John Warner Norton (7 March 1876 – 7 January 1934) was a muralist and easel artist who pioneered the field in the United States.

Norton was born in Lockport, Illinois, the fourth of five children born to John Lyman Norton and Ada Clara Gooding Norton. John’s youth was spent primarily in Lockport during the prosperous years of his families business, Norton & Co. When he reached his early teens, he was sent to Dr. Holbrook’s military school in Ossining, New York, and then he attended the Harvard School for Boys in Chicago. His family sent him to study law at Harvard University presumably to aid the family business. At Harvard, John demonstrated an early proclivity for drawing by creating illustrations for the Lampoon. By 1896, however, Norton & Co. became insolvent, and shortly thereafter Norton was forced to leave Harvard and return to Lockport.

When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Norton joined Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Norton never reached Cuba, however. Instead, he served his brief commission chiefly in Florida until his discharge at Montauk Point, New York. Norton returned to Lockport and worked briefly in his father’s struggling business—then in receivership—before returning to school, this time at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Here he studied life drawing under John Henry Vanderpoel (1857-1911) and composition with Frederick H. Richardson (1862-1937).

Norton’s older sister, Louise Norton Brown, introduced him to Japanese composition and style through the prints and books she brought back from her travels. Of particular interest to him was the work of Katsushika Hokusai. Norton studied these examples religiously, attracted to the simple lines, flat shapes, and the decorative qualities of the work. From these works he gleaned a fresh, new way that artists could interpret the world around them. He repeatedly used the principles learned from these works in his own early work. While in school, Norton’s ambition was to become an illustrator. In 1900, motivated by what would become his signature determination, he was employed by the Chicago Inter-Ocean as a quick-sketch artist. Over the next two years, he created illustrations for Blue Sky magazine and The Inland Printer. To supplement his income from infrequent illustration work, he began what would become a long committed career in teaching. After Carl Newland Werntz (1874-1944) opened the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1902, Norton started teaching there.

On September 2, 1903, he married Margaret (Madge) Washburn Francis (1879-1963), whom he had first met in 1900 as a classmate. The couple was married in the bride’s home in Rock Island, Illinois. Despite the exhibitions, illustration work and his professional reputation, these were lean years for the Nortons. After their marriage, they moved in with Norton’s parents at the old family mansion in Lockport, thinking it would be only temporary until they could head for New York City where so many of the Chicago artists were relocating. But with the family business already bankrupt, Norton’s meager salary as a teacher plus the mounting responsibility of a family, they were unable to afford a move east. The Norton’s first child, Margaret Francis, arrived in 1905, followed by John Francis in 1907, and Nancy in 1912. To compensate for increased expenses, Norton expanded his teaching activities beyond the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In 1906 he advertised a month-long sketching class at Saugatuck, MI where in later years he periodically taught or lectured during summers. He also opened his home in Lockport for summer classes in about 1908, but the venture was not financially successful. Although Norton was not able to make a living solely from commercial work, other opportunities did present themselves. In 1907 Norton established a relationship with A.C. McClurg and Company in Chicago. He also executed his first illustrations for a Western novel, The Iron Way by Sara Pratt Carr. The only known extant original painting for one of these illustrations offers insight to Norton’s work method and his maturing illustration style. The canvas size approximates those of later easel paintings, suggesting a format that was comfortable for Norton. The image was rendered in cool and warm grays without surface color that indicates Norton’s fairly sophisticated understanding of black-and-white reproduction. Norton’s palette shows a shift toward middle tones and away from the boldly contrasted ink drawings of his earlier illustrations.

Around 1910 when the recently formed Cliff Dwellers club took residence above Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, Norton furnished the space with his first important mural decoration. Originally situated at the top of the stairs, the painted canvas panel reflected both Norton’s and fellow club members’ interest in the Southwest and its culture As a member of the Cliff Dwellers, Norton was in the midst of some of the most consequential artists, architects, writers, and others interested in the city’s cultural development. It was a ripe environment for an up-and-coming artist and it was a place where Norton wanted to be. At this point there was a major shift in Norton’s teaching career. First, and most important, he started teaching at the School of the Art Institute. He began in the fall of 1910 by teaching life drawing, illustration, and summer classes.
Norton’s students who benefited from his classes and later became accomplished in their fields include Macena Barton (1901-1986), Archibald Motley Jr. (1891-1981), Increase Robinson (1890-1981), Kathleen Blackshear (1897-1988), the muralists Dean Cornwall (1892-1960), Davenport Griffen (1894-1986), Tom Lea (1907-?),[55] Eric Mose (1905-?), and Theodore Roszak (1907-2001). The advice Norton gave students represented more than his approach to teaching. It grew from the constantly evolving ideas he developed and made manifest in his work, whether illustrations, easel paintings, or murals. Norton craved the intellectual challenge of new ideas, and several events of the early to mid-1910s must have given him ample stimulus.

In 1913, the year he started teaching mural decoration at the School of the Art Institute, Norton began work on what would be his largest and most sophisticated mural decorations to date. The nine panels for the Fuller Park Assembly Hall, distinguished by its Prairie Style architecture, were completed in 1914 and fortunately survive today as a record of Norton’s earliest mural work for a modern, public structure in Chicago.

After a 1918 overmantel decoration for the Clayton F. Summy residence in Hinsdale, Illinois, Norton had a four-year hiatus before resuming his mural work. During this interim, George Bellows was invited in 1919 to the Art Institute as a painter-in-residence from New York, and with him came the influence of The Eight. Norton befriended him and was, in turn, affected by his work. It was Bellows who interested him in lithography, to the extent that Norton went into debt buying a litho press. Norton continued to make lithographs over the years, some representational genre scenes of contemporary life and others more abstracted and decorative in nature. In the late 1920’s Norton embarked on what would be his most rewarding collaboration in mural decoration: his relationship with the architectural firm of Holabird & Root. Norton’s crowning personal and artistic achievement with Holabird & Root came in 1929 with the ceiling mural for the Chicago Daily News Building. Norton’s only ceiling mural, the work covered a 180 foot barrel-vaulted ceiling, under which passed hundreds of commuters each day as they traversed the building’s concourse. Norton’s responsibility was to furnish a modern building supporting a modern enterprise with equally modern decorations. Norton, of course, knew that this type of building, “with its geometrical shapes and its impressive masses, cannot support Renaissance or Gothic decoration. His design, then, needed to be a new invention, a product of the times. If it were not, Norton, in his mind, would have failed creatively. But fortunately, he met the challenge head-on. His solution was a geometric abstraction of the architectural lines, angles, and spaces, into which were woven symbols of how contemporary news was gathered, printed and distributed. Again for this job Norton chose a limited range of colors, but added golden-yellows. Norton’s careful arrangement of color, shape and pattern created the illusion of layered objects which visually came forward or receded, depending on the point of view. Norton’s disregard for scale in individual objects added to the effect. The interplay, however, was always subtle.

Norton designed five murals for the Century of Progress World’s Fair held in Chicago during 1933 – 1934, all for the Hall of Science. Stylistically Norton seemed to have come full circle in these works. The Tree of Knowledge, The History of Technical Science, The History of Applied Science, The Dimensions of Natural Objects in Miles and Wave Lengths made a nod to some of Norton’s early illustrations. Bold shapes, strong contrasts, and overlapping compositions were all there. A new direction, however, was found in the terrazzo ground panels for the esplanade of the Adler Planetarium, which were also designed by Norton and Tom Lea. Norton’s earlier work made it to the Fair, too. His Logan Museum murals and two works from the Art Institute of Chicago’s permanent collection were also exhibited. With the Fair’s emphasis on progressiveness and his own interests in all things modern, Norton must have felt at home. In many ways, the spirit of the Fair symbolized what he struggled to achieve throughout his life: a constant development of intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual matters. In the fall of 1933, then gravely ill, Norton and his wife journeyed to Colony Gardens, South Carolina. He died of stomach cancer on January 1, 1934, at a hospital in Charleston, South Carolina. Services were held for him in St. Luke’s Cathedral in Evanston, where his drawings for the saints had been turned into three dimensions. Norton’s ashes were scattered at Saugatuck, MI.
Thanks to Jim L. Zimmer for contribution to this biography.

Noted works by John Warner Norton-
• 180 Foot long ceiling mural for the concourse of the Chicago Daily News Building (1929)
• Ceres mural in the Chicago Board of Trade Building (1930)
• Old South & New South, murals in the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham, AL
• American Heritage Series at the Hamilton Park Field House, Chicago
• Four murals at the St. Paul MN city hall
• Twelve murals comprising The History of Mankind (1923) at the Logan Museum of Anthropology, Beloit College in Wisconsin
• Navaho, mural for the Cliff Dwellers Club (1909) where he was a founding member.

Catharine A (Carrie) Lundmark – Dressmaker

Catharine A. Johnson Lundmark was born in Stockholm, Sweden on November 25, 1864. She also went by the name Carrie.

In 1884 she married John (Jonas) Lundmark, a carpenter, while still in Sweden. Jonas, Carrie and their two sons immigrated to the U.S. in 1892. She and Jonas had three children in all, John (Arvid), Peter (Alof) and Ruth. Ruth, who was born in Illinois in 1894, married Roy Miers and moved to Indianapolis.

In the early part of the 20th century, Carrie had a seamstress business called Mrs. Lundmark Dressmaking which was located at 918 S State Street in Lockport.

According to the 1900 and 1910 census, the Lundmarks had a home at 222 E 11th Street, which was where she later moved her dressmaking business.  

During the 1940’s, Carrie spent some time living in Saint Petersburg, FL. She died at the Wildwood Nursing Home in Indianapolis, IN on June 19, 1949 at age 85.

Edward Francis Worst (1866-1949)
Edward F. Worst was born in Lockport, Illinois May 20, 1866 to German immigrants Jacob and Henrietta Lang Worst, the fifth of six children. He attended Illinois Normal College and Cook County Normal School, earning a teaching certificate. As a teacher, Worst introduced crafts into his classroom teaching. Like others in the Progressive Education movement, his interest in handwork was in its relationship to other disciplines.

In 1900, Edward Worst was appointed principal of the Yale elementary school, a training ground for student teachers of the Chicago Normal School. But he was not only involved in school administration. In 1904 he developed the “Normal Extension” program at Chicago Normal, where he taught paper and cardboard construction, metalwork, woodwork, basketry, and weaving. Within a few years he added an advanced thirty-week weaving course for teachers.

In 1909, Worst became the first Superintendent of public schools in Joliet, Illinois, and in 1912 he became superintendent of elementary vocational education in the Chicago public schools. Worst was one of the first educators to consider the therapeutic value of handcraft. He taught occupational and physical therapy skills to employees of state mental institutions and pioneered one of the earliest occupational therapy classes in Illinois. In 1915, he began instructing teachers of mentally and physically handicapped children in Chicago Public Schools.

In 1905, Edward married Evangeline Sheriff. Worst and his wife traveled to Europe to study handicrafts schools. Worst was inspired by visits to Norway and Sweden, where handloom weaving was a very successful line of home industry. Sometime between 1910 and 1914, Worst purchased spinning wheels and looms and had them shipped from Sweden to Lockport where he organized Swedish immigrants into a cottage industry. Originally named the Lockport Home Industry, the group changed their name to Lockport Cottage Industries in 1923.

Through the publication of his books, Edward Worst became a national expert on weaving. Foot-Power Loom Weaving, published in 1918, described the weaving process in detail. Mr. Worst also established the course in the famous Penland School of Handicraft at Penland, N. C., and taught in state prisons, mental institutions, homes for the aged, and schools throughout the country. He enjoyed his work at Stateville Penitentiary, and was proud of the vocational school there. During his time there, he befriended the notorious prisoner Richard Loeb, whom he considered a friend at the time of Loeb’s murder by another prisoner in 1936.

Edward & Evangeline had three children; Lewis Worst, Elizabeth Worst Musgrave and William Worst. Dorothy Woebbeking Worst, who was featured on a 2015 Lockport Collector Card, was married to Edward’s son William (Bill) Worst. At the time of his death at age 82 on January 31, 1949, Edward was president of the Lockport High School board of education. He is buried in the Lockport City Cemetery.

Haley Augello-Olympic Wrestler (Born Oct 17, 1994)

Haley Augello was born October 17, 1994 to Larry and Wendy Augello. When she was 9 years old, her brother would come home from wrestling practice and practice with her. This sparked Haley’s interest in wrestling.

While attending Lockport Township High School, she won the Cadet World Championship and came in second in the US Open, along with many other championships. Haley graduated from Lockport in 2013. Haley went on to attend King University, where she wrestles competitively and continues to win tournaments, including the 2016 University Nationals Champion.

In 2016 Haley qualified for the U.S. Olympic Women’s Wrestling Team, and she will represent the U.S. at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Roland C. Lif (Feb 6, 1919 – Dec 6, 2006) Contractor
Roland Carl Lif was born in Lockport, IL on February 6, 1919 to Swedish immigrants Waldemar and Karin Pearson Lif. He attended Lockport Central Grade School and graduated from Lockport Township High School, class of 1939. In high school he met his future wife, Ada Dollinger. They were married on December 6, 1941. The next day Pearl Harbor was bombed and WWII began. His time as an apprentice carpenter was put on hold when he was drafted into service on March 26, 1942. During the war he earned the rank of Sergeant. He spent time in intelligence and eventually as an instructor, where he was responsible for contact and coordination of reconnaissance crews in combat and acting as a scout car commander.  His Decorations included: 1 Service Stripe, 1 Overseas Service Bar, an American Campaign Medal, a European-African-Middle Eastern Ribbon with bronze battle star and a good conduct medal.

He was discharged from service on December 30, 1945 and came home to his wife and new-born daughter Donna. He went back to work as a carpenter for local contractor Henry Ogren. In 1955 he and Ada opened R.C. Lif Construction Company. Roland acted as general contractor and Ada ran the office. In the beginning, he built both residential and commercial but by the 1960’s he was specializing in commercial construction. In late 1963, his son Ronald was born.
Roland was very active in both the local and business community. He was a member of Lockport Lions Club, VFW Post 5788, American Legion Post 18, the Lockport Moose and was a volunteer fireman for the Lockport Fire Protection District for more than 40 years. He regularly attended the Swedish Covenant Church where he sang in the choir.

Some of the noted buildings Roland was general contractor for include; Lockport Fire Dept. Station #1 on 9th Street (which was torn down in 2016 to make way for a new larger station), Summit Plaza, the old post office at 9th & Hamilton St. (now Midwest Digital Blueprint), the former rectory of St. Joseph Church, and Lockport Fire Station # 2 in Crest Hill. R.C. Lif Construction was also a major contractor for Lockport’s Texaco Refinery and Andrew Corporation in Orland Park, IL.

Roland & Ada retired from the business in 1986 and were able to spend the next 20 years enjoying the life they had built. He and Ada traveled many places, including regular trips to their summer home in Pentwater, Michigan. Roland passed away in the Lockport home they had built on December 6, 2006, their 65th wedding anniversary, at age 87. Ada Dollinger Lif passed away November 1, 2015 at age 94.

Bruce Deeming Cheadle (July 8, 1897 – Nov 19, 1990)
Bruce Deeming Cheadle was born in Lockport, Illinois on July 8, 1897. He was the first child born to Thomas Agnew Cheadle and May Lenora Deeming Cheadle. His brother Arthur T Cheadle was born three years later and his sister Anna May Cheadle was born seven years later.

Thomas Cheadle’s father had come to Lockport and worked in the canal boat yard before joining the Hiram Norton firm. Thomas Cheadle earned his living as a printer and newspaper publisher. It was in his father’s business, Will County Printing Co., where Bruce learned the printing trade.

Bruce Cheadle earned a master’s degree from Northwestern University. In 1926, he married Hazel Loomis, who he met in high school after she had moved to Lockport from Fennville, Michigan.

Cheadle taught in Chicago public schools for a total of 45 years, 37 of them (from 1928 to 1965) at Englewood High School where he taught printing and was supervisor of industrial arts. All the while he lived in Lockport and commuted into the city.
Commuting to and from Chicago didn’t limit his activities in Lockport’s civic affairs, however. One of his first important works for civic improvement was the Lockport Centennial in 1930. In the 1930’s Cheadle was a strong voice supporting a new City Hall and the improvement of Lockport’s sewers and roads. These improvements included paving New Avenue, which was the defunct streetcar line, to Lemont as well as the lighting of State Street. He was on the Lockport Zoning Board for 35 years.

He had a long career as an educator but was more famous as a civic leader in Lockport. He served as secretary of the Civic and Commerce Association of Lockport from its founding in 1935 until it went out of existence in 1980. The Civic and Commerce Association was Lockport’s predecessor to the Chamber of Commerce. He held a similar position from 1936 to 1980 and was a central force in organizing the Des Plaines Valley Improvement Association.

In the late 1940’s Bruce & Hazel Cheadle divorced and went their separate ways. However, they crossed paths again in the early 1960’s and remarried on November 22, 1962. They remained married for the rest of their lives.

One of Bruce Cheadle’s lasting legacies for Lockport is the saving of the building now known as Central Square. This had been the town’s central grade school for many years before closing in 1969. The School Board at the time planned to sell the land and demolish the building to make way for retail development. Bruce Cheadle was among the first group of citizens to spearhead legal action to stop the school board from being able to sell what had been designated “Public Square” in 1838. After years of legal fighting, the building was saved and renovated. It was agreed that the City, Township and Park District would participate in joint use of the building. In early 1981, the newly-renovated Central Square was opened.

Bruce Cheadle passed away on November 19, 1990 at age 93. Hazel Cheadle lived to be 104 years old and continued to live in the house they shared at 11th & Washington Streets (known as the Leon McDonald house) until she passed away on October 3, 2002.

Rev. Isaiah E Hooks (1870-1960)
Isaiah E. Hooks was born in North Carolina in December 1870 to Jacob and Margaret Hooks, who were former slaves. He moved to the Joliet, Illinois area when he was in his twenties. The Rev. Isaiah Hooks purchased some land south of Lockport that he then subdivided to construct affordable small houses in Fairmont. The land where he built these houses is east of Green Garden Place, between Princeton and Rosalind Streets.

Providing housing for many people who migrated from the South and had nowhere to go, the area eventually became known as Hooksville. The history of the development is part of the reason many houses in this area of Fairmont are located on small lots that do not meet current county zoning requirements.

Rev. Hooks also built a church, named the Children’s Church, on Arthur Avenue in Lockport and donated it to the community. Rev. Hooks died in 1960 and is buried in Elmhurst Cemetery in Joliet, Illinois along with his wife Winifred who died in 1939.

Captain Holder Sisson- (September 27, 1790-April 26, 1878), Lockport founding father
Born in Rhode Island in 1790 to Philip Sisson, a shipbuilder, Holder Sisson was one of 14 children. When he was 18 his father moved the family to New York State. At 19 he married Polly Anderson. Polly and Holder had two children. Soon after his marriage, he served for six months in the War of 1812 and Polly died soon after this. After the death of Polly, Holder moved west to Evansville, Indiana. There he wed Clarissa Brunson with whom he had 8 children, of which five daughters and two sons lived to adulthood. Sisson was in the Evansville, Indiana area for 15 years. He then moved the family to Michigan and then to a farm in Chautauqua County, New York. Finding no luck with farming in New York, he moved his family to Illinois in 1831. He was one of the first settlers in Lockport Township, settling on the east side of the Des Plaines River in what was then known as Hanford Place. The spot is located on Division Street, just east of Grandview Avenue.

By May of 1832, the Black Hawk War was beginning and Holder, along with other pioneers, moved their families to Fort Dearborn in Chicago. On Mr. Sisson’s return to Lockport, he built a blockhouse on his property. He was elected Captain and ordered by General Scott to proceed with his company to Indian Creek in LaSalle County and bury the dead that had been massacred. After the war, he moved his family to the west side of the Des Plaines River, to an area near what is now Romeoville High School. Clarissa Brunson Sisson passed away in 1858 and Sisson remarried in 1859 to Mrs. Abigail Spicer.
Sisson was elected one of the first commissioners of Cook County (before Will County was established). When Will County was established, he was one of its first commissioners. He was selected by his neighbors to look after their claims and interests during the sale of government lands.

It should be noted that Lockport’s first school was located in the kitchen of his east Lockport home. Capt. Sisson had built the addition to his dwelling to be used as a kitchen, but it was surrendered for school purposes in the 1830’s. There is also a street off of Division Street named for Capt. Sisson.

Captain Sisson died April 26, 1878 and was buried in the Brunson-Sisson Cemetery on Sisson’s land on the west bluffs of the Des Plaines River in Lockport. Material Service Corp. eventually owned the Sisson property and in the late 1990’s they wanted to expand the quarry. This meant the cemetery on the land needed to be excavated and the graves moved. In 1998, the cemetery was excavated and the bodies and stones moved to their current location in Lockport City Cemetery.

JOSEPH “STANDING BEAR” SCHRANZ
Joseph Schranz was born November 19, 1944. Joseph grew up on the south side of Chicago, knowing very little about his Native American background. After seeing a documentary on television about the federal government’s Indian schools, including the school in Pennsylvania that his own grandmother had been sent to, Joseph interest in exploring his cultural history was sparked. He has spent his adult life supporting and defending his Native American culture and heritage. Joseph is an enrolled member of the White Earth Reservation located in Minnesota. He is the Founder and President of Midwest SOARRING (Save Our Ancestors’ Remains and Resources Indigenous Network Group) Foundation, which began in 1994 and works to facilitate repatriation, protect sacred sites and promotes education of the Native American culture and environmental issues.

Joseph has worked extensively in Illinois and beyond on repatriation and sacred site issues.

He founded the New Lenox Honor Guard, which consisted of Native and non-Native people who stood in unity in 1994/95 at the New Lenox site out of respect for the village and burial ground there.

On February 21, 1998, he was responsible for the removal of the last publicly displayed human remain which was in a glass case at the Grundy County Courthouse in Morris, IL.

Joseph is responsible for initiating all the Pow Wows held by Midwest SOARRING Foundation. The current annual Harvest Pow Wow is in its 22nd year and currently takes place at the Naper Settlement in Naperville, Illinois.

He was responsible for Midwest SOARRING Foundation’s sponsorship of the historic Kickapoo Reunion at the Grand Village, held in May of 1998 at the Grand Village site in Leroy, IL. Members from all bands of the Kickapoo People reunited at the Grand Village site and took part in this special homecoming.

In 2000, Joseph agreed to work with the Batavia Plain Dirt Garden Club to help bring an exhibit of a Native Village Scene to Chicago’s Annual Flower and Garden Show. The exhibit received two first place awards. Members from the native community joined in by being in the exhibit bringing life to the village!

Joseph has been a consultant to the Brookfield Zoo for many years, but historic strides were made when he collaborated to bring in Native American Performers for their Rhythm and Root’s Festivals. This was the first time in the zoo’s history, that the native culture was highlighted in the Zoo’s programs. Joseph was invited back to be part of a charrette seeking ideas for the zoo’s new 10 million dollar permanent Great Bear Wilderness Exhibit.

Joseph was honored with the first award given to a private citizen, by the Will County Forest Preserve District for his concern of the environment and the help of obtaining 117 acres of land in Joliet, IL. The acreage is adjacent to Pilcher Park and was number one on Will County’s Land Acquisition list. Joseph has been instrumental in helping to save over 1900 acres of land in Illinois.

Joseph led SOARRING members to support the efforts made to save Plum Island and keep it from being developed. The efforts were joined by many groups and individuals including the Audubon Society and the then Lt. Governor Pat Quinn. Plum Island is currently a dedicated eagle sanctuary.

Joseph was appointed first by Governor Blagojevich as Illinois’ representative to the Governor’s Interstate Indian Council in 2006. He was the first Native American to be appointed to this council. Joseph continued to be appointed by Governor Pat Quinn and served for several years in that capacity.

Joseph has worked over forty years on native issues and has worked extensively with different native communities throughout Illinois and the Midwest.

Joseph continues to lead the people in programs and ceremonies now at Midwest SOARRING’s new Native American Cultural Center located in historic Lockport, Illinois.

Joseph is available for speaking engagements to schools, civic groups etc. He is also available to act as a consultant regarding native issues, environmental issues or to bring the native culture to your area! Please contact him for further details.

John Keller (Born May 23, 1923)
John Keller was born in Chicago, IL to William & Rose Keller who emigrated from the Ukraine. He had two sisters who passed away when they were young. John attended Crane Tech High School and still meets with about six of his classmates once a month. He attended one year at Michigan State College-Veterinary School where he played on the freshman football team. He was scouted at this time by George Halas, the owner of the Chicago Bears. This was during World War II and John left school to enlist in the US Army in December of 1942.

During the war he fought in Alsace Loraine, France at the Battle of the Colmar Pocket. John was Sergeant 3rd Division, 7th Regiment, L Company and an instructor for 57mm cannon. At the end of the war John was discharged and returned home in January 1946.

He went to work at Keller’s Lunchroom with his mother Rose in Chicago. John went on to work for International Harvester. In 1950, he married Irene and they lived in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. John & Irene had two daughters, Tina & Michele.

In 1952 John joined the Chicago Police department and was a patrolman for 27 years. Irene passed away in 2003 and John moved to Lockport in 2006. John is a member of the VFW. He enjoys golfing and is the oldest volunteer for Main Street Lockport. He still enjoys “Swimmin’ with the Women” at the Lockport Park District pool.

Participating artists, writers, and historians:
Lockport Area Genealogical & Historical Society (LAGHS) members: Ron Robin & Emily Lif
Joe Gentile, Steven Streit, Katie Blanchard, Larry Brogan, Ed Smith, Mike Fyles, and Reno Caneva.