Anne Lunde’s long-standing love of local history and her wealth of knowledge about Chicago’s Far Northwest Side made her a natural to co-author the definitive history of the Norwood Park neighborhood, “Norwood Park, A View from the Ridge,” a 355-page book published in 2024.
“She was a very, very smart woman who was very diligent in doing research and was tenacious,” said Susan Kroll, who wrote the history book with Lunde. “I mean, she was doing research long, long before the Internet was a thing, and she managed to track down rare books that would be hard to find today and to go through them to pick out details of things that happened 150 years ago. She was so very good at doing research.”
Also a longtime community journalist until her retirement several years ago, Lunde died April 22 at the Norwood Crossing senior living community in Norwood Park after a long illness. She was 74.
Jori Smith, a friend and neighbor, confirmed the death, which was not widely reported at the time. Lunde had been a longtime Edison Park resident.
Lunde’s keen attention to historic detail and her wealth of institutional knowledge — acquired over decades as a community news reporter — made her a go-to source for those interested in the Northwest Side’s history.
Born in 1952, Lunde grew up in Edison Park and graduated from Taft High School in Norwood Park in 1969. She then attended Rockford College.
Lunde’s mother, Grace, was a longtime local journalist who worked as a columnist and then editor for the Edison-Norwood Times-Review newspaper and then was the founding editor of the Edison-Sauganash Times-Review newspaper.
Lunde worked for many years as a reporter and editor for the Times-Review newspaper chain, overseeing coverage of the Edison Park and Edgebrook neighborhoods, as well as coverage of Park Ridge, Niles, Norridge and Harwood Heights.
She left in 2009 in a downsizing. Lunde then was hired in 2013 by the suburban Journal & Topics newspaper chain, where she worked as a full-time staff reporter until retiring in 2024.
Lunde’s love of local history dated to college, Kroll said. And Lunde’s family had been in Edison Park for several generations, she said.
“One of her grandmothers was a suffragette, so she had a family history of being involved in the world, and I think just knowing her family history made her aware of what can happen around you, and if you don’t document those things, they go missing, and people don’t know,” Kroll said.
The Norwood Park Historical Society manages the Noble-Seymour-Crippen House, which dates to 1833 and is considered Chicago’s oldest building. The society’s acting president, Art Krumrey, called Lunde “a gem of a resource” who “had the broadest and deepest knowledge of houses and businesses in Norwood Park.”
Krumrey also recalled Lunde’s journalism work helping local history researchers. He recalled her “Community Roots” columns in the Edison-Norwood Times-Review newspaper, which the Norwood Park Historical Society has digitized and regularly searches in response to historic requests from the community.
“From her days writing ‘Community Roots,’ she was a wealth of knowledge,” Krumrey said.
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Krumrey noted that through her research, Lunde was able to determine that the first monitor to measure noise at O’Hare International Airport was located at Taft High School.
In 1996, Lunde wrote a history of the Norwood Crossing senior living community for its 100th anniversary. About 15 years ago, Lunde also researched and designed a history wall at Norwood Crossing.
Lunde was past president of the Taft High School Alumni Association and volunteered as the secretary, the office manager and as the newsletter and bulletin creator at the Edison Park United Methodist Church.
The Rev. Jerry Miller, the church’s former pastor, called Lunde “a very giving person.”
“She was always looking for ways to improve things, including getting things done on time,” he said. “She was responsive to needs.”
In February 2022, Lunde moved from Edison Park to the Belmont Village assisted-living community in Glenview. In late February of this year, she relocated to Norwood Crossing.
Smith was one of several friends who helped Lunde in recent years. Smith has a family connection with Abraham Lincoln’s mother, and she recalled Lunde “sending me a little novel, some Lincoln trivia and how things fit together — Lincoln, Chicago, Ebinger Elementary School, and Norwood Park. She loved connecting all that.”
Lunde’s brother Albert was her only immediate relative. He died in 2020.
A celebration of life service was held Sept. 23.
“One of the things I really loved about her celebration of life that we had done was, we talked a lot about the power of community and how Anne brought together people within the community based on her writing and the history we have,” Smith said. “One of the things we can do to honor Anne is to know our neighbors, be curious about one another, listen to each other’s stories and show up for one another when we can. She believed in the power of community.”
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.