According to OPRF Communications Director Kay Foran, “Other Chicago area schools may have closed by the score on Dec. 1 during the first winter storm of the season, but at Oak Park and River Forest High School, the first hardy Huskies were bravely straggling through the doors as early as 7 a.m. At OPRFHS, students know the lessons of history. In its 133 years, the high school has closed for snow only four times.”
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Tuesday, March 25, 1930: 14.2 inches of snow
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Monday, Jan. 9, 1939: 14.9 inches of snow
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Friday, Jan. 27, 1967: 24 inches of snow
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Monday, Jan. 25, 1979: 20.7 inches of snow
“It is no coincidence,” Foran said, “that the school’s mascot is a Siberian Husky.”
School records show there was another time in the early 1900s when the school closed during a community outbreak of tuberculosis. Based on the dates of the closings above, Foran prognosticates, OPRF is overdue for a fifth weather closure. Could this be the year?
OPRF’s resident historian, Don Vogel gets credit for the research.
Local OP and RF notables model literacy
Posters featuring notable figures from Oak Park and River Forest are being displayed around both villages in an effort to promote literacy. According to Ellen Cutter, Program and Outreach coordinator for the River Forest Public Library, 17 individuals, including school officials, local police, and municipal workers were picked to pose in the posters with a book of their choice. The posters were initially displayed just at the River Forest library, but have spread to locations around both villages.
“We’re just trying to get reading and literacy a little more visible in the community,” Cutter said. “We want to promote the idea of lifelong reading, which we feel is a very important habit. For parents, the best thing they can do, in addition to reading to their own kids, is to model reading themselves.”
Dawn Bussey, library director, first had the idea for the project, and Cutter decided to use the skills she learned in a digital photography workshop to make the idea come to fruition.
Two of the “models” for the promotion are John Williams, director of Youth Services at Oak Park Township, and Township Youth Interventionist Bert Patania.
“As fathers we both get it real clearly that kids are influenced by what they see,” said Williams, who is featured in one of the posters with his sons, Jack and Finnegan. “We want to make sure we walk the walk, and they see us reading and promoting literacy.”
The main photographer/printer for the project is Matt Costerman. Cutter also took some photos.
Everybody will have one night of being liked by DTOP
Shades of Andy Warhol: At a village board meeting last week, Trustee Robert Milstein plugged the free showing of Polar Express at the Lake Theatre on Saturday, Dec. 9.
Willis Johnson, the theater’s owner, who was in the crowd that night as part of a Downtown Oak Park contingent interested in the future of Marion Street, spoke up: “Thanks, Bob!”
To which Milstein replied: “I’m just trying to make sure you like me for one night.”
Milstein lost points with the downtown business community when he led a fight to save the Colt building last fall.
Gray fox, my eye!
Local photographer Todd Bannor, whose work has occasionally graced our pages, spotted it immediately. “My brother’s a zookeeper,” he explained. Our alleged image of a gray fox in Viewpoints last week looked more like an African fennec on first glimpse. Later, he thought perhaps, it might be a kit fox from the Southwest U.S., but definitely not a gray fox. Bannor searched his archives and came up with one for comparison purposes.
Neither are related to the late Richard Farnsworth, who played the title character in the film, Gray Fox.
Setting the Table
This Saturday, Dec. 9, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., The Book Table, 1045 Lake St. in Downtown Oak Park, holds its third annual Holiday Celebration for PADS. They will be contributing 10 percent of all sales to West Suburban PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter), which serves men, women and children who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in West Suburban Cook County. PADS serves over 600 people a year.
The Book Table is a discount new and used independent bookstore, owned and operated by an Oak Park couple.