The Surprising History of My Home Town

The thing about a home town is its randomness.  I could just as easily have been born to a different family in a different city in a different country. Sometimes I think about how lucky I was to be born me instead of, say, the unwanted child of a Romanian peasant or one of the street kids of Rio de Janeiro or even the kid three doors down the block whose parents hated him for being gay.

The village I was born in was Maywood, Illinois.  Well, the hospital my mother went to to deliver me was in Melrose Park, Illinois, the adjacent Chicago suburb notorious for its connection to The Mob, but our home was in Maywood.  It’s a good thing I learned to love the place, because, just like everybody else, I had no say in the matter.   One day I simply became aware of my surroundings and was taught to recite my address.  For the longest time, I believed the 18 mile distance between our house and the Chicago Loop was about as far as one could travel in one day, it was so far.

This week, sixty-six years later, I received from my cousin a link to a large collection of vintage historical photographs posted by a Facebook friend who also grew up in Maywood.  Swells of nostalgia washed over me like a Maui surfer’s dream wave as I moved from picture to picture.  They drew me in and captured my attention for hours at the end of which I had learned more about my hometown then I had ever thought to ask.

The Village of Maywood is an Illinois home-rule corporation that was organized on October 22, 1881. The Village is named for May, the deceased daughter of Colonel William T. Nichols, Maywood's founder.  Colonel Nichols was a State Representative and Senator from Rutland County, Vermont.  He served with the Vermont Volunteers during the Civil War.  In 1868, Colonel Nichols and six other men came to Illinois from Vermont and formed the Maywood Company, which developed the Village.[1]

Surrounded by large parcels of farmland, the Maywood Company constructed homes typical of the times:  American Foursquare, some embellished with a few touches from the by-then-dated Victorian style.

 Figure 1: The third house built in Maywood in 1870 still stands today and is occupied by a local minister. (Vintage-Historic photos from Celia Elizabeth Leon-Mason's collection)
 
Many of Maywood’s buildings were done by prominent “Prairie School” architects of the time including William Drummond, John S. Van Bergen, Isabel Roberts, Thomas E. Talmadge, Vernon S. Watson and the much beloved Frank Lloyd Wright, who lived in the neighboring Village of Oak Park, a little more than 5 miles away.  Later I will reveal a recent discovery about the surprising connection between Wright and my very own family.

Figure 2 Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park home (Wikipedia)

 In 1887 my great grandparents, Iva and Amanda Hurst bought a home on 13^th Avenue in Maywood.  Although Iva was from England, he was a descendant of a Moor and therefore considered by Americans to be Negro.  At the time there were only two or three blocks in the village designated for black newcomers, but the village has always prized its early history of diversity in a thoroughly segregated Chicago and vicinity.  Great Grandmother Amanda, also from England, was Caucasian, but her choice of husband restricted her movements within Maywood society to the same small area . 

The Hursts became known as The First Black Family of the Village of Maywood and were honored as such at a recent gala.

  Figure 3: Amanda Croucher Hurst, my great grandmother

It is easy to understand how difficult it would be for any descendant of Iva and Amanda to fly under the radar in the neighborhood.  "You're a Hurst, aren't you?" was a frequent question from people who already knew the answer.  It was both a blessing and a curse, although I have always been profoundly proud of our history.  The longevity of our residency gave us status with both white and black residents who had been around for similar lengths of time.  Although Maywood grew to a whopping 27,000 residents over the years, back in my day everybody knew everybody else or knew someone who did.

The proverbial unlocked doors and the storied discipline from the handiest mom or dad in the block were all absolutely true for us.  If Mrs. Foster caught one of the kids in my family outside misbehaving in some way, our parents would know about it before we could get home.

We were Catholic, so for a lot of reasons I have gone into in other posts, the Hurst children (no matter that my sister and I had a different last name) all went to the only local Catholic school to which we were welcome.  We were still among a very few black kids enrolled; I can name them all from memory.

                                                

Figure 4: St. James Catholic Church and School,

where the nuns laid my educational foundation  

(Vintage-Historic photos from Celia Elizabeth Leon-Mason's collection)

This picture of St. James must have been taken years after I graduated in 1958 because the infamous fire chute is missing.  A cylindrical metal silo was stuck to the right side of the building.  It became the source of utter terror for many of us, including me.  Inside was slick like a well-maintained playground slide and was, of neccessity, spiraled for emergency exits.  The sound of the fire drill bell struck me dumb with fear.  I never emerged at the bottom without a friction burn on one or more parts of my body.

Oddly enough, the only photograph (left) of a similar contraption I found on the Internet happens to be one that Atlanta's Piedmont hospital had installed back in the same period.

 Figure 5: Proviso Township High in 1951.  It looked exactly the same in 1958 when I started my Freshman year.  (Vintage-Historic photos from Celia Elizabeth Leon-Mason's collection)

Both my mother and my grandfather attended the same high school we did.  Imagine walking into a school with 4,000 students and scores of teachers and having one of those teachers ask "Aren't you a Hurst?"  Aaarrggh!  It never ended until I left town forever.

I graduated in 1962 after a wonderful four years of intense instruction and a crammed social calendar.  It would be only five years later, after I had graduated from college and moved to Milwaukee, that I would pick up a Time magazine and read of violent full-scale race riots in those hallowed halls.   I cried.  My town, which I once couldn't wait to escape because it was so "square", had been transformed in five years time to a replica of the notorious West Side of Chicago, thanks to a combination of white flight and upward mobility on the parts of African American families seeking a better environment than the gang-infested streets of the city. 

There is only one member of the Hurst clan living in Maywood today.  My mother's first cousin, Sidney Hurst and his descendants have never left.  Cousin Sid is the same age as my mother: 86.  Mama lives in Matteson, IL now and her brother and his family live in Colorado.  But before they left, he and my aunt and my cousins lived in this Maywood home:

 Figure 6:  Current view from Google maps.  Sadly, the house has been painted in a way incompatible with its legacy. 

Before the current owners made the regrettable decision to paint the burgundy red brick white, the lines and layout of that house always made us suspect it had been designed by one of the renowned architects of the Prairie School.  Last year a neighbor called my Uncle to give him the long sought after news:  it has been confirmed that this house was designed and built by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright.  It is now listed in the historical register.

There is one more source of intense pride and sorrow for all residents of  Maywood.

Maywood was the home of the 33rd Tank Company, Illinois National Guard (Company B) which was organized on May 3, 1929 with the purpose of training men for combat. On November 25, 1940, 122 men of Company B were inducted into active service to become part of the famous 192nd Tank Battalion, which fought in the Philippine Islands during World War II.  The unit became part of the notorious "Bataan Death March" in April 1942, a horror that was later called a Japanese War Crime.  Only 41 men returned to Maywood alive.


In honor of their sacrifice, Bataan Day Parades were held in Maywood on the Second Sunday in September from 1942 to 1987.  As a member of the Proviso High School majorette squad, I had the honor of marching in that parade from 1959 through 1962.   (photo from Wikipedia)
In recognition of the enormous sacrifice endured by members of the 192nd Tank Battalion and to honor the soldiers from Maywood who died on the Bataan death march, Congress designated Maywood the Village of Eternal Light.[1]  
 

Today many of the people I went to school with who sought college educations and new horizons are returning to Maywood and working to return it to its former glory.  It will be a mighty feat.  The high school is a fortress of metal detectors and armed guards.  The diversity for which we had been so proud is rapidly slipping into a distant memory, although the complexion of the majority has changed.   

The more things change the more they stay the same...but different.  I wish I had had sense enough to appreciate what I had while I had it.  I sure do now.