From the President

By: Kathy Gemperle

Significant progress is being made on the construction of our new home at 5358 N. Ashland Avenue. At the end of March most of the second floor was finished by M.P. Construction, including painted walls, new lighting, and new doors. All that remains is the completion of the bathroom.

M. P. Construction has also been hired to finish the first floor. The first job was to move all the stuff from the main room to the back room that will some day be a kitchen. It was packed. With the main floor cleared work began on insulating and leveling the floor and completing the wall boarding. Now it looks like a room instead of a garage, quite a big step as some of you know who have been to some of our preview events. The next step was to move everything from the back room to the second floor. This included file cabinets and tables, desks and chairs. Now the real work has begun.

This last stage of construction is costing $12,000 more than we originally planned so we are hoping many of you will attend our Spring Home Tour and support our efforts to get into the building by Fall.

The tour on May 5th is a new event in a special area of Edgewater, the North Edgewater Beach area around Granville between Winthrop and Sheridan. Our host for the tour is the Sovereign Apartments. A special lunch has been arranged at the Thai Grill. Get your reservations in as soon as possible.

On Saturday March 16th we held our 15th Annual meeting at the Edgewater Library. It will be our last one in their meeting room. It was planned as a special day, the inaugural lecture of the Austin “Bud” Wyman Lecture series. Our Board of Directors established this lecture series as a memorial to Bud Wyman, a founding Board member of the Edgewater Historical Society and third generation Edgewater resident. The guest lecturer was Mr. James Landing, an environmentalist and birdwatcher who is professor emeritus in geography at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

We began the business meeting at 10 a.m. when Mr. Landing had not appeared as he had planned. After various reports and the election of Board members we realized that Mr. Landing must not be coming. We took a break and enjoyed the coffee and cake provided for this special event. Then I presented a certificate to Dawn Wyman, widow of Bud Wyman in honor of the Lecture series. Dawn spoke about Bud and told us a little more about the history of the Wymans in Edgewater. Though we were disappointed that our speaker did not attend we enjoyed the meeting anyway. A few days after the meeting, Mr. Landing called from the hospital. He had been taken in for bypass surgery and will be in recovery for awhile. Perhaps we can reschedule in our new museum.

Thanks to all of you who have sent in contributions since our appeal last October. About $500 was raised. We are happy to accept contributions in small amounts but hope that if you can you will get your total up to $100 so that your name will be recorded on a plaque in the museum.

We are now thinking about plans for the opening exhibit. Our original plan was to display all the photos that have been sent in for the Edgewater Millennium Project, However, we need more photos. Now is the time to take that historic photo in front of your home in Edgewater and send it in. We will enlarge it and display it for the opening event. We would like a little information about you and your family to post next to the photo, Don’t delay, dig out the photos we know you have or get everyone together on Mother’s Day for the family photo. The exhibit will be a sort of then and now exhibit, Edgewater residents from 1900 and then those from the year 2000 or the late 20th century. Please send your photos in now!

Hope to see you at the museum in a few months!