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Vol. 31, No. 37
September 21, 2016
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SStep into fall
Brewpub eyeing Riverside location PAGE 3
C Check out our Fall Food & Fun special section
Brookfield Arts Festival expands offerings PAGE 6
PPAGE 15
New D95 plan calls for major expansion at Brook Park
Riverside connection to Eastland disaster Hauser Jr. High teacher’s family boarded doomed Eastland
Initial new school concept at S.E. Gross just too expensive By BOB UPHUES Editor
Plans unveiled by Brookfield-LaGrange Park School District 95 officials last week as the solution to the district’s booming enrollment represent a complete break with prior plans, which called for a new school to be built on the campus of S.E. Gross Middle School. Instead, officials have decided on a major expansion at Brook Park School that will create a new first-floor kindergarten wing on the south side of the campus, allowing for the implementation of an all-day kindergarten program. The 44,135-square-foot, two-story addition would add a total of 18 new classrooms and a new gymnasium at Brook Park School. The additional classrooms will allow for Brook Park School to house six sections of each grade, K through 5. A new one-story gymnasium is also planned for S.E. Gross Middle School, to be built as a western addition to the existing building. Meanwhile, plans call for an extensive renovation of the north end of the building, which now houses the band program, industrial arts program and auditorium. See D95 on page 9
Courtesy of Eastland Disaster Historical Society
AFTERMATH: Rescue workers stand atop the hull the Eastland, a Great Lakes pleasure liner that rolled onto its side while passengers were boarding at its Chicago River dock on July 24, 1915. Longtime Hauser music teacher Patty Gill’s grandfather, father and two uncles were on board at the time. One of her uncles was killed. By BOB SKOLNIK
J
Contributing Reporter
uly 24, 1915 was a rainy morning, and the Eastland was one of five excursion boats filled to the brim with Western Electric employees who worked at the massive Hawthorne Works complex in Cicero. They were on their way to an all-day
company picnic and outing in Michigan City, Indiana. On board the Eastland that fateful day was the great-grandfather of L.J. Hauser Junior High music teacher Patty Gill. Accompanying him were and his three sons, one of whom was Gill’s grandfather, Frank. As passengers were still boarding downtown at a dock on the Chicago Riv-
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er between Clark and LaSalle streets, the Eastland began to list and then rolled over on its side. While many of those on the dock side of the boat got to shore without much difficulty, some walking over the side of the boat, many of those of the Chicago River side of were trapped under the boat and drowned. See DISASTER on page 10
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