Monday, December 31, 2012
Editor's note: This is the eighth of a 10-part countdown of articles looking back at the Geneva newsmakers of 2012. The No. 1 newsmaker will be Geneva Patch's 2012 "Person of the Year."
Bob McQuillan arguably could have been the No. 1 newsmaker of 2012. Certainly his name showed up in many of the top stories of the year. Whether you think Bob McQuillan is champion of the people or meanspirited obstructionist, the one thing just about everyone can agree on regarding the TaxFACTS co-founder is that he shows up and speaks his mind. The TaxFACTS citizens group grew in prominance in 2012 for at least three reasons: Among the top stories of 2012, McQuillan's name pops up frequently. McQuillan also jumps into the "Newsmakers of 2012" list because of his curious announcement that he will run for mayor—an announcement that earns the adjective because McQuillan has focused the vast majority of his time and attention to School …
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Editor's note: This is the seventh of a 10-part countdown of articles looking back at the Geneva newsmakers of 2012. The No. 1 newsmaker will be Geneva Patch's 2012 "Person of the Year."
Yes, Joe Stanton was the Wood Award winner in 2011—but he was a newsmaker in 2012 because of his association with one of the top stories of the year: the possible demolition of the Pure Oil Building. On Feb. 21, Geneva Historic Preservation Commission voted 5-1 to deny a demolition permit for the blue-roofed former gas station that was at the time the home of The Pure Gardener, 502 W. State St. Stanton, who owns the building as well as the one next door to the west, argued alongside commercial architect Jeffrey Lietz and St. Charles Bank & Trust President Tom Hansen that it would cost $360,000 to modernize the interior, an investment Stanton said would prohibit any adaptive reuse of the building. Commission members also heard testimony …
Friday, December 28, 2012
Part 6 of a multipart series in memoriam of the many amazing people Geneva lost in 2012.
Joe Radovich was Geneva's city attorney from 1957 to 1961, but he was an institution in Geneva for many decades longer than that. His law offices were at the top of the stairs of the iconic 312 W. State St. building in Geneva's historic business district, and his life was a little like the building in which he practiced law for so many years—solid, significant and central to this community's foundation. His story is really that of the great American dream. He was the son of Serbian immigrants who worked hard, earned a law degree, served in the military as a U.S. Army judge advocate during World War II, then settled in Geneva, where he established a private practice in 1948. For the next 61 years, he would practice law in Geneva, and …
It's time to look back on the major 2012 Geneva news stories as I saw them.
- GOVERNMENT
- Jeff Ward
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Friday, December 28, 2012
In the famous but somewhat paraphrased words of the fictional Margo Channing, “Fasten your seatbelts folks, it’s going to be a bumpy Geneva 2012 retrospective ride.” Since we’ve got so much to cover, let’s get right to it! In January, responding to a make-a-prognostication-before-the-fact challenge from eminent readers Colin Campbell and Ken Loebel, this columnist predicted the president would prevail one more time. My theory was that a combination of pandering to far-right lunacy and the contenders’ willingness to tear each other to shreds during the primary would ultimately lead to the GOP nominee’s downfall. And that’s essentially what happened. February brought us the sad revelation that Geneva streets Superintendent Steve LeMaire …
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Part 5 of a multipart series in memoriam of the many amazing people Geneva lost in 2012.
Janet Safanda's name should be more than a footnote in the Geneva history books. That's because Safanda was instrumental in the movement to preserve Geneva's historic buildings during the fast-growth period of the 1980s, and her legacy lives on in the stories of the day. It's hard not to think of this year's movement to preserve the Pure Oil Building without remembering Janet's similar efforts to preserve the former creamery building that's now a part of the foundation of the Herrington Inn. Back in those halcyon days, the issue of historic preservation popped up a lot in news articles. Developers were building new subdivisions, Tax Increment Financing Districts were new funding mechanisms for development and there were opportunities all…
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Part 3 of a series: Geneva Patch takes a look at 10 people who played key roles in the top stories of 2012, culminating with the announcement of Geneva Patch's 2012 "Person of the Year."
Todd Searcy made a lot of headlines as a football player at Geneva High School in the early '80s and more still as a linebacker for the University of Illinois Fighting Illini. But the headlines he made in 2012 weren't about the battles in the backfield or on the line of scrimmage. They were about the hard struggles of being a gay athlete growing up in Geneva, his life-and-death battle against AIDS-related illnesses and his day-to-day challenges with serious, ongoing health issues. In 2010, Searcy was named to the Geneva High School Athletic Hall of Fame. Two years later, he made the courageous decision to tell his story to freelance writer Martha Quetsch, who wrote a three-part series of stories, published on Geneva Patch, called "A Gay …
Part 4 of a multipart series in memoriam of the many amazing people Geneva lost in 2012.
It's probably not socially appropriate to consider "the best wake ever," but as I said in an earlier article, John Barton's visitation at Malone Funeral Home earlier this year would be right at the top of my list. It's just the way I think we should remember the lives the people we've lost—with love and affection, joy and reflection, testimonials and funny stories. A good life is something to be celebrated—and John Barton led one worthy of the loudest cheers. There's not much I can add to the excellent stories written about John by my friend, Kurt Wehrmeister: John Barton: The Coach Who Cared So Much and Coach John Barton's Fire Puts Him in GHS Hall of Fame. Read them and enjoy. And I wish I had videotaped all the stories told by family …
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Part 2 of a series: Geneva Patch takes a look at 10 people who played key roles in the top stories of 2012, culminating with the announcement of Geneva Patch's 2012 "Person of the Year."
Pam Broviak is one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. She is extremely smart and very good at her job as the city of Geneva's civil engineer—more or less the No. 2 person in the city's Public Works Department. She is also a mom, and it was in that role that Broviak found herself earlier this year at the core of one of 2012's most interesting and most-read stories, one which captured for a brief period of time both national and international attention for her stance on students' rights to Facebook privacy. The discussion might have started on April 24, when Broviak wrote on a "Public Works Group Blog" about an incident that took place at Geneva Middle School South. "Normally I don't like sharing the nitty gritty details of my family'…
Monday, December 24, 2012
Part 1 of series: Geneva Patch takes a look at 10 people who played key roles in the top stories of 2012, culminating with the Geneva Patch 2012 "Person of the Year."
Time magazine has its "Person of the Year." Now, Geneva Patch starts our own hyper-local equivalent. In this series, we'll count down from 10 to 1, naming the folks—from saints to sinners—who made the news so interesting during the past year. The first on our list is the temporary Genevan, Jenny McCarthy. The rumors of the actress and model's summertime stay in Geneva started in June and went symbolically hand in hand with other media reports about her summer romance with Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher. McCarthy told zeenews.com in June that she was pretty darned close to being in love with good old No. 54, who was going through some interesting times himself, with reported overseas knee surgery and eventually a late start to …
Part 2 of a multipart series: Dick Jaeger was part of Geneva's history.
On the same day Geneva lost legendary historian emeritus Merritt King, it lost another icon who was part of Geneva's history and played a key role in preserving it: Dick Jaeger. Like so many of the Jaeger family in Geneva, Dick was an active member of the community, a communicant of the old and new St. Peter Church in Geneva, a member of the Geneva School Board and Geneva History Center board. But he probably will be remembered most for constructing model replicas of Geneva's historic buildings for the Geneva History Center—award-winning pieces of folk art that are a reminder of his affection for his hometown. He started by creating Christmas ornaments depicting historic buildings of Geneva that he and his wife, Norma, used to help raise…
Janis Creason
5:22 pm on Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Our loss was Geneva's gain. Our town benefited greatly from Bob's ability to breakdown and articulate complex topics of importance to the taxpayers. Although we'd rather have him as our mayor, hope he becomes yours! more ›