Founder of Hoffman Estates fire service mourned

One of the first homeowners in what would soon be Hoffman Estates, as well as a designer of oil refineries all over the world, Mark Dick instinctively understood the need for fire protection in his fledgling community.

Dick, the first commissioner of the Hoffman Estates Fire Protection District, was memorialized at a Schaumburg service last weekend, eight months after he died of cancer at his California home. He was 94.

His wife, Mittie, who was the first kindergarten teacher in her community - first at Our Saviour's United Methodist Church and then at Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54 - is now planning to move back to the area and reside at Friendship Village of Schaumburg.

Mark, a World War II Army Air Corps veteran, with Mittie and their daughters Lorane and Wanda became only the 12th family to move to the future Hoffman Estates on Christmas Day 1955.

Before long, Mark turned his attention to establishing the fire protection district, Mittie said.

"He worked on this for about two years," she said. "(The community) was completely farm fields and nothing else. He realized it was the most important thing we needed."

With two other people, Dick disconnected property from the Roselle and Palatine fire districts in order to create the new taxing district. When money began to come in, equipment was purchased and firefighters recruited in 1958.

That same year, the barn on Illinois Boulevard where the department was temporarily housed burned, but all the equipment was saved, Hoffman Estates Village Historian Pat Barch said. And by November 1960, the first true fire station was completed on Flagstaff Lane.

"The village was growing so fast they knew they had to get their own fire station," Barch said.

In 1974, Mark Dick left his position on the fire district board and Mittie left her teaching job as they began 10 years of international travel for Mark's job.

At the end of that same year, the fire district was absorbed into the village of Hoffman Estates and ceased to exist.

Meanwhile, Mark and Mittie were seeing the world - living and working in England, Venezuela, France and Saudi Arabia, where he designed refineries for Universal Oil Products.

They returned to Hoffman Estates for several years after their decade of international work was over but have since spent the past two decades living near their daughter, Lorane, in California.

But with Mark's death last fall, Mittie is now preparing to return to the Northwest suburbs where she will be near her daughter Wanda's family.

In addition to their civic contributions to early Hoffman Estates, they also helped in the creation of Our Saviour's United Methodist Church where Mittie would later teach.