Mt. Prospect mourns Mel Both

Virtually anywhere you look in Mount Prospect — from the historical museum to a local church, to the infrastructure of the community itself — you can see the handiwork of Melvyn Both.

Both, 69, was a 45-year village resident who died Wednesday after living for three years with multiple myeloma.

Mr. Both worked for the Mount Prospect Public Works department from 1968 until his early retirement in 1995. During those years he worked on projects that included grading of the Clearwater Park retention basin, and the annual disposal during the 1970s and 1980s of the village’s leaves at an organic farm in Barrington, according to Glen Andler, former public works director.

“Mel was a jack-of-all-trades who led by example,” said Sean Dorsey, the department’s current director. “He gave incredible service to this village, working through floods, snowstorms and all kinds of situations.”

“And he was such a good-natured person,” Andler added. “I never even heard him raise his voice during all of the time he was a supervisor.”

Dorsey said Mr. Both’s attitude remained positive even after he became ill.

“He handled his whole life with purpose and dignity and earned the respect of all of us,” Dorsey said.

By the time he retired in 1995, Mr. Both had worked his way up to streets and building superintendent. After retiring from the village, he went back to his first love which was working with trucks and heavy equipment for Sennett Excavating of Barrington.

Mr. Both grew up around heavy machinery, working on his father’s farm near Higgins and Cumberland.

“It was a truck farm where they grew tomatoes, onions, peppers and green beans and then took them down to the market on South Water Street in Chicago and sold them,” his wife, Linda, explained. “But in 1957 when there were rumors about the Kennedy Expressway coming through, the family sold out and moved to Des Plaines.”

Mr. Both graduated from Maine East High School in 1959 and went to work for Nicor as a vehicle mechanic and in the street department. Simultaneously, he was serving in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, operating the heavy equipment that unloaded caskets coming from Vietnam, Linda said.

During the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, he became a mainstay of the Mount Prospect Historical Society as well.

“Mel was a quiet man who was always very generous with his time, using his mechanical know-how and his truck for the benefit of the Society,” said Dolores Haugh, director emeritus of the Society. He also was president for a time.

Village Trustee Paul Hoefert, also on the historical society board, said Mr. Both devoted himself to important village projects.

“The time and effort he put in at the former schoolhouse museum on Linneman Road and then at the Dietrich Friedrichs House Museum was critical to making those facilities usable as museums,” Hoefert said. “Mel was about as fine a person as anyone will ever know.”

In 2001 the village recognized him with the “Johnny on the Spot” Shining Star Award, saying he would “climb a light pole to fix the light so that others could shine.”

It should have surprised no one when he and his wife went through the four-year Archdiocesan Deacon training program for couples. He was ordained on May 28, 2006, and served at St. Cecilia ever since.

“He was a very Christian person who touched many people’s lives without making a big to-do about it,” said Fran Ficker, coordinator of care and bereavement at St. Cecilia. “He handled all of the committal services at the cemeteries for us and delivered very good homilies on many a Sunday.”

The couple headed the church’s Respect Life Committee, and Mr. Both was its representative to a domestic abuse committee in the suburbs and to Mount Prospect’s interfaith commission. He was also a Eucharistic minister at Northwest Community Hospital and prepared young couples for the sacraments of marriage and baptism.

St. Cecilia’s “Pathways of Life” brick walkway, which allows members to commemorate important events in their lives, will forever stand as a living reminder of Mr. Both’s inspiration and good works, Ficker added.

Mr. Both was the husband of Linda (Lobaza), whom he married in 1965. They had three children and two grandchildren.

Services have been held.