Known for a cheerful spirit, can-do attitude

Motorists pass through the busy intersection of Higgins Road and Oakton Street in Elk Grove Village every day, never suspecting that a thriving mushroom farm lies in their midst.

Mary Rose Maniocha joined her husband, Leon, and helped farm the property for nearly 10 years, from the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s, when their lives rotated around the four-month season, from planting to harvesting.

Family members now are cherishing those memories. Mrs. Maniocha passed away Tuesday. The former resident of Elk Grove Village, Mount Prospect and Streamwood, was 92.

Mrs. Maniocha and her husband had several mushroom houses on the L&M Mushroom Farm, where inside they kept the right mixture of fertile soil, humidity and darkness to produce a plentiful crop of white mushrooms.

"When it came time to pick, you picked," says her son-in-law, Casey Paul of Elk Grove Village. "They brought them down to the distributing center in Chicago. That provided all of their income."

The couple had met in Chicago. Both were widowed, and while Mr. Maniocha had been running the mushroom farm for 15 years, Mrs. Maniocha ran Evergreen Foods at the corner of Milwaukee Avenue and Evergreen Street in Wicker Park.

Having lost her husband, and a son who had died of polio, Mrs. Maniocha ran the family grocery store with her daughter, Rosemary.

"They ran it on the honor system," adds Paul, who met Rosemary when he delivered Pepsi to the store. "If you ran in to get a newspaper or something, you could pay them later. It drew everyone from the neighborhood."

After remarrying and moving to Elk Grove Village, Mrs. Maniocha found more time to pursue her homemaking, including perfecting her cake decorating, sewing and crocheting afghans for family members.

Mrs. Maniocha's granddaughter, Mary Lynn Ozga of Arlington Heights, described how her grandmother had capable hands that could master any project, and a cheerful, can-do attitude that drew others around her.

"In the nursing home, she was vice president of the Happy Club," Ozga said. For Mrs. Maniocha's 90th birthday last year, they mounted a favorite photo on top of the cake. It had been taken at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933, when as a young woman, she had worked as a glove model.

Mrs. Maniocha was preceded in death by her two husbands, two children and three sisters, but is survived by her grandchildren Steve (Julie) Paulo, Mary Lynn (David) Ozga and Michelle (Jason) Billows; and great grandchildren Jennifer and Alex Paul, Michael Ozga, and Davis and Noah Billows.

Visitation for Mrs. Maniocha will take place from 9 to 10:30 a.m. today at Grove Memorial Chapel, 1199 S. Arlington Heights Road in Elk Grove, before an 11 a.m. funeral Mass at St. James Catholic Church, 820 N. Arlington Heights Road in Arlington Heights.