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Does MPHS have photographs: Yes

Address in Mount Prospect: 4 S. Edward Street

Birth Date: August 1, 1900

Death Date: November 10, 1969

Marriage
Date:

Spouse: Irma (Thill) Whittenberg

Children: Arlene

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments

George Whittenberg was the second police officer in Mount Prospect and the second Chief of Police. He was hired by William Mulso, Mount Prospect’s first Police Chief, who was also the entire police force from 1924 until he hired Whittenberg in 1932. Five years later Whittenberg became the chief of police, a position he held until he retired. Whittenberg was originally hired, in part, because he could ride a motorcycle and the police department had one motorcycle and one 1929 Pontiac. George Whittenberg served on the Mount Prospect Police Department for 33 years, and was the Chief of Police for most of that time. He resigned his post in 1965, having seen the community change dramatically during his tenure. When he took the job, there were no paved roads and the population was about 1200. By the time he retired, the population was over 25,000, Mount Prospect was twice as large, and the police force had grown from two officers to close to thirty. Four years after he retired, he died. His funeral procession included fifty cars that passed by the Police Station one last time. Whittenberg was a long time member of the Mount Prospect Lions Club, and following his death, the Lions donated $6000 to the village to erect a memorial. In 1975 the village built a waterfall and fountain at the base of the water tower, as a memorial to his years of service. The memorial stood very close to the police station in which Whittenberg had spent so much time, but was later demolished.

Does MPHS have photographs: Yes

Address in Mount Prospect: 215 S. Emerson

Birth Date: 1900

Death Date: November 30, 1970

Marriage
Date:

Spouse: Helen

Children: Marryanne and Herbert J.

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments

Herb Van Driel started working in a drug store in 1913. He bought his own store in Chicago in 1927 and claimed that in this store he sold cigarettes and gum to John Dillinger. Herb Van Driel moved to Mount Prospect in the early 1940s. He bought an existing drug store at the corner of Emerson and Northwest Highway. When Van Driel came to Mount Prospect, the two doctors in town already had an agreement with another pharmacist. So Van Driel branched out and added a lunch counter, serving ham sandwiches and home made pies. He said that in the first few years most of his business was in food. While there was rationing during World War Two, Van Driel was a distributor for different foods and cigarettes and was able to establish himself as one of the important businesses in town. He later went on to be one of the founding members of the second incarnation of the Mount Prospect Chamber of Commerce (originally founded in 1926, dissolved in 1932 then founded again in 1947). He was also a member of the Chicago Retail Druggist Association, National Association of Retail Druggists, The Mount Prospect Lions Club, and the Des Plaines Elks Lodge. In 1968 he sold the business, although it still maintains his name. He died in 1970.

Does MPHS have photographs: Newspaper photos

Address in Mount Prospect: River Road in Des Plaines

Birth Date: 1898

Death Date: December 16, 1959

Marriage
Date: 1922

Spouse: Clara Touhy

Children: Roger Jr., Thomas

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments

Roger Touhy was reputed to be boss of the organized crime syndicate in the Chicago area during prohibition. Most of the information on him is sensationalistic and it is hard to tell how much is real and what is myth. Supposedly, Al Capone ran the underworld in most of Chicago and much of the southern suburbs while the northwestern suburbs were reportedly under the control of Touhy the Terrible. Touhy was the youngest son of a family with eight children. His father was a police officer and his mother died when Touhy was ten years old when there was an explosion in the family’s kitchen. He operated a car dealership in Chicago for a number of years, but decided to go into bootlegging to make more money. He reportedly bought into a distribution business with a man named Matt Kolb, who was later gunned down in a Morton Grove speakeasy. Touhy started out selling beer to road houses and saloons in the small towns north and northwest of Chicago. Supposedly, he brought in over $1million in beer sales in the 1920s. He was said to have gained public support, or at least a blind eye, by donating generously to different organizations, schools and social clubs. He lived in Oak Park, but after his first child was born he moved onto a farm in Des Plaines near the Maryville Academy. According to legend, he later extended his bootlegging to this farm but could not conceal the waste products or the smell of his operations. To take care of this problem, he invited his neighbors to go on a three week trip to Europe. While they were away, he had an engineering company come in and construct an underground drainage system that would carry all the waste from his land, under their property and empty it into a creek that led into the Des Plaines River. He was eventually arrested and put into prison. He was convicted of kidnapping a man named John (Jake the Barber) Factor, who was a friend of Al Capone and was wanted in England on fraud charges. Touhy denied the charges and claimed that he was framed by Al Capone’s gang. In 1942, after being in prison for nine years, he broke out, although he was recaptured shortly. He was eventually released on parole after serving almost 26 years in the Stateville Penitentiary. Twenty two days after he was released he was gunned down while standing on his sister’s front porch. While much of the story about Touhy may be mostly sensationalism, there are reasons to believe that there was sale of alcohol in the northwest suburbs. Many of the towns had strong immigrant populations and much of prohibition was a thinly veiled anti-immigrant policy, which was strongly resented by older, established immigrant communities who had little or no interest in abiding by it. Areas like Mount Prospect were also still largely agricultural with little law enforcement and what there was, was usually local.