Demolition marks the end of mom-and-pop landmark in Volo

Piles of wood and cinder block are all that remains of the modest Skyline Motel, a true mom-and-pop operation that overlooked Route 12 in Volo for 62 years.

Early guests were travelers and day-trippers for fishing and other activities in the Chain `O Lakes area. But in recent years, it was longer term residents, some of whom may have been down on their luck for one reason or another, who needed a place to stay and sometimes left without paying.

Through it all, the little motel was a fixture on the wide open landscape.

With no restaurant or other amenities, this seven-room motel was more layover than destination. But it also was the livelihood for a young couple with no college education.

"We got married right there in the living room," said Betty Wertke, who wed Russell Wertke in 1955, two years after the motel and adjoining family residence opened. "That was life. It was home."

But it also was past its prime and had become a modern-day curiosity.

"It's kind of the end of a way of life, if you will," said Dick Johnson, Wertke's son-in-law, who came from Massachusetts to oversee the demolition.

"People would come out to the country. They don't do that anymore. They go from Point A to Point B. They want a restaurant and pool and entertainment," he added. "That's not what this was about."

In June, the 84-year-old matriarch closed the motel and moved to a house in a subdivision nearby. She had the house built, but rented it out while she ran business alone, as she had since her husband died in 1993.

Her children for years wanted her to retire, but she stayed until it became too much. Besides the family house and a one-bedroom in-law apartment, the motel complex came to include two trailer homes for rentals that also will be demolished.

"It was true, I was ready," Betty Wertke said. "Healthwise, it got to where it was difficult to do what was required to keep the place up."

Russell Wertke was a Chicago native and only child whose family had a summer place on Long Lake since the late 1800s, Betty Wertke said. He bought 20 acres on the west side of Route 12, then a two-lane road, near the Fish Lake Beach Camping Resort and got a $4,000 loan from a bank in McHenry to pursue his dream.

"He just wanted to live in the country and liked to do things with his hands. He designed the building and did all the landscaping," she said.

Betty Wertke was raised in Florida and moved to the area in 1951. She recalls vast radish fields nearby on the east side of Route 12, and how the open spaces in the area inspired the motel's name.

"He looked out across the field and the trees weren't nearly as big and you could see the sun setting and he thought Skyline would be a good name," she said.

While Russell Wertke had the dream, he also had a full-time job elsewhere. And while he would come home and work some more at the motel, his wife was in charge of the day-to-day operations and all that entailed.

There were no celebrity sightings or movie shoots, but she recalled Chicago gangsters occasionally coming out to finish their pre-dawn card games. Another time, a man who turned out to be an escaped convict leapt out a window as police arrived.

There were also the trysts and one-night stands, and Betty Wertke recalls one local businessman who was a regular guest. She developed a policy early and stuck to it.

"I'd see him on the street. He didn't recognize me and I didn't recognize him and that's the way it should be," she said.

The couple raised three children. For more than 40 years, Betty Wertke was a 4H leader and remains a member and officer in the Lake County Association for Home and Community Education. She also was among those involved in Volo's incorporation in 1993 and served 20 years as the village's plan commission chair. She still meets monthly with friends she has had for 60 years.

Betty Wertke put the property on the market in 2007, but the economy tanked and it didn't sell. With the new year, Johnson will buy about 19.5 acres, including the motel site as an investment, and Betty Wertke will retain about three acres to the south.

"It was his original dream. I stepped right into it and have been there ever since," she said of her late husband. "We didn't have excess finances but it was a good life."