100-year-old monument honoring Wing Park namesake given more prominent home

Until recently, a rock memorializing the history of Wing Park in Elgin was in a spot that was hard to find.

Elgin City Council member Steve Thoren decided to get in the middle of that rock and the hard place.

Thoren said he has a special affection for the park Wednesday evening as he helped unveil the monument in its new, more prominent home closer to the entrance and exit of the park.

“I grew up at Wing Park, riding my bike here to play golf,” Thoren said. “And with my dad being the city champion and holding the course record, that was so neat. Wing Park was always just a fun, great place to be.”

Thoren's dad Robert won six city golf titles in Elgin, and Thoren still plays the course each week.

The 121.5-acre parcel of land that makes up the park was left to the city by William Wing when he died in 1902. He dubbed it “the people's playground of Elgin.”

The park opened a year later, and the golf course followed about five years after that. When it opened, Elgin became the smallest city in the country with a public golf course.

The course is the oldest in Illinois that still has its original configuration of tees, fairways and greens. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on Feb. 18, 2009.

The park is home to the Wing Park Aquatic Center, a band shell, basketball, tennis and sand volleyball courts, a large playground and a Little League complex. There are also two rentable shelters.

The monument originally was placed 100 years ago by the Elgin Woman's Club. While it languished for the past many years by a maintenance shed, not even the many longtime Elgin residents in attendance Wednesday could remember where it was first placed.

Thoren said he drove by the monument many times, wondering why it was in such an obscure location before a friend urged him to move it to a more prominent place.

He engaged the help of Maria Cumpata and Greg Hulke of the city's park and recreation department to find it a new home.

Mayor David Kaptain helped Thoren pull a cover off the monument during its official unveiling Wednesday evening.

“I always think that Elgin's very fortunate to have two of the finest parks in the entire Fox Valley,” Kaptain said. “That's what separates us from some of the communities around us.”