Park District legend Dave Novak was greeted last week at the Heavenly Gates of the the Field of Dreams by Larry Buckley, Buddy Boy and an army of a thousand or so gnarly-fingered, Clincher-wrenched softball players.
St. Peter graciously deferred on this one.
The man who spent his life providing recreation for others, passed while finally enjoying his own pastime, snorkeling in the islands. Move over, Jimmy Buffett, your exit’s irony has been surpassed.
Dave was a rock star to many … of course he was. He grew up in the ’60s and came of age in the ’70s.
In 1974, Dave came to “The Park” and implemented floor hockey, a penny carnival and a “Spook House” for kids who otherwise woulda been in even more trouble. He made $3 an hour but, though broke, he discovered gold in Carol, his co-worker and wife of 47 years, whom he snatched from the talons of The Eagles (the band), and she gave him two sons who wisely followed Dad’s lead into parks and golden lives with golden wives.
His six grandkids were even more dear. They revered Dave, and he them, having spent his last week visiting a few at their colleges as he leisurely cruised down to the sea.
Retirement came easily.
Dave called time out after 33 years, most as park director and spent the next 17 as he pleased with family, travel, golf and, of course, 16-inch softball. Jim Sarno invented “The Tournament,” but Dave shepherded it for three decades and then spent the next two in a left-field lawn chair, stogie in jowel, watching and commiserating with legions of fans and players in a Bill Veeck-like curtain call among the Cubs bleachers bums.
Home was FP. Dave was a throwback to tougher times when a public servant had to live where he worked, and at times, paid for it. Imagine walking into White Way for eggs the morning after you decided to remove the sledding hill or cancel a Little League game after rain and being ridiculed for “saving your precious softball field.” Rain falls on even the sunniest of jobs.
Park director was a highly scrutinized job when he came up. Yet for whatever grief parents gave, Dave had nothing but patience, second chances, a knowing smirk, and a muffled laugh for all the kids he staffed in a time when the only HR in “The Park” was secretary, Alice Conway, who mentored Dave in the ways of parenting long before his sons Danny and Nicky arrived.
Dave was proud of his slogans, “No Gloves Nationals” and “Never Had ’Em, Never Will.”
But while they became iconic for building “The Tournament” into the nation’s best (according to players), it was his earlier slogan, “A Free Hotdog and a Coke,” that was Dave’s original and most endearing legacy to the town’s hungry kids.
This budget-saving, kid-friendly slogan was “The Best” bestowed on every youngster who ever saw a foul softball fly over the highway fence and scurried through the “Mason Gate” to retrieve what Dave viewed as a budget-busting, lost ball. He had the “Mason Gate,” cut out for the expressed purpose of saving money.
“He threw nickels around like sewer caps,” Butkus once said of Halas, and mega-Bears fan Dave lived by that slogan much to the benefit of taxpayers and his own family.
Under his austere direction (and all park board members of the past), “The Park” did spend prudently on a new pool, tot lot overhauls, and compliance modifications.
Removed were ice rinks, hoops courts (twice), a sledding hill and a once-sacred town football field. Replacing them were a soccer stadium, a multicourt, and a skate park as community needs changed and insurance dictated. As the face of the franchise, Dave took public heat for these unpopular (at the time) changes, with few noticing he was almost always funding them by landing grants through feverish politicking and endless paperwork.
Revenue met community needs when Dave Novak started The Park daycare 35 years ago.
He was an originator of The Community Education Council which finally gathered the parks, schools and social agencies into the same room to interconnect for the greater good.
“He held it all together,” his son Dan said. Indeed, many he mentored and professional peers used those exact words.
Time likely will favor Dave as the man behind “The Tournament,” the Softball Hall of Fame, great slogans and maybe even the numerous boards he volunteered, was elected or appointed to.
But the community in his time, as a song from those days put it, “We Just Disagree.”
Dave was bigger than all that in the low key ways of caretaking, improving, spaces and people and making “The Park” a truly communal place. Under Dave’s watch, it literally became “The Park,” with no memorial name necessary. Which park?
THE Park!
It became an escapist place — like Margaritaville, but not mythical like Buffet’s Nirvana. This one was real … for the community.
It was never about him. Selflessness makes the best civil servants, husbands, fathers, grandfathers, and even occasionally … rock stars.
Fare thee well, Dave Novak. You’ve won “The Tournament” of life … every single round.
See ya out in left field.
Save a chair for us.
Rich Dalton met Dave Novak when he was a punk teenage employee and became one of his biggest supporters. He is a lifelong Forest Park fan, who greatly appreciates how the good people of the village made time for him and raised him right (if mostly in vain).