On Feb. 1, 1949, pioneer residents decided to write the history of Park Forest for the next century.
By a vote of 90-2, these forward-looking settlers living in new apartment houses built on the remnants of a golf course and some farmland in a distant southern corner of Cook County decided to incorporate as a legal entity.
Thus, Park Forest was born as a community.
Two months before, American Community Builders told the early residents to govern themselves. That decision 75 years ago set the stage for what the village is today. It has gone through a series of highs and lows but to this day, emerges as a community that survives.
Park Forest seems to hold fast to its history and its traditions of why it was built and how it still works.
An example is the two National All-America City awards. In 1953, the award came when citizens voted 1,828-12 to tax themselves and build a high school. The second came in 1977 for building Freedom Hall and working to establish Aunt Martha’s youth counseling service. The village reached the finals on three other occasions.
It has always been the people in Park Forest that kept it alive. It is the angry people who stick around, who complain and then correct others who complain; the stubborn people who acknowledge the village is not what it once was but don’t want to leave; it is the young and old who gather by the hundreds who keep in touch with each other on the village green on summer Wednesdays or through social media every day.
It is their perseverance, their resolve and their willingness to stay the course that makes Park Forest’s 75th anniversary year — 2024 — a special occasion.
This day there will be no long parades, no fireworks, no huge cake-cutting, no loud ballyhoo or gaudy embellishment. Instead, on this coming Saturday, Nov. 9, this celebration of the village’s history will take place in and around Freedom Hall and will underline both the village’s history and a couple of cultural successes.
The festivities begin at 11 a.m. with the village’s annual Veterans Day ceremony in the Freedom Hall parking lot and will include rides in a Huey helicopter, local vendors and commemorative T-shirt sales.
At 3 p.m. a celebration of “America’s original G.I. Town” in the theater will begin with a filmed history of the village followed by performances by the Grande Prairie Singers and the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra. Both of these musical groups were born in the village.
It is not a coincidence that this observance comes two days before Veterans Day. Park Forest began as a new kind of town; a planned community catering to returning service members caught in the post-war crunch of not enough housing for the ex-G.I.’s and their young families.
All that and more were set down in books about the village; “The Organization Man” by William H. Whyte; “G.I. Town” by Greg Randall; and “Park Forest – Dreams and Challenges” by this writer.
That decades-long tradition of service to others is maintained by the Veterans Closet and Resource Center at 352 Founders Way, which, since 2015, has been the center where returning service personnel can collect the necessary civilian necessities of life in their transition to the alleged normality of civilian life.
Most of these items are donated by residents and are free to all veterans and is a thank you to those who served from those who benefitted.
The Huey helicopter, first used as a rescue vehicle during the Vietnam War, will make three flights from its landing site in Central Park near Freedom Hall. Both the first flight, an honor flight for six veterans, as well as a second flight are fully booked. As of this writing, there are four openings for a third flight. You do not have to be a veteran to board that flight, but there is a $200 charge.
We hope to see you celebrate 75 years this Saturday.
Jerry Shnay, at Jerryshnay @gmail.com, is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown