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Dreams can come true…just ask the many foster children who have found their forever family with the help of Hephzibah Children’s Association.

For Oak Park resident Molly Hamilton, her decision to foster children through Hephzibah was simple: she had love to give, space in her life, and there was a need. Becoming a foster parent as a single, working woman may sound difficult, but for parents like Molly, Hephzibah offers an enormous amount of support to ensure a successful foster experience.

After fostering 20 children over 6 years, Molly decided to adopt not one, but two children in her care, who happen to be sisters. Molly believes, as we do, that there will never be a more opportune time to help than this very moment, and potential foster parents shouldn’t wait.

Hephzibah offers support to foster families by providing 24/7 crisis support, intensive training, childcare during emergencies, monthly parents-night-out events, info sessions and training, sibling summer camp and more. In order to provide these services, we need your support. We are dedicated to helping the families we work with navigate their journey of fostering and adoption. We tell each foster family the same thing we tell each child placed in our care. We say: “We’ve got this”, and so do you. Discover the power of giving. Whether it be by learning more about what how to become a foster parent, or by making a donation, you can be the reason a child thrives. Donate today: www.hephzibahhome.org/donate-now Hephzibah Children’s Association • 708- 649-7140 • hephzibahhome.org

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Editor and Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Michael Romain Senior Editor Bob Uphues Digital Publishing and Technology Manager Briana Higgins Photographer Alex Rogals Staff Contributor Shanel Romain Design/Production Manager Andrew Mead Editorial Design Manager Javier Govea Designer Susan McKelvey Sales Representative and Community Engagement Kamil Brady Sales Representatives Lourdes Nicholls, Marc Stopeck Business & Development Manager Mary Ellen Nelligan Donor Relations Manager/Food Editor Melissa Elsmo Development and Sales Coordinator Stacy Coleman Circulation Manager Jill Wagner | Email: jill@oakpark.com Special Projects Manager Susan Walker Publisher Dan Haley

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Chair Judy Gre n Treasurer Nile Wendorf Deb Abrahamson, Gary Collins, Darnell Shields, Sheila Solomon, Eric Weinheimer

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Village Free Press 141 S. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park, IL 60302 PHONE: 773-626-6332 ■ FAX: 708-467-9066 VFPress.news TWITTER: @village_free FACEBOOK: @maywoodnews

The Village Free Press is published digitally and in print by Growing Community Media, NFP. The print edition is distributed across Proviso Township at no charge each Wednesday. © 2022 Growing Community Media NFP.

THIS WEEK in Proviso History When the rotary dial came to Proviso

By MICHAEL ROMAIN

Editor

On Dec. 14, 1950, the Chicago Tribune reported that construction of a “two story and basement structure” had started in Bellwood and was expected to finish within two years.

Once completed, the new $2.9 million building, the Bellwood dial exchange, would enable “more than 23,000 telephones in Bellwood, Berkeley, Broadview, Hillside, Maywood, Melrose Park, North Lake [sic], Stone Park, and Westchester” to finally get dial telephone service.

For those too young to remember, before push-button telephones and later cell phones, people mainly communicated by rotary dial telephones. The website thekidshouldseethis.com explains what they were:

“On the rotary dial, the digits are arranged in a circular layout so that a finger wheel may be rotated with one finger from the position of each digit to a fixed stop position, implemented by the finger stop, which is a mechanical barrier to prevent further rotation.”

Patented in 1892, the rotary dial phone was a major innovation and a dramatic change for customers, AT&T, which first installed dial phones in 1919, explains on its website.

People “went from lifting the receiver and asking the operator for assistance to (gasp!) dialing the number themselves.”

AT&T historian Sheldon Hochheiser adds that the change to dial phones “required replacing the manual switchboards in an exchange with an electromechanical switch, replacing every telephone connected to that exchange with a new dial telephone -- and teaching every subscriber how to use the new dial phone.”

The change also required the installation of equipment like new cables and the erection of buildings like the dial exchange in Bellwood that housed “dial apparatus and other equipment,” along with “assembly and training rooms on the first floor [and] and a maintenance room and office space for the wire chief,” the Tribune reported in 1950. Because there was so much that went into the transition from operatorassisted phones to dial phones, the change took decades to be implemented across the United States. Even though the first dial phones were installed in 1919, AT&T was still converting phones to dial through 1978 (and, as you can see above, rotary dials didn’t reach a good portion of the west suburbs until the early 1950s).

The lesson?

Change, especially technological change, doesn’t just happen out of thin air — it takes people and processes to make it happen.

AT&T A woman shows how to use a rotary dial in a video produced by AT&T’s Bell system. Below le , a rotary dial phone with a moving nger stop. CONTACT: michael@oakpark.com