Longtime Geneva parks leader Esping dies at 94

Stanley Esping was a milkman. He would get up around 1 a.m., drive to Oatman’s Dairy in Aurora, harness a horse to a milk wagon, then return to Geneva to make deliveries. He would get home at 6 p.m.

When he heard in 1953 that the Geneva Park District was looking to hire someone, he decided it was time for a job closer to his Geneva home.

It turned into a 25-year career as executive director of the district, followed by four more years of volunteer service as a parks commissioner.

Esping died Wednesday at age 94.

The Geneva Park District was formed by referendum in 1953 and, before that, the parks were run by the city. When Esping started the job, there were only four parks: Wheeler, Dryden, Island and McKinley.

In a 2003 story about the district’s 50th anniversary, Esping said Wheeler “was just a great big weed patch” and Dryden was just a hayfield. “There was not a tree on it or anything on it, for that matter,” he said.

And through much of the 1950s, Esping was the sole permanent employee.

“He pretty much learned on the fly” how to take care of and develop parks, said his son, Spence Esping.

He would attend annual conferences run by Indiana University, and pick the brains of local park and forest preserve experts such as Gunnar Anderson. He had a greenhouse built near the city’s sewage treatment plant, to raise flowers for the parks.

He and park commissioners lobbied for a change in state law in the 1950s so that the district could team with the Geneva school district to build a gymnasium at the old Geneva High School.

Esping’s goal was “just to give everybody the best recreational park facilities that could be made” with the money available, Spence Esping said. His work days were still long, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Esping retired in 1978 and in 1979 was elected to the park board for a four-year term.

In 1987 the board surprised him by renaming the Esping-designed Ridgewood Park after him. “That would be his pride and joy,” Spence Esping said.

He remained a fan of the district, and was impressed by its current facilities.

“This is wonderful,” he said in 2003. “It’s like your kid growing up and when he grows up, and amounts to something.”

Esping was a member of the Geneva Rotary Club and had 38 years of perfect attendance at its weekly meetings. The club offers a college scholarship in his honor.

The wake for Esping will be from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday at Malone Funeral Home, 324 E. State St., Geneva. The funeral is at 10 a.m. Monday at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, 1145 N. Fifth Ave. (Route 25), St. Charles.

Memorial contributions can be made to the church; the Geneva Rotary Club; the park district; or the Geneva History Center.