JUST A QUICK THOUGHT OR TWO

A few items in this past week's police blotter related to summer shenanigans of our youth (see The Cops) caught my eye and made me wonder for a moment how easily things could be done to improve the health and welfare of our young people.

We all know kids often complain "there's nothing to do" in Anytown, USA. But in La Grange, where kids lately have been "caught" red-handed skateboarding on the parking deck, taking a dip in the downtown fountain and -- OMG! -- playing night basketball under the lights in Sedgwick Park, opportunity abounds.

The village displayed a quick wit this week by promising to make safety improvements (see The Cops and The News) along 47th Street, just a month and a few days since a 30-year-old Countryside mother was killed as she pushed her baby stroller across the busy roadway at 8th Avenue.

Now, I believe, it's time for the Park District and Village Board to act swiftly to help out our kids in other ways:

First, let the kids play basketball at night in the parks, so long as there is some adult supervision. After midnight might be too late, but establish some reasonable times. Where else will they spend their summer nights, other than eating out and at the theatre but in the streets and neighborhoods with the potential to cause trouble?

Second and third, work to acquire the vacant parcel of land at the northwest corner of Harris and Ashland avenues, where a funeral home once was and what was going to be a condominium development that went under. Take a tip from other towns like, say Lombard in DuPage County, where along their St. Charles Road business district west of Main Street you will find a low-maintenance, low-cost to build splash park.

Maybe the remainder of the land can become a state-of-the-art skating park, designed in part by the kids who will later use it, and feature other park amenities taking advantage of the retirement home to the south, the senior center to the east, the elementary school to the southeast and ice cream shop across the street.

It'd be a great place for kids to spend time after school under the watchful eye of the nearby Police and Fire departments, businesses and senior population. With the barrier of the old Illinois Bell switching station next door and the intergenerational potential, it's a no-brainer.

A similar "park" could be erected in the side and back parking lot of the new recreation center on East Avenue, and would be a great selling point for that pedestrian underpass at Maple Avenue so many folks keep talking about.

I'll bet the state senator and reps serving La Grange would love to assist with legislative initiative grants, or a Kids Foundation could be formed to raise money to make it happen.

The first step, however, is to form a Youth Commission, so elected officials can begin to develop a better understanding of what kids and teens really want out of their village.

Let me know what you think.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE?

I'd like to think if the La Grange police and fire department oficers and investigators I've come to know and trust over the years were given sole authority over the investigation of the May 19 vehicle vs. pedestrian death which claimed the life of a 30-year-old Countryside mom, they would have concluded their work weeks ago and maybe even issued actual criminal charges against the alleged offender.

It's uncanny it took so much time for state and county investigators -- only with the help of local police -- to piece together the tragic collision that left Cari Cook for dead and rendered her two children and family dog lucky survivors.

A little more than a week ago, the traffic violations of a Summit man who nearly escaped death himself when, in an admittedly almost sleepy state, he sheared off the front end of his vehicle and got pinned inside until firefighters could free him after crossing a double yellow line, were quickly determined. The case was evaluated by La Grange officers and a ticket was issued.

The 5-car crash June 11 was on the same stretch of state-controlled roadway -- the busy speed haven known as 47th Street -- as the crash that killed Cook, and less than two blocks away no less.

Maybe the involved parties in the Cook case weren't talking immediately, maybe it was hard to analyze a crash with no apparent witnesses with clear enough memories -- but maybe, just maybe -- part of the problem (i.e., the long delay) was because lead investigators were just not all that familiar with the road in question or the kinds of careless traffic activity that goes on there on an all-too-frequent, sometimes daily basis (See The Cops).

It is La Grange cops, and not state troopers or state's attorney investigators, who routinely patrol the high-accident corridor and figure out the final disposition of every other non-fatal crash on what really should be a local roadway under full local jurisdiction.

After all, local law enforcement typically know what's best and how to handle such matters both fairly and expeditiously.

Perhaps it truly did take everyone a full month to investigate the death, but it shouldn't have been La Grange Police Mike Holub who gave residents a very unrevealing update on the probe at the June 2 village safety meeting, with regular updates on what was going on with the investigation. Why not a state trooper and county prosecutor instead, with Holub at their side?

Instead of a press release issued by the local guys, perhaps someone should have hosted a press conference, if not midway through the probe, then at its culmination, so local web, print and broadcast reporters could have asked the kinds of questions that deserve answers; so the community could feel a little more at ease the wheels of government won't end up moving as slow as they seldom do on this burning issue.

Was the alleged offending driver believed to have been doing anything to possibly distract herself while crossing 8th Street? Speeding? Doing makeup? Talking or texting? Eating lunch? We may never know, but does anyone have proof if she was doing any of those things or not?

Was there excessive sunshine or dark shade affecting the vision of drivers at that hour of that day?

Why did the investigation take so long and why were criminal charges not justified in this case?

Easy questions, seemingly easy answers.

Instead we all get a statement, without all the facts and without answering many of the probing questions curious newshounds and understandably concerned neighbors and residents might have.

I have a feeling the many questions swirling around this case are from from over. Simply put, we all need to know more. And in a few days or a week. Not a month.

Why not let us know what you think???

A SILENT MEMORIAL SO CLEARLY HEARD

It's difficult for just about everybody to talk about death, especially when it means the passing of someone so young and vibrant, with their entire life ahead of them.

When it comes to news reporters, it's something that comes with the territory. You are either emotionally affected every time an assignment to cover a murder, fatal accident, suicide or prominent death hits your desk or you grow immune to covering so much tragedy -- kind of like how police and firefighters are able to show up to work every day.

Although I have been at this craft for nearly 30 years and have covered some pretty grisly murders, accidental and intentional deaths, I have never been immune to every story I've done.

There was that guy whose girlfriend beat him to death with his own baseball bat, the two young kids who died after being stabbed and bound with duct tape by a guy their mom thought was a trusting babysitter, the child who was run over by her own school bus after being dropped off at her corner, the young teen with so much for which to live decided to run into a train's path and, most recently, the mom killed while crossing a busy 47th Street with her baby's stroller.

I've covered them all, and then some. And I always try and find out something, if not lots of things about these people to share with my readers.

Most of us in the media follow an unwritten policy that we don't talk about suicides except when they occur in public. And while I am going to share the latest such case to cross my desk, I am not going to violate that code. I don't need to know or tell who this kid was, but I am sure he had a lot of hopes and dreams and a good life story to tell.

He died at the end of the school year, so the impact on fellow students may not have been as dramatic had his death occurred in the middle of the year. But the impact felt by the extended neighborhood in which he lived is downright touching to say the least.

That neighborhood is directly across the street from La Grange's western border with Western Springs at Gilbert Avenue.

From Gilbert to Wolf Road and from 47th Street to Burlington Avenue, nearly every parkway tree is adorned this week with flowing thick white ribbons honoring the life of a young neighborhood kid whose life, for reasons we will never know, came to an abrupt halt in recent days.

There was no story about it, nor should there be, unless someone chooses to share what he meant to others.

I couldn't help but thinking what it was like for the family and friends of the boy to experience such a loss; but moreover what it felt like to be blessed with so much support and compassion largely from so many people they didn't even know.

I've seen ribbon "campaigns" to raise awareness of child abuse, to pass school building referenda and to mobilize a neighborhood opposed to overdevelopment of a vacant downtown lot where hundreds of condos now stand. I've seen resident groups stand tall for and against any number of causes. But I've never seen anything so simply overwhelming as this.

Sure, the ribbons, over time, will come down -- but the memory of this valiant silent memorial will live on, not just in me, but hopefully in others directly impacted by the loss of their son or brother, their classmate or teammate, their neighbor, their friend.