Note: As part of our coverage of Flossmoor’s centennial, the Chronicle has conducted interviews with several of the village’s long-time residents to add their stories to the village’s story.
Richard Condon’s family moved to Flossmoor in 1932. In the mid-1930s, when he was still a youngster, the family moved to the Civic Center Building downtown, where he lived until he left for college.
He was present when the local American Legion post dedicated a Veterans Honor Roll on April 1, 1945, and his work preserving the history of that memorial inspired the current effort to build a new memorial to honor Flossmoor veterans.
The following is an excerpt from an interview Condon did late last year with the Chronicle.
One of your contributions to Flossmoor is keeping the idea of a veterans memorial alive. What’s your family’s connection to military service?
My Uncle Ed was a World War II vet and a World War I veteran. He was a, he was a lieutenant in charge of a machine gun company in World War I. In World War II, um, he got up to rank of colonel. My uncle Tom died after World War I. My dad in World War I but didn’t go overseas.
He was the electrical inspector for the Village of Flossmoor, the first one. And he wrote Flossmoor’s electrical code. We’re talking 1930s, 40s. We lived in the Civic Center building right in the middle of town. The American Legion was one floor below us. We were on the top floor, and then my bedroom was in the tower above the main entrance.
You served during the Korean War. Tell us about your experience serving overseas.
I had just finished my junior year in college. They had a college draft deferment test, which I passed, hoping to finish my senior year. And I went to the draft board in Harvey, and they said, Sorry, we need people.
I was there when they signed the truce. We went up to the trenches that very evening. I was not up at the front doing any rough stuff. I was a field wireman at regiment level. There were 25 of us that we did nothing but maintain telephone lines and radio.
We were on call 24 hours a day. One time we were out and the sergeant came around (and said) Why are you guys goofing off? I said, we’ve been 54 hours without sleep, and we’ve had one meal. Don’t come around telling the me we’re goof off. Our switchboard handled about 3,500 calls a day.
We maintained all the wire. If the wire got blown out by artillery barrage or something, you had to go out day or night.
You have long been involved in preserving local history. What projects have you been involved in?
I was the inventory chairman at Homewood Historical (Society) for 19 years.
We went upstairs and stood at the top of the stairs, and I looked to the north and I couldn’t get in the bedroom. (It was) piles and piles and piles of stuff. Kris (Condon, his daughter) helped with a program on a computer that worked out beautifully. We had about 6,500 items in that little bitty house (the Dorband-Howe Musem on 183rd Street in Homewood) and almost 5,000 photographs.
You also witnessed important moments in Flossmoor’s history, including the speech given by James Mitchell, Flossmoor’s only World War II prisoner of war.
Most of the audience is in tears, because he’d been a prisoner of war. He was taken care of in a German hospital. They kept him almost three months after the they knew the war was over. But they transferred him to another and they made him walk there.
