Naperville honors volunteers who preserve city's past

Marcia Pendexter fondly remembers her days as an educator at Naper Settlement when the museum village started the Underground Railroad program to teach schoolchildren about slavery. Educators took different viewpoints on the issue that were representative of the opinions people held in the mid-19th century.

Pendexter played the role of Mrs. Blodgett, the abolitionist wife of the village blacksmith.

“It was a very powerful program,” she said. “This kind of interpretation really brought history to life and removed it as something from the past.”

Pendexter and her late husband, Hal, will be among a half-dozen new inductees into Naperville Heritage Society's Distinguished Heritage Hall of Honor for their dedication to preserving local history and bringing it to life. The public is invited to the ceremony at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 7, at Naper Settlement's Century Memorial Chapel, 523 S. Webster St., Naperville.

Other inductees are Michael Garlich, Walter S. Newman, Walter and Connie Schall, the Stenger family, and Naperville Hose Company No. 1.

The Pendexters

A former elementary schoolteacher and Campfire Girls leader, Marcia Pendexter joined the Naper Settlement education staff in 1988 and received a thick book of information to study about each building.

Try as she might, she occasionally got a few details wrong — like when a fellow educator whispered in her ear that she was holding a leather horse harness upside down before a group of school kids.

“There was a lot to learn about the 19th century,” Pendexter said.

After retiring as an educator in 1993, she continued to do volunteer work at the settlement. Meanwhile, her husband, Hal, the former senior executive vice president and chief administrative officer of USG Corporation, led his company into becoming a major contributor to the settlement.

“USG was able to donate materials for the Pre-Emption House,” Marcia recalled in a news release provided by Naper Settlement. “He also thought there were so many USG employees in the area, particularly Naperville, that the company should be involved.”

Hal Pendexter served on the Heritage Society's Resources Committee, helping to develop fundraisers for the settlement, including an Old-Fashioned Circus that was held for 10 years. He joined the heritage society's board in 2006.

“He thoroughly enjoyed working with people who had ideas and talent,” Marcia said.

Together, the couple supported the heritage society for more than 20 years and USG continues to be the society's largest corporate donor.

Hal Pendexter passed away in January after a battle with lymphoma. Marcia and her family, who spend part of the summer in Maine, will come in for the ceremony.

“It's very nice to be so remembered,” she said. “We are very honored.”

Michael Garlich

Naperville resident Mike Garlich got involved with Naper Settlement in 1979 when the heritage society needed volunteers to help build Fort Payne.

“How often in your life do you get a chance to build a log fort?” he said, as quoted in Naper Settlement's news release.

A structural engineer by profession, Garlich's love of carpentry and woodworking soon led him to join the settlement's Restoration Crew. He warmly remembers Saturday mornings spent working on the buildings.

“It was fun,” he said. “I learned a lot from some of the gentlemen who were more knowledgeable than I was.”

In fact, his wife, Deberah, was surprised one Saturday when she came to pick up their 2-year-old son, Jeffrey, and found him on the barn roof with the rest of the crew.

Deberah and Mike served as chairmen of Joe Naper Days, co-chairmen of a group that provided food for the antiques show fundraiser that the society held for many years, and Deberah volunteered as a guide at the Murray House. One year, the couple won a prize for the best costume at the society's Heritage Ball.

Mike Garlich attended classes in North Carolina and Cooperstown, N.Y., to become a blacksmith and shared his skills by serving in the settlement's blacksmith shop. He said he enjoyed talking to visitors and finding out that some of them, like himself, had ancestors who had been blacksmiths.

“My great-great-granddad was a blacksmith, among other things,” he said.

Garlich served on the heritage society board for 10 years, and as president from 1985 to 1987. While he was president, construction started on the Pre-Emption House Visitor Center and the formerly all-volunteer society began to hire paid staff. He also served as the heritage society representative on the city's Museum and Settlement Board for several years.

While no longer as involved with the heritage society as he would like to be, Garlich maintains his interest in it and continues to add to his own collection of blacksmith and antique woodworking tools.

“It's a wonderful group of people,” he said. “I love history. Anything to do with history, I've always enjoyed.”

Walter S. Newman

When Walter S. Newman became Naperville's director of community development in 1976, the historical society was putting plaques on old houses, but the city had no ordinances about what could or couldn't be done to them.

The city's historic district had been created by the state, and regulations came into play, only if federal funds were involved with a project.

Newman had two degrees in architecture and had been deeply involved with historic preservation while serving in Cleveland, Ohio. The Naperville City Council directed him to prepare a report regarding preservation.

“It was a labor of love,” he said.

Based on Newman's report, the city council opted to steer a middle course on historic preservation, neither taking a laissez-faire approach or total control. The council then had him and the city attorney draw up the Historic Preservation Ordinance and created a Historic Sites Commission.

As the commission's first executive secretary, Newman set the agenda and used his position with the city not to issue permits when the commission made decisions he felt were inappropriate. He also spearheaded the writing of Naperville's first Comprehensive Plan, setting the tone for development for years to come.

“He put together all of the city's ordinances, zoning and policies to regulate development. If Walter hadn't been there, it would be a different community,” said then-city attorney Craig Cobine, as quoted in Naper Settlement's news release.

Newman retired from the city in 1995, but has not lost his interest in Naperville or historic preservation.

A volunteer for the historical society, he helps archive news articles and serves as a source of information on Naperville's growth from the 1970s through the 1990s. He has recorded an oral history interview and donated old maps and photographs of his own for the archives. The photos have included pictures he took during a helicopter ride in the 1970s when I-88 was under construction.

The Schalls

Walter and Connie Schall met while working at the Kroehler Manufacturing Company in Kankakee and moved to Naperville in 1954 when a job transfer brought them to the company's headquarters.

They quickly made their new community their home, volunteering with numerous organizations and becoming charter members of the Naperville Heritage Society when it formed in 1969.

“I think the idea of the Naperville Heritage Society was a perfect niche for them,” said Nancy Kneer, one of the couple's four daughters, in an email interview. “They already knew most of the founders of NHS, so it was a fun project for them both to work on together.”

Walter served as the volunteer chairman of the building and grounds for 20 years and on the heritage society's board from 1979 to 1982. The plant manager of Kroehler until his retirement in 1979, he literally dived into Dumpsters to save memorabilia after the company decided to close the plant and stored the artifacts until the historical society was ready to receive them.

Connie also served a stint on the board and was an integral part of the Quilt Ladies, who raffled off their first quilt at the historical society's Antiques Show in 1970. She continued to quilt on behalf of the society until her death in 1996, Kneer said. Walter passed away in 2002.

Both served on numerous heritage society committees and fundraisers, Kneer said. They involved their daughters in the work as well. Kneer was a high school junior when her mother talked her into clearing off tables in the eating area at the Antique Show and two of her sisters remember selling quilt raffle tickets.

The Schalls scrubbed floors, scrapped paint and were pleased to see their work come to fruition, Kneer said.

“They loved being a part of Joe Naper Days,” she said.

Her parents also would have been pleased to be inducted into the Heritage Hall of Honor, she said.

“Oh my! Dad would be so very proud and honored! He'd flash his big, toothy smile and strut around posing for as many pictures as possible! Mom was more humble, but she'd be right by Dad's side,” she said.

The Stenger family

As a child growing up in Naperville, Ron Stenger played in underground tunnels that crisscrossed downtown without knowing they had once stored beer brewed by the Stenger Brewery.

His great-great-great grandfather, Peter Stenger, an immigrant from Bavaria, had run the brewery with his sons, Nicholas and John. From 1849 to 1893, Stenger Brewery was the biggest employer in Naperville.

Ron Stenger stumbled into another bit of family history when, as a high school student, he visited the Martin Mitchell Mansion that is now part of Naper Settlement and saw the trunk that John Stenger used during the Gold Rush.

“It used to be put on the back of stagecoaches,” he said.

As an adult, Stenger funded the restoration of the trunk and helped restore the Stenger Brewery limestone sign, now on display in the Brushstrokes of the Past … Naperville's Story” exhibit in Naper Settlement's Pre-emption House Visitor Center. A portion of Franklin Avenue, where the brewery was once located, recently was renamed “Stenger Brewery Parkway.”

A sixth-generation Stenger living in Naperville, Stenger and his father's cousin, Paul, funded the 2006 documentary “Two Brothers, One Beer, and the American Dream,” produced by Naperville Community Television Channel 17.

“That was an exciting time,” he remembered. “Got us acquainted with relatives all over the country.”

He, his wife Claudia, and son Nicholas also have volunteered at events at Naper Settlement, where Nicholas served as a junior and teen interpreter for three years.

“I'm pleased we can help contribute to the history of the town,” Ron Stenger said. “Part of why we did it was to encourage others to step forward.”

Hose Company No. 1

Dennis Adamski, retired assistant chief of the Naperville Fire Department, had been a firefighter in Naperville only a couple of years when the late Jane Sindt told the department that there was an old pumper sitting on her lot and asked them to take it.

The 1874 Joe Naper pumper, the first piece of firefighting equipment the city purchased, is still owned by the fire department, but housed at Naper Settlement.

“We spent a little better than a year restoring the Joe Naper pumper,” Adamski said, recalling they completed the restoration in 1974 in time for the department's 100th anniversary.

Adamski spent most of his 32-year firefighting career in Naperville, serving in the fire station downtown that now houses Lou Malnati's Pizzeria at 131 W. Jefferson Ave. The original 1888 fire house had stood across the street, he said.

“When I started, we had one station. Today, we have 10,” he said.

Over the years, as the fire service grew and changed, old uniforms, badges, photographs and other memorabilia piled up at the firehouses. After Adamski retired in 2003, he and other retired and active-duty firefighters decided to do something to save their history. They asked the Naperville Heritage Society for help.

“We felt more confidence in the direction and what we were doing,” he said. “This kind of history has to be tracked.”

The Public Safety Preservation Project started in 2009 and the community was invited to share their memorabilia and stories. Since then, heritage society registrar Sarah Buhligh and retired firefighter/paramedic Mike Andler have visited each of the city's 10 fire stations to let firefighters know about the project.

Artifacts have been inventoried and stored, and oral histories recorded of retired fire personnel and members of the ladies' auxiliary.

To help with the effort, Adamski and other firefighters officially founded Naperville Hose Company No. 1 in May 2010. He said he is pleased their dedication to preserving the fire department past has been recognized.

“They feel we have brought a whole new factor of Naperville's history into being,” he said.

If you go

<b>What</b>: Distinguished Heritage Hall of Honor induction

<b>When</b>: 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 7

<b>Where</b>: Naper Settlement's Century Memorial Chapel, 523 S. Webster St., Naperville

<b>Cost</b>: Free

<b>Info</b>: (630) 420-6010 or <a href="http://www.napersettlement.museum

">napersettlement.museum</a>