This old house: Former, current residents share memories

A dream of all old-house lovers came true for Lisa and Lars Ohrstrom.

The couple and their two daughters, whose Arlington Heights home was built in 1920, was recently visited by the family that lived in the house more than 80 years ago.

"You get to know if anything was changed that you didn't know about," said Lisa Ohrstrom. "Was there a door here? Were there really radiators? I'm very into the fact that it's a 100-year-old house and how did other families live here. They were raised in this house just like we're raising our kids."

The answers came from three of the four Fricke siblings who lived in the house for more than a decade starting in 1927. All now live elsewhere, but they were in town for a reunion as part of the 150th anniversary celebration for St. Peter Lutheran Church. Their father, Rev. Harry Fricke, was a pastor of the church.

The Frickes shared tales of roller skating in the basement and on sidewalks. And the youngest, James Fricke, who is now 78 and living in West Salem, Wis., told of napping on a day bed in his father's study. One day he sneaked into the closet and accidentally knocked over an ironing board, blocking the door, said his older brother, Roger Fricke, 86, who lives in Contoocook, N.H.

"Fortunately, there was a window in that room, and Dad was able to rescue him that way."

That closet is gone now, and so is a pantry that was on the same wall. The study is open to the kitchen and serves the Ohrstroms as a family room.

The Ohrstroms learned from the Frickes why the only way to reach the second-floor attic area is through the bathroom. The answer: the bathroom was added later. When the home was built it only had one bathroom, the one on the first floor. Now there is one on each level, including the basement.

When Rev. Fricke was called to St. Peter, his mission was to help introduce the English language to the traditionally German congregation that had grown to 1,800 adult members, said Roger.

At that time, the church and school and other buildings were on Northwest Highway at Highland Avenue. Fifty years ago, the congregation built a new church and school on Olive Street west of Arlington Heights Road.

Since Fricke was the younger, newer pastor, the church rented his family the house on Douglas Avenue, near what became Recreation Park a decade later.

Roger Fricke thinks the family lived without a car half the time they were on Douglas. During the Depression, young couples could not afford fancy weddings and would sometimes be married at the Fricke home. Families would also come once a month to talk with the minister before communion Sunday.

The Frickes moved from this house to the parsonage in 1938 or 1939, but by then, the younger generation was starting to attend college. The oldest is Harriet, who will be 90 in September and was not able to make the trip to Arlington Heights from her home in Madison, Wis. The fourth sibling is Lois Oehm, 84, who lives in Springfield, Ill.

World War II took Roger Fricke to active duty in 1942, and his father enlisted as a military chaplain in 1943. After the war, Rev. Fricke and his wife, Lillian, moved to Cicero to start a church. During the Depression, they purchased cemetery lots in what is Memory Gardens in Arlington Heights, and when they died in the 1980s, that's where they were buried.

"All of us would get back to Arlington Heights," said Roger Fricke. "But never together. I used to drive by the house every time. We lived there a lot longer than we did any place else and have fond memories of growing up there."

This time they made a request through the church office, and Marilyn Hermann, a longtime member who knew the Ohrstroms through business, arranged the invitation.

"It's surprisingly close to what it was in the early 1930s. And the Ohrstroms have done a beautiful job of keeping it up," said Roger Fricke.

Lisa Ohrstrom, who has owned the home for 13 years, loves the home so much that she removed oak flooring from a house being demolished in Glenview to replace linoleum in the kitchen and old pantry and flow seamlessly into the family room.

Roger Fricke is impressed. When he lived in the house it didn't even have kitchen cabinets, just a free-standing sink, gas stove and a table large enough for the six Frickes. Refrigeration was provided by ice delivered to the back porch.

As much as Ohrstrom raves about the nooks and crannies and unusual windows and character that make her house different from cookie-cutter types, as a professional cook, she insisted on gutting the kitchen.

Now it has cherry cabinets, granite countertops and backsplashes and a six-burner dual-fuel range. And it's open to a now-heated porch where Lisa stores 250 cookbooks and her baking equipment.

Many of Roger Fricke's memories involve playing in the now-finished basement. Besides roller skating, the youngsters played with a model train on a board hinged to the wall so the tracks could fold up when not used. The coal furnace was there, too.

"We didn't like to get out of bed in the winter until my dad stoked up the fire and threw on another shovel of coal," said Fricke.

The trip to Douglas Avenue was a delight for both families.

"As soon as we got there and stood and talked in the front porch, I sort of knew I was home again," said Roger Fricke.

"Everyone around here hopes for a family like that to stop in," Lisa Ohrstrom said. "My neighbors were so excited."