Late Elgin newspaper woman was pioneer

Submitted by Phillip Ranstrom and Melodie Ranstrom Wallace

Longtime Elginite Verla Crawford Ranstrom, who started as a reporter covering the liberation of France during World War II and continued her career as a reporter for the local newspaper, died this winter at age 92 at her daughter's home in California.

In 1965, Copley Newspapers awarded Verla the “Copley Bell, Ring of Truth Award” for her series of articles on pollution in the Fox River, back in an era when the word “pollution” was an obscure, scientific term.

But, having grown up on a farm with crops, animals, clean air and water all around her, having a respect for nature was an central part of who she was.

She communicated regularly with the legendary and elusive environmental activist, “The Fox,” a Robin Hood-like figure who was famous for spilling buckets of their own sewage back into the corporate offices of local polluters.

Born Verla Mae Crawford, May 6, 1919, she was raised in Harrisburg, Ill., the daughter of a coal miner and farmer.

In 1940, she took the little bit of money she could gather, hopped on a train with five cents in her shoe and got off at the University of Illinois in Champaign, where she found a job and worked her way through undergraduate school.

She left university just before graduating to cover the liberation of France for the San Francisco Herald and AP Newswire, then returned to the United States and worked as a reporter at the Bloomington Pantograph. Later, she worked for the San Francisco Herald and AP Newswire, where she covered the end of World War II from Paris.

She later landed a job as a reporter at the Elgin Courier News and moved her family, including son Phillip and daughter Melodie, into their new Elgin home. During her tenure at the paper, Ranstrom wrote her daily column, mostly about government and politics in Kane County, until her retirement in 1976.

In her later years, Verla continued to write and worked in her garden at her home on Elgin's westside. She was an avid reader and enjoyed the classics.