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RIVERSIDE-BROOKFIELD Also serving North Riverside
Special Section
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Vol. 35, No. 49
December 2, 2020
Brookfield records its fifth death as a result of COVID-19 PAGE 7
Pair of armed robberies within days in Brookfield PAGE 17
You weren’t dreaming, voter turnout was huge
DREAMING BIG: The Rev. John C. Talbot addresses the congregation of Community Presbyterian Church on Aug. 18, 1957 during a cornerstone-laying ceremony where they also placed a time capsule that was uncovered last month as North Riverside prepared to demolish the church.
Avalanche of early, mail votes meant initial low totals were deceiving By BOB UPHUES Editor
A full week after the U.S. presidential election, the Landmark published an article about how voters in each village cast their ballots – for the winner, Joe Biden, as it turned out – but toward the end of that article we noted one head-scratching bit of data. At the time that article was written, on Nov. 9, the Cook County Clerk was reporting vote totals that seemed at odds with what our eyes had been telling us since early voting kicked off in mid-October. Incredibly, we noted, the total number of votes cast in Brookfield and Riverside was lower than for the presidential election in 2016. In the case of Brookfield, at the time, the clerk’s office was reporting more than 650 fewer votes cast. The only exception was North Riverside, which recorded a few dozen more votes than in 2016. See VOTER TURNOUT on page 15
PROVIDED
As end approaches, an echo from the past North Riverside uncovers church’s time capsule, under seal since 1957 By BOB UPHUES
A
Editor
ug. 18, 1957 was a big day for North Riverside Community Presbyterian Church. Since 1952, the nascent congregation of about 230 had been worship-
ping over at Komarek School, at first in the basement and then, by 1953, in the newly built gymnasium. By late summer 1957, however, the bones of a new church were visible at the northwest corner of 8th Avenue and 24th Street. Around 4 p.m. on Aug. 18 of that year, the Rev. John C. Talbot, the church’s 28-year-old pas-
tor, stepped up to the microphone – the new church’s dramatic A-frame timbers jutting skyward behind him -- to lead a prayer prior to pretending to seal a time capsule, encased in copper, behind the cornerstone bearing the year of the church’s construction. See TIME CAPSULE on page 6
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