RIVERSIDE-BROOKFIELD Also serving North Riverside $1.00
Vol. 33, No. 27
July 4, 2018
Summer success RBHS girls win tourney title PAGE 13
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Bowling alley RFQ draws one response PAGE 3
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RBHS may make lacrosse an official sport PAGE 7
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Growing up Brookfield
Mary Phillips’ roots run deep in a village where she’s lived for more than 90 years By BOB UPHUES
F
Editor
or the record, Mary Phillips doesn’t think she is actually Brookfield’s oldest resident. But being the good sport she is, Phillips will be riding in an open-top, 19th-century carriage drawn by a horse in today’s Fourth of July parade, a symbol of the village’s historic past as residents mark Brookfield’s 125th birthday. While, she may not be the oldest resident of the village, the 92-year-old Phillips has family roots that just might be the deepest. Phillips has lived in the same two-story frame house on Henrietta Avenue since she was an infant — she was born in Feb-
ruary 1926 — and she and her family have been, and still are, connected to past and present businesses, schools, fraternal organizations and even local government. Asked about being in the spotlight at the parade marking the village’s quasquicentennial, Phillips was about as honest as you might expect. “It’s a pain in the butt,” she said with a sidelong glance at her granddaughter, Nicole, who heard about the village’s efforts to find the oldest resident for the parade on Facebook and talked Mary into it. A proud Bohemian, the former Mary Sedivy — she says it’s actually pronounced “shed-jivy” — was born in Berwyn to a pair of Czechoslovakian immigrants. See PHILLIPS on page 12
ALEXA ROGALS/Staff Photographer
CENTER OF ATTENTION: Mary Phillips practices her parade wave during an interview at the Brookfield Village Hall last week in advance of her appearance in the July 4 parade. She’ll be riding in a horse-drawn carriage to mark the village’s 125th birthday.
Historic Riverside Lawn home destroyed by fire Cause being investigated, but blaze appears ‘suspicious’
By BOB UPHUES Editor
The last historic home left standing in Riverside Lawn burned to the ground during
the early morning hours of June 28, ending for good any speculation about whether it or any part of it would be saved for posterity. Firefighters were called to 3744 Stanley Ave. in unincorporated Riverside Town-
ship about 1:50 a.m., according to Lyons Fire Chief Gordon Nord. By the time engines arrived, the house was completely engulfed in flames, he said. Because the house has been vacant
for more than a year and the protective metal shutters over the house’s lowerfloor windows appeared not to have been See FIRE on page 10
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