Vernon Hills remembers early leader who helped plan village's growth and created lasting traditions

When Bob Shaw and his wife, Barbara, moved to Vernon Hills in 1961, the population was under 200 and its future as a retail and business center hard to envision.

That would change rapidly with an avalanche of interest from developers who regarded the blip-on-the-map community as fertile ground to build.

As a village board member from 1965 to 1969, including two years as mayor pro tem, the commercial lighting salesman was among the early leaders credited with creating a template for development and a foundation for what was to come.

After more than three decades in the same house on Greenbrier Lane, Shaw left the village he helped shape to retire in Florida in 1994. He died unexpectedly Oct. 21 at age 91 after an accidental fall while visiting relatives in Fox Lake.

Village officials recently were notified of his death and plan to note his community involvement during the village board meeting Tuesday night. The Korean War vet also will recognized next summer in the village's annual military honors banner program.

Besides dealing with developers during a formative time when village hall was run out of a neighbor's basement, Shaw was a community advocate. Traditions he helped establish still are enjoyed by those who may never have heard of him.

He helped organize the first Vernon Hills community picnic, held in his neighborhood at the end of Westmoreland Drive in a grassy field, according to a village notice of Shaw's death.

"It was just a bunch of people having fun," he recalled in a 2013 local cable television interview.

Shaw left elected office after his job duties changed. But he and others stayed involved for about 30 years until the village assumed operations of what became Summer Celebration, now known as Vernon Hills Days. A community parade Shaw helped organize became the village's annual Fourth of July parade.

"It was a lifetime ago but it was a magical experience growing up there," said his daughter, Kathy Shaw Johnson, one of six Shaw children.

Shaw enlisted in the Army at 17. He trained as a tank driver but served as a medic. He was living in Elmhurst and working in Melrose Park when the family bought a single-family home southwest of Route 45 in one of the first subdivisions developed in Vernon Hills. The monthly mortgage was $90.

"It was just a good place to raise kids," he said in 2013.

He described the original village board as "a captive government" who worked for or were family members of the original developers. Shaw and others changed the tenor after being elected in 1965.

Developers recognized their inexperience and hoped to exploit perceived weakness, Shaw recalled. They sought advice from the late Adeline Jay Geo-Karis, an attorney who later would serve as state representative and senator for nearly 35 years.

"We hired her and she trained us on how to run a city," Shaw said. "It became pretty much the city it is today because of the changes were able to engineer initially," he said in 2013.

On Geo-Karis' advice, antiquated zoning ordinances were replaced with planned unit development regulations. That model has been followed by administrations since, Shaw said.

"It's a city that did it right," he said.