Connect to Local History @ Palos Heights Public Library

If you’ve driven around the south suburbs, chances are you’ve driven a road paved by Durward Fagan. Palos Heights’ spry centenarian grew up in Missouri, and after a short stay in Chicago, he and his wife settled in Palos Heights in 1940 at the corner of 121^st Street and 70^th Avenue. At the time, there wasn’t much development in the area – the streets were gridded, but most weren’t paved. Farmland was abundant. People got around using the network of country roads that today has developed into Harlem and Ridgeland Avenues, 119^th and 135^th Streets, and Route 83. One day, on a drive through “the country,” the Fagans stopped at the Bartlett Realty in Palos Heights, and they ended up purchasing a lot in the “highest place around,” which reminded them of their former home in the Ozarks.

A civil engineer, Fagan worked for S.G. Hayes & Co. and acquired the first road site project for the newly developing community of Park Forest – for a six year period, every road, parking lot, and driveway in Park Forest was paved by Durward Fagan, an accomplishment of which he remains particularly proud. From the 1940s until he sold the business in the 1990s, Fagan built roads, airstrips, and parking lots from Dekalb, IL to Peru, IN, including many in Harvey and South Holland.

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Connect to Local History @ Palos Heights Public Library

Since its inception in 1939, the Palos Heights Fire Department has exemplified the civic-minded service and volunteerism characteristic of the community as a whole.  In the nearly 75 years since answering the first call, the Fire Department in Palos Heights has grown from a one-car, all-volunteer force to a two-station operation staffed by both professional firefighters and paramedics as well as highly trained part-time staff.  Today, both the Palos Heights Fire Protection District (east of 76th Avenue) and the Palos Fire Protection District (west of 76th Avenue) work together to serve citizens of Palos and Worth Townships.

The first rule of crisis prevention is that appropriate measures are typically implemented after a crisis.  In April 1938, fire erupted at a home at 12433 S. 71st Ave., just north of the library’s present location.  As no fire brigade existed then for Palos Heights, first responders from Oak Lawn and Orland Park attempting to quench the fire found their way blocked by the cars of people watching and attempting to fight the blaze themselves.  Flames consumed the house as the fire fighters struggled to bring equipment close enough to fight the fire. Read more...

Connect to Local History @ Palos Heights Public Library

Regional News readers will certainly recognize the name of Harwell West, founder of the paper, and of the Richards family, who purchased the paper from West in 1947.  In 1977, Virginia Richards, who for years served as Co-Editor with her husband Carl, was interviewed as part of the Moraine Valley Oral History Project.  A transcript of that interview is held in the Palos Heights Public Library’s Local History Room.

Long before her first weekly column in the Regional, Virginia Upton was born in Branson, Missouri, on January 3, 1914.  She grew up in El Dorado Springs, a resort town about 70 miles south of Kansas City known for its “mineral waters which were supposed to be good for all kinds of ailments in those days.”  Her father, Joseph Gravely Upton, was a newspaper editor; he passed away when Virginia was 7 years old.

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Connect to Local History @ Palos Heights Public Library

For more than 70 years, the Rini family attended to the medical needs of the Palos Heights community through their family business, Rini’s Palos Heights Pharmacy, located at 12309 S. Harlem.  Begun by Vincent Rini in 1940, the pharmacy continued to operate under his son Lou Rini until closing its doors in June 2007.

Vincent Rini, born in Kenner, LA, and his wife Anna came from the Chicago Lawn neighborhood to Palos Heights at a time when the area was still mostly rural.  Today, clone-like chain pharmacies abound, but Rini Pharmacy was something special.   As one would expect, residents could find a prescription at the pharmacy, but Mr. Rini also provided first aid and other medical attention, sometimes meeting people in the middle of the night and taking them miles to the hospital (the Palos Community Hospital did not open until 1972).  Additionally, even until it closed in 2007, residents could find special medicines found nowhere else, formulated and mixed the old-fashioned way by first Vincent and then his son, Lou.

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