cOMMunity

By Jan Dovidio NEWS@THEWOODSTOCKINDEPENDENT.COM

Members of St. Vincent de Paul Society at St. Mary Catholic Church have faced many challenges in serving friends in need during this pandemic year. The charity is named after a saint in the 17th century who was known as the “apostle of charity” and “father of the poor.”

The group’s main focus is to provide temporary outreach – both physical and spiritual – during an emergency. In addition to bringing food items, it has bought gasoline cards, paid rent or utility bills, paid for vehicle repair, and provided information about community organizations that can be of help to resolve immediate needs.

“We are never judgmental,,” said Kathleen Lewellyn, president of the St. Mary Conference. “We are there to support our friends in need, and we also pray for them. We all come away with more than we have given. Our ability to share with those who need help has not faltered during the pandemic.”

The process for people seeking help begins with a phone call to the SVDP hotline, for which volunteer David Byers is the phone dispatcher. He interviews the potential client before passing the information to the home visitors if SVDP can be of help.

Teams of two volunteers follow up

A Woodstock woman is one of two new members to the Community Foundation for McHenry County Board of Directors.

Stacy Brown, an account executive for New York Life Insurance Co., will join the board along with and Rocio del Castillo of Crystal Lake, assistant superintendent for special services for Huntley School

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with a home visit, which was in person pre-pandemic and now via phone. At that time the volunteers determine the level of help required. This assistance is meant to be temporary and provide contact information for future help.

SVDP works with many community partners.

“The goal is for our friends in need to be able to help themselves,” said Bob Hahn, SVDP member and district president of 14 conferences (parish SVDP groups) in the Rockford Diocese.

“We collaborate with all agencies in the county that provide assistance to needy persons,” he explained. “Working together has enabled us to be far more effective than we ever could be by working independently.”

During this pandemic, regulations for helping the needy keep evolving. Volunteer Al Cichon serves as a watchdog in finding updated guidelines for eviction issues, financial assistance, free sites for care, and other everchanging support information. Prairie

District 158.

“Both of our newest board members embody the spirit of community and bring talent, expertise and energy to the foundation,” said Tamara Marshall, board chairwoman.

Woodstock’s Department of Public Works will collect Christmas trees for mulching from Monday, Jan. 4, through Friday, Jan. 29.

Residents must have their trees in the parkway (between the sidewalk and street) by 7 a.m. on their regularly scheduled trash day to ensure collection. State Legal Services in McHenry provides free representation when needed.

After providing temporary help, the home visitors check by phone to make sure clients have followed up with referrals and are taking initiative to improve their situation.

“We averaged 600 cases per year in pre-pandemic times,” Hahn said. “We handled 53 cases in October of 2019 and 51 cases in November of 2020, so the need remains steady.”

Donations come mainly from St. Mary parishioners. Events and projects bring additional financial support.

One of those projects is called “Share the Bounty.” Vicki and Tom Reinhardt have dedicated a 30-by100-foot garden to raise vegetables for the needy. They offer the produce on Sunday mornings from July to November for parishioners to buy and leave a donation for SVDP clients. From July through November, they raised $1,700.

Current officers of the group are Kathleen Lewellyn, president; Cynthia Russell, vice president; Judy Fitzpatrick, secretary; Steve Reis, treasurer; and Deacons Bill Kearley and Joe Kayser, spiritual advisers.

“Christ calls each one of us to serve the least of his people,” Lewellyn said. “As a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, I have been given the opportunity to answer his call. I am also privileged to work alongside other dedicated members in this message of charity.”

The St. Vincent de Paul Society local hotline is 815-334-7711.

Trees must be secured so they do not blow into the street. All ornaments, tinsel, lights, decorations, nails, bags. and stands must be removed. Branches, wreaths, roping and other greens will not be collected

For more information, call the Department of Public Works at 815-338-6118 or email pwdept@woodstockil.gov.

As a child growing up in Woodstock (first on Dean Street, then on West South Street), the closest I came to being directly affected by international events was when, in a drill, our Dean Street School teachers made us hide under our desks to keep us from dying in a nuclear attack. (Those teachers meant well.)

It turned out, however, that my insular Woodstock life would not last even through child- Bill hood. My par- Tammeus ents took me and my three sisters Guest column to live in India for two years (195658) so Dad could be part of a University of Illinois agriculture team there.

Then, when I was an adult, on Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorists murdered my nephew, Karleton Douglas Beye Fyfe, son of Woodstock natives Barbara Tammeus Fyfe and Jim Fyfe. Karleton, a 31-year-old bond analyst for John Hancock in Boston, was a passenger on the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center that malevolent day.

At the time, I was an editorial page columnist for The Kansas City Star and wrote the lead commentary for an extra edition of the newspaper published that afternoon. Partway through that task, I learned of the death of Karleton, with whom I was

very close.

Now, almost 20 years later, I have written a new book that recounts the multiple traumas my extended family experienced because of 9/11. It’s called “Love, Loss and Endurance: A 9/11 Story of Resilience and Hope in an Age of Anxiety” (amzn. to/3ltRBn5). (It’s on Amazon and elsewhere, but I hope you’ll patronize your locally owned Woodstock bookstore, Read Between the Lynes, to get one.)

Beyond telling our family’s personal story, the book also explores the difficult question of why some people get drawn toward extremist ideas that can – and often do – lead to violence. And I devote the last chapter to offering ideas about combatting such extremism, which as we know now affects not just religion but politics and other fields, too.

Just a couple of days before Karleton boarded American Flight 11, his wife, Haven, told him she was pregnant with their second child. Their first son, Jackson, was 19 months old when his daddy died. But their second son, Parker, born in May 2002, never met his father.

Karleton, who grew up in North Carolina, was funny, brilliant, accomplished, and tall. I’m a bit over 6-3, but Karleton wound up 6-5, so I looked up to him in several ways. He was one of my parents’ (Bertha and Bill Tammeus) 10 grandchildren, including their first one, who died at birth.

Karleton’s death rocked our family in countless ways. It was like removing a bearing wall in a house. The collapse inevitably wounded everyone. In some ways it has taken us almost 20 years to find our sea legs again, and in some ways we never will find them.

What killed Karleton? Diseased religion put into action. The hijackers had adopted a perverted version of Islam, one that slandered an ancient and honorable religion that I first had come to know as a child in India. They slandered Islam in much the same way that Ku Klux Klan members vilify Christianity.

As I say in the book, “That kind of religion (and religion is far too good a name for it) – rooted not in awe and wonder but in a hunger for conviction, for a simplistic, no-doubts orthodoxy – is quite literally killing us. So this book, in a sense, picks up where my last book left off. In “The Value of Doubt: Why Unanswered Questions, Not Unquestioned Answers, Build Faith” (amzn.to/29F2bmP), I argued that unless you’re part of a faith community that allows you to ask the hard questions of and about religion and all of life, to wrestle openly with your doubts and skepticism, you’ll never develop the kind of faith that can sustain you in both bad and good times.”

The hijackers didn’t have that kind of faith. The result is that the world – including Karleton’s parents, his two sisters, and their families, his widow, children and others – now is bereft of his shining presence, to say nothing of the presence of the nearly 3,000 other people murdered on 9/11. Which means that my family’s inconsolably painful story is just one of many.

In some ways this story began with Barb and Jim’s 1964 wedding in Woodstock. Maybe some of you in my hometown can join me in working toward a more peaceful world to help to redeem this terrible loss.

Bill Tammeus was a columnist for The Kansas City Star for nearly four decades. Today he writes for several other publications, though his “Faith Matters” blog (billtammeus.typepad.com) continues to appear on The Star’s website. This is his seventh book

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The Winter Solstice was Dec. 21 this year. Believe it or not, there are about 2 minutes more daylight each day between now and the Summer Solstice on June 20, 2021, but the nights still seem awfully long (and the days far too short).

While driv- Lisa ing late one night Haderlein between Woodstock and Harvard, it struck The Nature of Things me how dark it seemed. Most house lights were out, so the landscape visible along Route 14 was dark. It was a new moon, so there was no moonlight from the sky to illuminate the ground – my headlights were the only light. I thought to myself, The world must have looked like this for the Potawatomi who lived here 200 years ago.

Not even close.

After doing a little research, I learned that when European-American colonists arrived in this area, they would have found actual darkness. True darkness is something few Americans will ever experience unless they travel to very remote areas.

There are still a few places in the United States where true darkness can be found, but these dark spots are increasingly rare. According to information found at lightpollution. info, there are no places in the entire state of Illinois that have zero light pollution. The nearest place to find true darkness is in Lake Michigan, northeast of Door County,Wisconsin.

Light pollution is defined as lighting that spills upward and outward beyond the objects it is intended to illuminate. Think of a street lamp that shines some of its light into the sky, or a home’s security light that shines into the neighbor’s bedroom. These are examples of light pollution.

Woodstock sits outside a light bubble that surrounds Chicago and most of its suburbs. The bright area stretches from Joliet to Park Forest in the south, north to Elgin and Waukegan, and from Lake Michigan in the east to the Fox River in the west. In this area, the sky is perpetually gray or brighter, and only the brightest stars are visible to the naked eye. On the Bortle Dark Sky Scale, this area is rated from Class 9 to 7, inner city to urban/suburban transition – a place that never gets dark.

Woodstock is in an area considered Class 5, suburban sky. The Milky Way may be visible if directly overhead, but it will appear washed-out. Clouds will appear lighter than the sky because ground light pollution is illuminating them.

Heading northwest from Woodstock, the sky is rated a Class 4, rural/ suburban sky. In this area, the Milky Way is visible when overhead and may have some definition.

In a truly dark, Class 1 or 2 sky, clouds will look like “black holes” that appear deeper than the starlit sky around them. This is because there is not ground light pollution to illuminate the clouds from below.

People illuminate the night for many reasons, with safety being the primary concern. However, there is a tendency to over-illuminate, or to illuminate in inappropriate ways. There is sound research showing that excessive lighting can actually facilitate crime by making it easier for criminals to see what they are doing.

When lighting is installed in a sensible way, it not only saves money and provides security, but also reduces light pollution and improves viewing of the night sky. Proper lighting is directed at the objects it is intended to illuminate, rather than scattered across a large area that does not need to be lit – like into the sky.

The International Dark-Sky Association’s vision is “The night sky, filled with stars, is celebrated and protected around the world as a shared heritage benefiting all living things.” The IDA website, darksky.org, has a wealth of information about sensible lighting, and a program to designate Dark-Sky Communities that adopt good outdoor lighting ordinances and undertake efforts to educate residents about the importance of dark skies.

The village of Hawthorne Woods in Lake County is a Dark Sky Community. What would it take for Woodstock, Bull Valley, or Wonder Lake to become one, too?

Natalie Murphy, Steven Simpson, and Patrick Murphy of Murphy’s Flooring are “masked up” to help in preventing the spread of the coronavirus. The Independent wants you to join your neighbors by sending in a photo of members of your family, club, office, or other group wearing your masks. Please email it to woodstock4all@thewoodstockindependent.com. We’re all in this together, Woodstock. SHOW OFF YOUR MASKS!

STELLA ROSS

DANCE/POMS Marian Central Catholic junior Stella Ross is a natural leader on the dance/poms team. She has kept spirits up throughout the season by sending positive messages to the dancers, staying focused on team building, and working on fun choreography that displays each dancer’s strength. From leading Zoom practices in the summer to never missing an in-person practice she is 100% committed to her team. Her 10+ years of dance experience shines through all she gives to her team. Whether it is organization or skill, she is a valuable member of the Marian dance team.

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