The opening scene in the musical “The Music Man” has a bunch of traveling salesmen discussing the tribulations of their jobs, and “you gotta know the territory,” is the refrain that carries the day.
Except for his birth in Chicago, some early years in Calumet City and the years spent in college at Langston University in Oklahoma, Kevin Adams is a decadeslong resident of Park Forest and for more than 20 years, a vital force in the village’s Parks, Recreation and Community Health Department, knows the territory.
So it was logical that with the retirement of the department director Rob Gunther earlier this month, that Adams, the department’s assistant director the last five years, was named as Gunther’s successor, taking over the complex job of administering the village’s 15 dedicated parks, the Central Park wetlands, the tennis and health club, the Aqua Center, a skate park a dog park and numerous playgrounds scattered throughout the village.
A Rich East High School grad (Class of ’98), Adams began working part-time for the department that year and gradually moved up the ladder from recreational supervisor to manager in 2013 and assistant director in 2017.
Adams, who lives in town with his wife and four children, says his personal philosophy is borrowed from that of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, who epitomized the value of giving back to the community in which you live when she said in that “service in the rent we pay for living on the planet.” It is, he says, “the right thing to do.”
High on the list of projects is the completion of the $800,000 renovation of Somonauk Park on the south end of town. The revamped facility will include a pond for fishing and kayaking, zip lines, a new basketball court featuring spectator seating as well as distinctive landscaping. Originally set for opening earlier this year the project was delayed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adams also hopes to renovate the villages’ Tennis and Health club on Westwood Drive by improving the “health” portion of the building with fitness programs and at the same time keeping the tennis area viable.
Coming home
Our annual 10-day road trip to and from Colorado for a visit with our daughter’s family always affords us a pleasant diversion and except from an uncomfortable stay in a disaster of a motel in Omaha was uneventful.
This year the tops of the corn in the fields along I-80 seemed seared brown from the excessive heat of the season and the price of gas varied from state to state with Iowa, with around $3.60 a gallon taking the prize. Perhaps the cost of a fill-up was the reason why, when we cruised at the speed limit, we saw fewer vehicles pass us.
On our way home we saw a wispy series of clouds driving though Nebraska. They looked as if some artist splotched the blue with a mile-wide dry brush; each bristle carrying a thin line of white smeared with no discernible form. It was if the late Park Forest artist Pat Moore was displaying her finest canvas for us. She often liked to paint listening to jazz and if so I think this time the painter might have heard something by Stan Getz or Miles Davis.
Those brush stroke clouds escorted us eastward throughout the day.
And by the way, it’s good to be back home.
While we were gone
For the record, the final Sunday Mass at St. Irenaeus Catholic Church was held Aug. 14 with a pilgrimage of parishioners from the Park Forest church and those from the closed St. Laurence O’Toole Catholic Church in Matteson to Infant Jesus of Prague Catholic Church in Flossmoor, where, I was told, they received a warm welcome.
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Nothing ever stays the same, and the experience of change that existed for decades is never easy. It may be especially true in religion, where so many memories are bundled up with unbreakable knots of friendship and fellowship. The breaking of ties that existed for decades is never easy.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.