My Lincolnwood Story - Adrienne Stern

“I feel like I’ve had a good life and you have to give back. It’s our obligation as Jews that we must help out other people and do what we must do for other people.”

Born in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago, Adrienne Stern moved to Lincolnwood after the birth of her first son in 1961. As a certified aquatic exercise instructor, she has taught Aquanastics every summer at the Lincolnwood Pool since its opening in the 1970s. Ms. Stern talks about growing up in Chicago, meeting her husband, and what has kept her in Lincolnwood even after selling the family home.

This interview was recording using Zoom.

The views and opinions expressed in interviews do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Lincolnwood Public Library, including its Board of Trustees and staff.



TRANSCRIPT:
Lev Kalmens  0:00  
My name is Lev Kalmens. I'm an Information Services Librarian at the Lincolnwood Public Library. Today is October 30th, 2020. And I'm interviewing Adrienne Stern for our oral history project. Adrienne, thank you for joining me. And what is your lincolnwood story?

Adrienne Stern  0:16  
I must say we moved in Lincolnwood when my oldest son was six months old. And in May of 1961. This population, of course, then was a lot smaller than it is now. We knew all the policemen by their names. Hamlin Avenue, from Touhy to Lunt, was not paved. We had a tree in the middle of the street, as a matter of fact. My alley, which was next to my kitchen--there was an alley that ran along the house--was used as a street because they couldn't get through on Hamlin. The mail truck would come by there and everything. So that was the only way that people could get down the street there. We had pheasants that came to the edge of the road to eat, where they have [inaudible] in order to digest their food. And if they didn't have a very good fight, they would barely make it over the roof tops of the houses there. We could see all the way to--it was an open field we could see all the way to--Bell & Howell, which is where the Lincolnwood Mall is now. We heard all the noises when they were building Winston Towers. I think it was in the thick of '64. The pile drivers were going till 11 o'clock at night. We were going out of our minds to find out who to contact to take care of it. Anyhow, Lincolnwood was not very diverse at that time. We had a young black man, who my husband worked with, who was coming to fix the shed. And he told us when he got to the house, he parked the car and the police were right there directly behind him. He told me they were following him from McCormick and Devon all the way to our house. We were on Greenleaf and Hamlin. So I got to the window and I waved to the policemen that it was okay. And then they drove away. But I mean it was incredible. I guess it just was such an odd thing to see a black man there, they were very, very cautious. It was kind of weird. Let's see, super snow in '68: all of our neighbors pooled together all the food, and everybody got very, very close to each other. We'd support each other. There was an abandoned milk truck in the middle of Hamlin Avenue, south of Greenleaf, that he couldn't go any further. He was stuck in the snow. So we relieved him of the milk and the butter and whatever else he had in his truck. So we had extra things that we could use. People got very, very friendly. All of our neighbors were friends with each other. We'd all basically moved in around the same time of each other. But when somebody new moved in, we always brought a cake to welcome them to the neighborhood. This doesn't exist any longer, I'm afraid. As I said we could see all the way to Bell & Howell. There were factories. There were no factories at all. We fought to prevent factories. It turned out there was a comprehensive rezoning that was to be going on in Lincolnwood. We had one car at that time. My husband's was at work. So two of us walked with our baby buggies, and we went to Village Hall because they wouldn't tell us what the comprehensive rezoning was about. And they said the book was at the clerk's office and we should come and look at it. So we did, and we found out that you could not have a house of ill repute in Lincolnwood. And you could not have a sauerkraut factory. Those were the two prohibitions of Lincolnwood. And then we said, "Well, what was the comprehensive rezoning? What is that?" So she said, "Look in the back." So in the inside flap of the end of the book was a folded up piece of paper. It was like a map. And we said, "Oh, here's my house. Here's your house." And we said, "What's this M, which was to the east of us?" And she said, "Oh, that means manufacturing." Well we were assured that when we moved in, it was all single family residential. And we saw that M, we got hysterical. We went home. We alerted the entire neighborhood that they are trying to put factories in there. So we start fighting this thing. We hired an attorney and the whole bit. We were getting nowhere very rapidly. And then one day, we found out the mayor owned the property there. And we were in contact with the mayor's attorney. The land was not in the mayor's name, it was in the attorney's name and the attorney's secretary. But we found out that that was not the case that he really did own the land. And we were getting nowhere. And one of my neighbors was a builder in Lincolnwood, and he said, "I'll give you some information. I can't get involved, but maybe this could help you." There was a piece of property on the corner of Lunt and Crawford that he had a bid on, and they called and they said, "Somebody has bid more money. If you want to meet it, you know, you can have it be yours." I think it was he had bid 16,000. Somebody offered 18,000, I believe was the figure. And he said, "No, it's not worth any more than that. I'm not giving you that." So they said, "Okay." And they sold it. They sold the land to Mayor Proesel. And it turned out that's where they put Town Hall, a school there, and we didn't think it would look too good that he had prior knowledge of what was going to be built there. So we decided, well, should we tell the newspapers? We decided to call his attorney. And we told him we didn't think it would look very good in the papers that the mayor had prior knowledge of this and that's why he bought the land. He sold it to the school board for, I think it was $123,000. And then they built Town Hall there. We had a lot of different things with Mayor Proesel. We fought for the library. He said what do you need a library for? You've got Skokie, you can use that. Then we fought for the pool. And I will give you the quote. "What do you people need a pool for? You have the JCC." The "you people" hung there in pregnant quotes. And then we knew we had to do something, that we had to force him with a referendum. And we finally got the people to agree that they would like a pool in Lincolnwood. It opened in 1972. I started teaching "aquanastics" there in 1973. And I taught for 46 years. If it wasn't that the pool didn't open this year, I would have been there teaching again.

Lev Kalmens  7:55  
Are you still teaching? I mean with the exception of this year of course. 

Adrienne Stern  8:52  
Correct. 

Lev Kalmens  8:53  
Still teaching? Wow.

Adrienne Stern  8:54  
Yeah, and I've got muscles for sure. Let's see. We've seen many changes here in the area. So many different stores and restaurants, and they've changed and gone away and we miss them. Where the bank is. They just closed. Fifth Third had bought out the bank on Touhy and Crawford. And that was a grocery store. It was called Linwoods, and that was our favorite store. It was wonderful. I would send the kids there for just milk or whatever the hell we needed, and you didn't have to worry that it was right there in the neighborhood. We had a butcher shop there. We had a bakery there. We had a local drugstore and the snack shops. It's so different now. It's incredible.

Lev Kalmens  9:48  
So you said you moved to Lincolnwood, you said 1961. Right?

Adrienne Stern  9:54  
Correct.

Lev Kalmens  9:55  
So tell me a little bit about where you moved from, and why did you decided to move to Lincolnwood?

Adrienne Stern  10:01  
Okay, we lived in Logan Square which is where I grew up. It now became a very nice neighborhood. And it was always a great place to live, but now the yuppies have discovered it. When I got married, we didn't even have an apartment. You couldn't get in the apartments and things were really tight. We went on our honeymoon without having a place to come back to. And then my mother's butcher lived in this building on Sawyer Avenue, and he told her there was an apartment for rent there. My mother grabbed it for us. It was a three-and-a-half-room apartment and had just one bedroom. And we had adopted my son after seven years. And we decided because we needed a bigger place, it's time to go into a house. So we'd loved Lincolnwood. I thought it was a great place. By the way, where my building sits now on the corner of Touhy and Lincoln was a very famous, very lovely restaurant called the House of Pierre. My dad used to bring us here. We would travel all the way down Lincoln Avenue to get there. And they had strolling violinists. It was really a very classy place. I remember very distinctly. Anyhow, so we moved into the house, and it was a cute little small house. And then I gave birth to my other son three years later. We had wonderful neighbors and became dear, dear friends through the years. And even when one of them moved to California, we stayed with them when we went out there. I was closer to her than I think to my own sister, frankly. We were dear friends. She passed away 19 years ago. I miss her every single day. So my boys went to, you know, all the schools there: Town Hall, Rutledge, Lincoln Hall, and of course Niles West. They had a wonderful, excellent education all the way through [inaudible]. My older one is an engineer. He's a civil engineer. And my younger one is an entertainment attorney. And they both live in California unfortunately. Anyhow, we didn't really want to leave Lincolnwood. It was just part of our, you know ... My husband couldn't take the stairs anymore in the house. We had to find a building that had an elevator which is the reason we came here. And we're very happy here. We've always been involved in everything here in the village. My husband helped co-found the Lincolnwood Police Foundation and he was the treasurer there. I served on the Madeline Grants 2000 Commission. I forgot what they called it. It was going to be "what were you gonna do in the future? The future's here." I was also the treasurer of Friends of the Park. We were the ones who took over and did the carnival every summer. What else can I tell you? I think that Mayor Proesel is spinning in his grave right now. I'm not saying he was antisemitic, but he would die again if he knew we had a Jewish mayor and a Jewish police chief. It really cracks me up what I know about because he was he was not the most ecumenical guy you ever want to meet in your life. And I don't know what else I can tell you. Things are very, very different now. The diversity of the population here has changed drastically. The building that I live in is the perfect example. At one time. it was I think 95 or 90 to 95 percent Jewish. There are very few of us here now. We have Muslims, we have one Black family, several Asian families, and a lot of Montenegrins. So it's changed really quite a bit. But we still love it here and found that it was a great place to live. It was certainly close to Chicago whenever we wanted to go in. And yet we had the suburban life which was awesome. It was very nice.

Lev Kalmens  15:13  
After you moved out of your house, what kept you in Lincolnwood, as opposed to, you know, moving somewhere else?

Adrienne Stern  15:23  
Well, we knew everybody. We knew every mayor, I guess, afterwards. The police have changed drastically, but we're still friends with some of them who are now retired. And of course, my husband was on the Family Foundation--you know, the Police Foundation. And you had pools. Even though I have a pool here in my building, I still go to the Lincolnwood pool. Aside from teaching there, I have a lot of friends. We have a whole enclave at the pool that we'll see each other. As matter of fact, we just met for lunch last Wednesday at L. Woods. We keep in touch with each other.

Lev Kalmens  16:05  
How did you get involved in teaching at the pool?

Adrienne Stern  16:10  
How. Let me think. I was teaching certified. Well, the certification didn't come till afterwards. I started teaching before there was certification with the AEA, which is the Aquatic Education Association--Exercise Association. I taught at the Leaning Tower YMCA for a while. And then when we opened the pool up, the following year is when I started teaching there. And we started out with bleach bottles--I tried milk bottles, but they were too soft--in order to get to be able to work in the water. There was no equipment at that time. They didn't have the buoys, the weights, they didn't have noodles. It just didn't exist. So I had people saving their bleach bottles that were used to push down on the water. Then we started using eight-inch playground balls. But by that time, the AEA started coming out with equipment. And so I had at one time 25 or 26 women in the class. Now we're down to like I think it's nine. I have some of the original people are still in my classes as a matter of fact. They come back every year. We have a wonderful time. We do it to music. Now that there's more equipment, it's easier. We have the noodles that we use and the weights. It's fun; we have a wonderful time doing it. And my class is very, very loyal to me. They come back every year.

Lev Kalmens  18:04  
So like you said, some of the people have been with you the whole time that you've been teaching?

Adrienne Stern  18:11  
I have one or two that are still. We've gotten old together. Most have passed away already unfortunately, but I got some of them stuck with me all through the years.

Lev Kalmens  18:24  
So I wanted to go back a little bit. So you said you were born in Chicago, correct? And lived in Logan Square. Tell me a bit about your parents.

Adrienne Stern  18:35  
I was a very lucky girl. I had marvelous, marvelous parents and we had a wonderful life growing up. I have a younger sister. And my father was an exceptional man. It's hard to describe. Do you know what the word "Tzaddik" is? In Jewish lore, it is a righteous man. They believe there are 36 at one time in the world at all times. And I believe my dad was one of them. He was an incredible individual. 

Lev Kalmens  19:12  
What made him so incredible in your opinion?

Adrienne Stern  19:18  
We didn't find out a lot of things that he did until his funeral and people were coming up to us and telling us. He paid for one man's honeymoon. That guy was about to leave for service and he paid for him to go to New York on is honeymoon. He paid for a woman to get piano lessons for her child. He'd help her pay for the piano. He was just an incredible guy. Loving. It's very hard. He was so wonderful. I just have trouble with remembering. I was lucky enough to find a man I married who was virtually very much like my dad, and I had a wonderful life with him. He just passed away seven months ago. And I consider myself very, very fortunate that we lived in a middle-class life when I was growing up, and we were never in want of anything. And my parents took very good care of us, taught us well, taught us to be charitable. My maiden name was Erlich. In German, that means honest. And my dad always felt that we should always live up to that. I hope that I have sustained his belief and followed in his footsteps. We've been very charitable. I feel that I've had a good life and you have to give back. It's our obligation. In Jewish it's called "tikkun olam," which really means to repair the world. And that's our obligation as Jews that we must help out other people and do what we must do for other people.

Lev Kalmens  21:20  
What about your mother?

Adrienne Stern  21:21  
My mother was a wonderful lady. She never worked. She was a wonderful housekeeper. She [inaudible]. She was a great cook and a great baker. And she and my dad lived a wonderful quiet, nice life. We never heard arguing in the house. She was active in Hadassah and the synagogue and the sisterhood. And she did wonderful things for us. Now I look back and I wonder how she even did it. We lived not far from transportation. We had to walk to the L at that time. But she took us to performances down at the Goodman Theatre. I remember seeing Alice in Wonderland and things like that. She always made sure we were exposed to plays and to the theater. And she took me down for my piano lessons Downtown. Originally, I took piano lessons in the house. And then I had to switch to something at Kimball Hall. And we would go for lunch afterwards. And I just have wonderful, wonderful memories. I've had a wonderful, wonderful childhood.

Lev Kalmens  22:42  
Were they born in Chicago, or did they immigrate?

Adrienne Stern  22:49  
Yeah, they immigrated. My dad was 20 years old. He came from a place called Galicia, which never existed after the First World War. Then it became Austria Hungary. Then it was Russia. Then it was Poland. Today is sits in the Ukraine. So the same place is still there, but it depends who won the war that week. He came when he was 20. My mother came when she was two years old from Minsk, which is Belorussia--White Russia. And she originally went to live in New York, and left New York when she was 10 years old, and they moved to a very small town here in Illinois called Amboy, Illinois. Most people never heard of it. It's near Sycamore and DeKalb and places like that. She had a sister there who was lonely, had married a man from DeKalb, and she drove her crazy. She wanted her to come and be family with her. So they lived in Amboy, Illinois. And then my grandmother couldn't stand that they left. In New York, they had electricity. They had indoor toilets. They got to Amboy, they had outdoor toilets, kerosene lamps, lighting, and they a well. She used to keep the meat down the well to keep cold. And because she was kosher, she never ate meat the entire time she was there, but she would give it to the kids. And finally she couldn't stand it anymore. She sent my grandfather on a Saturday to Chicago to go find some friends or something. And that's how they ended up moving to Chicago, which was my fortune because she met my dad.

Lev Kalmens  24:49  
And you know how they met?

Adrienne Stern  24:51  
Yeah, my dad's sister. My mother met her at a dance. And they got to be quite friendly and she introduced her to my dad. It was from the JPI. I think it was like Douglas Forward in the West Side. So that's how they met. 

Lev Kalmens  25:10  
What are your own memories of growing up in Chicago? Where did you go to school?

Adrienne Stern  25:17  
I went to Darwin Grammar School, and I was supposed to go to Tuley and I didn't want to go to Tuley. My friends and I also decided we had to get permits, and at that time you had to talk to your alderman. I guess they had to pay off a little bit. And we all went to Roosevelt High School. We rode the Kimball bus all the way to Roosevelt. I used to walk to Kedzie and Logan Boulevard to catch the bus. They had taken the buses off during the Second World War because they had rubber wheels on them and they needed the rubber. So we had to take a streetcar originally when I first went. I think after the first year, we did put the buses back on. And we had a lot of stories with that. I had a mouton fur coat, which is a lamb of some sort. And when it got wet, it smelled terribly. It smelled like tomato herring. Really could describe it. And we had a locker at school. There were three of us that shared the locker, and we all had these heavy big mouton coats, and how we shoved them in and put our boots inside it. And I think of it now and we'd laugh. There's one of us still left besides me. It was fun. It was fun. There was a whole bunch of us who were the bus riders. Some of them came all the way from Division Street. And we were like a halfway mark before they picked us up. And sometimes the buses used to break down in fact quite frequently. And we would get a transfer from the bus driver to show when we came in late to school. We would use the transfer is our admit why were late. We had a lot of nice times and it was a good time. We were the first class after the war was over. And we graduated grammar school in '45 and high school in '49. It was a lovely time. It was a time when things were much simpler then. I remember my dad bringing home the first TV. And we were the only ones in our building, which was a six-flat building, who had a TV. So all the neighbors came to watch TV. Tuesday night was the big night. It was Milton Berle and afterwards was wrestling. And the pattern came on afterwards. My mother was saying let's open a restaurant because we had all these people there she was serving every night. And my landlady once said to my mother, "She shouldn't mind because you're making up [inaudible]." So it was fun. Then other people started getting TVs. And my dad kept bringing back bigger TVs because ours was kind of a little one. And every time they came out with a bigger size, he brought us the bigger one. And then when they came out with color, wow we were really well known in the neighborhood. But people started getting their own TVs, so it became a little easier. But meanwhile, I was in school and studying. I was a sophomore in '47. We had all these people in the house every night. It was kind of tough. But I remember distinctly it was an interesting time. We had chairs set up in the living room like theater style. We had a lot of people there. It was fun though.

Lev Kalmens  29:18  
How many people would come over on any given night?

Adrienne Stern  29:22  
Let me think. Three, six, nine ... probably a dozen. Yeah. Tuesday night was the big night because it was Milton Berle. Yeah. That was the biggest one. It was fun. There was no air conditioning originally. We had a park that was half a block away from us, south of us, called Palmer Park. And I remember going there with my parents and bringing blankets and our pillows and walking over to the park when it got very, very hot, and we slept in the park. I remember doing that two or three times in as a matter of fact. But that park was our neighborhood park, and all the kids knew everybody. Mostly the boys, I knew all the boys. They used to play baseball there, and it was not allowed. And the Shakespeare Avenue police department would always chase them away all the time. It was a terrible thing.

Lev Kalmens  30:21  
What were some of your hobbies? Or, what did you enjoy doing, growing up?

Adrienne Stern  30:26  
I'm an artist. So I've always had a pencil in my hand. And in the later years, I sculpted. And it got too heavy for me now, so then I just do watercolor. But I've always been an artist. I had a nack. That was my big hobby. And I play piano. I did play piano. I don't any longer.

Lev Kalmens  30:51  
How did the interest in art develop for you?

Adrienne Stern  30:59  
I think from school originally. The teacher knows, first of all, I'm terrible at math. And I found out I had a nice excuse that usually--unlike Leonardo da Vinci who could do both--most artists are not good at math. It's the other part of the brain or something. So thank God, I used that as an excuse. I do portraits. So whether in sculpting or in painting, now I like to do portraits. I do people, as opposed to objects. Unfortunately, it doesn't sell too well. Nobody wants somebody else's, you know, face hanging there,  unless it's something really unusual and not necessarily pretty but an interesting face. We used to go to California for the winter months. And I took classes there and we had models. And quite often I would sell the pieces that I was working on to the model. They liked that I got their likeness. So I've sold I think four or five of those which is very nice.

Lev Kalmens  32:15  
Tell me how you and your husband met.

Adrienne Stern  32:18  
Oh, well. Do you know what Bnei Bris is? Bnei Bris is a Jewish organization. And at one time they had the youth boys club called ACA (alef-tzaddik-alef), and the girls were called BBG girls. I was president of my chapter many years ago. And because of it, we used to have meetings and different dances and different things like that. And I dated guys who were all over the city. It wasn't just in my high school, people that I knew. I dated guys who lived on the South Side, on the West Side, on the North Side because of having met them through Bnei Bris. And my husband was in ACA. I dated a couple of his boyfriend's before I got to him. And he called me one day. I remember seeing him at North Avenue Beach where he used to hang out there. And then he called me for a date. Our first date, believe it or not, was at the Chez Paree, which was at the time the most spectacular nightclub in Chicago. And we saw Nat King Cole there. That was 71 years ago. We were married five years later, so we were married 66 years, last January. And I say I lost him in April. Anyhow, we stayed friends with most of the people that we knew from BBG and ACA. And I still see some of them today after so many years. We know each other from high school days, which was really incredible. And then we got after many years later in 1954, the year we got married, I joined a City of Hope group. To make a long story short, my chapter lasted seven years. I was president of the time. And then we joined a couples group, which was called the Bobby [inaudible] Chapter City of Hope. And we remained very, very active with that. As a matter of fact, I ended up being on the National Board of Directors in California. And I was on the board for 22 years. When they changed the board, we were put on something called the Board of Regents--I called the board of rejects. They changed the board drastically by having people serve on there who are like the president of American Airlines and people like that. And they pay $10,000 a year to serve on the board. So it just became a completely different setup, but they wanted their expertise and their money. And we still remained as the Board of Regents as advisory people. And I say after all these years, I'm still president of my chapter. And we raised over $4 million. From the time of its inception in 1961, I believe. We just had a virtual Walk for Hope. We had the walks every year for breast cancer. And I turned in $13,000, almost $14,000. And that's pretty fair. But I've got a cousin in California who gives me $10,000 every year, so that helps. And then his son started giving me $2,000. So I raise, you know, almost $2,000 myself. So the place is incredible. It's 102 acres. There are many discoveries that have come out of our laboratories. If you know anybody that's diabetic, they take something called Humalog that came out of our laboratories. We were getting $36 million a year in royalties from Eli Lilly. Then the patent ran out, so we don't get that anymore. But at one time, City of Hope was a free hospital, and of course it became impossible to do that. But they do accept insurance. And they give out quite a bit of free care regardless. Most hospitals don't give out more than 5%. And we give out something like 40% free care, which is pretty fantastic. And it's just a fabulous place. They're working right now on diabetes very, very strongly. They've got a few cures, but they can't call them cures yet till there are many more people--the type 1 diabetics--who no longer have to take insulin. Ashley Furniture gave us $50 million (five-oh). Their grandson is diabetic, and they promised him within six years they would have a cure. And they're working very hard on it. It looks looks very, very promising. So I'm very proud of them. They're terrific and they do a fabulous thing at cancer. They were one of the first ones to do the Da Vinci machine where they did robotic surgery, mostly originally on prostate cancer. And then it got bigger and bigger, and they use it for many, many things now. They have six operatories, and they have six of the robotic machines in there. Each lab has its own. So they're $6 million at least each. And so they've got one in every one of the operatories. And it's quite a place. The thing is that it is done with love, absolute love. There's no profit in curing the body if in the process we destroy the soul. So it's with a great deal of compassion and love. 

Lev Kalmens  39:17  
What drives you to maintain this engagement and activity.

Adrienne Stern  39:24  
One time, I was walking down the hall at City of Hope. We were at convention at that time, we used to take us through the halls during the tours. They don't do that any longer if there's patients there. And there was a lady sitting in a rocking chair, holding her baby and rocking back and forth. And I found out the child had Tay-Sachs disease, which is one of the Jewish diseases. And the child was not expected to live more than two and a half years. And there were times I got very upset with people over petty little things. And I remember that mother's face and the hopelessness and the sadness of when she sat there rocking that baby back and forth. And that's what kept me going for a long, long time. I felt I was doing some good and I was helping, and it's very gratifying. I think I got more out of it than City of Hope.

Lev Kalmens  40:26  
I did want to ask, you mentioned at the very beginning about being involved in getting the library in Lincolnwood up and running. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?

Adrienne Stern  40:37  
Yeah, they had bought this--I think it was a Jewel, if I'm not mistaken, or an A&P. I think it was Jewel.

Lev Kalmens  40:44  
The Jewel, yes.

Adrienne Stern  40:45  
And it was right where the library is now. And they were excited that they had bought this property, and there was a heavy, heavy snow that year and the roof came in. And that was the end. They had to tear the whole thing down and build a whole new library. But we put on a show to raise money. And that was a fun thing. It was really neat. We named Sonia Marshak, who wrote the thing and directed it. It was very, very clever. We all had dual parts. I was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and my other part was Dorothy Parker. The thin man was also the tin man. Noah Coward was the Cowardly Lion. It was so clever. It was absolutely fabulous. I think we had two or three different performances. And we raised money for the library. We started out with that.

Lev Kalmens  41:43  
Where were the performance held for that?

Adrienne Stern  41:45  
At Lincoln Hall? Yeah, I think it was probably Lincoln Hall. Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. I had Toto in a basket. I carried my little dog with me. It wasn't my dog. It was a stuffed dog. But I had braids. I still have my ruby red slippers which I made out of red sequins--sequins all over the shoes to make my red slippers. Yeah, it was a fun thing. We rehearsed at Sonia Marshak's house all the time. And then we did our performances. It was cute. So we were the original ones to support the library before there was Friends of the Library. By the way, I'm putting a bench outside the library in memory of my husband. We're waiting for the plaque to be finished. He was there every day. It was his second home. He said he read every newspaper you had from all over the country. So everybody knew him. He was there all the time. What a fitting thing for me to put that there in his memory.

Lev Kalmens  43:01  
Any other final memories about your life or your life in Lincolnwood as we wrap up?

Adrienne Stern  43:10  
It was a charmed life. I think it was wonderful. We had a wonderful little house. And we moved into this lovely little [inaudible] building here afterwards. But this was without any disruptions, without any heartaches, any something. I mean I've had a wonderful, wonderful life, and I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. It was a very convenient place to live, as I said, because it was so close to the city. And we did use the city. And it was nice. It was always ... you knew everybody. Everybody was friendly and warm. And it was just a wonderful place to raise my children. And I think that they look upon it very family. My younger one is still very much involved with all his friends that he met: some at least from kindergarten, and then kids that he met in Niles West, and then the kids he met at Champagne. And he's kind of a Pied Piper. He melded all these people together. They're all one big group. And no matter where they live, they're all one big happy family. I've never seen kids like that in my life. Some of them were from Morton Grove, some of them from Lincolnwood, some several from other places. And they've all become friends all because of my son. He was the catalyst that pulled them all together, and I'm proud of him too.

Lev Kalmens  44:59  
Well, I want to thank you for taking the time and sharing your story and your Lincolnwood story with me.

Adrienne Stern  45:06  
Thank you. I appreciate your doing this. I think it's absolutely wonderful.