HS Board

By Ray Limbach 
VFW Post 1337 Historian 
and
Bill Starr
Commander, American Legion Post 525

When the virus hit, little was known. When it came out that the most vulnerable were the older adults, and the number of people dying in retirement and elderly care environments, Mount Prospect’s veterans groups had to take precautions. For instance, many members were scheduled for an Honor Flight to Washington D.C., which was cancelled. Many other events were cancelled, as well, as the veterans took all the precautions that were advised.

Most began a self-quarantine program beginning in March. Getting masks and cleaning wipes (not to mention tissue and toilet paper) was next to impossible. We began to video contact our loved ones. We only went out when necessary and learned to keep distance between individuals. All stores that were open required masks and social distancing, with well-placed markers on where to stand and how to travel between aisles. 

With all the uncertainties that each of our members went through, the leadership of both VFW Post 1337 and American Legion Post 525 continued to move forward. Virtual meetings via Zoom were set up to inform and advise on the current situation. Many members met virtually, by computer or over the phone. 

May is always a busy time for both posts. Poppy Day for both posts (May 14th) was held via two separate GoFundMe sites. Members also solicited donations at the Mount Prospect Farmer’s Market several weeks during the summer and the public was very generous. So, the Poppy coffers were replenished. 

Grave Decoration Day was held in May, as usual. Members of both posts met to decorate approximately 300 graves at 20 separate cemeteries. The Posts also honored all the service workers who were actively protecting them during the COVID crisis with a banner in front of the downtown police and fire station. Masks were worn and all safety precautions were observed. 

The Memorial Day parade and ceremony of May 2020 was cancelled, but some members quietly met at the Veteran Memorial without members of the public to honor fallen comrades. 

For members of the public, a video was made of previous parades and posted online. In addition, Legion Commander Starr, who annually serves as the Master of Ceremonies for Memorial Day, filmed a short message which was broadcast via the Mt. Prospect Park District website, along with Memorial Day thoughts from VFW member and American Legionnaire Kyle Brooks who had been scheduled to speak at the 2020 ceremony. 

The traditional “What Memorial Day means to me” essay contest was hosted by the VFW, despite COVID. Other years the winner had ridden in a convertible and be invited to read his/her entry at the Memorial Day ceremony itself. Instead, the 2020 winner Stephanie Bennet’s winning paper was posted on the VFW website. 

Per usual, the American Legion gave awards to Junior High School students at six different graduations – virtually. The awards included boy/girl Citizenship, Academic and All School Medallions along with an official Certificate of Appreciation to all deserving students at all schools as normal but, of course, virtually. 

The VFW also gave out Patriots Pen awards to grade school students, “Voice of Democracy” awards to high school students and other honors to first responders (fireman and police), one Eagle Scout and two teachers who progressed through the process to be made State VFW Teacher Award recipients. 

Both groups were also quite active with charitable events during the COVID year. For instance, both VFW and American Legion members chose to help fund the acquisition of flat screens for the LaSalle Veterans Home so that residents there could also keep in contact with their loved ones during the COVID crisis. 

The American Legion was unable to continue its tradition of hosting a monthly BINGO game at the Lovell VA Hospital in Lake County, so instead they voted to send $300 per month to the veterans so they could purchase items like snacks from the canteen. 

The American Legion did manage to hold their traditional golf outing at the Mt. Prospect Golf Course which exclusively benefits TLS Veterans of Crystal Lake. TLS is a nonprofit exclusively devoted to supporting homeless veterans. It would have been easy to cancel this event as the virus was still running high but bravely and in the open air, 72 golfers attended the event and were given a unique face mask for the day. No meal was served in the clubhouse, however. Thanks to the event, the TLS Veterans group was presented with a check for $7,752.56. 

The Legion and VFW also continued to hold “Wake Ceremonies” for deceased members, but we had to make adjustments. We could not, of course, meet at the funeral home as we normally would, but instead provided a very well received (by the families) presence at the cemetery where up to 20 uniformed veterans from both the American Legion and VFW lined the roadway (properly distanced and masked) to come to attention, salute, play TAPS and pay final respect to our comrade as the hearse paused on the way to the gravesite. we attended approximately eight of these ceremonies during the COVID pandemic. 

In November Veterans Day was marked with a unique ceremony at Village Hall which was televised with the help of the Mount Prospect TV personnel.

The virtual ceremony contained the same ingredients as it had in years past, but it was necessary to pre-record parts of the ceremony which could not be done in person due to the pandemic. Those that were pre-recorded were the 21-gun salute, The National Anthem music, keynote speaker address, TAPS played by Prospect High band member and greetings and songs from schoolchildren. Live portions of the program included: beginning and ending prayers, patriotic songs played and sung live, and the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. All segments – both live and recorded — were expertly melded together for the ceremony by Steve Martini and Howard Kleinstein of MPTV. It is estimated that thousands of students watched the ceremony live or viewed it via YouTube later that day. 

The local VFW and American Legion Post leadership had also been planning to host an inaugural Thanksgiving meal for sailors from the Great Lakes Training Center, but that did not happen in 2020, due to the pandemic. 

Early in 2021 both the VFW and the American Legion moved their meetings from the Arlington Heights Post 208 to the VFW’s original home at the Mount Prospect Moose Lodge 660 on Main Street. The VFW constructed it with volunteer labor and had met there from 1950 until 1983 when they could no longer afford to maintain it and sold it to Moose Lodge 660.

During the pandemic, VFW representatives met with Moose Lodge representatives and worked out an agreement for the Post to once again hold their meetings back at their former home.  American Legion Post 525 did the same.

In early 2021, many members were able to get their Pfizer COVID shots at Hines VA Hospital. Service officer Dutch DeGroot sent out the information as soon as it was available. Nevertheless, their meetings still practiced social distancing and masks. 

We also began planning for 2021 events like the annual Mount Prospect Veterans picnic in August; an outing up to Milwaukee for a Cubs game; their annual Christmas Dinner; and an inaugural effort to host Naval training boots for a Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner. We hope our Honor Flight will eventually take place as well. Time will tell. We are also looking to resume our various state and national conventions.  

As the Covid crisis eases, we are and must be still on our guard. In April 2021, we held an open house with the Lions, Moose and American Legion and VFW Posts. It was attended by many in the community with their children (they loved the balloons). A member of both Posts, VFW Post 1337 Junior Vice Commander Tony Cuellar even brought down an armored vehicle and all were interested.

For Memorial Day 2021 the usual ceremony was held – but without the parade. The Park District painted white circles in the grass to assist the 1200-strong crowd maintain social distancing. The Mt. Prospect Community Band could not attend, as they normally would have, so they were very ably replaced by a lovely soloist, Debbie Schreiner, from Saint Paul Lutheran Church who led the crowd in singing “God Bless America,” “America the Beautiful,” and the “Star Spangled Banner.” Major Paul Knudtson, an Illinois Veteran, gave a moving speech. After the ceremony, a luncheon was held at the Moose Hall for members of both organizations.

VFW Post 1337 and American Legion Post 525 are known for being some of the most active veterans organizations in the area – no matter the challenges — because Mount Prospect veterans are proud of their community.  Incidentally, it bears noting that John “Dutch” DeGroot was nominated for VFW Member of the Year in 2021 and Les Durov will become the VFW State Safety Director as of July 1, 2021.

Friedrichs Funeral Home has been a part of the Mount Prospect community since 1958 and during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21, it was run by Hank Friedrichs Jr., grandson of the founder.

Unlike businesses that simply had to figure out how to continue to ply their trades during a tragic time with repeated lock-downs, funeral homes had to figure out how to do business while also physically dealing with people’s loved ones who had died of a myriad of diseases and causes, including the scary and new COVID-19 virus. 

Over a 14-month span, Friedrichs handled arrangements for 35 COVID victims, as well as many more who died of other medical conditions, accidents, old age and so forth.

“Like every business, COVID affected us tremendously overnight,” Friedrichs recalled. “In the beginning, nobody knew how COVID was really transmitted and how long the virus could live in the air. We were picking up folks who had passed away from COVID – which was a concern. We were using safety precautions, but also, there were folks who had passed away from the COVID who had probably exposed family members to COVID and we were, in some cases, having contact with those family members.  So, we were very concerned about exposure to COVID,” Friedrichs recalled.

And in the early days, he admitted that they – like everybody else – got caught flatfooted and only had about ten full PPE sets of equipment on hand. “And that was not going to be nearly enough to get us through the COVID time. Our suppliers – the people we buy our funeral industry supplies from – really came through on the PPE for us. They kept us supplied with PPE throughout the COVID times and we were very thankful for that.”

“One of the things we did here, because of that concern, was to cut our staff back. We continued to keep the part-time staff who do all the clerical and cleaning and that type of stuff on the payroll, but we told them to stay home. I’ve got two funeral directors and two hearse drivers and I made two teams of two and they would work every other day.  I did that so that the chance of an entire staff coming down with COVID was limited because they were not around each other. I do have to say that the teams of two did the work of a team of about five people. My staff really came through for us.”

Another major change Friedrichs Funeral Home had to make involved technology.  “When somebody passes away, the family comes into the funeral home and we make arrangements.  That is how it has been done for years,” he explained. “But when COVID hit, families didn’t want to come into the funeral home and, quite honestly, we weren’t sure we wanted families coming into the funeral home. So, we had to learn how to make that initial arrangement session using technology and between Facetime and Zoom calls, we were able to do that.”

They also had to figure out how to let people choose caskets, vaults and printed materials from their homes.  So, the technology of just the arrangement session was a big change, right from the beginning, he explained. 

Figuring out how to livestream funerals so that people could watch from home was the next hurdle. 

“We’re not IT people here but we had to start livestreaming – and reliably livestreaming – services.  When I say reliably, you don’t want to tell a family that you have that technology (and they have 30 or 40 people sitting in their homes) and suddenly it’s not coming up and they can’t see the funeral service.  So, there was a lot of pressure on us to get a reliable livestreaming service going.” 

The types of funeral services offered also had to change – literally over night!

“A majority of the services that we have here at Friedrichs are what we call “traditional funerals”. This involves a one-night visitation (usually from 3 until 9) and then a funeral service or funeral Mass the next day and off to the cemetery.  Immediately that stopped.”

During the pandemic they, of course, followed the CDC and state guidelines and limited services to ten people. 

“So, a lot of folks – right at the beginning – were just meeting at a cemetery. Others that did want to have more of a traditional type of funeral, meaning a viewing, held a one-hour viewing in the morning, for ten people – and then it was off to the cemetery. And that is how, for the first several months of the COVID, we were doing funerals.  You couldn’t have more than ten people, so people didn’t want to come here and sit for six hours in the afternoon, so they came for one hour in the morning,” Friedrichs explained.

“During this time, it was quite heartbreaking because we had to tell people that they could only have ten people in the funeral home for their loved one’s funeral,” he continued. “Oftentimes, that doesn’t cover the immediate family. We had one family with eight kids.  They couldn’t even bring their spouses, much less the grandchildren or brothers and sisters, to the funeral.   For us, that was hard.”

“No families ever fought us on that because we were all in this together, but when you want to offer compassion in a final sendoff for somebody’s loved one, you want to be able to do your best and by only allowing ten people, we felt like we weren’t doing that.”

Friedrichs said that as time went on, the state requirements changed, and they were able to increase the number of people in the funeral home to 50.  

“This was nice. It still didn’t really open up and allow for a traditional funeral, but it did allow more people to come in. The advantage we have here at Friedrichs is we have two chapels and the wall between them can come down and it can become one very large chapel. So, throughout the entire COVID time, whether there were ten people or 50 people permitted, we were always able to have plenty of room for people to “social distance” in the funeral home.”

“Even today, toward the end of the COVID era, we still don’t see a lot of traditional funerals coming back,” he continued.  “We have more, but we still see a lot of the one-hour (in the morning) wakes and services and I don’t know if ‘traditional funerals’ will ever again be a majority of the services we do. That is yet to be seen.”

“But making arrangements by computer has already gone away. People are more willing to come into the funeral home now.”

Livestreaming of funerals, on the other hand, is here to stay. 

Looking back, Friedrichs said that limiting the number of people who could come to a funeral was hard for them to deal with. They were never really overrun with COVID deaths.  The number of funerals they did during COVID was a little bit higher than the previous year or two, but those fluctuations happen in their industry. 

Actually, Friedrichs said that the death rate during COVID kind of mirrored what they normally see in the fall and winter when the first flu virus goes through nursing homes.  COVID was much more deadly and much more contagious, he admitted, but the death rate mirrored what they normally see during different times of the year and they were never really overrun with COVID deaths. 

“I think that the one thing I will personally remember is that it was almost hopeless for everybody at the beginning of COVID. There was really no light at the end of the tunnel.  It was a sad time. I’ve never lived through something like that,” he recalled.

“I lived through 9/11 and that was a horrible tragedy. But within days after 9/11, while things changed all over the world, things were starting to get back to normal here,” he continued. “With COVID, we went for over a year with things not being normal and just as human beings, we’re not built to be able to deal with that.  It was very hard on me, personally. and I’m not saying anything that I’m sure anybody else out there who has lived through the last year and a couple months would say differently.”

In the late spring of 2021, he added, Friedrichs Funeral Home was notified by their national association that FEMA had come up with a plan to give up to a $9,000 reimbursement to families whose loved ones had died of COVID. So, the Friedrichs staff went back through their records and notified every family that had a loved one who died of COVID that they were eligible for that money and relayed what they needed to do to access it.