Time is our great narcotic. It’s the drug of choice on which we blissfully overdose. We ingest time as if it were a food, stoking our psyche with the belief that time is a permanent, positive thing.
Time, gentle reader, is not on our side. Things always change. The dear friends we used to have are gone, lost to memory or mortality. We have become carbon copies of the communities we inhabit — some of us now older and wiser, some of us now slower and less functional; some of us now living in humbler settings.
Some of us, both people and towns, recognize the symptoms. That is one reason why Park Forest has opened a Civic Leadership Academy, seeking residents willing to take the lead in formulating the future.
The initial class of 13 ranges in age from a 15-year-old high school freshman to a retiree in her late 60s. They were selected after a rigorous vetting process that included both their reasons for taking part in the program and letters of recommendation.
Their once-a-month all-day sessions began in September, and the focus this Friday will be on the village’s renowned arts community. Topics in later months will include schools, health, youth and senior services, government operations and facilities. The academy will be an ongoing program with the hope that new blood will develop into new leaders for the next generation.
There used to be a time (that word again) when Park Forest didn’t need this kind of impetus. It was the “G.I. Town” setting new standards of public service, winning All-America City recognition, miles ahead of the curve on housing and integration. Men would take the train to work in the morning. Women would discuss schools and parks and stores (and the lack of same) during the day, and when men came home, they were told to “do something.”
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So the men went to village board and school board meetings, volunteering for duties and commissions that for nearly two generations helped shape the village. What was done then is now history. You can blame time for that. One way or the other, the pioneers left us. It is much easier to live history than it is to impart its message to new residents who have no connection to the community’s past.
Time also affects community groups. The Park Forest Lions Club is gone. The Park Forest Nurses Club, once a vital force in public health, now limits itself to monthly lunch meetings. The Kiwanis Club’s “Memorial Grove” in Somonauk Park seems to grow each year. So let us ask the unaskable: It is time for a community umbrella for all service clubs? Could these organizations operate separately, but volunteer to help each other, or would ego and territory interfere?
Some believe if you add the words “perks” and “privilege,” you come up with a workable definition of the nature of some school districts in the area. Take this one step further and perhaps ask all graduates of the Civic Leadership Academy in years to come their vision for the future of the south suburbs. We need a little history for that answer. In 1754, Benjamin Franklin created a woodcut in which a snake was chopped into eight pieces, each representing a British colony or region. The inscription read “Join or Die.”
Not today, not tomorrow, but sometime soon, someone smart will ask why three or four suburbs with shared problems cannot unite as one large community. Join or Die?
Maybe it will be a graduate of the leadership academy who can bridge the problem of territory, ego, perks and privilege.
Who knows? Only time will tell.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown and can be reached at [email protected].