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“I’ve been enjoying your crossword puzzle,” a friend mentioned to me at a party a couple of weeks ago. We tend to get a little insulted when people talk about what they love most in the paper and it’s something — like horoscopes or police beat — that we did not write. But this is a friend I know to be an avid reader of the paper. So I wasn’t offended when he told me he has been enjoying our crossword puzzles. I recognize he is not alone due to the uptick in our phone call vo...
all team captain Charlie Williams learned this spring that the season was over, a goal he and his teammates had been working toward disappeared overnight. "We were basically told the whole time that we're working to play our senior year," he said. "That was gone. That was a huge bummer." Williams and the other seniors on the team had been playing together in Devil Baseball since the program was founded. And they hoped to contend for a conference championship this year....
I haven't laughed out loud while reading a book for a long time. I opened Dave Barry's "Lessons from Lucy" a few weeks ago and was reminded what it's like to read something so hilarious I just can't hold it in. But like Mike Royko - the only other writer to make me laugh that hard out loud - Barry has something more than humor to offer. He writes about being treated like an "exceptionally dull-witted" 6-year-old during diversity training, makes a joke and then offers this...
District 86 students will start the school year with a hybrid schedule that combines two days a week of in-person classes with three days a week of remote learning. “The students are at the center of our planning effort, but the decisions are based on the health and safety of the entire community,” Superintendent Tammy Prentiss said at the July 23 Hinsdale High School District 86 Board meeting. “Our ultimate goal is to return to 100 percent in-person instruction, but it is not possible at this time due to the guide...
After asking the Hinsdale Plan Commission to consider a moratorium on the demolition of historic homes, most Hinsdale trustees are no longer interested in imposing one. Following hours of public comment during three virtual hearings on June 10, 24 and 30, commissioners voted 4-2 not to recommend the moratorium to the Hinsdale Village Board. “The whole purpose of the moratorium was (to allow) a standstill while we took action on the part of Title 14 that relates to demolitions,” Village President Tom Cauley said at the Jul...
I have a stack of travel journals in which I have documented the early days of many wonderful trips. Unfortunately, I’ve lacked the discipline to finish most of them. So when I saw Christine Dannhausen-Brun posting her coronavirus updates on Facebook week after week, month after month, I was impressed. And I knew I wanted to talk with her. After a hiatus of several days, during which time she was visiting her family in Door County, she caught up Monday with a post for days 1...
The Hinsdale Fire Department lost a firefighter/paramedic candidate Tuesday when 25-year-old Nicole Hladik took her own life. "It's a devastating loss for her family, and the fire department itself is a family. They are grieving the loss of one of their own," village manager Kathleen Gargano told The Hinsdalean Wednesday. Village officials have been in contact with her family and brought in grief counselors to talk to her co-workers in the department, Gargano stated in a...
After decades of debates about parking solutions, years of negotiation between the village and District 181, months of construction - and a global pandemic thrown in for good measure - Hinsdale finally has a parking deck. The new facility on Garfield Avenue just south of First Street opened today, July 16. "We are very pleased with the outcome and very happy that we could provide this much-needed amenity to the village," village manager Kathleen Gargano said. Village...
I'm often late to the party. I started listening to Steve and Garry on the Loop in August 1993, just about a month before the two ended their 15-year run. I became a fan of The Rolling Stones in the late 1980s, a good two decades after they had their first No. 1 hit. I currently own an iPhone 7, when the iPhone 11 has been out for almost nine months. I blame this deficiency on my parents, who did an even poorer job keeping up with the times than I do. I'm convinced they...
Officials hope a July 9 open house at the DuPage COVID-19 testing center at Anne M. Jeans School in Willowbrook will make more area residents aware of the facility. The site, which is a cooperative effort between the school, DuPage County and Pillars Community Health, has been testing patients Tuesdays and Thursdays by appointment since June. "It was really important to me and members of the county board that we support this crucial health effort right here in this community,"...
Hockey has been part of Christian Hmura's life for as long as he can remember. "I got my sixth, seventh and eighth concussions in the last nine months of me playing, and I just wasn't able to really bounce back, he said. "I had some major issues with that for while." With his career as a player out of the question, Hmura, then 19, turned to coaching. "Obviously I wanted to stay involved in the game," said Hmura, who is now 33 and a Hinsdale resident. "It was my entire life up...
"Why do you print names in police beat?" a resident asked us recently, being of the opinion - as you might guess - that we should not. My initial reaction was to blurt out something like, "Because we've always done it that way." But that's not a very good defense. I've also been trying to follow the advice of a Facebook friend's post in June: "Can we consider the possibility that possibly we don't know what we don't know?" So I asked myself if indeed we should stop publishing...
Tired of camping out in the backyard but not interested in a long drive to a campground? The forest preserve districts of DuPage and Cook counties have the answer. Blackwell Family Campground The family campground at Blackwell in Warrenville, with more than 60 wooded and semi-wooded sites to accommodate tents, trailers and motor homes, opens tomorrow. And people are anxious to go. "It looks like we have quite a few reservations already for the coming weekends. As of right...
Hinsdale High School District 86 Superintendent Tammy Prentiss could barely contain her enthusiasm as she talked about the construction work taking place this summer. "There are some pretty amazing engineering feats going on, particularly at Hinsdale Central," she told board members at their June 25 meeting. One is easily identified by the giant pile of dirt on the soccer field off Madison Street. A large storm trap is being installed under the field to compensate for the...
Today we present the final installment of athlete profiles that did not run during the spring season, which was canceled due to COVID-19. Name: Chloe Lapointe Year: senior Hometown: Burr Ridge What was it like not having a senior water polo season? I actually tore my labrum before the Red-White meet. That was my first and last game. It was going to be my last game anyway because of my shoulder, but not being able to play because of coronavirus and my shoulder (was...
Hinsdale High School District 86 officials expect in-person learning to resume for the 2020-21 school year. But exactly what that will look like in the midst of a pandemic remains unclear. At the June 25 school board meeting, Superintendent Tammy Prentiss updated board members on the work of the district's Recovery-Revitalization-Restored Committee, a group composed of teachers, department chairs, and building and district administrators charged with crafting return-to-school...
By the end of July, Community Consolidated Elementary District 181 officials hope to have a guidebook and web page that details procedures for reopening schools available to families. “We will continue our conversations in the coming weeks and want to be sure we are incorporating the voices of our teachers, staff, parents and community partners,” Superintendent Hector Garcia wrote in a June 26 email to district families. The district has formed a transition team that includes a school board representative, a PTO president fro...
Nancy Pollak, who served as president of the Hinsdale High School District 86 Board from May 2019 to May 2020, resigned from the board effective July 1. She and her family are permanently relocating to a home they own in Michigan. Pollak had expected to finish her term in 2021 before moving, but the circumstances surrounding COVID-19 altered her plans, she told The Hinsdalean. “We’ve already spent 100 days (in Michigan) this year. It just seemed to make sense,” she said. Asked if her decision was prompted by happenings in th...
Holidays always trigger a lot of memories, and Independence Day is no exception. One of my favorite Fourth of July holidays is quite possibly one of yours as well. In 2013 the Hinsdale parade featured none other than Coach Q and the Stanley Cup. When the fire engine he was riding on made the turn from Garfield Avenue onto First Street, you could hear the roar of the crowd from more than a block away. The first Hinsdale parade I ever attended is etched in my mind as well, for...
A week before plan commissioners finished their deliberations on a proposed moratorium to stop the demolition of historic homes, Village President Tom Cauley presented a draft ordinance designed to help preserve such homes. The draft is actually a revision to Title 14 of the village code, which covers historic preservation. The new language offers several incentives to homeowners who want to renovate a historic home, including an exemption from floor-area ratio requirements (which regulate the size of a home relative to the...
The Hinsdale Plan Commission does not support a 180-day moratorium on the teardown of historic homes in the village. The 4-2 vote came at the close of a public hearing during which commissioners listened to more than eight hours of comments stretched across three sessions. Because the hearing was held via Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic, residents were allowed to call in or submit written comments expressing their opinion. "The village board of trustees wanted community...
o her teen years, I fear she will increasingly fall victim to the opinions of others. Younger kids do a pretty good job of allowing each other to express their own individuality. But many kids, as they get older, feel a need to follow the prescription of how they should look and act. Right now, it’s trendy to be a VSCO girl, clad in an oversized T-shirt with Nike shorts, Crocs and a shell necklace, carrying a Hydro Flask and wearing a scrunchie around your wrist. We all had po...
Trinity Sober Living is no longer limited to nine residents in its sober house in Hinsdale, following a June 10 order issued by Judge Brian Diamond of the DuPage County 18th District Circuit Court. The court originally stayed all litigation in the case to allow the federal court to rule on the issues of preemption after Trinity filed a federal lawsuit in November claiming the village of Hinsdale is discriminating against residents of the The Sober House at 111 N. Grant St. “The court was led to believe, at that time, that t...
This summer, Ronan Martin had planned to celebrate his graduation from Hinsdale Central High School with a trip to Spain with dad Chris, walking the 220-kilometer road know as the "Camino" from Porto to Santiago. The trip had to be canceled due to COVID-19, and it isn't the only one the Martins missed out on this year. Political unrest precluded a journey to Lebanon in March, and the alternative destination of Brazil was ruled out due to the pandemic. Fortunately, the...
After listening to input from Hinsdale trustees in January, representatives from Ryan Companies appeared before the village's plan commission last week with a revised proposal for a senior housing development at Ogden Avenue and Adams Street. "We've listened to the village board and we've updated our plans based on the feedback that we received," said Dave Erickson, vice president of real estate development for Ryan Companies, during a June 10 public hearing on the concept,...
