Notable Northwest suburban deaths in 2014
We said goodbye to several notable Northwest suburban residents in 2014. They left indelible marks on their communities through impressive accomplishments and dedicated community service.
Mary Cadigan
One of the original board members of Journeys The Road Home, in Palatine, Cadigan was a driving force for the homeless and accessible services. Cadigan started volunteering for the Hope Center in the late 1980s, in the lower level of the Wheeling Township building in Arlington Heights. A year later, she was a prominent part of the public debate to obtain an empty warehouse in Palatine for the new combined headquarters. In 2006, she was named Journey's Outstanding Community Member and Volunteer.
Phil Crusius
A prominent member of the Arlington Heights Elementary District 25 board since 2009, Crusius also was a well-known community volunteer — he coached Science Olympiad at South Middle School and was the tech coordinator for South's drama department; he was an assistant scoutmaster with Boy Scouts, a volunteer with PADS homeless shelters, a member of United Methodist Church and once ran for Arlington Heights village board.
Robert Depke
A larger-than-life personality in Lake County politics for decades, Depke was county board chairman in the 1960s and 1990s and was nicknamed “Bulldozer Bob” in the 1980s when he helped expedite the growth of corporate giants Baxter International and Abbott Laboratories. When the federal government threatened to close the Great Lakes Naval Station in the early 1990s, Depke was one of the key figures fighting to keep the base near North Chicago. The county board named a new facility after him — the Robert W. Depke Juvenile Justice Complex near Vernon Hills.
Edward T. Duffy
From his early years on the Chicago police force Duffy had an extensive career in both the public and private sector. With the state of Illinois he headed the Dangerous Drugs Commission, the Department of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse, the Department of Public Aid, and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Gov. Jim Thompson. In the private sector, Duffy oversaw the rebuilding of Arlington Park Racetrack as president and then later the transformation of Sportsman's Park into a dual-purpose facility that brought world class auto racing to Illinois with Chicago Motor Speedway.
Ray Hartstein
The founding chairman of Oakton Community College in Des Plaines and to many its driving force, Hartstein “put his blood, sweat and tears into making a college that everybody can be proud of,” eulogized his son, Buffalo Grove Village President Elliott Hartstein. OCC President Margaret Lee called Hartstein “the father of Oakton,” saying, “If it hadn't been for Ray, I'm not sure that the college would have happened.” He was on the Oakton board for 35 years and OCC's Evanston campus bears his name. Hartstein was president of the Illinois Community College Trustees Association, which annually gives out the Ray Hartstein Outstanding Trustee Award.
Ida “Dolly” Hein
Dolly and her husband, Gordon, started some Wheeling area businesses, including a Mobil gas station on Dundee Road, a series of auto parts stores and in 1976 they purchased a restaurant that they named Hein's Pub. Dolly Hein immersed herself in the community — lobbying for the Wheeling Park District to purchase and renovate Chevy Chase Country Club and to build the Aquatic Center and Community Recreation Center. Named a “Super Senior” in 2001 she was grand marshal of the July Fourth parade, and served on multiple village commissions.
Jim Lancaster
A respected suburban businessman with Bank of Elk Grove, he retired in 1997 as the president and chief executive officer of NBD Illinois. Lancaster was active in a number of business groups in the Northwest suburbs, and served on the Harper College Educational Foundation as both a board member and president. He was an active supporter of Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, serving on its governing council and on the Advocate Charitable Foundation Board.
Catherine M. Lee
A sitting board member of Northwest Suburban High School District 214's Continuing Education Foundation and the driving force behind its ESL training and literacy for immigrant women has died, Catherine Lee of Barrington also was the catalyst behind District 214's Women and Children's Center, which opened in 2000 at Forest View Educational Center in Arlington Heights. Foundation officials renamed the center in her honor in April 2012. Lee also was elected to two terms on Barrington Unit District 220's school board, including as its first woman president.
Harold Lipofsky
The former owner of Lipofsky`s Department Store, which anchored a corner of Barrington's downtown for more than 100 years until it was destroyed by fire in 1989, Lipofsky founded the Barrington Rotary Club in 1960, was a Barrington trustee from 1975 to 1979, was a founding member of the Barrington Area Chamber of Commerce and was active in Scouting. What started in 1896 as S. Lipofsky & Sons, became Lipofsky's Department Store when Harold took over after returning from World War II. He and his fathers and brothers built the Roy Wilmering Scout Cabin in 1934, still used by both Girl and Boy Scouts. The Harold Lipofsky Fund assists Barrington area organizations and projects.
Jack Roeser
Founder of Otto Engineering in Carpentersville and a big-time supporter of conservative politics and Republican politicians, Roeser was credited with revitalizing an area along the Fox River when he moved his company there from Morton Grove. In 2013, it had more than 500 employees and sales of more than $79 million. Roeser founded the Family Taxpayer Foundation, which advocated reform of the public education system through free market principles, such as school choice and school vouchers, as well as flexible education options that address the needs of each individual student. He was an early supporter of Tea Party politics, and ran against Gov. Jim Edgar in the 1994 Republican primary.
Tom Rueckert
The Maine Township assessor for 29 years, Rueckert was also a longtime member of the Maine Township High School District 207 school board and chairman of the Oakton College Law Enforcement Advisory Committee. A retired criminal investigator for the Illinois Department of Revenue, Rueckert had been a prosecuting attorney for the city of Des Plaines and an active member of the Maine Township Regular Republican Organization.
Ted Scanlon
A village president (1965-1977) who steered Wheeling from a quaint, small town to commercial and residential growth, Scanlon was one of the patriarchs in a family with more than 100 years of service to Wheeling, starting with his father, Walter Scanlon, who served in the volunteer fire department in the early 1900s. Scanlon's son, Dave, is a longtime employee of the village's public works department. Ted Scanlon also was a volunteer fireman and the village's police magistrate. president of the Northwest Municipal Conference and was a founding member of the St. Joseph the Worker Catholic parish in Wheeling.
Jack Siegel
The “dean of Illinois municipal law,” Siegel stood up for Arlington Heights in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and saved Schaumburg from a premature demise during his more than five-decade career. He also served at various times as attorney for Barrington, Bartlett, Evanston, Lombard, Mount Prospect, Rolling Meadows, Rosemont, Riverwoods and Skokie, and played a crucial role in the creation of home rule authority for Illinois' larger communities. His case, Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., led to a landmark 1977 ruling upholding a village's right to dictate where multifamily housing could be located. Siegel's place in Schaumburg's history includes defending a legal challenge to the village's incorporation in the 1950s, drawing up its zoning ordinances and master plan, helping create its park district and writing land-use covenants that protected the status of Spring Valley Nature Center. “It's safe to say that without Jack Siegel, there wouldn't be a Schaumburg,” Mayor Al Larson said.
Eugene Schlickman
A veteran Illinois lawmaker and a former Arlington Heights trustee, Schlickman was known for being a champion of prison reform and disability rights, who worked to secure funding for education and art programs in state prisons and pushed for overhauls of mental health facilities. Was on the Arlington Heights village board five years until winning a seat in the legislature in 1964. After retiring from public office in 1980, he practiced law in Arlington Heights and co-authored “Kerner: The Conflict of Intangible Rights,” a biography of former Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner. He also cowrote the first biography on Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
Joanna Sojka
A freshman Des Plaines alderman, Sojka, 29, was already making a name for herself as a rising young leader, committed to problem-solving and helping others. Sojka quickly became involved in the community after buying her first condominium in Des Plaines in 2011. Her sister says she attended condo board meetings and then joined Mayor Matt Bogusz's mayoral campaign. At the same time Bogusz was elected the youngest mayor in Des Plaines history at 26, Sojka — a fellow Northwestern University graduate — won a three-way race of her own for alderman.
Robert Steingraber
As Hersey High School's first basketball coach, his 1974 squad was the first Mid-Suburban League team to advance to the Elite Eight. Steingraber coached the Huskies from 1968 to 1977 — including former Chicago Bull Dave Corzine. Steingraber worked 34 years for Northwest Suburban High School District 214, including at Buffalo Grove and Rolling Meadows high schools. He taught driver's education, physical education and math, while coaching basketball, tennis and volleyball. In later years Steingraber was one of 18 veterans interviewed by St. Viator High School students for their book, “Lest We Forget: Arlington Heights' Korean War Veterans.”
Rena Trevor
Her mother helped found the Chicago chapter of the Ladies Garment Workers Union, but Rena Trevor had her own credentials. Outraged by the violence of “Bloody Sunday,” the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery that was beaten back on the Pettis Bridge, she and her sister caught a bus to Selma, Alabama for the follow-up march. She co-founded the Women's Center at Harper College in the early 1970s and twice led the local LWV chapter as president. As Rolling Meadows' welfare officer she distributed funds from the city's temporary family assistance fund.
Jim Walsh Sr.
A gregarious titan of the Chicago newspaper industry, the longtime Des Plaines resident Walsh divided a 40-year advertising career between the Chicago Tribune and Daily Herald. The 6-foot 6-inch former Michigan State University basketball player joined a grueling 2011 expedition to the jungles of Papua New Guinea to search for missing World War II fighter planes.
Harold Weary
Weary probably had more recognitions and awards in Mount Prospect than just about anyone. In 1988, the Mount Prospect Public Library board named the library's genealogy collection in his honor because, by that time, he'd given it more than 20 years of service. An avid genealogist, Weary helped found the Northwest Suburban Council of Genealogists. Seven years later the village honored him with the “Living Legend Shining Star” award for service to the library, the Mount Prospect Historical Society and Trinity United Methodist Church.
In 2007 he was honored by the Mount Prospect Sunrise Rotary Club with the John McNamara Service Above Self Award. Finally, in 2011, Weary was given the library's Founders' Award for exceptional work that included logging over 10,000 volunteer hours. Weary was a founding member of the Mount Prospect Public Library Foundation, stepping down only on the occasion of his 105th birthday.