From the Editor: How we went about covering our own birthday

It's not every day we get to celebrate a milestone like this. Especially when it's ours.

What would become the Daily Herald began humbly, as most newspapers do, nine years before the Great Chicago Fire, more than 80 years before Schaumburg was incorporated.

We celebrated the opening of Arlington Park racetrack in 1927, reveled in its temporary reconstruction in 1985 for the Miracle Million, covered the construction of the new grandstand and then mourned its closure in 2021.

And we'll be here to cover the Chicago Bears' reinvention of that property, if it comes to fruition, or whatever happens next.

We didn't become a true daily until the 1970s, when competition forced our hand. It was a choice between growing and dying.

But in the century before that transition occurred, we covered our suburban turf like a blanket. Our mantra was local, local, local. We saw new towns emerge from the countryside, and we established ourselves and grew with them.

We've grown up with the suburbs.

So how does one celebrate 150 years of newspapering?

We thought first of the local news events that occurred over that time and decided we'd list 150 of them for the sake of symmetry.

But we look at the suburbs as more than potential news stories and more about the people who make up the suburban community.

Naturally, we set out to name 150 people from the suburbs who made their mark on the world. And this, of course, is where some trouble begins. Everyone who has ever come up with a Top 10 list knows such a thing will never go unchallenged. And so it went with our list of 150 people.

I'm smart enough to put a pressure relief valve in a listing like this so those who think we blew it would have a chance to respond.

"You left out Adlai Stevenson, who was one of the truly influential people in American politics, Sen. Paul Simon and so many others," one person responded. "This article must have been written by kids just graduating from kindergarten."

For the record, Adlai Stevenson was born near Springfield and spent his life in Bloomington when he wasn't in Washington, D.C. So, not a person from our suburbs. We did, however, include Adlai II and Adlai III, both of whom were in our list.

And Paul Simon was from southern Illinois.

Others say they enjoyed the section but had a few thoughts on those who should have made the list:

• Bruce Boxleitner, a Prospect High School grad, is a longtime TV actor.

• Tom Blomquist, a producer, writer, actor, professor and author, who was in Boxleitner's graduating class.

• Bill Kelly, a screenwriter from Elk Grove Village, who wrote the Disney film "Enchanted."

Three good ones.

The difficult task for us was to figure out a definition for "the suburbs." Our definition is largely guided by our circulation area. Not everyone sees it that way.

Other feedback we received included people we did not consider or who didn't make the cut:

• Actor/comedian Bob Newhart is from Oak Park.

• Actor Charlton Heston is from Wilmette.

• Carol Lawrence, who won a Tony for her role as Maria in "West Side Story" is from Melrose Park.

• Singer Lionel Richie, went to high school in Joliet.

• Jeff Mauro, the host of "Sandwich King" on the Food Network, is from Elmwood Park.

Were we perfect? No. But perfection in something like this is unattainable.

Maybe we'll try again for the 175th anniversary.