Glenview History Center benefits from communications specialist's skills
Lynne Stiefel is still working in communications in Glenview, but for a different client.
Her last day after a decade as the Village of Glenview's communications specialist was June 4, 2021. In July she started volunteering for the Glenview History Center. By September she was on the board.
Board members, all volunteers, are asked to contribute something to the cause, Stiefel said. It was a natural that she help in publicity.
She came up with a project: Dig up daily factoids of Glenview history she'll post throughout 2022 to the History Center's Facebook and Twitter sites.
"I wanted to do something with social media because I wanted to build up the History Center's presence there," Stiefel said.
"We were following a number of other history sites, and I'd see occasionally, 'This is what happened on this day,' and I thought I could do something like that with Glenview."
A former newspaper reporter with free rein over the History Center's more than a century-worth of articles, photos and artifacts, Stiefel's research abilities have produced recent entries, including the landmark 1979 snowstorm, the village's 1911 purchase of what is now Railroad Avenue, and the 1991 swearing-in of Glenview's Bob Kustra as lieutenant governor.
"Some of them are obvious, some of them are interesting, some of them are not so interesting," she said. "And to me it's very interesting because a lot of these things I didn't even know happened, so as I'm doing the research I'm learning about some stuff that I never knew about."
She pairs the little fact with a photo. That can be a challenge, though the History Center has about 3,000 photos digitized for safekeeping with more waiting to be processed.
She uses a schedule listing every day of the year. She assigns facts to the days as she goes along with her research. She has about 80 days that are blank - as of yet.
"Some days I have, like, 10 things, and some days I have no things," she said.
Though she'll accept submissions people through the Glenview History Center's social media pages, she thinks she'll fill that schedule.
"Glenview is an active enough community that there's always going to be something," she said.
Stiefel started this project in December, before the start of 2022. Whether or not she'll continue this fact-a-day mission beyond 2022 is to be determined.
It'll be hard to shake a former reporter off the case when she has a building full of goodies at her disposal.
"It's fun and that's the main thing. You want to get people to remember or say, 'Yeah, I never knew about that.' This is a lot of fun," Stiefel said.