to see that the future was in building materials, especially with the interstate highway system just getting started in the ’50s,” said his daughter, Dorothy Oremus Lindauer, the company’s general counsel and chairwoman of Prairie Bank and Trust. “The business never stopped growing, but he always kept it a family affair.”
Angeline Oremus, his wife and business partner for 49 years, died in 1983. In 1997 his son Jack, who was president of Prairie Material Sales, died in a car crash. Shortly after, his son Thomas, a company vice president, died of a heart attack, family members said.
A grandson, Alan, is now president, and another son, Robert, works in the credit department.
“The most important thing to dad was his family,” his daughter said.
Other survivors include six more grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. Mass will be said at 11 a.m. Monday in St. Fabian Catholic Church, 8300 Thomas Ave., Bridgeview.