Peter G. Malone, the grandson of the second mayor of Park Ridge, died Aug. 11. He was 91.
Besides being the scion of an early giant in the community, Malone served as alderman and on the zoning board for many years. He was also a father, a brother, an MIT graduate, an engineer and a racecar driver. He was Faz to his family.
Born in 1935 in his grandfather’s home at 201 Grand Blvd., Malone was raised by his mayor grandfather, though by then, he was no longer mayor. Still, the senior Malone continued to develop local properties and have a hand in Park Ridge’s fortunes.
But aside from a stint on the board of alderman and his service to the zoning board, Peter G. Malone’s interest lay elsewhere. As a young man, he joined the Chicago-area Sports Car Club of America and he was an early investor in the Road America racetrack in Wisconsin. His son, Peter J. Malone, said his father had a manual Aston-Martin and would drive it to racetracks around the region.
“Back in those days you’d race the same car you’d drive to the track,” explained his son.
He never gave up his love of motorsports and retained his SCCA card his whole life, but Peter said he gave up driving when the family came along.
“He was racing before I was born,” he said. “Then he had three kids and the Aston Martin got traded in for a station wagon.”
For a time, Malone was in the Marine reserves and ran a car dealership before going to MIT and becoming a mechanical engineer. By then, with a wife and three kids, he got interested in the family business of local politics and got on the board of alderman.
“He was busy quite a bit,” recalled Peter. He said his father was passionate about zoning. In particular, he was aghast at granting variances to developers and home builders.
“When he was on the zoning board, a lot of houses were being built outside of the zoning laws,” said Peter. “Everything that was being built had some variation on the zoning and my father fought them for many years. He was always against anything that didn’t adhere to the zoning laws.”
Those changes would come to haunt him. In 1999, he sold the family house on Grand. The house sat on a triple lot and the property taxes had grown exorbitant, and so, the house that had raised generations of Malones would leave the family.
“When he sold the home in 1999 that was the first time he ever moved,” explained Julie Malone, his daughter-in-law and Peter’s wife. “Imagine a lifetime of accumulating stuff as well as all his grandfather’s stuff was in there.”
By then, Park Ridge was already very different from the city he’d helped guide.
In the decades since he’d retired from local politics, Park Ridge had gone from dry to wet and houses were getting bigger on smaller lot sizes. Peter recalled in his father’s day, houses couldn’t be bigger than 40 % of the lot size and his father remained opposed to that change.
“It made it easier to leave the city,” he said.
With the children grown, Malone and his wife retired to the St. Charles area. After selling the property, it was split up into three lots and new houses were developed next to the historic property.
But the family’s legacy remains.
The Malone house on Grand, now a historic landmark, is still here. As is the Pickwick Theater, built by his grandfather, and the William Malone Fountain by Rita’s on the Northwest Highway keeps the family name in town.
For more information, visit the family’s obituary here
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.Jesse Wright is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.