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Review set for pot plan No timeline for proposed dispensary in Sycamore By KATIE SMITH ksmith@shawmedia.com
Adam Poulisse – apoulisse@shawmedia.com
The DeKalb County contingent of the Sycamore High School Class of 1945 meets at Sycamore Cafe the first Monday of each month. Pictured are Helen Doty, (from left) widow of Calvin “Cal” Doty, Gert Wylde, Class of 1948, married to Roland Wylde, Class of 1945 president, Jeanne (Denby) Whitesell and Sonja (Johnson) Twombly.
Sycamore High’s Class of ’45 reminisces at monthly brunches Voice your opinion
By ADAM POULISSE apoulisse@shawmedia.com SYCAMORE – The Sycamore Cafe bustled with its usual breakfast business Monday morning – but one table in the DeKalb Avenue restaurant resembled a Sycamore High School lunch table – circa the 1940s. At the head of the table was heavyweight football quarterback and senior class president Roland “Squeak” Wylde, sitting next to his high school sweetheart Gert Wylde, Jeanne Whitesell – clarinet player, Roland student journalist, “Squeak” drama club mem- Wylde ber, plus other organizations – and a cappella vocalist, choir member, and Pep Club president Sonja Twombly. Times have changed in the 70 Jeanne years since these (Denby) 87- and 88-year-old Whitesell senior citizens were high school seniors roaming the halls of the former Sycamore High School on East State Street, which was demolished in 1986. “My memory ain’t too good,” said Squeak Wylde, the former
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high school athlete who now uses a wheelchair and is battling Parkinson’s. “I don’t even know what I had for breakfast.” Even as the fresh-faced Class of 2015 turns its tassels and embarks on the next chapter of its lives, local surviving members of Sycamore Sonja High School’s Class (Johnson) of 1945 continue Twombly to have monthly brunches at Sycamore Cafe to stay connected and reminisce about going to high school at a time when girls didn’t play organized sports, school buses didn’t exist, girls wore dresses and boys wore slacks, and the words “Pearl Harbor” weren’t associated with a crummy Michael Bay film. “There’s still the spirit there of the few that are local,” Whitesell said. The monthly brunches started about 20 years ago during the group’s 50th reunion, and numbers have dwindled now to about eight graduates, some of whom are un-
able to attend. Wylde weighed 140 pounds when he was the Spartans’ quarterback, he said. There were no buses to take players to road games, so they piled into a cattle truck, he said. And football safety gear wasn’t what it is today. “I had a steel helmet, and the [interior] all broke off, so before every game, I had to stuff it with paper towels for some kind of cushioning,” Wylde said. Wylde was one of the few Sycamore High boys who did not fight in World War II, but his brother did and was killed, he said. With so many senior lads already in the service, it affected the traditional courtship of prom season, according to Twombly. “I remember that our senior prom, there was so many guys gone that we all invited sophomores or younger brothers,” she said. “We had a good time at that prom.” “The girls had pretty dresses,” Twombly added, “but I don’t think they’re as extreme as they are now.” Twombly used to cheer on the Spartans under the Friday night lights, sing in the chorus and sing a cappella, which wasn’t too far removed from the popular music-without-instrument-accompaniment we see today. “Music might be different, but
some of it’s the same,” Twombly said. The senior class yearbook – appropriately themed When GI Joe and Jane Come Marching Home Again – shows the remaining class members in their glory days. Twombly was on the yearbook staff. In a special section of the yearbook, each student signed a “will,” designating a certain object or memory to the remaining students. Squeak said he “leaves his ‘enormous’ accumulations of class notes taken from Mr. Hauswald’s many lectures, to Fred Larson. Of course, you don’t really need them, do you, Fred!” In Whitesell’s will, she “rushes out of the door – dashes for home – gets all fixed up because Kenny is coming. After all – who knows how long he will be on the farm??” Kenny and Whitesell eventually married. “You never knew when he was going to be around for a date,” she said. The monthly brunches also are attended by spouses and even widows of Class of 1945 alumni. Gert Wylde didn’t graduate until 1948, and met her beau when she was a freshman and he was the senior class president. “This one fellow asked if he found a girl would he go [to the
See REUNION, page A5
SYCAMORE – The future of a proposed medical marijuana dispensary in Sycamore – and any timeline for when medical marijuana might be available to people in Illinois – is up in the air. Neither the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation nor Luke DeBatty, a representative for The Dispensary LLC, can say when approval for the dispensary or the OK to distribute marijuana to qualifying patients might happen. Regulators began reviewing applications Wednesday for authorization to open medical marijuana dispensaries, department spokesperson Terry Horstman said. Among them was an application from The Dispensary for a Sycamore location, which received a special use permit from the City Council on April 20. The dispensary applications will be reviewed by staff members in the professional regulation division, Horstman said. Horstman could not give a time frame in which patients would be able to purchase marijuana in Illinois once dispensary locations have received authorization by the state. “Because IDFPR is processing registration materials for all applicants statewide for the first time, we would be unable to provide an exact approval time frame,” he said. Marijuana has been on the minds of Illinois legislators of late. State lawmakers in Springfield moved on several pieces of a legislation related to marijuana Sunday, the last day of the legislative session, including approving a proposal to extend the state’s medical marijuana program by two or more years. The Legislature approved a pilot medical marijuana program two years ago. It allows for one dispensary in each of 60 dispensary districts, including one district for DeKalb County. Patients must be diagnosed with at least one of 35 ailments
See MARIJUANA, page A5
Danielle Guerra – dguerra@shawmedia.com
Army veteran Jim Champion, confined to a wheelchair by his multiple sclerosis, backs up his chair on to a lift in 2014 in his Somonauk home to get him from his “man cave” to the main level. Champion was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in June of 1988 at the age of 21, only months after returning with the 101st Airborne Division from Jordan.
DeKalb debates using TIF funds for road maintenance By BRITTANY KEEPERMAN bkeeperman@shawmedia.com DeKALB – The city’s roads need repair, and it won’t be cheap. It would cost $9 million per year to maintain streets in their current condition, according to City Engineer John Laskowski. This year, the city used Infrastructure Management Services to evaluate the road net-
work within the city of DeKalb and determined about half of the streets are either failing or in pre-failing condition, according to city documents. If nothing is done toward street maintenance, those pre-failing roads will rapidly deteriorate. In general, streets within the city’s two tax increment financing districts are a bit worse off than those in other areas of the city, Laskowski said.
But as budgetary discussions begin to wrap up, not all are convinced the city should use TIF funds to pay for road repairs within those districts. The city’s central area TIF district, which includes downtown DeKalb, will expire at the end of 2020, while another that covers the south-central portion of the city will expire at the end of 2018. Some city officials, including Mayor John Rey, say the
city needs to use those funds for transformative projects that would alter or beautify the city. Others aren’t convinced, including Financial Advisory Committee member Tom Teresinski. “For a number of years, the TIF district budgets included something for roads and sidewalks in those neighborhoods. … I don’t see why this year is different,” Teresinski said. City staff are currently
working on a plan for phasing TIF funds out of the city’s budget. Financial Advisory Committee Chairman Mike Peddle said he thought the city needed to begin weaning itself off using TIF funds for routine maintenance costs, such as road repairs. Other proposed uses for the TIF money include putting air-conditioning in the Egyptian Theatre, a parking garage feasibility study, and improve-
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ments at DeKalb Taylor Municipal Airport. But if roads aren’t repaired – or at least maintained – they will continue to deteriorate and cost more to fix later, according to city documents. “If we can avoid excess costs downstream, it’s wise to at least fix some of the roads,” Teresinski said. “In my opinion there will still be adequate money to fund some of those bigger projects.”
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