Bruce Samuels, 82, a longtime Oak Park resident, dedicated public servant, community organizer, husband and father, died on Sunday, July 27, 2025. He helped develop the Head Start program as well as Sesame Street in the late 1960s in New York City and was then hired by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Chicago office, where he spent nearly 40 years rescuing millions of dollars in employee pensions that unscrupulous employers had failed to pay. He considered the work he did recouping embezzled pensions as his greatest accomplishment. He also helped transform his local political landscape by co-founding the Illinois Green Party, serving two terms on the Oak Park Library Board and running for Oak Park village trustee three times.
Bruce Steele Samuels was born in Long Branch, New Jersey in 1943, grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, and earned his B.A. from City College of New York. He married Julie Natco in New York in 1968. They had their first two children, Rachel and Aaron, in 1970 and 1972 respectively as they migrated west and eventually settled in Oak Park in 1973. When they tried to buy a house there and found themselves redlined by banks, their activism and media appearances were instrumental in the creation of the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act in 1975. That year they had their final child, Noah, and continued to work tirelessly side-by-side to make a better world for their three children, helping to establish the first recycling program and health food co-op in the village in the 1980s and working to shut down a nearby toxic incinerator in the 1990s.
In his leisure time, Bruce enjoyed racquetball, genealogy, reading, Scrabble, collecting coins and stamps, and watching deer and other wildlife at the Thatcher Woods forest preserve near his home. He is survived by his three children and his niece Jennifer.
A celebration of life party will be held at his Oak Park home on Saturday, Sept. 6, from 12 to 3 PM. Those wanting to attend should email shaktihands “at” gmail “dot” com for the address.
In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Oak Park Animal Care League at https://www.animalcareleague.org/waystogive.
