Illinois High School Glory Days turns 20 years old this year. Honored in 2022 by the Illinois State Historical Society as its Best Historical Website, IHGD preserves memories and information from Illinois high schools that are no longer in existence: small town, large town; public, private; 19th century, 21st century. I have been part of its team since its beginning in 2005.

This post is the second in an ongoing series featuring road trips that involve my work for Illinois High School Glory Days. View the preface of the series HERE, which shares a brief story of the mission, purpose and history of the website.

I would like to share some road trip memories centered around Illinois High School Glory Days. I’ve done research in nearly every county in the top 1/3rd of Illinois.

Our team of historians travel all throughout the state to explore and research these schools. Some trips are during dedicated trips, others involve places we happen to be passing through on something totally unrelated (but we stop to appreciate anyway).

The get-togethers

We come from all over the state to journey, document and share. Any time our team can gather is a special occasion. We’ve gathered in Princeville, Bloomington, Ottawa and Springfield at times over the years to share our journeys, build our friendships and get to know each other a little more.

The first get-together I was a part of was at fellow site author Monsignor Richard Soseman’s home in Princeville not long after the website started. Soseman, who died in 2020, was the priest at St. Mary of the Woods Church in town. His home was not far from a park called Cutter’s Grove, where I parked and walked over to get “my steps in.”

Our Springfield get-together was a special one. That was when the Illinois State Historical Society honored the website.

May I come in?

In my years as a journalist, one of the ways I help tell a story is through photographs. If you include the imagery in the telling of a story, it may evoke a thought or memory.

During one of the first couple of years of the website, I was on a mission to get pictures of Thomson, Savanna, Hanover and Elizabeth – all along state Route 84. This was not long after the West Carroll consolidation. I’m from a historical website, and I’d like to come inside and take pictures. You can really only do that during a school day, and that involves permissions from those in charge. Thomson, Hanover and Elizabeth went along just fine. Savanna, not so much. While in Thomson, I had received verbal permission from the superintendent that I could also go to Savanna for pictures of its school. Telling this to the high school principal in Savanna resulted in a shock – here was this kid with a camera during school days and he immediately went into protective mode. It took a little while before he calmed down and heard from the superintendent.

As the website’s knowledge grew, I never had a problem going forward. There was, however, one occasion during a visit to Burlington, c. 2008. The building was the office for the Central School District, and upon asking the superintendent, I was told that that the building was never a high school. I had to tell him he was wrong, and how it was the Burlington High School building BEFORE it became part of the Central District.

The school that began my journey

In the couple of years before working with Illinois High School Glory Days, I was surprised that a small town such as Hillsdale had a high school. My family had driven through town on Quad Cities shopping trips many times, and all teenage me knew of the town was that it was tiny. Then when I could drive, I found the old high school, with “Hillsdale Community High School” etched on it. Tiny enough to have a high school? Really?

When the website began, I had a camera to take pictures. So on a ride through Hillsdale in the spring of 2005, I captured a few of them. I think that was one of my very first contributions. We have since had additional pictures of the buildings from older days become part of the page, and now are featured.

Something had to have been there at some point, right?

I don’t recall if I made these stops on the same trip or separate, but there were two things on my mind when wondering about the Quad Cities: 1) United Township seems like a consolidated name, what were the predecessors; and 2) Milan is that big, it HAD to have a high school at some point, right?

That’s when Silvis and Milan were added. Those were two moments of curiosity that paid off. Not much has been added to the Silvis page, but much has been added to Milan’s – just plant a seed and watch it grow.

Double-duty

When I was on the Sauk Valley Media education beat, I had to keep up with news about educational happenings in Lee, Ogle, Whiteside and Carroll counties. So when Paw Paw High School in eastern Lee County closed in 2019, I reported on its final graduation. I wish I would have taken more pictures and talked to more people, but I was on the clock the entire time. My story appears on the Paw Paw page.

Stacks and stacks of yearbooks

I worked on pages for Rockford High and West Rockford during the website’s early days, and was overwhelmed at the collection at the local history room of the (now-razed) downtown library.

Fast-forward a few years later. When Woodruff High School in Peoria closed in 2010, I not only sought to do research on that school, but it also has the distinction of having two separate identities before it: Averyville High School and Kingman High School – might as well get those, too. Peoria’s main library at the time of my visit was in temporary quarters at the local PBS station. I had time. I felt like I didn’t want to miss anything. I made a mess. That was one of those research sessions where I had to push myself to keep going.

The 2015 Metro-East Trip

I was between gas station jobs at the time, and recovering from a dark personal time as well (both during spring). What better way to get away and have fun than going on a big road trip and engaging in the research I enjoyed doing.

Worden, Edwardsville Lincoln, Granite City North, Godfrey and Upper Alton were the highlights of that trip (Godfrey being a new addition). It felt great to get out of the house and have fun again.

“Trapped” in Smithfield

During my Quincy-and-back trip in 2024, one of the towns I went through was Smithfield. This was a day before Fulton County’s HUGE Spoon River antiques event. I saw a sign on the road through Smithfield about a “Red Brick School,” so, with an interest in school history, and just a few minutes of time to swing by, I swung by.

Meeting me in front of the school was a woman who was a volunteer for the community center that the school eventually became. They were prepping for their big chicken and noodles event, and the place was going to open up for so many people to see. I just wanted to take a picture of the exterior, but I was persuaded, and persuaded even more, to come inside and see what was there.

About an hour later, learning all about a man’s collection of wood carvings and other local things, I needed to head back on the road to make time. Much of the school’s items, including trophies, were preserved. If I had more time, I would have given it a proper visit. Perhaps a trip to the antiques event will do that.

Chicago and its suburbs, in brief

Illinois High School Glory Days, whose first school was Mineral, had a very rural, small-town America feel to it. As the site grew, schools from the Chicago Metro area became included. I was making Chicago trips at least five times a year during the first few years of the website.

Histories of Chicago city schools, public and private, weren’t all that well-documented. Sometimes we’d only come upon a name of a school, and that’s it. Figuring out what these schools were about was a difficult task. However, getting tiny pieces of the puzzle in is better than nothing at all. All of my city trips have been photo trips. Parking anywhere can be a challenge, so a lot of times I have to position my camera in a good spot while driving in challenging city traffic.

The suburbs proved to be great curiosity for me. There are many suburbs, but not as many high schools. Questions that would pop up would be something like, “Did Itasca have a high school?” “Was this ‘Bowes High School’ (near Elgin) even a real thing?” “Was there a high school in one of the Paloses before Stagg and Shepard?” Many research stops have resulted in blanks, and the answers to those aforementioned questions are all “No.”

The thing about the suburbs is that the atmosphere has changed SO much over the past 75-100 years that much history has been largely forgotten because of sprawl and a low number of lifelong residents. Someone says, “It’s always been Carl Sandburg High School.” Nope. There was Orland High School before that. It had to have been something before Sandburg was worthy of having a school named for him. A trip to the Orland Park Library uncovered that.

Glen Ellyn was an interesting find. The Glenbard School District is there now, a portmanteau of “Glen” and “bard” for Lombard. My mind thought, did the two have separate schools before that? Glen Ellyn did. In fact, Glen Ellyn High School was located in the upper stories of a downtown bank building.

Driscoll Catholic in Addison closing in 2009 was a shock felt across the state, especially in the world of high school football. Before it closed, I made sure to take a trip there to capture the campus. I’m glad I did: The entire campus has since been demolished and redeveloped into The Highlands neighborhood, named in part after the school’s nickname of being the Highlanders.

Seton Academy in South Holland is perhaps my most favorite stop. It closed in 2016, and I stopped by that March to see what I could find to take pictures of. I took a chance and went into the building on a school day. I was happy to find out that the principal was happy to escort me through the building. We event went into the boiler room, where its two boilers were nicknamed “Jake” and “Elwood.” Unfortunately, I never got those pictures uploaded and I think they are still on a flash drive buried somewhere. I need to find those.

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That’s all for now. More memories may happen the more I find more stuff and places along my journeys. I know I have one dedicated research trip in the planning stages with the former directional schools of Rich Township in eastern Will County, date TBD. The “Uncovering the Glory Days” series eventually will continue if I find more things.