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Does MPHS have photographs: Yes

The following oral history text is from a collaborative project between the Mount Prospect Historical Society and the Mount Prospect Public Library. Interview took place on 5/18/88.

BECKER: This is May 18, 1988, Mount Prospect Historical Museum. Helen Becker for the Historical Society. This afternoon, I’m talking with Mr. Al Juhnke, who is a long-time resident of Mount Prospect and the area, and we’d like to ask him questions about his growing up and his life here. Mr. Juhnke, can we have some words from you?

JUHNKE: Sure. I’m AI Juhnke. I was born and raised right where the Huntington Commons buildings are sitting now. From there on, when my mother died, we moved over to where my grandparents lived, where the bowling alley is sitting now, which is Dominick’s. When I started school, the first year, we went over to a little public school on Golf and Linneman Road. For the first, second through seventh, I went to the Lutheran school. Through eighth, we had to go back to the public school to get our diploma.

BECKER: To the same little school?

JUHNKE: The same little school where we started with the first year, second through seventh we went to the Lutheran school. Eight, we had to go back to the public school to get our diploma.

BECKER: What corner was that on? You said Golf and. ..

JUHNKE: That would be on the southeast comer. They have a picture up here in the museum of that school, yes. Nobody knew what it was.

BECKER: It was a public school.

JUHNKE: Yes. It was a public school. Possibly eight or nine children were about tops at that time.

BECKER: One room.

JUHNKE: One room, sure. We had a potbellied stove. My job was to take a bushel of corn cobs and get the fire going in the morning.

BECKER: Now, what years would that have been?

JUHNKE: I was born in 1906. It could have been 1912 when I started school. And from then on, I went to church over here.

BECKER: At St. John?

JUHNKE: St. John’s. Joined a choir. I belonged to St. John’s until I was about nineteen years old. Then I struck out on my own, went to St. Paul’s in Mount Prospect.

BECKER: All this time you lived down where Dominick’s is now?

JUHNKE: Yes, yes. All that while.

BECKER: Yes.

JUHNKE: Where was I?

BECKER: You went to St. Paul’s.

JUHNKE: Then I went to St. Paul’s church. Later on, I got married. In ’28, I got married. We moved to Des Plaines and when my children were ready to go, we had a little tough luck during the Depression. We lost our home. Then we went to Mount Prospect, and I rented an apartment from what is our secretary’s father and mother. We rented an apartment from them.

BECKER: And where was that?

JUHNKE: In Mount Prospect. In Mount Prospect.

BECKER: Yeah, but where?

JUHNKE: Over on Pine Street. I think it was Pine Street. I’m not too positive. It was on the south side. ..

BECKER: On the south side.

JUHNKE: South side of the tracks. Then I came back here in 1957. I joined St. John’s here again.

BECKER: I see. This was when they had the new church, or was it the little old white-framed church?

JUHNKE: No, no. It was the church that’s here now.

BECKER: The new one across the street.

JUHNKE: No, no. That’s a school.

BECKER: That’s right. That’s right.

JUHNKE: The church is over here.

BECKER: The church is right down here.

JUHNKE: And, been a member. ..

BECKER: Before the steeple burned or whenever that was.

JUHNKE: Well, the steeple blew down. That was. ..

BECKER: Yeah.

JUHNKE: …I’d say possibly six or seven years ago that the steeple blew down.

BECKER: It was longer ago than that, wasn’t it?

JUHNKE: Could it be? Possibly.

BECKER: Could be. I know. Time goes. ..

JUHNKE: Time goes. ..

BECKER: …in a hurry, I know.

JUHNKE: Anyway, but we needed a steeple back because we had people in this area that didn’t even belong to our church. They said, “You’ve got to build this steeple. That’s the first thing we see in the morning.”

BECKER: Right! Right.

JUHNKE: And build it. So we did. We did. And now we’ve really done a lot in our church in the last five or six years. We put new carpeting in and had our benches all redone. We just got through putting all new leaded glass in the front of the church. That was just completed last week. And it’s a beautiful church inside.

BECKER: When was it built and first opened?

JUHNKE: This church is celebrating its 145th anniversary this. ..

BECKER: A hundred forty-five.

JUHNKE: A hundred forty-five years.

BECKER: That’s about 1840 or something like that.

JUHNKE: Could be somewhere in there. Yes. Could be somewhere. ..

BECKER: Not many houses around here at that time, were there?

JUHNKE: There wasn’t hardly any! There wasn’t hardly any. Our teacher lived over, what the old little white house is now, behind the school. That’s where our teacher M~ lived –which was my teacher.

BECKER: I recognize the name, I think. Mist, mist. ..

JUHNKE: Masky. His son finally had a store in Mount Prospect.

BECKER: Yes. I see.

JUHNKE: Teacher Masky was here, would you believe it, forty-three years teaching –one-classroom school when I was here. He had between, I could possibly say, between fifty and sixty children. One teacher.

BECKER: No problems, either.

JUHNKE: No problem. We respected the man. And our pastor at that time was Pastor Garret. He was here forty-four years. He confronted me.

BECKER: Then you’re saying now that the first year of school you went down on Golf and Linneman. Then this school, where we are now, would have been built when? In 19- …

JUHNKE: 1901, I think. The cornerstone is out there. I think it’s 1901 that this building was built. Now this building was only –it’s been added to since it was a one-room school. Finally, it wound up to be a two-room school.

BECKER: Oh, is that right?

JUHNKE: Yes.

BECKER: With the wall down the middle that there is now?

JUHNKE: That’s right. That’s right. See, there was a two-room school. And when I belonged to the choir, we had our fun games down here. We had a one-lane bowling alley set in down on the west side of the wall in here.

BECKER: You did? Where?

JUHNKE: It’s out now. It’s out now. On the west wall.

BECKER: Oh. Over on that side.

JUHNKE: Right.

BECKER: I’ll be darned.

JUHNKE: It was quite a contraption. It had no pins, but it had flap flags with a little ball like that, with numbers on it. I think there were five numbers. So you threw your ball and maybe one number was twenty. All right. You got twenty points. So, when you were through bowling, you’d pull the lever and that would set those flaps back in –set those back up again.

BECKER: Well, how long is that? That would be about what? Twenty or thirty feet long? Is that about all?

JUHNKE: Well, now it was quite a bowling alley. I mean, it was. ..

BECKER: I mean from here, you know, from here.

JUHNKE: Yeah. We only had about that much room on the end of the bowling alley.

BECKER: I’ll be darned.

JUHNKE: Then we met down here, in the choir. We used to practice choir in here. And then we’d come down in the basement. At one time, we had, for about three years I would say, we had a little boxing team going on down here. We did some boxing. It started out as a point system. You know, nothing above the shoulders –the point system. Well, finally, it got to be a grudge fight and that was the end of it. I mean, we got told, well, we don’t want any bloodshed. And it would have amounted to that, I think, if we’d have kept it up.

BECKER: This is when you were going to school or when you were grown up in the choir?

JUHNKE: When I was in the choir. See, I couldn’t join the choir until. ..

BECKER: You were an adult.

JUHNKE: …we were adults. I think I joined the choir possibly when I was possibly sixteen or seventeen years old.

BECKER: I see.

JUHNKE: In the summertime, we had a great big school picnic here. We’d draw at least, I’d say, fifteen hundred people. And we’d put on a play–the choir would put on a play. We’d set a stage up outside. We’d put on a play, and people from all over would come. It was beautiful. We had all trees out there. And then we had what we call flag drills at that time. Teacher Mask~ was good at that. I mean, we had our flags, you know, like this –cross them. It was something all right.

BECKER: When you were growing up, what was your occupation?

JUHNKE: Well, I stayed on a farm until I struck out for my own. And then I learned the carpenter trade. I was a carpenter in mostly cabinet work. I finished up a cabinet maker. And then I worked for the Mount Prospect school district.

BECKER: Oh, did you?

JUHNKE: Fifty-seven -I worked for the school district for about possibly five and a half, six years, in their cabinet shop. I built…

BECKER: Is that right?

JUHNKE: They didn’t buy a cabinet while I worked over there. I built them all.

BECKER: Now was this little school that you originally went to –was that District 57, or was there a District 57 at that time?

JUHNKE: I don’t really know what this little public school district. ..

JUHNKE: A lot of people don’t –it’s changed.

BECKER: Oh, course it has.

JUHNKE: Look at all the new people that we’ve got in here.

BECKER: Yeah. They move in and out. Now, when you were growing up, tell me something about the area –where you lived and what houses were there and the people that were there and what they did.

JUHNKE: Well, the only thing that I can really remember is the teacher Mask~’ s house, the pastor’s house. That was an old one. That was not the house that is sitting there now. That was a really old one that was sitting south of the church, which they finally tore down when we built the new parsonage. And the rest was all farm land. There were a couple of houses on Lenemen Road. Arthur Linneman had a farm. And the rest was all farm. I mean, Masky even had –I don’t know how many acres.

BECKER: That’s the teacher you’re talking about.

JUHNKE: That teacher, he raised onion sets. He had a cow. He got his own milk. He was a typical farmer in the summertime, during vacation time. But he was one heck of a teacher.

BECKER: He was.

JUHNKE: He was one heck of a teacher.

BECKER: Must have been.

JUHNKE: He was. He was a good man.

BECKER: Teach eight grades?

JUHNKE: Well, he had six grades.

BECKER: Six grades.

JUHNKE: From two to seven.

BECKER: Well, what happened before that? I mean, if he started at the second grade, who had first grade?

JUHNKE: Over at the public school.

BECKER: That was there at that time?

JUHNKE: Oh sure.

BECKER: That public school was there while you went to Lutheran school?

JUHNKE: Sure.

BECKER: I see.

JUHNKE: Then the rest –finally to come on in. Then they started building homes along Linneman Road here. Mr. E~ I think, built the first house –that little house that’s sitting just a little bit north of the school there. And then Mr. Witt come in, Mr. Oakum come in. And I think that’s the three houses –no, there’s another fellow come in there. Can’t remember his name right now –the first house. They come and then they started building more homes and more homes and more homes.

BECKER: Making more roads and so on.

JUHNKE: Making more roads and keeping them up. The roads were here, but they kept them up better. .

BECKER: Yes.

JUHNKE: In the wintertime, when we’d come to school over here, I mean, there was a farmer. He lived about, I’d say, four of five miles from here and he’d come with a team of horses and a sled. And he’d come down Elmhurst Road and he’d pick up all the kids there were off of Elmhurst Road and he’d take them up to school here. And at night he’d comeback.. .

BECKER: He would.

JUHNKE: …with the team of horses and –of course, we did most of the walking. We walked right through the field, you know, because it wasn’t too far from Huntington Commons to the school. Then we had little ball games going. I mean, we kind of amused ourselves a little different than they do today. If you don’t buy a child a toy today, he can’t amuse himself.

BECKER: Unless he watches TV.

JUHNKE: Yes.

BECKER: Well, you do more reading, you do more game playing, I think, without this. ..

JUHNKE: I do a lot of reading. I read two newspapers a day. I’m retired.

BECKER: And you were in carpentry.

JUHNKE: All my life, all my life. During the Depression when there was no carpenter work, I happened to know a fellow in Des Plaines that had a laundry. So I asked him if I could go to work for him. He said, “Yeah. I’ll put you on commission. Whatever you make is yours.” Okay. So I worked for him for possibly two or three years, and then it got to the point where he said, All the charge accounts are okay. He said, People haven’t got the money charging. I said okay. Then finally he came to me and said, “AI, you owe me so much dollars because I can’t collect from those people.” I said, “Wait a minute. You okayed them.” So what did I do? I went to my dad. I said, “Dad, I lost my job. I’m going to quit. What are you going to do now? Well, there was a store vacant in Mount Prospect. I said, “I’m going to buy me a little truck if you help me a little bit with the money. I haven’t got it.” So he said, “How much do you need?” I said, “Well, let me find out how much it is going to cost.” So he gave me the money and I started up a little, a dry cleaning store right in Mount Prospect that the village owns now –just the first store west of the village building, that old stucco building. There used to be an old stucco there, that the shoemaker was in.

BECKER: Yes. I remember that.

JUHNKE: Okay. I had the store east of the shoemaker’s shoe store.

BECKER: I see.

JUHNKE: And I ran that impossibly during the Depression, cleaner and laundry. I’d go out and I’d built up a laundry route. And then when times got to the point where they were putting in basements again, my brother happened to be out of work that time. I said, “Alfred, you want the business, you can have it. I’ll give it to you.” I gave him the truck. I gave him the whole works. I went back to carpentry. I went back and I stayed. It was good to me. Carpentry was good to me.

BECKER: Well, I think it’s kind of a rewarding occupation. My grandpa worked in that,too, kind of for recreation and so forth.

JUHNKE: It is. Take a piece of wood and make something. I’ve had a good life. I’ve had my tough times.

BECKER: How many children did you have?

JUHNKE: Two. A boy and a girl.

BECKER: That’s a good…

JUHNKE: Well, we wanted three. We had planned on three, but my wife developed a tumor and that was the end of childbearing. That was all.

BECKER: Well, you’ve had one of each.

JUHNKE: I was thankful.

BECKER: I tried three times, and I got three girls and then I gave up.

JUHNKE: The Lord had been good to me.

BECKER: Your children have each gone their own way, I assume.

JUHNKE: Yes, both live in Florida.

BECKER: They do!

JUHNKE: Not by choice. My son-in-law married my daughter, he had a quadruple bypass, and he was told to not stay here where it’s cold. You’ve got to go where it’s warm. And my son cracked himself up with a snowmobile and he put himself into limbo where he couldn’t work anymore. So they went to Florida. They were just in here. They just left yesterday. My son’s mother-in-law died so they came in for the funeral. They went back yesterday morning.

BECKER: Well,. that gives you a place to visit.

JUHNKE: Well, I’ve been there so many times. Believe me, I just don’t like Florida.

BECKER: I don’t know whether I would either.

JUHNKE: I like to go there, but I’m telling you, I don’t like the climate. It’s so humid there! I should get up in the morning and the dew is hanging on the cars outside. If the windows are open, the bedclothes are damp.

BECKER: Well, you’re a Midwesterner.

JUHNKE: Yes. I loved it up North. I went fishing up North, northern Minnesota, for thirty years and I loved it up there. I love the climate here. love that.

BECKER: Well, change of scene is …

JUHNKE: I love the seasons. Oh, sure. You’ve got something to look forward to. What do you have in Florida?

BECKER: Nothing but the same.

JUHNKE: Nothing but the same. My son brought us some grapefruit. He’s got a grapefruit tree on the front yard. There’s some big ones on there yet. He says the little ones are already this big. Now, he hasn’t seen change there. It’s just a continuation. They like it. It’s not their choice. It’s because they have to. I think they begin to like it there now that they’ve been there. My son has been there, I think, going on eleven years. And my daughter just moved there about three years ago. My son lives in the house, and my daughter and her husband, they bought a trailer. It’s a nice one, though. I mean, it’s got as much –we’ve got a three-bedroom home where we’re living, and I think they’ve got as much room in that trailer as we have in our house.

BECKER: Is that right? Do they have children?

JUHNKE: Yes. They have three sons and a daughter. Grandchildren.

BECKER: Well, are they fairly close together?

JUHNKE: Well, one of them lives here, one lives –no. My granddaughter lives in Woodstock, and one grandson lives in a trailer park over here on Elmhurst Road. And the other grandson lives in an apartment building, I venture, in that area. And one grandson lives in –he used to live in Fox Lake and he just moved. I can’t think of it.

BECKER: Well, anyway. They’re within driving distance.

JUHNKE: Oh, yes. And I talk to my kids about once every two weeks or so. We either call them or they call us.

BECKER: Now, suppose we go back to the early days of St. John’s school here. Can you tell me what it was kind of like on a typical day?

JUHNKE: Well, the first thing we did, we had prayer in the morning. Then we had religion. Then we went into reading, writing, arithmetic and learning our lessons. Then, in the afternoon, we …

BECKER: Did you go home for lunch?

JUHNKE: No. I carried my lunch. I mean it was –in the summertime, it wasn’t bad, but we’d sooner eat our lunch quick and play out here instead of waltzing all the way home. So then in the afternoon, we’d get up in the -now. We had to recite some of the lessons that we learned. And we had to recite verses out of the Bible. We had to recite verses out of the psalm book. We were lined up in the back and it wasn’t “it’s your turn” or “it’s her turn.” “AI, do you know what that verse meant?” –that’s the way it went. He’d point at a thing, and you never knew what your piece was going to be. Most of it today is rehearsed, I think.

BECKER: Well, you’re kind of saying it was kind of like a catechism class?

JUHNKE: Catechism class. And then we had arithmetic. We had a blackboard. We had to get up and do problems on the board.

BECKER: Now, how would he distribute the classes, the different groups in the different grades?

JUHNKE: Well, the little ones sat in the front. And then the seventh grade sat in the back –the big ones.

BECKER: And how would he distribute the time?

JUHNKE: That is pretty farfetched. I mean, I don’t quite remember how he did that. I couldn’t really answer that, honestly.

BECKER: Would he give the little ones some attention first and then give them something to do and then move on to the …

JUHNKE: Oh sure. He did that to keep the little ones quiet because they get restless more than the bigger ones. The bigger ones, they knew if they got restless, they got reprimanded. But he kept the little ones busy. There weren’t ever second grade –I mean, there were no first graders here. The first graders were all over the school.

BECKER: And what were the school hours?

JUHNKE: I think we started at nine o’clock, end about three-thirty, an hour for lunch.

BECKER: And how many students would there have been?

JUHNKE: Oh, there must have been –I know at one time, it was over fifty-five kids in the room.

BECKER: And Mr. Masky didn’t have any assistants or anything like that?

JUHNKE: Finally, his daughter helped him out as a substitute teacher, as an assistant teacher. And then, when we were graduated from there, then we took -for the last year we went here, the seventh grade. Then we started taking our confirmation classes. Then we’d go over to the pastor’s house and we’d get our catechism instructions and then we had examination. On the day of Palm Sunday, we always got confirmed on Palm Sunday, they had an examination which was just like Maskey would do it here. There was nothing rehearsed. You better know what it was all about. And Pastor Garret would point at Albert –what does this mean? Gerhardt –that was his son –what does that mean? And finally, we got to the point where we kept growing up and growing up, and then we joined the choir and from that on, it was just —

BECKER: What about high school?

JUHNKE: I had no high school, no high school, but I had three and a half years of Metropolitan Business College. I went in the evenings. I couldn’t

BECKER: Now, where was it and how did you get there?

JUHNKE: I went in Chicago. I took a horse and buggy, parked it in Mount Prospect where Kruse’s tavern is now –they used to have a shed there. I tied a horse up there in the shed. We’d take the train in to Chicago. It was Fred Meeske, Johnny Busse and myself. The three of us –we went to, Metropolitan Business College. I was supposed to be a four-year term and I had three and a half years –not quite three and a half years. They called me in the office and they say, “You’re doing all right. I think we can get you a job. You’re far enough ahead. We can get you a job. I took general business and penmanship because I liked a good handwriting.

BECKER: Another thing they don’t have much of these days.

JUHNKE: Then I went to Chicago to the bank that they had recommended me to go to. And you know what they offered me? Ten dollars a week. And my train fare would have been more than that. So I came home. At that time, I had a car. And I was up in Des Plaines. I took my car to Des Plaines. When I got off the train in Des Plaines, I picked up a paper. Are there any jobs available? Okay, there was a job there that had something, to do with construction. So I went and talked to the man and he says, Yeah, I can use you. And that was the beginning.

BECKER: Was this twenties? You went to business school after eighth grade.

JUHNKE: Oh yeah. After I got confirmed. So I could have been possibly fifteen when I started Metropolitan. And then I didn’t take that job. But then the job that I picked up in construction was thirty dollars a week. I’d go home and I said, “Dad, I got me a real good job. He says, “Al, you know, school didn’t really payoff.” I said, “Dad, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

 

[Side 2]

 

BECKER: This is side 2 of the interview with Mr. Al Juhnke at the Mount Prospect Historical Society museum on May 18, 1988.

JUHNKE: Then I finally struck out on my own. I built about eight or nine houses.

BECKER: Working out of your home?

JUHNKE: Out of my home, yes. I was building a home that my competition was getting the best of me. I was putting the best that I could buy into the homes, and these other people were putting in dry wall and plywood for the floor and carpeting. over it. I was putting in oak floor and plastered walls, and I figured, well, that wasn’t paying off. I had a hard time selling my last house. This little yellow house that’s sitting over there, just a little bit west of the shopping center, what is now the family counseling home, have you noticed? I built that home. I built. ..

BECKER: Where were some of these other houses that you built?

JUHNKE: Well, I built one for Ralph Mensching over here on Golf Road, and I built a couple of them in Palatine. I built a couple of them in Barrington.

BECKER: Now these are frame houses?

JUHNKE: Frame and brick. Whatever people wanted. In Elk Grove Village, I built the biggest house that I built for a fellow that had a rich grandma. And grandma helped, you know.

BECKER: Now these would have been built in 1930s and ’40s?

JUHNKE: Well, I quit community builders in ’46, so it was after that. Just what the years were, I don’t quite remember. Then I opened up my own shop when I quit that. And I built cupolas. And I built cupolas that, if I told you that I built them by the truckload for contractors, it’s pretty hard to believe. I built fifty to sixty cupolas for one outfit. And I built big ones. The one that’s sitting in Des Plaines, just a little bit northeast of the theater, I built that one for a railroad man. And he had a bell from the railroad, and he had a little mechanism that he put on the outside of the cupola that sounded like a bell. And, at twelve o’clock, at noon, this thing would sound that –sounded like the bell in the cupola was ringing but it wasn’t. So then I kept that up, and then I had a little problem. My wife took sick. I had to put her in a nursing home. And five and a half years, and she finally passed on. And while she was in there, the doc said to me, “Al, if you don’t get out of that job that you’ve got all by yourself, you’re going to go crazy. Get yourself a job where you can get up in the morning, go say hello to somebody and work with somebody.” So that’s when I took the job at the Mount Prospect school. And I stayed there about six years. I worked for the –which was a good job.

BECKER: Well, it got you to meet a lot of people that way.

JUHNKE: At least I had something to look forward to. Neat people. Because I was living alone, I was working alone. I’d get up in the morning, I’d go in my shop and work, I’d go in and make my lunch, and I’d go back out and work. And it got me down. It got me down.

BECKER: I understand.

JUHNKE: But I lost her. But I married a beautiful woman.

BECKER: Did you really? Aren’t you lucky. I’ve been a widow for quite a while now. Maybe the men are a little bit more fortunate than the widows are.

JUHNKE: I don’t know. I married a gal that. ..

BECKER: You found a good woman.

JUHNKE: A good woman. I’d known her before she was ever married. She lost her husband about two years before I lost my wife. She lived right across the street from me. And we were friends. And she was alone, I was alone. And I did a lot of bowling in my days. I still bowl every week. And I had a bowling banquet to go to and I didn’t care to go alone, so I called Alice. I said, “Alice, would you like to go a bowling banquet?” She said yes, so one thing led to another. ..

BECKER: That’s nice.

JUHNKE: Yes.

BECKER: When did you marry her?

JUHNKE: We’ll be married nineteen years in August.

BECKER: You’re very fortunate.

JUHNKE: I’m very fortunate. I’m very, very fortunate.

BECKER: It’s been a great pleasure talking with you, AI. And I think we’ve learned a lot about the early days of this area. I hope that you will come back often and visit the museum. And, of course, anything that you would like to pass along would be very much appreciated and we’ll see that it gets a good home.

Does MPHS have Photographs: No

 Date of interview: 11/15/1994

 Text of oral History interview:

NANCY HANKS: I want to thank the two of you for agreeing to be interviewed today and for signing the release form.

ROGER JOHNSTON: Our pleasure.

NANCY: I am going to ask you a little bit about the biography of your family. What’s your full name?

ROGER: My name is Roger A. Johnston.

NANCY: And your maiden name Beatrice was?

BEATRICE: Erickson.

NANCY: When and where were you born? I’ll ask you first.

ROGER: I was born in Chicago on July 11, 1915. At the time, we were living –my mom and dad –about a block and a half from Cubs ballpark. It was on Racine which is the street that leads into Clark Street. Of course, that’s on the north side of Chicago.

NANCY: Beatrice, how about you?

BEATRICE: I was born April 11, 1917.

NANCY: The place of birth was?

BEATRICE: Chicago.

NANCY: Who were your parents?

ROGER: My father’s name was Albert M. Johnston. My mother’s name was Anna Charlotte Johnston. Of course, her maiden name was Croonborg. Both my mother and father were born here in Chicago, and their parents came from Sweden back in the 1880s.

NANCY: Beatrice, how about your parents?

BEATRICE: Mabel and Carl Erickson.

NANCY: What was your mother’s maiden name?

BEATRICE: Shogren.

NANCY: When did you move to Mt. Prospect?

ROGER: That was in 1951. To be exact, on February 26.

NANCY: Your address now is 900 South Lancaster?

BEATRICE: Yes.

NANCY: Have you ever lived at any other address in the village?

ROGER: Yes. When we first moved here, the address was 106 South Hi-Lushi. We lived there for 18 years and moved here in 1968, so it has to be 26 years that we are here.

NANCY: How has Mt. Prospect changed since you’ve lived here?

BEATRICE: The population has increased by 12 times as many.

ROGER: At least 10 times.

NANCY: How about other changes?

ROGER: It always has been a friendly community.

BEATRICE: Always and has remained that. That really hasn’t changed, wouldn’t you say? How else has it changed? Well, Golf Road was a two-lane road. Central Road was a two-lane road. It was just a small community.

ROGER: When we first moved out here, the railroad crossing at Central Road used to be a whistle crossing. Trains would go through there –freight trains at night –blowing the whistle.

NANCY: That was it. If you didn’t hear them, there was no gate and no signal.

ROGER: I think there were flashing lights. That was all at the time.

BEATRICE: There were steam engines that used to blow the whistle.

ROGER: When we lived on Hi-Lushi, it was the village limit to the west. Beyond that were farmer’s fields. Our kids used to go out and be with the farmer when he was reaping his crops.

BEATRICE: And play in the peat bogs out there.

NANCY: Before you came here, what did you know about Mt. Prospect?

BEATRICE: I don’t think we knew anything about Mt. Prospect. We just kept going farther and farther on the day that we were looking. We probably started out in Evanston. No, not in Evanston. Park Ridge. We kept moving farther out.

ROGER: Even before that, I think we looked in Edison Park first.

BEATRICE: Right. Edison Park. We just kept going farther out.

ROGER: From Park Ridge we went to Des Plaines. We still didn’t find anything to our liking.

BEATRICE: In the way of housing. We wanted to live in the country. This was the country.

NANCY: What are some of the events that you remember happening in the village?

BEATRICE: I can’t recall any big, disastrous thing that happened.

NANCY: How about some of the interesting things or things that were fun? Right before the holidays –July Fourth or parades?

BEATRICE: There always were parades. Our children were in Campfire and Boy Scouts. We have two girls and a boy, and they were in that. I was involved in Campfire. Roger was involved in Boy Scouts. We marched in those parades.

ROGER: Yes. I was –what do they call it? –cubmaster. That’s what they call it.

NANCY: What do you feel are landmarks in the community?

BEATRICE: I think Van Dreil’s Drug Store for one. Keefer’s also, although he doesn’t own it.

NANCY: Is Van Dreil spelled D-R-E-I-L?

ROGER: That is correct.

BEATRICE: That sounds good.

NANCY: And Keefer’s is a drug store?

BEATRICE: Yes.

NANCY: What was Van Dreil’s?

BEATRICE: That was a drug store.

ROGER: A full drug store. After Herb Van Dreil died, it was taken over by what is his name?

BEATRICE: I don’t know.

ROGER: Anyhow, he figured one drug store was enough in town, and he went in for all these fancy pieces of equipment –walkers.

BEATRICE: Lots of the buildings have changed on Main Street there. Some of them have been torn down and rebuilt.

ROGER: You used to do your grocery shopping at Meeske’s in town.

BEATRICE: That store is still there, but it is Continental Bakery now.

NANCY: Is that Meeske?

ROGER: Yes. The thing that is interesting about that is I guess it always was this time of year wasn’t it that he got that great big barrel of olives in?

BEATRICE: Yes.

ROGER: They were imported from Spain. I don’t know how he got them all the way here. He put them in the store, and the women could bring their own glass jars. He had one scoop, and I think that one scoop held like a pint.

BEATRICE: I don’t remember, but I know you brought your own.

ROGER: You’d go in there with that, throw in however many scoops you wanted and tell the girl at the checkout counter

BEATRICE: Sort of a bulk, and it was wonderful.

ROGER: Yes. It was a bulk, and you had it for quite a few years. Getting back to when we first moved out here in 1951, that same group of stores was where Keefer’s Drug Store is now. Keefer’s originally used to be on the north side of Northwest Highway between Main Street and Emerson. Later it moved to its present location. There also was a bakery. The name of it was Lenhardt. That was a bakery, and the main bakery itself was in Des Plaines. What they would do is make deliveries early every morning and during the day as needed coming up to Mt. Prospect.

BEATRICE: That was the National Tea. There was a little gal who worked there named Jessie Mileski. She lived in a little house just south of St. Mark Church, and St. Mark bought her property when she died. Her husband died, and she moved out of there. St. Mark bought her property, and that’s part of St. Mark’s property.

ROGER: Her property was 204 South Wille. I know, because I was on the committee at the time our church acquired it.

NANCY: OK. We’ll go on to the stores and merchants. What do you remember most about shopping downtown?

BEATRICE: There was Jewel on Northwest Highway.

ROGER: Close to Central.

BEATRICE: It was around what? –Wille, Pine.

ROGER: I guess Pine Street.

NANCY: Of course, you’ve mentioned Meeske’s. Did you go to the Lenhardt Bakery?

BEATRICE: Yes.

NANCY: For groceries, you shopped at Meeske’s?

BEATRICE: Mostly at Meeske’s.

NANCY: How about clothes and shoes?

BEATRICE: There was Strauss’s ladies apparel, and it is still there.

ROGER: What do they call it now?

BEATRICE: Now it is called Mary Jane’s or Plain Jane’s. I don’t remember exactly. It is still there. Strausses owned it, and their daughter Mary Jane is there now.

NANCY: Oh, she is the owner?

BEATRICE: Yes.

NANCY: How about hardware items?

ROGER: Old Busse’s Hardware.

BEATRICE: And Bierman.

NANCY: And Bierman is spelled how?

ROGER: Bierman.

NANCY: How about farm equipment?

ROGER: That was Frank. Let’s see.

NANCY: Did you need any farm equipment?

BEATRICE: No.

NANCY: How about other supplies? How about for cars?

ROGER: Let’s see. Where did we go? We didn’t buy any here locally. For all the car repairs that we ever needed at that time, we used to go to Busse Buick which is where Northwest Electrical Supply is now. I’ll just add this here. Then they moved to where they are located on Rand Road now. Busse took it over, and then who was it? It wasn’t Joe Retro. That’s the one there now. Joe Mitchell took it over, and he is still there.

NANCY: How about for medicine? Where did you shop?

ROGER: Keefer or Van Dreil. I think we went to Keefer, because he was on this side of the tracks.

NANCY: What other things did the stores carry? What did your family usually buy there besides the groceries, the car repair and shoes?

BEATRICE: Elaine Buffy had the Gift Box on Main Street between Northwest Highway and Busse. It was a card and gift shop.

NANCY: Where was that located?

BEATRICE: It was on Main Street between Northwest Highway and Busse. Owen Baxter had a shoe store on Northwest Highway just north of Central.

ROGER: I guess there is a chop suey place there now.

BEATRICE: There is Sophie’s Polish Deli and an Oriental takeout place.

NANCY: Is that Northwest Highway and Central?

BEATRICE: Yes. At Central. Right. It was great. We used to do a lot of shopping locally.

ROGER: Except for family shopping and Christmas shopping. Then we went either to Evanston or Elgin. It was about 20 miles either way.

NANCY: Do you still go out that way much?

BEATRICE: Not necessarily to Elgin. Sometimes to Old Orchard. Wieboldts was in Evanston. We used to drive out there a lot and shop.

ROGER: There are so many big shopping centers now like Randhurst.

NANCY: Let’s start with you Beatrice on the school that you attended.

BEATRICE: Let’s see. I think I started in Trumbull School in Edgewater.

NANCY: How many years?

BEATRICE: I think I was only there for about three years.

NANCY: And then do you remember your next school?

BEATRICE: Yes. My father built a home in West Rogers Park, and I attended. What was the name of that school on Fairfield?

ROGER: Bowden.

BEATRICE: No.

ROGER: Clinton

BEATRICE: Clinton School. Yes.

NANCY: In Rogers Park?

BEATRICE: In Rogers Park. Until a new school was built about three blocks from where I lived, and that was Daniel Boone School. I graduated from there.

NANCY: How about you, Roger?

ROGER: I also started out at Trumbull School, and then went to Sullivan Junior High. Then I went to Senn High, from which I graduated.

BEATRICE: I did too.

NANCY: What were your favorite subjects or classes?

BEATRICE: Let me see now. I loved manual training. In eighth grade, the girls were allowed to take a semester of manual training, and we had such an adorable teacher. I loved that class. I made a wonderful wicker basket in that class. I loved a lot of other classes, too.

NANCY: But that one stands out in your mind. I think that is great. How about you, Roger?

ROGER: Let’s see. I think that I probably found history as interesting a subject as any I ever had. Others I think I just took, because I had to take something to graduate. I hadn’t formulated any strong desires.

NANCY: How far did you live from your schools? Were you always real close?

BEATRICE: I was close just to the last grade school I went to. I was only a couple of blocks away. For Senn High School, we had to take transportation. That was farther away –a streetcar.

ROGER: There were no buses standing by to take us.

NANCY: A streetcar to Senn High School.

ROGER: You were a farther distance away than I was.

BEATRICE: A little bit.

NANCY: So you got to school via streetcar or walking?

ROGER: Yes. When the weather was decent, we never minded walking at all.

BEATRICE: I didn’t walk very much. It was pretty far.

ROGER: You had almost twice as far as I did, and I lived over a mile.

NANCY: Do you ever get transported by car ever where your dad got the car out?

BEATRICE: No! No! No!

ROGER: People were lucky if they could ride the streetcar in those days. The ones who could afford an automobile for the family were the ones way up in society.

NANCY: What time did school start?

ROGER: 8 a.m. at Senn.

BEATRICE: I don’t remember. I’m thinking that grade school was about 9 a.m.

ROGER: Yes. 9 a.m.

NANCY: What time did you have to get up in the morning to be at school on time?

ROGER: I got up at 6:30 to 6:45 a.m. I guess that’s no different from today.

NANCY: I see that our neighbor’s kids go to the weight room at the high school at 6 a.m.

BEATRICE: We didn’t have anything like that. We didn’t get up for anything like that. We got up in time to eat breakfast, get dressed and go.

NANCY: Before you left for school, did have any chores in the morning?

ROGER: No. That’s one thing that I never had.

BEATRICE: No.

NANCY: Before you went to school, did you eat breakfast?

BEATRICE: Absolutely.

ROGER: Either that or collapsed before the noon hour.

NANCY: Could you describe a typical breakfast meal that you would eat before you went off to school?

ROGER: In the wintertime, it would be a warm cereal I guess. My mother would give us a fried or boiled egg on other mornings. Of course, in summer it would be a dry cereal and either a cup of coffee or glass of milk. And orange juice or some kind of juice.

NANCY: How about you?

BEATRICE: Probably pretty much the same. Toast, a sweet roll or cereal. Milk.

NANCY: Did you bring lunch to school?

BEATRICE: Yes. There was no lunch program.

NANCY: Did you ever go home for lunch?

BEATRICE: Yes. I was close enough. Were you?

ROGER: In grade school, I could do it.

BEATRICE: In high school, we either brought our lunch or bought our lunch.

ROGER: I used to eat in the cafeteria. It was 25 or 30 cents, and I had all I could eat.

BEATRICE: Yes. Right. Sometimes we would go out to one of the little School stores, where they had food. I would get a sandwich or something there, but most of the time we brought our lunch.

NANCY: OK. What was in your lunch or a typical lunch?

BEATRICE: I can remember summer sausage. When I buy summer sausage today or eat a piece of summer sausage, I can remember the sandwiches I took to school. Summer sausage and probably a lot of other things.

NANCY: Just bread and butter or mayonnaise?

BEATRICE: No. It was just a sandwich.

NANCY: Did you ever have sandwich spread? Sandwich spread was something my mother relied heavily on. They still sell it.

BEATRICE: No. It was butter and no margarine. I don’t remember what else. I am sure there were a lot of other things.

NANCY: Summer sausage sandwiches. Was the school lunch at the building in the high school cafeteria anything like barbecues?

ROGER: No. I don’t recall that. I remember one of my favorites used to be German noodles, which was noodles and peas mixed together.

BEATRICE: I don’t remember anything about those. I imagine that I brought lunch more often than going to the cafeteria.

NANCY: Approximately how many students did you have in your classes at school?

ROGER: We used to run about 35 or 40.

NANCY: Would you say that’s the grade school?

BEATRICE: Yes. In grade school.

ROGER: I can remember even in grade school that went a little bit higher. There used to be six rows of eight desks in a row, so that would be 48.

BEATRICE: 48. Absolutely.

ROGER: Teachers would shudder if they thought they had to handle 48 kids today.

NANCY: What was a typical order for the day? Did you start the day with a special song, prayers or Pledge of Allegiance?

ROGER: Pledge of Allegiance.

BEATRICE: Yes.

NANCY: What was a typical day?

BEATRICE: In grade school?

NANCY: I would say grade school.

BEATRICE: I suppose it was the Pledge of Allegiance.

ROGER: And maybe an hour or so of each subject whether it was history, arithmetic or writing classes. We would spend another hour or so reading. We had to read aloud when the teacher would call on us.

BEATRICE: I don’t remember.

NANCY: Did you have spelling bees?

ROGER: Yes. We had that. Usually, we had spelling from 11:30 a.m. to noon. That was the half hour just before we went home for lunch.

NANCY: Do you remember art?

ROGER: Art was another one.

NANCY: Did you have a gym program?

ROGER: Yes.

BEATRICE: Sure. The girls wore black gym bloomers.

NANCY: That was something you changed to, because you wouldn’t have worn those to school, would you have?

BEATRICE: No. We changed to those.

NANCY: The next question is what did you wear to school?

BEATRICE: Skirts, sweaters and blouses. Never slacks. Nobody wore slacks in those days.

NANCY: Was there a dress code? Well, that was that you didn’t wear slacks.

BEATRICE: That’s right. We just didn’t wear slacks. I don’t know that it was a dress code. People just didn’t wear slacks. Women didn’t wear slacks.

NANCY: Men did.

ROGER: They were just starting to wear them then. Mostly in grade school, we were still wearing knickers and sweaters. A favorite of the boys, too, in wintertime were these high-top shoes, if we could get them.

BEATRICE: I remember another subject in grade school that I dearly loved, and that was cooking. We would make little things, and we would have little metal containers with an earthenware dish inside. It had a little cover on it and a handle, and you would cook or bake something in school. Sometimes you were able to put it into the little containers and take it home. I used to love that. I really did. Another thing that I remember is we used to have to wash our desks and bring a jar of some kind of soapwater from home. We would have to wash our desks with it.

NANCY: That’s interesting. How did you carry soapwater?

BEATRICE: In a jar, and it got kind of smelly and moldy in there after awhile. I had a friend who still lives here in Mt. Prospect, and we have known each other since about sixth grade in grammar school. We were gigglers. We would be down there on our hands and knees washing our desks. We probably got down on our hands and knees, because we were giggling so much. We didn’t want the teacher to see us. We would be washing off our desks, and we had inkwells. Some of the boys were very nasty. They would take a girl’s hair and dip it into the inkwells.

ROGER: That’s what I was thinking of here. I was going to bring up the inkwell. How we used to have those straight pens all the time.

BEATRICE: We would dip it into the inkwell.

NANCY: Every now and then did you have it happen that you dipped into the well, brought it up to write and a little drop flew back on the paper?

BEATRICE: I still remember that.

NANCY: Was there anything that your parents refused to let you wear to school?

ROGER: I don’t recall any problems in that day.

BEATRICE: I remember having problems with our own children wanting to wear certain things.

NANCY: But not in your day?

BEATRICE: I don’t remember that.

NANCY: Describe some things you did during your play or recess period or games that were fun and popular to play.

BEATRICE: Baseball for one thing was fun. I can remember one time a gal who was up to bat threw her bat and knocked out the teeth of the teacher. That was Dora Limberafi.

NANCY: Should we put that down to special memories in junior high and high school?

BEATRICE: Sure.

NANCY: Is there anything that was popular at recess?

BEATRICE: I can’t remember what else we did at recess. Probably jump rope. We used to jump rope.

ROGER: The boys I guess used to run around the place and play tag.

BEATRICE: Maybe marbles. There were so many things that they don’t do these days.

NANCY: They still run around.

BEATRICE: Yes. They run around. I bet they don’t shoot marbles.

NANCY: No.

BEATRICE: They lag for pennies now.

NANCY: Do you remember the specific songs that were taught and frequently sung at school?

BEATRICE: Star Spangled Banner. My Country Tis of Thee.

ROGER: Do you remember this one? “Over The Ocean Flies a Fairy Tale.”

BEATRICE: I don’t remember that.

ROGER: That was a very pretty song.

NANCY: But you don’t remember the exact name of it?

ROGER: I couldn’t even begin to say.

BEATRICE: I don’t either. In music, we probably sang a lot of songs, but I don’t remember.

NANCY: What arts and crafts were done at school that were especially memorable and fun?

BEATRICE: Sewing.

ROGER: I don’t know how we would fit it in, but they always used to have a lot of plays. First one class would have to have a play for Thanksgiving. Another one would be for Christmas and Easter. Sometimes, two or three classes would go together. They would need more actors and extras.

NANCY: OK. Now do you have a favorite teacher? You mentioned your manual training teacher?

BEATRICE: I don’t remember his name, but he was a younger person. Boy, I was getting old and sophisticated by that time. He was a dream.

NANCY: Roger, how about you?

ROGER: Let’s see. What was the question? I was reading.

NANCY: A favorite teacher, and why did you like him or her?

ROGER: I can’t think of anyone. I can think of a couple I thought were characters by just the way they conducted themselves and all.

BEATRICE: Some of them were nice, and some of them you couldn’t feel comfortable with. There were others whose classes that you wished you weren’t in.

ROGER: There is one incident I think about very once in awhile. In all my days of grade school and high school, I had one tardiness. I was late one morning. Just as I got to the doorknob to turn it and to go into the homeroom, the bell started to ring. So I got in and closed the door with my hand. The teacher looked at me –this was Myra Smith –and said, “You’re tardy.” I said, “I’m tardy? I’m in the door. She said, “You’re not in your seat.” She was so calm and easygoing about it.

NANCY: That’s quite a record.

ROGER: I don’t know if I could do it today. I liked that too much. I might be tardy all the time.

BEATRICE: I liked my gym teacher, my cooking teachers and some of the other teachers.

NANCY: How would you answer this? –I would never forget the day at Trumbull School when or I would never forget the day at Senn High School when

BEATRICE: I was chewing gum in a science class. Mr. Hoff told me to go out into the hall during the whole class. 1 was very shy, and that was very embarrassing to me.

ROGER: Was that in high school?

BEATRICE: High school.

NANCY: That was a time when no gum was allowed.

BEATRICE: Right. Absolutely. I don’t remember any other particularly embarrassing moments.

NANCY: Roger, how about you?

ROGER: It brings to my mind right now when I was taking Spanish in high school. The teacher was Bertha Vincent and had buttery red hair. She used to wear it in a beehive, just like someone back at the turn of the last century. We had a Jewish boy in class. He was one of these characters who was always in and out of something. He was good kid, but if anything was going to happen to or with anybody it was going to happen with him. He used to come into class and chew gum quite a bit. Miss Vincent said to us when we came into class, “We’ll talk in English now, and I’ll tell you what I expect of you. After than, I expect you to be speaking in Spanish.” This guy, Jack Spector, would come in there and before long would be smacking his jaws with gum. Miss Vincent would say, “Senor Spector, que tiene usted en su boca,” which means “what have you got in your mouth.” He always would say, “Gum.” “No habla en ingles,” which means don’t talk in English just Espanol. She would say, “Es chicle,” which means “it is gum.” Then she would say, “Escupo,” meaning “spit it out.” This would go on a couple of times every week.

BEATRICE: That’s how you remember it.

NANCY: What did you do after school in the way of chores, work or play?

ROGER: I used to work in what was like a Jewel store, but they called it Loblaw. That was a Canadian outfit, and eventually Jewel bought them out.

NANCY: How was it pronounced?

ROGER: Loblaw. Later bought out by Jewel. We used to work there on Saturdays. We would start at 7 a.m., and sometimes we would work up to 11 p.m. or 11:~U p.m. We got three dollars a day for it and thought we were in heaven. Of course, this was in high school. I used to have a paper route from the time I was in seventh or eighth grade until maybe midway through high school. It was an afternoon route.

NANCY: Did children hang out in their free time or where did they hang out?

ROGER: Let’s see. What did we do?

BEATRICE: In grade school, we used to just get together and play all kinds of games.

NANCY After school?

BEATRICE: After school, the girls would jump rope. We would have jacks –throw the ball and pick up the jacks. In the decent weather in the summertime, we even would be out at night. We would play Run Sheep Run and wonderful games where you would run and hide. It was great. In the wintertime, we would go ice skating. In the summertime, we were roller skating and bike riding.

ROGER: What we boys used to do was gather some old lumber and build a hut.

BEATRICE: This was during grade school.

ROGER: Yes. This was grade school.

BEATRICE: As we would progress, then we would do other things. I don’t even remember. There weren’t any malls. We didn’t go to any malls.

ROGER: Another thing the boys used to do, too, in the summertime and when the weather was suitable was go to these city parks and play football. Touch football was what we really did. We used to do a lot of baseball. We would go like to Winnemac Park.

BEATRICE: That’s right, and I was on a basketball team. I was on a Park District basketball team. We did get into some sports.

NANCY: So those were your special memories of junior high and high school? Would you say they were the after-school activities, friends and part-time jobs?

BEATRICE: Yes.

NANCY: Did you baby-sit?

BEATRICE: Yes. I did.

ROGER: I’ve got to tell you one thing, too. On Saturday afternoons, my mother or dad would give me 15 cents to go to the show. It was 10 cents to get into the show and a nickel for a bag of popcorn. Think of the kids doing that today for 15 cents. You couldn’t buy even a bar of candy for that now.

NANCY: We will follow up with your fondest memory of early downtown Mt. Prospect.

ROGER: Downtown Mt. Prospect? I don’t know if this would really be related to that, but I was talking about baseball for boys before. That was another thing when we first moved out here. A lot of merchants in town and a lot of businesses would sponsor these Little League teams. It was all volunteer, and there were several of us dads who would be managers of the teams for the kids and umpires. I even was that for awhile. We used to furnish our own umpires. They were not paid by some other type of professional baseball organization or anything of the sort. This was all on a volunteer basis. Some played in the evenings, and we also could play on Saturday afternoon. However, the things were scheduled.

BEATRICE: Speaking of downtown Mt. Prospect, we lived closed enough to the train station where Roger would take the train and go down to work. It was such a wonderful, rural thing, because we had been raised in the city. It was just great. He would be able to walk to the train, or I would drive him to the train. Coming home, it was the same way picking him up at the train.

ROGER: If I were running a little late in the morning, we used to be able to look out that north window in our home on Hi-Lusi. I could see when the puff of smoke would start to rise when the train was leaving Arlington, so I would say, “Bea, come on and let’s go. We’ve got to get down.” She would drive me. It was about six blocks or something like that. I’d be able to get down to the crossing at Main Street and catch the train in time.

NANCY: That kind of got the steam up.

BEATRICE: A puff of smoke from the steam engine in Arlington would signal.

ROGER: I’ve got to tell you about this. One time I drove the car down there, and Bea was just in her robe for some reason or another. I was so used to taking the key out of the car that I took it out and jumped on the train. There she was with hardly any clothes on. It was one of our neighbors a couple of doors the other side of us who drove you home, and you got your set of keys and drove back.

BEATRICE: I don’t quite remember all that, but I do remember after we moved there that it was so wonderful to look out our kitchen window into our own backyard. Our little children were playing out in our own backyard. That was the biggest thrill.

NANCY: Had you lived in an apartment in the city?

BEATRICE: We had. I lived in a home that my folks had built there. When Roger and I were married, it was right after the war. We lived in an apartment in the same area. We lived there for about five years, didn’t we? It was four or five years in the apartment. Then we came out here, and it was our first home.

NANCY: Just to look out in your own backyard and have a place for your children to play.

BEATRICE: Sure. We lived in an apartment where they had a cement yard, and that’s where our kids played. There was an alley behind it. This home was wonderful. Pheasants would come.

ROGER: Pheasants would come for about a year or two, and then they were gone after that. I can remember even after getting on the train and pulling out of Mt. Prospect on the south side of the tracks there was a cornfield. It wasn’t unusual at all to see two of three pheasants rise out of that while we were going. Out here on Golf Road where Loeman’s Plaza is now there was a line of trees. I can remember one morning when Fred Sheath picked us up, and I was working for Union Oil just north of Woodfield Shopping Center. Looking out there on the snow, we counted eight or nine pheasants walking around out there. They showed up so distinctly in that white snow background.

NANCY: If there one thing that you would want your children to remember about the history of their hometown, what would it be?

ROGER: The relationship that our children had with others in the community. It seemed like there were just little things. It was never difficult to acquire friends or find something to do. They were active all the way, and particularly my daughters have close association with their school friends.

BEATRICE: Their friends from school. They attend their reunions. They just love to see each other, even though they all live far away. None of them lives close.

NANCY: Where do your children live? Did you say one was in Wisconsin?

BEATRICE: Right. Our son the eldest lives in Wisconsin a couple of hundred miles up. Our middle child –a girl –lives in Colorado. The youngest daughter lives in Bloomington, Illinois. They all are married and have children. We have seven grandchildren. They always have loved Mt. Prospect and always were involved in anything that was going on. There was only one school when we first moved here. No. A central school was here in town, but one grade school on the outskirts here. That was the outskirts, and the was Lincoln School. It was brand new when we moved here. David started in first grade there.

NANCY: OK. In that respect as far as schools, but do you think that Mt. Prospect is still a neighborly and friendly community?

BEATRICE: I think so. You just don’t get a chance to know all your neighbors as well.

ROGER: There are a few people that isolate themselves and don’t make any effort.

BEATRICE: We are involved in so many things and have been over the years that we have accumulated many, many friends. We really can’t imagine moving away from our church, activities and friends.

NANCY: What do you think the future holds for this community?

BEATRICE: I think it is going to keep on growing and growing, if there is any property left to build on. I think it always is going to be a family community.

ROGER: I think it will be strictly a bedroom community. There are a few bits of light industry here, but still its limits are defined now.

BEATRICE: When they developed Lions Park, it was fun. Then they had the swimming pool, and our kids used to go over to the swimming pool. After the parades, the parades all would come back to Lions Park. They would have little ceremonies in Lions Park. One thing they had was Folger’s Mountain, and that was probably when Folger’s coffee became popular. They named the high-rise in the ground Folger’s Mountain. It was a little sledding hill. They didn’t ski. Toboggans. That’s what it was. Then at July Fourth, they would shoot fireworks off from that hill. They were not just aerial fireworks. There were ground fireworks that were up the hill and on the sides of the hill. We would sit down below, and they were just absolutely beautiful fireworks. We’ve never seen anything like it since.

NANCY: Do they still do that?

BEATRICE: No. I don’t thing the mountain is there anymore.

ROGER: No. They took Folger’s Mountain down, because people were sledding down there. I guess a couple of children got involved in an accident, and the park district was sued for it. They figured they wouldn’t expose themselves anymore.

NANCY: Was Lions Park like lions in a zoo?

BEATRICE: Lions.

NANCY: It was Lions.

ROGER: It’s right by where Lions Park School is right now.

NANCY: Lions Park. Is that from the Lions organization?

BEATRICE: I would think so, because they would have chicken dinners once a year around July Fourth. They all would be out there cooking chicken on big grills.

ROGER: Yes. The Lions Club. Before they had July Fourth as you say sponsored by the Lions. Now they are over at [Mellow’s] Park on July Fourth. They used to be over at Lions Park.

NANCY: I am going to take additional biographical information then. We will start with Roger A. Johnston.

ROGER: With a “t.”

NANCY: What does the “A” stand for?

ROGER: Albert.

NANCY: Beatrice, what does “C” stand for?

BEATRICE: Carolyn.

NANCY: Your full legal name is?

BEATRICE: Beatrice Carolyn Erickson.

NANCY: Roger, you were born in Chicago.

ROGER: 7/11/15.

NANCY: Roger, your mother’s full name?

ROGER: Anna Charlotte. Her maiden name. Is that what you want?

NANCY: Yes.

ROGER: Croonborg.

NANCY: And your mother’s full name?

BEATRICE: Mabel Agda Shogren.

NANCY: Do you know where your mother was born?

ROGER: Chicago.

NANCY: And how about your mother?

BEATRICE: Chicago.

NANCY: And fathers?

ROGER: Both Chicago. Wait a minute. Your father wasn’t.

BEATRICE: My father was not born in Chicago.

ROGER: My parents were both born in Chicago.

NANCY: Your father’s full name?

ROGER: Albert Mathew. Sometimes it is spelled with a double “t,” but he never used it.

NANCY: And your father’s full name?

BEATRICE: Carl Gustav.

ROGER: Gustav is the ordinary way of spelling it. I don’t know if I ever saw your dad’s full name written out.

BEATRICE: I’m not sure. That’s probably right.

NANCY: Roger, where was your father born?

ROGER: Chicago. My mother also.

NANCY: Bea, now about you?

BEATRICE: My father was born in Sweden.

NANCY: Let’s talk about your children. Yes. I’m going to ask about your children. Do you want to give me the name and age?

BEATRICE: Not the date of birth but the age. David is 50. Susan if you want the whole name is 48. Mary is 43.

ROGER: There is a five-year difference.

NANCY: What was your occupation?

ROGER: I worked with Union Oil Company in lube oil and grease as a supply manager.

NANCY: Bea, what about you?

BEATRICE: I worked for quite a number of years. I was secretary to a fellow who was a secretary of the Illinois Cooperator’s Association. Then I became a preschool teacher. I taught for 20 years.

NANCY: Where did you teach?

BEATRICE: St. Mark’s preschool.

ROGER: Yes. That’s the church here.

NANCY: You joined St. Mark’s on Palm Sunday.

ROGER: 1952. It was one year after we moved out here.

NANCY: Where was it located then?

ROGER: Where it is today. Really, it was on Evergreen then between Pine Street and Willie. Then when they built the church, they took the address of 200 S. Wille Street.

BEATRICE: The entrance is on Wille Street.

NANCY: The new church was built when?

ROGER: I’m trying to think of when that was. I even was on the committee for that, but 1 don’t remember exactly. Rasmussen was still pastor then. I’ve got some old booklets around here that would tell me.

NANCY: You’ve been active members. Have you been in things like choir?

BEATRICE: My goodness sake! In all kinds of committees.

ROGER: Bea was a member of the church council.

BEATRICE: So were you.

ROGER: I was too.

BEATRICE: I was the first woman elected to the church council, as a matter of fact. You were on the church council.

ROGER: I was treasurer and president the last year.

NANCY: How large is that church would you say?

ROGER: I don’t know what it is. Probably closer to 1,200. I think at on time it was over 1,600. But of course, so many churches came around here, and a good part of our membership came from Arlington Heights and Palatine. Many of those people just went back to their own area.

NANCY: What is it?

ROGER: Lutheran.

NANCY: Is it associated with any of the various synods?

ROGER: ELCA –Evangelical Lutheran Church. It’s four letters.

BEATRICE: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It has combined with other Lutheran synods a couple of times.

ROGER: The United Lutheran was separate at one time. They just never have combined with the Missouri synod.

 

Does MPHS have photographs: No

Address in Mount Prospect: Unknown

Birth Date: Unknown

Death Date: Unknown

Marriage
Date: Unknown

Spouse: Unknown

Children: Diane, Betty and Derwood

Interesting information on life, career, accomplishments:

E. H. Janssen was the first dentist in Mount Prospect. For many years he was the only dentist in Mount Prospect. He had an office in Mount Prospect, as well as offices in Chicago and Lombard. However, as Mount Prospect developed he began to spend most of his time here. His first office in Mount Prospect was at 100 E. Northwest Highway, but he later moved to a larger office at 214 E. Emerson.