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The C/Overt Observations exhibit at Virgil Catherine Gallery in Hinsdale includes works by celebrity photographer Udo Spreitzenbarth and painter Guy Stanley Philoche. Oh, and Hinsdale Central graduate Jared Callaway. Five of 21-year-old Callaway's photographs are part of the exhibit organized by gallery owner Catherine Ponakala. She first learned of Callaway when his mom, Hinsdale's Kathryn Occhipinti, stopped in and mentioned her son was a photographer with a number of...
We stood in the green room Saturday night before our final performance of "Hinsdale Unmasked" and talked about all that's happened since our last Community Revue in 2020. We've lost three longtime cast members - Dick Johnson, BJ Chimenti and Ly Hotchkin. We've dealt with individual losses and unwelcome diagnoses and other challenges. Oh, and there's been that other little thing: the global pandemic. It was the most emotional pre-show gathering I've experienced in the eight...
Community Consolidated Elementary District 181 plans to spend about $703,000 to buy new math materials, including textbooks and digital resources, for the 2022-23 school year. The Math Subject Area Committee recommended i-Ready Classroom Mathematics for students in kindergarten through fifth grade at a cost of $555,833 and EdGems math for sixth- through eighth-graders at a cost of $147,526. Those costs include paper and digital resources as well as teacher training. Kathy Robinson, assistant superintendent of learning,...
When Hinsdale Central student Niko Rhodes learned Russia had invaded Ukraine, his first thoughts were of how to help the people there - including members of his own family. He has relatives in both countries on his mom's side of the family, and his stepmom and two young half-sisters were in Kyiv at the time of the invasion. "They couldn't drive out because the traffic jams to the west were so massive," he said. "Buses, same problem. Trains were not running, or the train...
Come June 1, the need to feed parking meters in downtown Hinsdale could be a thing of the past. Trustees and staff discussed a plan to allow three-hour zoned parking in the central business district at Tuesday's Hinsdale Village Board meeting. Village President Tom Cauley said officials have been talking about removing the 300 meters for some time. "It's something we started considering before COVID but shelved during COVID. COVID had just started when we opened the new...
Xitlali Garcia was hunched over a light table Monday morning, painstakingly peeling off pieces of a transfer sheet that later would be pressed onto a St. Patrick's Day T-shirt. Garcia doesn't mind the attention to detail required. She enjoys working for Threads, a micro business that is part of the new District 86 Transition Center. She is one of about 80 to 90 Hinsdale Central and Hinsdale South graduates who attend the new center, which is tucked into an office building on...
Despite snow earlier this week and in the forecast, spring is almost here. And with it comes a new season for Red Devil athletes in 13 sports and their fans. In this week's issue, coaches of the boys and girls lacrosse teams share highlights of the upcoming season, as do coaches for the boys and girls track teams, which have been competing indoors since February. This is the first of a four-part series. Boys lacrosse First meet: March 16 vs. Barrington Last year: lost to Naper...
I must confess. I missed National Grammar Day last Friday, what with family in town and it being opening night of "Hinsdale Unmasked." You, too, might have missed the celebration. The holiday is rather new, after all, having been established less than 15 years ago in 2008. Martha Brockenbrough, an author, teacher and founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, said she founded the day to help students with grammar in a "lively and positive way." (I'm fairly certa...
Name: Kaila Kuo Year: senior Hometown: Hinsdale When did you first start playing softball? I did taekwondo from third grade up until middle school. My dad wanted me to get involved in team sports. He said I could do track or softball. I figured softball would have less running, so I did softball. What do you enjoy most about the sport? I just like meeting new people, hanging out with them and being able to build that team relationship. It's not like other friends you find at...
Administrators have offered a first look at how changes to the grading system in Hinsdale High School District 86 affected first semester grades More students are earning A’s and many F’s are being replaced by incompletes, said Chris Covino, assistant superintendent for academics, at the Feb. 24 board meeting. “The intent was not to try to create more A’s,” he said. “We have very strong academic students and moving grades to be more summative in nature is a clear indication we have a strong sense of work ethic and academi...
Tomorrow night is opening night. I am certain I can speak for all of the cast of "Hinsdale Unmasked" - the 2022 Community Revue - when I say we can't wait to perform for an audience. We've had our fill of applauding for each other and laughing at our own jokes and are ready to share this hilarious show with you, dear residents of Hinsdale. Before I proceed, I should let you know that all of us have been SWORN TO SECRECY about the show's contents. I wrote a column 18 years ago...
Twenty-two years ago a 13-year-old Melanie Lamoureux was running summer theater camps out of the backyard of her Hinsdale home. Last month she took students that age and younger to compete in the prestigious Junior Theatre Festival in Sacramento, Calif. BAMtheatre's Junior Conservatory Ensemble was one of six groups to win the festival's highest award for outstanding production. "We've always wanted to go and we finally felt like we had a group that was ready to take this on...
It's not every day that you get to interview a rocket scientist. But that's exactly what eight students from Hinsdale and Clarendon Hills middle schools did last week for a District 181 Foundation webinar with David Ellis of the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. "I was always really interested in space and wanted to meet an astronaut for a long time," said Taylor Muehlhauser, a seventh-grader at HMS. "I thought it was a really cool opportunity to talk to someone with...
I've known I was adopted for as long as I can remember. My birth mother loved me so much, my mom would tell me often, that she gave me up to make sure I would have a good home. And she and my dad had picked me to be their daughter. It was a story of love all the way around. As I grew up, my understanding of being adopted deepened. I didn't want to find my birth mother, but I did think about her. I thought about her more after my own daughter was born. And yet I did nothing. I...
Three Hinsdale Central High School athletes earned top-six finishes at individual IHSA state meets last weekend. Senior gymnast Kelly Klobach placed fourth on vault with a score of 9.65 in the individual state finals Saturday at Palatine High School. At the individual state wrestling finals in Champaign Saturday, sophomore Marko Ivanisevic placed fifth in the 220-pound weight class and junior Cody Tavoso placed sixth at 132 pounds. In her first appearance at state, as there...
I first discovered Charles Mackesy in November 2020 when CBS Sunday Morning was doing a piece on him and his book, "The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse." We were enjoying our annual Thanksgiving weekend getaway in Saugatuck, so I had time to sit down with my coffee and enjoy the show. "In a quaint barn in the English countryside, there's a man, with a dog, documenting the human condition in its simplest form, through sketches about kindness and empathy, as we all...
The old Zion Lutheran School will be converted to condos if the Hinsdale Plan Commission and Hinsdale Village Board approve the proposal. Holladay Properties Services Midwest Inc. wants to buy the existing two-story building at 125 S. Vine St. to create 12 age-targeted lifestyle housing units. The project is tentatively named Vine Street Station. "We're really excited to be here tonight," Hinsdale resident Drew Mitchell, vice president of Holladay Properties in Clarendon...
I have been so inspired by the athletes competing in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Here are a few of my favorites: • Colby Stevenson, the silver medalist in the men's big air competition, who almost died in a 2016 car accident that left him with a broken skull in 30 places. He had been driving from Oregon to Utah to see a friend who broke his leg when Stevenson fell asleep at the wheel and rolled his car six times. Doctors weren't sure he'd walk again - or even live -...
Looking for a good Agatha Christie murder mystery as an escape from the late-winter blahs? "Death on the Nile" is in theaters now, with a blockbuster cast led by Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot. And then there's the First Folio production of "The Secret Council" on stage at Mayslake Peabody Estate in Oak Brook. The adaptation was written by First Folio's co-founder and executive director David Rice. The film and the play were both scheduled to run a year ago but delayed due...
When Jackie Pyle of Hinsdale began searching for her birth mother in 1989, the only clue she had was her full maiden name. Resources like ancestry.com and 23andme were yet to be developed. She joined a west suburban chapter of ALMA, the Adoptees' Liberty Movement Association, and began to do the tedious work of piecing together her past. "We lived at the Newberry library," she said, noting her husband Ken, who died in 1995, was a huge help. "Any adoptee could be a private...
Mary Catalano still has "The Chosen Baby" book her parents gave her for Christmas in 1966 to help her understand adoption. "To our chosen baby, precious Mary Margaret. All our love, Mommy + Daddy," its inscription reads. "I've known ever since I was born," Catalano said. "I've always known I was adopted so it was nothing new. I was always open talking about it. It wasn't something I tried to hide." Growing up in Gwynedd Valley, Pa., Catalano didn't have a desire to find her bi...
Some three dozen speakers offered about 2 1/2 hours of public comment during the Feb. 10 Hinsdale High School District 86 Board meeting at which board members voted 5-2 to continue the COVID-19 mitigations approved in August. Many speakers offered impassioned pleas for the board to lift the mask mandate, including several Hinsdale Central students. "We are exhausted from being manipulated and exploited into wearing masks," Central student Sydney Pjesky said. "It's time to...
A disconcerting mammogram reading prompted Julie McGue to search for her birth family, with the hopes of learning her medical history. The five-year search process generated much more than information about her genetic predispositions. McGue found and established a relationship with her birth mother and other relatives, chronicling the experience in her memoir, "Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family and Belonging." "From the very get-go I was journaling about what I...
On Valentine’s Day, most people are thinking about romantic love. I always think about Valentine’s Day my sophomore year in college. My boyfriend made me a homemade card and asked me to wear his lavaliere (a step before getting pinned). He was smart enough not to buy it in advance, as I had rejected this idea previously. But once I said yes, he walked a mile and a half in the snow to buy me one. He’s now my husband and has done many nice things for me on Valentine’s Days over...
Were it not for his daughter, Bill Lewis might never have found his birth family. Four years ago, when she was a senior in high school, Mary Claire came to her father with a simple request. Well, more of a demand. "She is a triple Type A and tells me she wants me to do one of those DNA things so she can find out if I'm a minority," Lewis, a Hinsdale resident, said. Her goal? To get into a better college. After initially refusing, Lewis eventually agrees and submits a sample...
