St. Charles' Baker Community Center marks 90th anniversary

For many, the anniversary of the creation of a board of directors might not mean much.

But it is worth noting that a St. Charles landmark saw its caretakers reach that lofty status on May 25 - 90 years ago.

When the Baker Community Center board met that day, those who keep track of such things noted that the first-ever board meeting was held in May of 1926, about a year after the building was officially dedicated and about two years after it was built.

The board has been monitoring all things community center ever since. One consistent for many of those years has been Melvin Peterson, who joined the board in 1943 at the ripe old age of 22 and has never left, being in attendance last month for the 90th anniversary.

"I can't remember exactly what we talked about at my first meeting, but I do remember walking in there with all of the older gentlemen and realizing that I knew all of them," said Peterson, who celebrated his 95th birthday in late February. "They were all businessmen with Main Street businesses."

Col. Edward Baker and his wife, Martha, built the center as a living memorial to their young son, Henry Rockwell Baker, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 22, as well as a tribute to World War I veterans. It was considered the first major donation from the Bakers to St. Charles, with the last being funding for Baker United Methodist Church in 1952.

And the board, which has been operating the center in conjunction with the St. Charles Park District for decades, is continuing to tackle projects that will allow the center to serve residents for years to come.

"We're working on the main lobby, and still working on getting an elevator in place," said Peterson, whose name will be attached to the lobby as a tribute to his loyalty to the center and its board for 73 years.

Make pools safer: Pool season is upon us, and I read an interesting magazine item in which a lifeguard said parents bringing their kids and staying at a pool need to help a bit when it comes to safety.

Sure, the lifeguards do a good job in keeping a public pool safe, and they are trained to do so. But it certainly helps the overall cause when parents are aware of what their young ones are doing in the pool.

So what are too many parents doing these days? It's a pretty easy answer. The lifeguard said they are on their phones either texting, playing games or checking out, quite likely, unimportant stuff on Google or Yahoo.

This 'school' never ends: I'm not inclined to give our recent high school or college graduates a nightmare, but that's kind of what this is.

We all, on occasion, have odd dreams and some of us have a particular dream that reoccurs. Mine just happens to set me back in either high school or college, and I come to learn that I didn't finish a project on time, which results in more of a nightmare than a pleasant dream. Other parts of the dream have me searching for a classroom I cannot find.

In trying to figure out what the heck causes this sort of dream, I resorted to studying the opinions of dream analysts, and this is what they tell me: I might have a fear of failure, or am "directionless" in some area of my life.

My first reaction to that is, aren't we all? But that's supposed to explain why I fear not finishing a school project or finding a classroom in these dreams, even though I have been out of school for more years than I want to admit.

"Dreaming you have to take an entire year or even a semester all over again, even though you know you already graduated, may mean that somewhere in your job or career you are having to prove yourself all over again, even though you know you've got what it takes," one dream analyst wrote.

They might be right, considering a good journalist should approach work in that manner - having to prove to readers that each new story is worth taking the time to read.

So, now that I know what my dreams have been all about, maybe they will leave my brain - and pop into the minds of some of our new graduates.

What is Fermilab: That's a question that many of us who have written about this particle physics laboratory in Batavia continue to ask ourselves on occasion because things there can change quite a bit.

But we do know this. It's a great place to take your young, curious children for a visit, especially if they are interested in science and want to see what takes place on the grounds and in the lab.

A free, two-hour guided tour takes place at 1 p.m. June 19 at Fermilab. Children 10 and older are welcome, and an adult must accompany those between the ages of 10 and 14.

Registration is required at fnal.gov/summersundays.

dheun@sbcglobal.net