Most people in the country know Adlai E. Stevenson II as the politician with a hole in the sole of his shoe.

A now famous photo was taken during a presidential campaign in the 1950s when Stevenson was running against Dwight D. Eisenhower.

"He was so interested in what he was doing that he didn't take his shoe to be fixed," said Eva Schwartzmann, a Mettawa attorney who was Stevenson's campaign manager in his second presidential campaign against Eisenhower in 1956. The first was in 1952.

While the liberal Democrat had a hole in his shoe, the Republican powers that be in Libertyville at the time had a hole in their hearts for the man who lived southwest of St. Mary's Road and Route 60.

"The officers in the village were Republicans. One of the lovely things about Republicans in Lake County is they hate Democrats," Schwartzmann said.

Stevenson was Illinois' governor from 1948 to 1952, wrestling the position away from a Republican stronghold.

After leaving the governor's office, he took a six-month trip to Europe and the Far East. When he returned to the farm in Libertyville he said to a friend, "Have you ever in your life seen anything better than an Illinois cornfield?"

Until Mettawa incorporated in 1960, his beloved home was on 70 acres in unincorporated Vernon Township. However, his post office was in Libertyville and he was known as the man from Libertyville.

"The interesting thing was the village officials denied vehemently he was a resident of Libertyville and he was lying by saying he was," said Schwartzmann, who added that Stevenson was one of the original Mettawa residents who signed a petition for incorporation.

During the 1956 presidential campaign, village board members refused to allow a banner across Milwaukee Avenue that said, "Home of Adlai," because it was against village policy. Meanwhile, neighboring Mundelein put up a banner touting itself as "Neighbor of Adlai."

Shortly before the presidential election, Libertyville merchants defied village policy and put a sign up supporting Stevenson, but village employees took down the sign and that drew national attention.

After his governorship, the Illinois lawyer and gentle intellectual made the black-tie circuit as a keynote speaker. Some books about Stevenson say he wanted to be Secretary of State when John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960. Kennedy, however, named him as Ambassador to the United Nations with full cabinet rank.

He then lived mostly in New York and shuttled to Washington D.C.

"His became the voice of democracy that challenged Communism, the voice of freedom, of conscience and honor, and that of a man who spoke constantly of the search for peace because he had a working faith in the future no matter what crisis was upon the world," said Bill Severn, author of "Adlai Stevenson, Citizen of the World."

Severn notes that Stevenson enjoyed being an adopted New Yorker and he enjoyed being the escort of beautiful women at formal events. He squired movie stars such as Joan Fontaine and Lauren Bacall, and when the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy came to New York, Stevenson was her escort.

"He was a friend of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and of musician Leonard Bernstein, and in his 60s still 'danced like a dream' and played a brisk game of tennis," Severn writes.

A heart attack took Stevenson's life at age 65, attributed in part to his hectic lifestyle. He was buried in his hometown of Bloomington, Ill.

His untimely demise was fortunate for a high school under construction in 1965 in Prairie View. The school was to be called Ela-Vernon East High School while the high school in Lake Zurich was to be called Ela-Vernon West High School. But Lake Zurich unexpectedly broke away to have its own school district, three months before school was to start. That left those in the Prairie View area under pressure to finish the school building and give it a name.

For lack of a better suggestion, the name of the school, since annexed into Lincolnshire, was going to be Tamarack High School because of tamarack trees on the property. Then Stevenson, whose home was not far away, died, and the school took on his name.

The Stevenson house that stands today in Daniel Wright Woods Forest Preserve, was built after his first home there burned in 1938. Stevenson loved to ride horses there as well as sunbathe in the grass or on the deck outside his bedroom. He lived in the house longer than any single place, but in all, he lived there fewer than 10 years.

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