For the 140-plus who last week attended two observances of Park Forest’s salute to its early citizens, memories were the flavor of the day. You bite down on the years and the taste on the tongue will surely be sweet.
The occasion was a salute to all residents who spent at least the last 25 years in the village. It was the brainchild of Evelyn Randle, the village’s community relations coordinator. But one-quarter of a century was just the starting point.
During the morning session, Randle was seemingly awed by the number of hands that were raised when she asked, “How many have been here 30 years?” Then “40 years?” “50 years?”
Sixty years was just the tipping point. When Randle got to 70 years, three members of the Gladstone family — Andy, his wife, Georgette, and his sister, Deborah — had hands in the air. All are in their early 70s and all came to a fledgling village with unpaved streets in 1951.
They were joined by Therese Goodrich, who, at age 90, is the oldest of the first citizens.
It was much the same at the noon gathering, with Janet Whitson Markus, in town for 69 years, Jan Marcotte, 68 years, and Bill O’Neill, 67 years, making the cut.
Events and time rule our lives and it is likely these seven are not the full count of the village’s oldest pioneer residents. If so, we may soon hear from others because everyone has a story to tell.
Park Forest, a community long known for its open borders, does not have people of color in this little band of pioneers. It took the village 10 years after it was incorporated to get it right and before the first Black family, that of DePaul University professor Charles Wilson, moved into town Christmas Eve, 1959.
The passing years will remedy that ironic twist.
Both Janet Markus and Bill O’Neill were born in the village. Markus was born in 1954, two years after her parents moved to the village. O’Neill was born in 1956, four months after his parents arrived.
Andy Gladstone and both Therese Goodrich and her late husband, John, were village trustees. In 1954, she arrived on a train from Spokane, Washington, with her 3-month-old daughter and her mother-in-law to unite with her husband in his new job.
“There was this new place called Park Forest where everyone came from somewhere else,” she said. Staying in a rental unit on Fir Street “gave me a home” as she quickly became involved in both church work and community affairs.
The new village became a special place for those who were children in those early years.
The roots Janet Markus put down are firm to the fourth generation. Her daughter Kristy now lives on Michael Road with her four daughters, while son Aaron lives on Choate Avenue and his son with his two children.
“We knew all the neighbors up and down the street,” Markus said, adding “it was a warm, friendly community. We always had good neighbors.”
Andy Gladstone and his sister Deborah were born in England; the children of Air Force Capt. Morris Gladstone and his British war bride, Barbara. The Gladstone clan moved back to the United States in 1949, settling first in Chicago and then to a house on the then-dirt road playground of Marquette Avenue.
“There were six houses on our block and 15 kids,” said Deborah Gladstone. “We called ourselves the Marquette Mob.”
Georgette Gladstone was little more than a year old when her parents, George and Johanna Rosner, moved into a rental unit in the embryonic community. Through the decades, she said she always felt “comfortable” in the community, especially when she discovered her father’s name in the first telephone directory.
Janice Marcotte was 9 when her parents left their sturdy home in Worcester, Massachusetts, for what she said was the mid-20th century “Space Age” housing in the rental units on McCarthy Street.
“It was new, it was different. It was the greatest experience to grow up in Park Forest,” she said.
Everything changes over the years. Today, there is no shopping center, no grocery store, no movie theater. Property taxes are sky high. The village is now an appendix of Chicago’s complex urban structure. So why stay?
Bill O’Neill may have summed up the feelings of the seven.
“I have no reason to move,” he said. “I’m happy where I am.”
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.