Accelerate 77 Share Fair Celebrates Sustainability in Chicago

Looking for a cool sustainability-themed event this coming weekend? Here you go: this Saturday from 10am to 4pm at Truman College on Chicago’s North Side, the Institute for Cultural Affairs will host the “Accelerate 77” Share Fair that brings together people and organizations working on all kinds of sustainability initiatives in each of Chicago’s 77 community areas.

Back in the spring of 2012, my SUST 210 Honors seminar at Roosevelt’s Chicago Campus did on-the-ground research in small groups in 5 different communities in Chicago: Fuller Park, Rogers Park, Little Village, and the North and South halves of the Loop. Their research added to that of students at several other Chicago colleges and universities, as students fanned out across the city to learn about urban sustainability initiatives and meet people from every walk of life, in every neighborhood of the city.

As the ICA Share Fair’s website describes, there’s a ton going on this Saturday:

Exhibitors: Come Meet Your Neighborhood Assets

The main room will be filled with representatives of all 77 communities of Chicago. These representatives have been identified as leaders in their respective communities, but a leader can be embodied in many ways. We work towards realising a sustainable Chicago, the foundations of which rely on economic, cultural, and social sustainability. You can expect to see examples of urban agriculture, green technology, and alternative energy, but then also so much more! Each leading program has their own methodology in how to encorporate/encourage environmentalism in their neighborhoods. True to the richness of the Chicago community, we expect a lot of different ideas to come out in our exchange of best practices. To see a full listing of the organizations that have signed up already check out the See Who’s Coming page. 

Connection Seminars: Q&A with Citywide Stakeholders 

In “breakout rooms” located outside of the main fair space, there will be representatives of programs which work all across Chicago. If you’re part of an organization, these will be great opportunities to learn more about exciting programs across the city and gain some “how to” at the same time.  To see a full listing of the organizations and topics covered, head over to the Connection Seminars listing page.

The Reception: Celebrate and Learn

After the Share Fair, a reception will be held at the ICA, located at 4750 N Sheridan Ave. Come and learn about Chicago’s very own GreenRise and help us celebrate the Institute of Cultural Affairs’ 50th anniversary. To learn more about the GreenRise tours, head over to the GreenRise Tours page.

During the spring semester of 2012, the 20 students in Prof. Mike Bryson’s SUST 210 Sustainable Future honors class conducted a semester-long community-based research project in conjunction with the ICA’s effort during 2011 and 2012 to map and describe as many sustainability initiatives and assets as possible in each one of Chicago’s 77 official Community Areas. Two RU students, international studies major Dylan Amlin and sustainability studies major Ngozi Okoro,  pursued summer internships with the ICA by conducting community research in several South Side neighborhoods.  As Dylan notes about the Share Fair:

It will be an excellent networking opportunity for students as well, and we could really use some youthful energy in the room. If students are interested in volunteering, they can contact me directly asap (dylanamlin@gmail.com). They also can go to the Accelerate 77 website to learn more about the project and to register.

Join Dylan, Ngozi, and lots of other students, faculty, sustainability professionals, grassroots activists, and area officials for this singular event!

Talkin’ Biodiversity at the Field Museum

Last week I had the privilege of attending a two-day meeting at the Field Museum’s Biodiversity Synthesis Center (BioSynC) hosted by museum botanist and early land plants collections manager Matt von Konrat. I joined faculty and students from several Chicago colleges and universities to discuss how to develop college curriculum for the taxonomic study of the liverwort genus, Frullania, one of many under-studied yet incredibly important bryophytes that are the oldest type of land plants and key bio-indicators of environmental degradation and climate change.

Faculty and students convene at the Aug 29 and 30 biodiversity research and curriculum workshop held in the FMNH’s BioSynC center
(photo: K. Lugo)

With the rise of molecular genetics and related disciplines since the 1950s, biology as a whole has seen a massive shift away from the traditional natural history-based disciplines of comparative anatomy and taxonomy, pursuits rooted in the 18th- and 19th-century study of nature. Yet the imperative to catalog and assess the world’s remaining biodiversity in our current age of mass extinction, a process largely driven by human action, means that current taxonomists working in museum collections and the field have a critical task ahead of them. The NSF-funded Connecting Biodiversity Research with Curriculum project spearheaded by the Field Museum’s Konrat and his colleagues is a creative way to involve students and non-scientists in the essential data collection and analysis work vital to cataloguing bryophyte species, re-assessing their place on the tree of life, and providing a model for similar work for other organisms.

For more on this endeavor, check out this post on the SUST at RU blog.

Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge Proposal Wins Federal Approval

This past week saw some great news this week for citizens of the greater Chicago region as well as southeast Wisconsin. The US Dept of the Interior has announced the approval of the Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge, a constellation of planned open spaces and conservation areas that will link existing green spaces in NE Illinois and SE Wisconsin. It will be the closest wildlife refuge to the Chicago area, and is a future boon for regional ecotourism, land preservation planning, and sustainable economic development.

The map above depicts the original study area of the proposed refuge. According to the USFWS Division of Conservation Planning, it “includes the refuge Study Area boundary in black plus conservation lands currently owned by the State of Illinois, the State of Wisconsin, counties in both states, non-governmental organizations, land conservancies, and private individuals. Because land ownership is dynamic, some existing conservation lands may not be shown and some areas may have changed in status since this data were obtained.”

This somewhat more schematic map below, which was distributed widely via the media, shows the now-authorized boundaries of the new refuge, and clearly depicts the donut-shaped collection of open space and protected lands (including future conservation areas) that straddles the Illinois-Wisconsin state border.

What makes the Hackmatack Refuge unique within the longstanding national wildlife refuge system is its close proximity to a major metropolitan area (and therefore millions of potential visitors per year) and the fact that it will be composed of a mosaic of present and future protected landscapes, rather than a single contiguous parcel of federal land. For more information on the scope and significance of Hackmatack, see this news article from the Daily Herald, the Friends of Hackmatack website, and US Fish & Wildlife Service’s official webpage for the Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge.

Labor-Managment Conflict in Blue-Collar America: The Caterpillar Strike in Joliet

Without Caterpillar Corporation, I probably wouldn’t exist.

Once upon a time, a Kansas farm boy (my grandfather) moved to central Illinois with some of his brothers to find work. He eventually caught on at Caterpillar in Peoria, where he became a union machinist — what he always called a “tool and die man.” He worked hard, got married, and started a family. Then around 1951, he was transferred to the brand-new Joliet hydraulics plant and moved here with his wife and two kids.

One of those children was my mother, then nine years old, who years later met and married my father — and just a few years afterward, I arrived on the scene. Hence my very existence depended upon, among others things, Grandpa getting that job at Cat.

I relate this family anecdote because when it comes to grappling with the meaning and significance of the current union strike at the Caterpillar plant in Joliet, now well into its fourth excruciating month, history matters. Personal connections matter.

Cat workers on the picket line (photo: Fox Valley Labor News)

In a working class town like this, where people from all walks of life have deep and sometimes tangled histories with the Joliet’s industrial past, labor disputes resonate. They’re not just abstract stories in the news about someone else somewhere else. They’re about us: our aspirations, our values, our prejudices, our sense of community.

As an Illinois citizen, I have a vested interest in Caterpillar remaining strong and vibrant. Its very identity is built from equal parts technological innovation, engineering expertise, and good old-fashioned hard work. Cat’s products and the myriad of jobs the company provides are important to Illinois’ economic vitality.

But as the grandson of a tool and die man, I also feel solidarity with the hundreds of striking machinists out on Route 6. In their rejection of Cat management’s offers of a new long-term work contract, Local 851 union members hardly are asking for the moon. What they’re putting themselves on the line for, rather, is the preservation of good blue-collar jobs within America’s embattled middle class.

Caterpillar management’s latest offer to the workers (up for a vote today) would freeze wages, double health care expenses, and cut into pension benefits. One shouldn’t forget that Cat has had a longstanding multi-tier pay schedule in place for union machinists, with those hired after May 2nd, 2005, getting significantly lower wages than older “Tier 1” workers. So-called “supplemental” machinists get paid even less than the Tier 2 folks. See a pattern?

Meanwhile, Caterpillar achieved record sales, revenues, and profits in 2011 — and its second quarter profits in 2012 are the highest in company history. Yet with labor contract talks at fits and starts, Cat is playing hardball by advertising for and hiring replacement workers, thereby taking advantage of high local unemployment conditions in which any job seems like a good job.

The Caterpillar labor dispute is thus a microcosm of the growing cultural conflict between the exaltation of corporate greed and self-interest (the market rules best) and the long-term viability of America’s working class (the people matter most).

Most folks agree that our country needs good manufacturing jobs with decent wages and benefits, that companies should play fair, and that employees should work hard. But how do we put those common values into practice? We’ll soon find out here in Joliet.*

* On Friday, just a few hours after this article appeared in the 17 August 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News, the striking machinists’ union voted to approve Caterpillar’s most recent contract offer, as reported here in the Chicago Tribune and other sources. Details about the vote totals were not released, but apparently it was close. Early analysis indicates that the union conceded on several key issues, including the doubling of health care premiums, the elimination of pensions, and a reduction in seniority rights.

Leopold’s Shack, Wild Turkeys, and the Wisconsin River

This summer my family and I took our annual vacation to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where we camp out at the Bryson family cabin — a fairly humble one-room cottage in Hiawatha National Forest on the shores of little Crooked Lake (a lovely place to canoe and observe wildlife, among other woodsy pursuits). There’s no bathroom or hot water: just a hand pump in the cabin and an outhouse twenty yards out into the woods. The nearest little town of any note is about 12 miles up the road. Still, with a roof over our heads and electricity in the cabin, staying there feels rather more deluxe than, say, camping out in a tent.

After a week or so in the UP, we drove back roads through Wisconsin to Baraboo, where we spent a few days exploring the countryside and doing fun stuff with the kids. The Baraboo area is home to many delightful natural areas and sites of interest, including the much visited Devil’s Lake State Park; the beautiful though overly commercialized Wisconsin Dells; and the International Crane Foundation, a remarkable wildlife conservation facility. After our visit to the Crane Foundation north of Baraboo, we drove one of Wisconsin’s beautiful “rustic roads” that parallels a levee along the south bank of the Wisconsin River, and pulled off the road once we came to an unmarked turnoff in the middle of the woods.

Here I took a few minutes to hike a sandy road into a clearing not quite visible from the road. This is the site of “The Shack” — Aldo Leopold’s weekend retreat on the farm he purchased in the early 1930s as a family getaway and place where he could put into practice the conservation principles and restoration techniques he and others were developing in the early to mid-20th century.

Once a chicken coop that Leopold converted into a family cabin, the shack is a tiny structure by today’s standards. I realized as a walked around it, dwelling in its quiet presence, that it was significantly smaller than the 20×24-foot cabin we use in the UP — by comparison, our summer home is a roomy palace. Yet this humble shack looms large in American conservation and literary history, given its inspiration for Leopold’s classic 1949 work of environmental literature, A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. Though I spent a mere twenty minutes or so at the site — listening to the wind filtering through the tree canopy, and wondering about the current of the Wisconsin River, flowing just to the north of the Leopold farmstead — it was impossible not to feel the power of this particular place. I left reluctantly.

As we drove east on Levee Road, we pulled off again to scale the grassy levee, which was topped by a profusion of wildflowers — and enjoyed a commanding view of the Wisconsin River, here a wide and fast-flowing stream with many sandbars and heavily-wooded shorelines. Further on up the road, my wife spotted a family of wild turkeys, which scuttled up over the levee at the noise of our passing. We stopped to take a look at them, and watched mesmerized as the male set ran off first in one direction, toward the river, while the female led her young away at a different angle, toward a copse of trees. An exciting and special moment, one I was glad to have on the heels of finally seeing Leopold’s cabin after many years of simply reading about it.

Cosmic Outlaws: Coming of Age after the End of Nature (a call for papers)

I recently received this intriguing call for papers through email. If you’re a young and aspiring writer and have an interest in the natural environment, sustainability issues, and related subjects, check this out!

In the prescient 1988 book, The End of Nature, Bill McKibben forecast the end of a primordial relationship between humans and the untrammeled earth. Evidence abounds that our ancient connections with the home planet have irrevocably altered.  What happens to individuals and societies when their most fundamental cultural, historical, and ecological bonds attenuate—or snap?  How do the young, especially, cope in a baffling and mutable new world? “When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit,” wrote Henry Beston, “man becomes, as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw. . .  .”  It is vital that we hear from members of the generation who have grown up on the new earth, who can express their challenges, fears, dreams, and sources of resilience for living and thriving as cosmic outlaws.

Co-editors Julie Dunlap and Susan A. Cohen are soliciting submissions for an anthology tentatively titled, “Cosmic Outlaws: Coming of Age after the End of Nature.”  Submissions are invited from young writers, born in 1982 or later. We are interested in essays, short fiction, and poetry that explore themes including (but not limited to) growing up in a warming climate, accepting biodiversity decline, defining responsible consumption, understanding the relevance of wilderness, interpreting moralities of resource allocation, new views of urban design, sustainability, and environmental justice, technological optimism or pessimism, environmental heroes for the future, and sources of joy in a diminished place.

Julie Dunlap is co-editor of Companions in Wonder: Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together (MIT Press, 2012) and an award-winning author of children’s books, articles, and essays about nature, science, and environmental history. Susan A. Cohen (formerly Susan A. C. Rosen) is co-editor of Wildbranch: An Anthology of Nature, Environmental, and Place-Based Writing (University of Utah Press, 2010), editor of Shorewords: A Collection of American Women’s Coastal Writings (University of Virginia Press, 2003), professor of English at Anne Arundel Community College, and the author of numerous essays on American literature and the environment.

Please submit materials electronically (.doc or .rtf files only for essays and fiction – .pdf files will be accepted for poetry) by December 31, 2012, along with contact information and a one-paragraph author bio.  We will accept essays & fiction up to 4,000 words (one per contributor) and up to three poems per person.  Please submit copies of your work to both of the e-mail addresses below.  If you must submit by mail, please send TWO double-spaced copies to both addresses below.  We will be reading and selecting pieces in early 2013.  We are happy to accept simultaneous submissions, but we ask that you please notify us if your submission is accepted elsewhere.

Send your work to:

  • Julie Dunlap:  juliejdunlap@earthlink.net (6371 Tinted Hill, Columbia, MD 21045)
  • Susan A. Cohen:  sacohen3@aacc.edu (40 Johnson Road, Pasadena, MD 21122)

Thank you.  We look forward to reading your essays, stories, and poems!

City Creatures: A New Blog

Here’s an exciting new blog to check out: City Creatures, a place of insightful writing about animals (and their human neighbors) here in Chicago’s urban and suburban environments. This is a project of the environmental non-profit organization, the Center for Humans and Nature, that will support and complement a book and art exhibit of the same name.

As a contributing author to the project and the blog, I’ll be writing about the Bubbly Creek ecosystem on Chicago’s Near Southwest Side and the many animals, past and present, that exist in that damaged yet resilient landscape — from the herons and other birds that find food and shelter within the creek’s waters and riparian zone; to the carp swimming below the surface that harbor bio-accumulated toxins in their tissues; to the decades-old offal from the millions of processed cows and pigs that was once dumped untreated into the waters of Bubbly Creek, and which is still slowly decomposing within its sediments.

Paddling south on Bubbly Creek, May 2012, on Chicago’s Southwest Side; to the right are 34th Street and the Iron Street Farm (M. Bryson)

Project Exploration: Re-thinking Environmental Science

Last month I was invited to participate in a brainstorming session at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago about kids and environmental science. The event brought together educators, environmental professionals of various stripes, and students to discuss how to make environmental science more accessible and relevant to minority boys and girls, particularly kids in the Chicago Public School system. The organization responsible for this effort is Project Exploration, a non-profit dedicated to increasing female and minority participation in science early on in the educational pipeline: specifically, in junior high and, to a lesser extent, high school.

Jameela Jafri was the dynamo behind this convening, at which I met many exciting and impressive people from all corners of Chicago. Check out her blog post about the event here, and visit to the Project Exploration website to learn more about the amazing stuff they do.

A Tribute: Remarks at My Grandmother’s Funeral

If you had met Millie Bryson for the first time in the last few months of her life, it would have been easy to underestimate her. She was 98 years old, blind, hard of hearing, and increasingly forgetful. She lived in a humble and charmingly disordered house that hasn’t changed much over the last few decades. She moved around gingerly, by feeling her way along furniture and walls, and she slept a lot. One of the surest signs to me that she was finally slowing down in her late 90s was that she stopped following every inning of every game of her beloved Chicago Cubs.

But such observations would belie my Grandma Millie’s many accomplishments and talents, as well as the humor, passion, knowledge, and wisdom she shared over the course of her long and influential life.

First and foremost, Millie Bryson was a true force of nature possessed of both tremendous energy and a winning personality. Fiercely independent and strong-willed, she had a quick wit and delightful laugh — qualities she retained even after going blind late in life. And she was smart. A sharp thinker, an avid reader, a skilled crossword puzzle-solver, she had brains to go along with her impressive command of the English language.

Speaking of English, Gram was a stupendously energetic talker. She perfectly embodied the phrase “having the gift of gab.” In her prime, which lasted from the moment she started talking to well into her 90s, Gram could pretty much dominate any conversation she happened across. Once she became partly deaf in her later years, she could turn her hearing aids down low and happily keep on going and going without ever being troubled by an audible interruption.

I’ll never forget one summer when she was in her 80s and my wife and I drove her up north to Michigan for one of her final visits to the Bryson summer home. For about nine straight hours, she talked non-stop, including through the two meals we took along the way. I don’t think Laura and I spoke more than ten words the entire trip. After we arrived and the evening wore on, she began a violent and loudly percussive series of coughs and throat clearings that went on well into the middle of the night. “I don’t understand why my throat is so sore,” she said, much to our amusement. “I must have caught a little bug or something.”

Gram’s passion for conversation bespeaks her role as the oral historian of the family. She was the repository of family lore, and with her amazing memory could recite dialogue from a 1930s afternoon gathering word-by-word at the drop of a hat. Besides her vast knowledge of Bryson and Hicks genealogy, she possessed a seemingly limitless supply of fascinating family stories, as well as an arsenal of memorable sayings that usually surfaced spontaneously within the appropriate social context. A few chestnuts from these aphorisms include:

“First the worst, second the same, last the best of all the game.”

“Wish in one hand and spit in the other, and see which one gets filled up faster.”

“Why? You want to know why? Because the boat leaves Friday, that’s why.”

“What for, you ask? For cat’s fur, to make you kitten britches.”

Millie also was a terrific musician who was born into a musical family — her father, Leslie Hicks, played banjo and guitar in Charlie Formento’s Dance Band during the Depression years here in Joliet. Gram became an accomplished pianist who could sight-read expertly. She had a lovely alto voice and was equally at home singing in the church choir or directing it. She instilled a profound and lasting love of music within her family, and was a nifty dancer to boot.

Faith and church involvement were foundational to Gram’s life. Long a member of First Baptist Church on Joliet’s East Side, she was a founder and charter member of Judson Memorial Baptist Church on the West Side in 1955. For decades she was a respected leader in church affairs at Judson, particularly music, education, governance, and mission outreach. Millie played organ and piano, directed the choir, served as deaconess, taught Sunday School, raised money for mission work, led women’s Bible studies, and performed countless other services for the church community. She lived her faith through deeds more than words, and many of us benefitted from her example.

Gram was an amazing cook who was generous with her skills, knowledge, and recipes for those eager to learn (including my mother). Family dinners at her home on Oneida Street were legendary. She routinely prepared elaborate meals singlehandedly in her miniscule kitchen, and she was a skilled confectioner of pies, cakes, rolls, donuts, cookies, and a special chocolate sauce.

Besides her cooking, she was an expert seamstress. For many years she made her kids’ outfits as well as most of her own clothes. I have it on good authority that her embroidery work was nothing short of exquisite.

More significant than these many talents is that she stepped up when she was needed. As the Bryson matriarch and a beloved mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Millie was utterly devoted to her family. For over two decades she took care of elderly relatives in her small home even as she raised her own children. Most people would find this difficult to do for 24 days, if not 24 hours — she did it for 24 years.

As that previous example shows, Millie often sacrificed her own comforts and conveniences for the sake of others. She could see the bigger picture and act accordingly. Consider that tiny kitchen I mentioned before. Back in 1960, she and my Grandpa Abe decided to use the money they had long saved for a kitchen expansion/remodel to instead purchase a small rustic cabin in the north woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. No-one could deny that a talented and hard-working cook like Millie surely deserved a bigger and better theater for her daily labors. But to my knowledge, she never regretted that decision for a second.

Ever since, the Bryson cabin at Crooked Lake has been a treasured vacation site for four generations of the Bryson and Laury families. And though she was city bred and couldn’t swim a stroke, Gram came to enjoy camping out, and learned how to handle a canoe in rough water and pitch a tent in the rain.

Speaking of dealing with adversity, Gram knew the meaning of devotion, heartbreak, and deferred gratification. By this I mean she was a Cub fan. I’m talking Hack-Wilson-is-your-favorite-Cub-of-all-time type of Cub fan. Gram dated her devotion to baseball to the summer of 1929, when she began hanging out with the menfolk at picnics listening to ballgames on the radio. It wasn’t very lady-like behavior according to some tongue-waggers, but Millie didn’t truck with convention if it didn’t suit her. She followed her beloved Chicago Cubs on the radio “through thin and thin,” as she often noted wryly — year after disappointing year, decade after excruciating decade, century after spirit-crushing century.

She borrowed this memorable phrase “though thin and thin” many years ago from her soon-to-be son in law of 50+ years — Everett Laury of Danville, Illinois — who uttered it upon meeting Millie at her house for the first time. From that point on, once she knew Ev was a fellow Cub fan, he was A-OK in her book. Another special moment in her baseball life was when Cubs radio announcers Pat Hughes and Ron Santo paid a lengthy tribute to her on the air during her 90th birthday. I’ll never forget the look on her face as she listened to their humorous patter, and then said, “Gee, that was dandy!”

Many times over the past few years, when I would bring my two daughters over to her house for a visit, Gram would say to me, “Oh, I don’t know why I keep hanging around so long. I’m just a burden to people. What do I have to live for at this point? Why am I still here?”

For me, the answers to her rhetorical questions came easy. To hear the Cubs play another game, and maybe, just maybe, win the pennant at long last. To share love. To teach us. To bring joy. To appreciate an earthly life well lived, and anticipate the eternal life to come.

Speech delivered at the memorial service for Millie Bryson (1914-2012) held at Judson Memorial Baptist Church, Joliet, IL. (pdf version)

A Remembrance: Millie Bryson, 1914 — 2012

My grandmother Millie was one of the most important and influential people in my life, and it was a distinct honor to write her obituary this week. Here is the full text, which is reprinted in today’s edition of the Joliet Herald-News, along with a few vintage photographs.

Millie Bryson in 1999

Mildred Edith Hicks Bryson, 98, of Joliet died peacefully on July 11, 2012, of natural causes. She was at home with her family by her side.

Mildred “Millie” Hicks was born at home May 17, 1914, on the East Side of Joliet, IL, the daughter of Leslie Timothy and Margaret Edith (Nicholson) Hicks. She married Abel Hurst Bryson on June 17, 1935, in Joliet. He died on November 4, 1987.

Millie was a lifelong resident of Joliet — first on the East Side, where she lived with her family near Hickory Creek; and later on the West Side, where her parents built a home in 1925 on Reed Street, then the city’s far western boundary. She graduated from Farragut School and Joliet Township High School (class of 1931); completed teacher’s training at Joliet Junior College in 1933; and subsequently taught in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Will County near Manhattan, IL.

Abel H. Bryson married Mildred E. Hicks on 17 June 1935.

After her marriage in 1935, she left teaching (as was customary in those days) and worked diligently thereafter as a homemaker, mother, elder caretaker, and church volunteer. Once her children were grown, she was in high demand as an accompanist in the Joliet area, particularly for short-notice funeral services. She also cashiered for several years at Plainfield Road Pharmacy. No matter the job, Millie was a hard worker who valued getting things done the right way, preferably “in a jiffy.”

Born into a musical family — her father Leslie Hicks played banjo and guitar in Charlie Formento’s Dance Band during the Depression years — Millie was an accomplished pianist who could sight-read expertly, and she was a nifty dancer to boot. She possessed a lovely alto voice and instilled a profound and lasting love of music within her family.

Faith and church involvement were foundational to Millie’s life. Long a member of First Baptist Church on Joliet’s East Side, she was a founder and charter member of Judson Memorial Baptist Church on the West Side in 1955. For decades she was a respected leader in church affairs at Judson, particularly music, education, governance, and mission outreach. Millie played organ and piano, directed the choir, served as deaconess, taught Sunday School, raised money for mission work, led women’s Bible studies, and performed countless other services for the church community. She also was a longstanding member of The King’s Daughters and Sons international Christian service organization.

A family portrait from 1941: Abe and Millie with Ralph (front left) and Margaret (aka “Molly” and later “Peggy”)

As the Bryson matriarch, Millie was utterly devoted to her family and for 24 years took care of elderly relatives in her small home even as she raised her own children. She was a beloved mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, as well as an expert seamstress and cook (though by her own admission an indifferent housekeeper). For many years she made her kids’ outfits as well as most of her own clothes, and her embroidery work was unparalleled.

Family dinners at her home on Oneida Street were legendary. She routinely prepared elaborate meals singlehandedly in a miniscule kitchen, and she was a skilled confectioner of pies, cakes, rolls, donuts, cookies, and a special chocolate sauce.

That kitchen gained a special place in family lore when she and her husband Abe decided in 1960 to use the money they had long saved for a kitchen expansion/remodel to instead purchase a small rustic cabin in the north woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Ever since, the Bryson cabin at Crooked Lake has been a treasured vacation site for four generations of the Bryson and Laury families. And though she was city bred and couldn’t swim a stroke, Millie came to enjoy camping out and learned how to handle a canoe in rough water and pitch a tent in the rain.

Millie and Abe Bryson out on a “night on the town” in Chicago, sometime in the 1940s.

Anyone who came to know Millie Bryson would attest that she was a force of nature possessed of both tremendous energy and a winning personality. Fiercely independent and strong-willed, she had a wonderful sense of humor, quick wit, and delightful laugh — qualities she retained even after going blind late in life. She was an avid reader and skilled crossword puzzle-solver. A devoted baseball fan since 1929, she followed her beloved Chicago Cubs on the radio “through thin and thin,” as she often noted wryly.

Surviving are her son, Ralph A. Bryson, of Joliet; her daughter, Margaret “Peggy” D. Laury (Everett), of Danville, IL; six grandchildren, Michael A. Bryson (Laura) of Joliet, David P. Bryson of Chicago, Laura E. Bryson of Crest Hill, Ann E. Luciani (Paul) of St. Louis, MO, Susan K. Laury of Atlanta, GA, and Catherine D. Wiese (Donald) of Danville; and four great-grandchildren, Lily and Esmé Bryson of Joliet, and Libby and Jacob Luciani of St. Louis, MO.

Millie Hicks (age 20) and her younger sister Doris (18) in their backyard in Joliet, wearing matching dresses made by my Great-Grandmother Edith Hicks Bryson (1934). These were later worn by the bridesmaids in Millie’s wedding.

She was preceded in death by her husband; her parents; her siblings, Leslie C. Hicks, Doris E. Holman (Harold), Roy A. Hicks, and Barbara L. Hicks; and her daughter-in-law, Patricia K. Bryson.

A celebration of Millie’s life will be held on Tuesday, July 17, 2012, at Judson Memorial Baptist Church, 2800 Black Road, Joliet, IL 60435. Visitation with the family will be at 3pm; services will start at 4pm. A church dinner will immediately follow the services.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Judson Memorial Baptist Church or to Joliet Area Community Hospice, 250 Water Stone Circle, Joliet, IL 60431. Arrangements are being handled by Carlson Holmquist-Sayles Funeral Home of Joliet.

Readers who wish to post a memory of Millie or a note to the family may do so here on the Carlson Funeral Home website. Also see this essay I wrote about Gram last week for my monthly op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News.