Mr. and Mrs. Bertrand Buehle went to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a few months, according to a news article published in Cicero Life on Jan. 5, 1934. This relatively useless fact was sandwiched between articles also describing a “Milk War” and a Cicero police investigation into the mystery killing of a local woman.
Using a microfilm reader near the reference desk at the Cicero Public Library, Assistant Director Patricia Conroy projects an image of the front page of the old news publication.
The library’s microfilm collection is part of a broader collection of historical artifacts that the library has collected for more than two decades, which preserve Cicero’s storied history of mob activity, civil rights marches, manufacturing, immigration, and more. Many of the surrounding suburbs such as Berwyn and Oak Park share a similar history.
According to Brian Dillon, president of the Berwyn Historical Society, preserving local history is important so that “people have a sense of where we came from and how we got here … if you read through the old newspapers, many of the issues back then are the same issues we’re dealing with now: money, taxes, people wanting better city services.”
Many Cicero and Berwyn community members, and organizations, have stepped up to preserve and archive and share the region’s history.
T.G. Masaryk Czech School is a place where history meets the present. The school, which was built over 100 years ago when Cicero’s population was around 70 percent Czech, teaches language, culture and history to adults and children and has served as a center of the Czech community since its founding.
According to Klára Moldová, vice president of the school, the school was built with an apartment attached to it where the janitor lived, similar to how schools are constructed in the Czech Republic. Today a teacher lives there.
For many years, the second floor of the school was home to the Czech Genealogy Society and Moldová was curious.
“I just made the effort one day to climb up the stairs … and I couldn’t believe what I found,” she said.
Moldová discovered that her great-grandmother actually lived in Cicero and Berwyn and worked at the Western Electric Company, where she spent many years manufacturing telephones and cables before returning to her home country.
Today, a large room on the second floor is rented out to the Czech Heritage Museum, housing boxes full of items stored as the museum works to develop a new space for them.
For those looking for a more public way to learn local history, one of the best places to go is the museum run by the Berwyn Historical Society, 1401 Grove Ave., where admission is free.
Their website states that they are, “dedicated to collecting, preserving, and disseminating historical information about the city of Berwyn, including its architecture, its people, communities, businesses, economics, cultures and ethnicities, past and present, and its overall societal footprint as a near-west Chicago suburb.”
According to Dillon, the organization is committed to sharing local history by inviting guest speakers, making presentations at schools, sharing old photos on social media, and responding to requests from community members who are seeking information about their homes or old relatives. He says helping people understand local history helps them understand the present.
In the past, a similar organization, known as the Cicero Historical Society, existed. However, the group stopped meeting about 20 years ago and decided to donate all their items to the Cicero Public Library. The library now houses these archives in a dedicated history room.
In the room are old newspapers, posters, little knick-knacks from local businesses over decades, videotapes, maps of factories, Town of Cicero budgets and zoning maps, yearbooks, phonebooks and so much more.
“I do think that the library is a natural spot for such a collection to land,” said Conroy, who recalls one woman from Argentina coming to the library to look up ancestors who had settled in Cicero, and the library was actually able to connect her with some distant cousins who still live in town.
The efforts of Cicero and Berwyn community members and organizations to preserve this history helps maintain the strong fabric of both neighborhoods.
“We don’t exist in a vacuum,” Conroy said. “Really everything that comes before us shapes the place that we’re in and could hopefully point us forward too.”
Ankur Singh is a freelance journalist and a co-founder of Cicero Independiente, a hyperlocal bilingual news outlet in Cicero.