Glenview woman remembered as ace gardener who loved her family and a part of the area's history

Shirley Conley brought up a great point about her late mother, Marion (Knoll) Engelking.

"It's not when you died," Shirley said, "it's how you lived."

Mrs. Engelking died at age 96, midway through this past summer. Her story, whose roots span the history of both Glenview and Northbrook, requires reflection.

Her great-grandparents, Heinrich and Marie Heppner, were among Glenview's first settlers, owning 30 acres on the corner of Glenview and Harms roads, Conley stated.

Her paternal grandparents, John and Caroline Knoll, were one of the first families in Northbrook. John Knoll was one of the founding fathers of St. John's Lutheran Church in Northbrook.

The land these families owned, as well as the property owned by her late in-laws, housed working farms for more than a century. They became the home of future developments like the Abington of Glenview and Sportsman's Country Club. Mrs. Engelking's father, John Jr., was born on a farm where Glenbrook South High School now stands.

Marion was the first of five children born to John Jr. and Elsa (Heppner) Knoll, on Jan. 15, 1924, in Morton Grove. Shortly after her birth, the Knolls moved to Church Street in Northbrook.

That was the first of a few Depression Era moves, one of which saw Elsa starting the Heppner Farm Stand in 1929 in Glenview. The Knolls moved to a farm on Shermer Road in Northbrook and, later, settled on a farm at 3113 Central St., in Glenview. In 1990, the Knoll farm was one of Glenview's last farms to be razed, Shirley Conley remembered.

(Conley also recalls the family's devotion to the Daily Herald: Not only did Mrs. Engelking read it all her life, her mother did as well before she passed away at 100 years old. John Knoll Sr. was one of the paper's first subscribers and read it for more than 50 years, the oldest reader at the time of his passing in 1955 at the age of 97. Heinrich Heppner walked to town to buy the paper when it first became available in his area.)

Mrs. Engelking's pastoral background influenced her interests for the rest of her days. Cooking, baking, canning, sewing; painting, dancing, reading, writing.

Friends of her four children - two boys and two girls - vied to stay overnight on weekends, just to smell the warm, fresh-baked bread the next morning. Even last year, at 95, she cooked a 28-pound turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.

Above all, gardening was Mrs. Engelking's passion that put her at ease.

"She had a fabulous disposition," said Shirley Conley, who graduated from Glenbrook South in 1972. "I was a very lucky person; she was always happy."

And the rare occasions she was not?

"When she wasn't in her garden," Conley said.

As a 21-year-old, Mrs. Engelking in 1945 was the Prairie Farmer's WLS first-prize winner in floral arrangement at the Wisconsin State Fair. One of the first members of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, she visited every Sunday after attending church at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Glenview, where her family has worshipped for 144 years. She taught crocheting at Immanuel Lutheran School - she even drove the school bus for a spell.

"In fact we think she wore the pew out a little bit where she sat at church. Same pew, same spot," Conley said.

Her mother's funeral on July 18 was the first time Immanuel Lutheran Church held an indoor service since before the coronavirus pandemic. A memorial fund in her name has been established for the beautification and maintenance of Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery.

When buying her last home, in Des Plaines in 1984, Mrs. Engelking was less concerned with the condition of its interior than with the property itself - whether or not it could sustain a garden up to her standards. Maintaining it to the end, Mrs. Engelking tended more than 500 species of plants in that garden, each identified with botanical and common names. Peonies were her favorite.

"My parents had two-and-a-half acres, so that was a lot of grooming, and it was pristine," Conley said.

Her abilities weren't limited to domestic talents. Taking a job on the assembly line at Wieboldt's distribution plant in Des Plaines in 1977, she quickly earned a promotion to supervisor. Her manager told her she was his best worker and "the most pleasant and competent," Shirley Conley stated.

In 2017 one of Conley's daughters, Jenny - among Mrs. Engelking's eight grandchildren, plus eight great-grandchildren - graduated from the University of California-San Diego. The Dalai Lama served as keynote speaker for the ceremony. In advance, the university announced the holy man would take questions for a public forum the day before the graduation.

Out of thousands of questions submitted, Mrs. Engelking's was one of few selected and the first chosen: "What can the students graduating do to make the world a better place?"

Hearing that she was 93 years old at the time, the Dalai Lama bowed his head, called Mrs. Engelking "his sister," and told the crowd of 50,000 that the key was intelligence, communication and to "treat each other with kindness," Shirley Conley said.

Marion Engelking had learned that long before.

"She was my best friend," Conley said. "I talked to her at least once a day for all my life and twice a day when the pandemic hit.

"I think of the legacy she left me, and I think of her core value, which was to be a good person. She always said there's two kinds of people in the world, the takers and the givers. She was a giver."