Buffalo Grove honors longtime volunteer, designer of village flag

Buffalo Grove honored its longest-serving volunteer - and the designer of the official village flag - on Tuesday by flying the town banner she created at half staff.

Village President Beverly Sussman said Joan Kuffel, who died recently at age 88, volunteered with the village for more than 60 years. She designed the village flag in 1963.

Kuffel's daughter, Suzanne Braun, said her mother worked as a school nurse in River Trails School District 26 for 30 years.

"A lot of kids still remember her," Braun said.

Braun said her mother's other talents included baking and playing the piano.

"She was 100 miles an hour all the time," she said.

In a 2008 Daily Herald article, Kuffel said she moved to town in 1959, about a year after its official incorporation. She recalled front yards that were still dirt and mud when people first moved into their newly finished buildings.

"We were a little group of country people," she said. "I didn't like being locked up in a box in a house where you can't get outside. This was perfect."

Braun said the flag was created as part of a contest. Her mother received a $25 savings bond for submitting the winning entry.

Buffalo Grove historian Deborah Fandrei, curator of the Raupp Museum, said Kuffel had a tremendous impact on the community as one of the founding members of the Wheeling-Buffalo Grove Nurses Club. The club worked in the community throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, providing health information, blood pressure screenings, a medical equipment lending closet, public education and annual scholarships to young women who were planning to enter the field of nursing.

Fandrei said she met Kuffel when she was part of the committee writing the book for the 50th anniversary of the village's incorporation.

"She was lovely and a lot of fun to work with," she said.

Kuffel was buried privately at St. Mary Cemetery on May 28.