My family moved from Chicago to Oak Park in May, 1948. All family members — except my two uncles — made the move in May, and my uncles moved in with us the following spring. Before the move, my grandparents lived at 22 E. Elm, and we lived at 202 E. Walton.
I attended Bateman School, a private elementary school located in the former McCormick mansion on the northwest corner of Oak and Michigan. The school was three blocks from our apartment, but both in the morning and after school, students were driven by either Mr. Booker or Mr. Craig.
The building where we lived was three stories in height, and we lived on the third floor facing Walton. The only pal I had in the building was Harry Coblenz, who lived on the second floor. Most of the time we played together in our respective apartments.
The only grass in sight was the garden at the Yar Restaurant which was just to the west of our building. If we wanted to play outside, we had to go to the public park next to the Armory, which was across Chicago Avenue from Northwestern University, and whenever Harry and I went to the park, we were accompanied by a parent.
When we moved to Oak Park, the change was dramatic. The house into which we moved was about three times larger than our apartment. There was grass everywhere, the yards were larger than I had ever seen, and there were kids living all around us.
We quickly met our neighbors who lived on every side of us. This was different because in Chicago, our neighbors were either across the hall or downstairs a flight or two, and we hardly knew them.
It wasn’t long before I met most all of the kids in our new neighborhood, and I even made a best friend named Charlie Mack who lived on Euclid.
When the school year started in September, I was enrolled at Holmes School at Chicago and Kenilworth, and I could easily walk the three blocks and didn’t need rides to and from school.
In the morning, many of the neighborhood kids met on the northeast corner of Chicago and Oak Park avenues and walked together to school. At noon and after school, there were usually three or four kids heading in my direction, so I rarely walked home alone.
I had completed the third grade at Bateman, so on the first day of school I expected to be in the fourth grade, but for some reason I was assigned to a third grade classroom. When I came home for lunch, I told my mother what had happened.
My mother walked to school with me after lunch and met with the principal. When the very brief meeting was over, the principal escorted me to the fourth grade classroom where I met my teacher, Miss Holland.
At supper that night, I related the event to my family, and my grandfather said he was not surprised that his daughter, my mother, took care of the problem in an efficient and speedy manner.
Except for the four years when Carol and I were first married, I have lived in Oak Park for over six decades, and my life here has been a good one.
John Stanger is a lifelong resident of Oak Park, a 1957 graduate of OPRF High School, married with three grown children and five grandchildren, and a retired English professor (Elmhurst College). Living two miles from where he grew up, he hasn’t gotten far in 74 years.