Mount Prospect Historical Society

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Randhurst Commemorative T-Shirts On Sale Now!

Randhurst Shopping Center, a shopping landmark in Chicago’s northwestern suburbs, opened its doors to an excited public 60 years ago — on August 16, 1962 — and while the original structure no longer stands, Randhurst continues to serve the shopping public and fond memories of the original Randhurst experience remain.

“The mall may no longer be “all under one roof,” but memories of Randhurst remain sheltered in our hearts and memories,” stated Emily Dattilo, Director of the Mount Prospect Historical Society. “Everyone here has a memory of Randhurst, from playing on the sculptures, to ordering lunch at The Picnic, to shopping for Back to School clothes and supplies.”
 
The Mount Prospect Historical Society is commemorating this momentous anniversary with a new t-shirt that features several of the shopping center’s iconic features. Shirts come in red, blue or green.

“This is a pre-order sale and all orders must be placed by June 30,” said Amanda Marcus, the Society’s Office Manager. “The shirt will sell for $28 for sizes S-XL and $30 for 2XL+.”

“We hope to ship the shirts by the end of July, but supply shortages may extend delivery into August. We thank you for your understanding,” Marcus continued.

Click here to purchase from our on-line store.

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WHO: Nearly 15 million deaths associated with COVID-19

By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer 5/5/2022

LONDON — The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 15 million people were killed either by coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems in the past two years, more than double the official death toll of 6 million. Most of the fatalities were in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas.

In a report Thursday, the U.N. agency’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the figure as “sobering,” saying it should prompt countries to invest more in their capacities to quell future health emergencies.

Scientists tasked by WHO with calculating the actual number of COVID-19 deaths between January 2020 and the end of last year estimated there were between 13.3 million and 16.6 million deaths that were either caused directly by the coronavirus or were somehow attributed to the pandemic’s impact on health systems, like people with cancer unable to seek treatment when hospitals were full of COVID patients.

The figures are based on country-reported data and statistical modeling but only about half of countries provided information. WHO said it wasn’t yet able to break down the figures to distinguish between direct deaths from COVID-19 and others caused by the pandemic, but said a future project examining death certificates would probe this.

“This may seem like just a bean-counting exercise, but having these WHO numbers is so critical to understanding how we should combat future pandemics and continue to respond to this one,” said Albert Ko, an infectious diseases specialist at the Yale School of Public Health who was not linked to the WHO research.

For example, Ko said, South Korea’s decision to invest heavily in public health after it suffered a severe outbreak of MERS allowed it to escape COVID-19 with a per capita death rate around a 20th of that of the U.S.

Accurate numbers on COVID-19 deaths have been problematic throughout the pandemic, as the figures are only a fraction of the devastation wrought by the virus, largely because of limited testing and differences in how countries count COVID-19 deaths. According to government figures reported to WHO and to a separate count kept by Johns Hopkins University, there have been more than 6 million reported coronavirus deaths to date.

Scientists at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington guessed there were more than 18 million COVID deaths from January 2020 to December 2021 in a recent study published in the journal Lancet, and a team led by Canadian researchers estimated there were more than 3 million uncounted coronavirus deaths in India alone. WHO’s new analysis estimated there were more than 4 million missed deaths in India, ranging between 3.3 million to 6.5 million.

Some countries, including India, have disputed WHO’s methodology for calculating COVID deaths, resisting the idea that there were many more deaths than officially counted.

Earlier this week, the Indian government released new figures showing there were 474,806 more deaths in 2020 compared to the previous year, but did not say how many were tied to the pandemic. India did not release any death estimates for 2021, when the highly infectious delta variant swept through the country, killing many thousands.

Ko said better figures from WHO might also explain some lingering mysteries about the pandemic, like why Africa appears to have been one of the least affected by the virus, despite its low vaccination rates.

“Were the mortality rates so low because we couldn’t count the deaths or was there some other factor to explain that?” he said, adding that the crush of deaths in rich countries like Britain and the U.S. proved that resources alone were insufficient to contain a global outbreak.

Dr. Bharat Pankhania, a public health specialist at Britain’s University of Exeter, said the world may never get close to the true toll of COVID-19, particularly in poor countries.

“When you have a massive outbreak where people are dying in the streets because of a lack of oxygen, bodies were abandoned or people had to be cremated quickly because of cultural beliefs, we end up never knowing just how many people died,” he explained.

Although Pankhania said the estimated COVID-19 death toll still pales in comparison to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic — when experts estimate up to 100 million people died — he said the fact that so many people died despite the advances of modern medicine, including vaccines, is shameful.

He also warned the cost of COVID-19 could be far more damaging in the long term, given the increasing burden of caring for people with long COVID.

“With the Spanish flu, there was the flu and then there were some (lung) illnesses people suffered, but that was it,” he said. “There was not an enduring immunological condition that we’re seeing right now with COVID.”

“We do not know the extent to which people with long COVID will have their lives cut short and if they will have repeated infections that will cause them even more problems,” Pankhania said.

Krutika Pathi in New Delhi contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 Daily Herald (www.dailyherald.com)

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Thank You to Our New Business Members

APC Financial Group
Busse Automotive
Formula Auto Repair
Friedrichs Funeral Home
Hearth & Home
Law Office of Mark J. Watychowicz
Mount Prospect Child Care Center
Picket Fence Realty (Thomas and Mary Zander)
Specialized Janitorial Service
Van Driel’s Medical Support Wear
Vista Linda Eye Care
Wilkin Insulation

Visit www.mtphist.org/membership/ to learn how your business can become a member too!

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From the Collection, Spring 2022

Throughout the early 1900s Lena Friedrichs kept in touch with friends and family by sending postcards. During the first fifteen years of the 1900s, postcards were an immensely popular way to send a quick note to loved ones, much like a text message with emojis today.

Postcards came in all sorts of designs for just about every occasion and sentiment that a sender could imagine. Lena’s collection demonstrates this wide variety. Some of the postcards send a holiday greeting or a congratulations, while others are photographs of places that family and friends had visited. Still others are much more whimsical! Now that Lena’s collection has been digitized, I wanted to share some favorites with you.

Thank you to all the volunteers who digitized these postcards!

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From the Desk of the Director, Spring 2022

Emily Dattilo, Director

The Historical Society volunteers have been busy this winter. In addition to guiding tours, volunteers have been hard at work adding newly donated artifacts to our database, digitizing files from our archive, and assisting me with an upgrade project for the Historical Society artifact collection.

Digitization efforts have sped up considerably thanks to a generous donation from one of our volunteers that allowed us to purchase a new scanner. This new equipment will allow us to share more of the Historical Society collection not just in exhibits and presentations, but also in the newsletter and through our website and social media accounts.

I am endlessly impressed by the talent and dedication of our volunteers, and we are so lucky to have each and every one of them sharing their time and skills with the Historical Society.

Staff and board members have also been busy planning programs and other events this year. In March we will hold a virtual Annual Meeting on our social media accounts. (The corresponding 2021 financial report is enclosed in this newsletter.) We will announce the exact date and time closer to the presentation, but afterwards all content will be available to view at any time. For my part of the Annual Meeting I will be presenting a new tour of the Dietrich Friedrichs House. I’m especially excited to share some of my recent discoveries about this beautiful historic house.

Probably the most intriguing discovery in this research process was finding a receipt in the keyhole of what is now the door to our office. Thanks to help from a board member and my coworker, Amanda Marcus, we were able to locate and contact the man named on the receipt. His stories about living at 101 S. Maple Street illuminated a part of the house’s history that was previously unknown. It was a rare example of finding answers — and history — in strange places!

Happy spring, readers!

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The Dietrich Friedrichs House: The Lost Years

by Emily Dattilo

Before 101 S. Maple Street was a museum, it was a home. Dietrich and Lena Friedrichs built the house at 101 S. Maple Street in 1906, and five years later their daughter Bessie was born. Collectively the Friedrichs family spent 60 years in this beautiful house.

101 S. Maple Street when the Historical Society purchased it in 1988. Photo by Walt Rutkowski

After Dietrich and Lena’s passing, Bessie decided to move into a home of her own with her husband, Charles Barnes. She sold 101 S. Maple to Richard and Jane Webb in 1966. Just like the Friedrichs family, Richard and Jane adapted the home to meet the needs of modern life and personal preferences.

One of the Webb family’s adaptations involved creating a main floor bathroom out of the pantry adjacent to the kitchen, as suggested in the 1966 real estate listing for the house. The Webbs also repainted the house yellow, as seen in the photo on the left.

In 1975 First Chicago Bank of Mount Prospect purchased 101 S. Maple Street, and the Webbs moved to another home in Mount Prospect. The bank was located across the street, on the corner of S. Maple Street and W. Busse Ave. in what is now the former Chase Bank building. Their original plan for the property was to tear down the home, garage, and carriage house in order to pave a parking lot. Neighbors and the Village of Mount Prospect, however, were strongly opposed to this plan because the space was zoned as a residential area. Instead, First Chicago Bank began renting out 101 S. Maple Street, most likely as a way to get a return on their investment.

One of those tenants was Richard, a young man whose lease lasted from 1982 to 1984. He shared the house with four other young people, all in their late teens and early twenties. During that time Richard occupied the room that is now the Historical Society office, and in July 2021 Historical Society staff found a receipt with his name on it stuffed into that door’s keyhole. One of the most entertaining memories from his time as a resident was when another resident’s cat had kittens. The kittens could be found roaming all over the house!

Richard moved out of town in 1984 and the rest of the tenants moved shortly afterwards. By 1987 the house was empty and once again available for purchase.

First Chicago Bank first approached the Village of Mount Prospect with an offer to sell the house, and the Village then turned to the Mount Prospect Historical Society. The Historical Society was interested in preserving this historic home, and they enthusiastically began an intense fundraising campaign to raise $94,000 in less than a year. First Chicago Bank donated the first $16,000 towards the purchase price. Individuals, businesses, and local organizations contributed the rest of the almost $80,000. Fundraising efforts included door-to-door campaigning, bake sales, breakfasts, and other special events. It was truly a community project!

However, it would take plenty of restoration to bring 101 S. Maple Street back to its former glory.

Crowds waiting to enter the new Dietrich Friedrichs House Museum on opening day, September 12, 1992

That meant continued fundraising. The Historical Society formed a Restoration Committee who guided the entire process with thorough research and input from two former residents, Bessie Friedrichs Barnes and Jane Webb. Volunteers spent countless hours researching furnishings and household items appropriate for an early 20th century home. Some of the most significant objects acquired for the museum were those that once belonged to the Friedrichs family. Bessie donated many of these, but others, like the dining room table and chairs and the hall tree in the entryway, were returned by their second owners.

The Mount Prospect Historical Society’s Dietrich Friedrichs House Museum officially opened with a dedication ceremony on September 12, 1992. Crowds of supporters gathered to witness the ribbon-cutting ceremony and celebrate all the hard work and dedication that made the day possible. 30 years later, we’re still sharing Mount Prospect’s history in this beautiful, historic home.