There’s a lot to like in Forest Park. Here are four things the Review is reporting on this week.
The Trailblazers is a growing new club in District 91. The group of students who use special education resources are focused on taking part in Special Olympics competitions. It has grown from four students to 14 in just a year.
Last weekend, the community gathered for a pep rally in advance of the coming events. Police officers, including the chief, turned out, as did many D91 teachers and administrators, and, of course, Mayor Rory Hoskins. Each of them escorted one of the Trailblazers onto the court for recognition. The cheerleaders from the middle school added to the excitement.
As the Review’s Hope Baker reported, it would be hard to decide who was more moved and excited about this happy recognition – the students or the parents of the Trailblazers.
A good day in District 91.
Shop With a Cop was back this year. In a program sponsored by Walmart and, this year, joined by neighboring police departments, Forest Park police spearheaded this feel- good shopping spree for some local kids.
It creates a positive bond between officers and youngsters, and it sends the young people home with holiday presents for their family and themselves.
The annual Holiday Walk captured Madison Street last Friday evening. This Chamber of Commerce event has all the good vibes. Small-town charm, indeed, with horse-drawn carriages plying the street, fun and inventive live window displays (The Review went all in on “Alice in Wonderland” this year), our small businesses selling their goods in a critical season, and hundreds of people enjoying what’s best about Forest Park.
Finally, and yes, this is somewhat self-serving, we’re bragging a bit about a great new Review feature: Penned by Amy Binns-Calvey, Our Quietest Neighbors is a near-weekly piece on a single person spending their eternity in a Forest Park cemetery.
This week, Binns-Calvey tells the life story of Martha Louise Raynes, a journalist from the late 1800s who pushed the strict limits on the role a woman could play in journalism. While she wrote for the Trib under a pen name, she also published her own magazine, Chicago Magazine of Fashion, Music and Home Reading, and authored books, including one titled, “What Can a Woman Do?”
Our favorite note, though, was that Mary Todd Lincoln, Abraham’s widow, refused to be interviewed by male journalists while she was confined to a sanitarium in Batavia. She gave an interview to Raynes instead. That interview is credited, wrote Binns-Calvey, with securing Mrs. Lincoln’s release from the institution.
