Wheeling High School mourns ‘van lady’

For more than 35 years, students at Wheeling High School knew Georgia Lee Blyth as the security guard who monitored the outside part of the building, from the parking lots to the surrounding neighborhoods.

“They called her ‘the van lady,’ “ says Debra Swierczek, dean of students. “She was an icon here.”

Mrs. Blyth was found on Tuesday slumped over the steering wheel of her school van during one of her regular rounds. She passed away that day, at the age of 69.

“Generations of kids grew up knowing her,” Swierczek adds. “She knew every car in the parking lot and followed up to make sure they all had the proper stickers. She also went out into the neighborhood, making sure our kids were being good neighbors.”

Mrs. Blyth began working at Wheeling High School in 1975, while her two sons were in elementary school. As a single mother, she needed to find work, and she turned to the local high school, where her sisters still attended.

“The students liked her,” Swierczek added. “They knew she was doing a good job and they respected her for it.”

Mrs. Blyth also worked security during home football games, and over the years she became one of the school’s biggest fans, family members say.

“She really loved the kids,” says her son, Eric. “She just liked helping people.”

In 1996, Mrs. Blyth took on a second job to help support her family. She worked evenings as a part time security guard at the Wheeling Township offices in Arlington Heights.

“She was always there to secure the building at the end of the night,” said Jo Stellato, finance and administration director. “She was wonderful and so dependable. Everyone who received services at the building got along with her.”

Her son said that for years, she would work all day at the high school, before coming home for a short break and heading to her second job at Wheeling Township.

“She worked long days,” Eric Blyth said. “She really worked hard.”

Wheeling Township officials knew immediately on Wednesday that something was wrong, when they arrived in the morning to find office doors open in their building and blinds still up.

“Georgia always did all that,” Stellato added.

Mrs. Blyth was preceded in death by her son, Christopher. She is survived by two grandsons.

Visitation will be held at 11 a.m. before a 4 p.m. funeral service, both on Saturday at Kolssak Funeral Home, 189 S. Milwaukee Road in Wheeling.