Flossmoor was incorporated on June 20, 1924, and the community celebrated its 100th birthday on Thursday, June 20, with a party that featured the most timeless of American traditions, baseball and cars.
Visitors strolled along Brassie Avenue from near Flossmoor Road to Vardon Place to admire cars and trucks ranging from modern sports cars to Model A’s and the village’s vintage Engine No. 4 fire truck.
Food trucks lined the Western Avenue School parking lot, and kids shot hoops and played on the school playground. On one ball field, kids played a pickup game of kickball.
The main activities, though, happened on Bronco Field, where the event got started with a rendition of the national anthem by the cast from Spotlight Performance Academy’s production of “Matilda Jr., the Musical.”
Mayor Michelle Nelson followed with introductions.
“One hundred years ago today we became an incorporated village,” she said. “Back then there were approximately 265 residents and they lived mostly just a few blocks from where we are today. We’ve changed a lot since then. Now we have over 9,700 residents in 16 different neighborhoods.”
She named the ways the village had grown and developed over the years, including its opportunities for education and recreation, conservation and public art, business and industry.
“And most importantly, friendship and understanding,” she said.
She offered gratitude to a number of people and organizations that contributed to the event, including President Carlo Gozzi and Flossmoor Baseball and Softball, for making the ball park available for the event and for organizing two of the three exhibition games.
She thanked village staff for its dedication to the community.
And she thanked state and township elected officials at the event for their support.
Standing with her were former mayors Bert Reed, who served from 1973 to 1989, and Paul Braun, who served from 2009 to 2021; former trustees John Beele, Gigi Gummerson, James Wilder, Diane Williams and Charlie Didrickson; and she thanked current trustees Joni Bradley-Scott, Brian Driscoll, Gary Daggett, George Lofton, Jim Mitros, Rosalind Mustafa and Village Clerk Gina LoGalbo.
Nelson also welcomed special guest Nancy Faust, the legendary organist who spent 40 years playing at nearly every Chicago White Sox game (she missed five, Nelson noted, in all those years) as well as stints with the Bulls and Blackhawks during the 1970s and 1980s.
Nelson said Faust’s music had a special place in her family. Nelson grew up in Kansas City, but her mother was from Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood.
“When we took road trips between Kansas City and Chicago, we used to play (Faust’s) cassettes the whole way,” she said. “When dad came home after a hard day we’d have her tapes playing because we knew it would cheer him up.”
Her father, Michael Svetlic, was at the event and said his daughter surprised him with Faust’s appearance.
He danced and clapped as she played prior to the opening ceremonies. He said he had been a fan for more than 40 years and was especially fond of her version of Steam’s “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”
“That was her signature song and that has spread through the country,” he said. “I remember when she originally played it. It fired people up.”
The games
If Faust’s organ music stirred some baseball nostalgia, the featured game of the evening took it even further. The visiting Deep River Grinders faced the Flossmoor Whistlestoppers in a vintage game played by the sport’s original 1858 rules.
Jim Basala, who served as umpire in a top hat, explained the rules to the evening’s announcing team, the Yellow Jackets.
He said the bat is heavier and thinner. There are no catcher’s masks. There are no gloves. Finger injuries do happen sometimes, he said. The balls are a little bigger and softer than modern baseballs. Some of them made by hand. A ball hit out of the park counts as a single. Basala said in the early days of baseball there were no fences and fields were large, “a home run meant home run. You had to run it out.”
The Whistestoppers prevailed in the game, beating the Grinders 16-10.
Prior to the vintage game, Flossmoor Baseball and Softball fielded teams for softball and baseball exhibitions.
The Yellow Jackets — Terence Peter Smith, Michael Goldberg, and Jon Elfner — famous locally for entertaining runners and spectators at the finish line of the annual Hidden Gem Half Marathon, announced for all three games.
Two local dignitaries threw out ceremonial first pitches.
Prior to the softball game, Christiana Faith Brown tossed the first pitch. Nelson introduced her, noting that she had just graduated from Parker Junior High School, where she ran track, played volleyball, participated in math bowl, was student council president and was named the Parker Citizen of the Year.
Before the vintage game, former Flossmoor Baseball and Softball President Tom Dobrez threw out the first pitch.
He recalled his first experience playing baseball in 1967 and his long association with the organization.
“Thirty years ago my wife spent her birthday at this park as we lit these lights for the first time,” he said.
Drone show
Instead of the usual booms and smoke of a fireworks show, the village offered the music and lights of a drone show. The choreographed multicolored drones scampered around the night sky to form various shapes designed to exemplify the life and spirit of the village.
There was a diamond, a reference to the village’s “hidden gem” brand; a train engine to mark the importance of passenger rail service to the village’s founding and economy; a baseball and bat to note the importance of youth baseball and softball to recreation in the village; a golf ball landing on a green to show the importance of golf throughout the village’s history; and an outline of “Child,” arguably the village’s most visible and familiar work in its sculpture collection.
Flossmoor Community Engagement Manager Stephanie Wright said the show was the first of its kind in the South Suburbs. It was paid for, as were all the village’s centennial events, by a number of sponsors.
During the introductory remarks, Nelson gave a shout out to the four biggest donors: four biggest sponsors: Flossmoor Station Restaurant & Brewery, Eyes on Sterling, UChicago Medicine, Law Office of Kathleen Field Orr.
