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player ready...Story number one.
The letter in the mailbox was followed by a knock on the door the following week. You will be evicted said the document. You must leave now, said the sheriff’s deputy, and “now” meant just that — now.
The family had been living in the same house in Park Forest for more than a decade and believed their monthly payments to a series of mortgage companies was adequate. Their first mortgage company, an arm of a large international banking giant, was abolished just a year before the big bank and others were caught cheating their customers with immoral sub-prime loans.
Another company took over the mortgage and when the husband lost his job for a time, he was told it would not be a problem. Just pay the interest on the loan, he was told. For three years taxes were apparently unpaid. Over the years two other companies apparently serviced the loan. Then last October a Chicago area company bought the tax deed and the family was told to go.
“The day the sheriff showed up I just freaked out,” said the wife. “I needed help.”
For years the household in trouble gave of themselves without asking anything in return; collecting food for the hungry and enlisting willing neighbors to their cause. Last year they held a successful block party to raise money for a close-by resident, a woman who was fighting cancer. Every penny was accounted for was used to help pay for needed treatment.
Help was next door and the door after that and across the street and up and down the block. One family made room in their home for the parents and the last two of their children. The woman battling cancer rented a truck so the family could move their possessions the day they were evicted.
Everyone wanted to help. “They told us we were always helping others and we want to help you because of that,” said the grateful wife. “We want to stay here until our children graduate high school. This is where we live and where our friends live.”
Story number two.
A woman and her elderly mother lived in a run-down home in the south end of Park Forest. When the mother died nearly five years ago, the woman, who suffers from a debilitating illness, could barely care for herself, let alone the house, which was falling down around her.
Last year, as she vainly tried to maneuver her walker some few steps to the door of Village Hall, she was stopped and asked if she needed help. The woman could not manage, she replied. She could not cope with her life and her dilapidated home. She desperately needed help.
The passer-by told friends and told others of her plight via Facebook. She needed help, it was reported, just to get inside the door, which was a jury-rigged entrance to what was once a garage. Within a week a handful of people volunteered to clean, patch, paste, plumb, and paint. It was, and still is, a slow, tedious process. A son of the family being evicted volunteered.
Last weekend, three painters began putting a bright blue coat of paint over the small dining nook. One of the men was Bruce Miller, 60, who lived in Park Forest for 50 years before moving to a neighboring community to help his mother. A second was Gideon Weicker, 16, a third generation Park Forester. The third was Jonathan Vanderbilt, the man who had that chat with the hobbled woman and started the ball rolling.
Vanderbilt is a perennial candidate for Village Trustee and I have disagreed with him in print and in person on many of his ideas including his plan to spend millions to build a plant to bottle Park Forest’s water.
At times we are asked why we still live here. The people of Park Forest are the reason. The people, yes!
Jerry Shnay is a freelance journalist.