By Kari Lydersen
Sheila was 11 when her family moved to Oak Park. “Just a little Southern girl moving North,” she wrote in her diary, and listed the names of the only two girls at school who would play with her. But Oak Park soon became home. During high school she worked part-time at a park district parking lot, and she lived at home for a year and a half while she studied nursing at Triton College. “When she realized she couldn’t stand the sight of blood,” says Mary, she decided to follow in her father’s footsteps and join the air force.
Sheila had a mastectomy, underwent chemotherapy, and went through a divorce at the same time. “They told me that in three weeks I would lose my hair,” she wrote in her diary. “Three weeks to the day I was taking a shower, and suddenly I saw all my hair–waist-length hair–in the bottom of the tub. I’m sure my screams woke the neighbors for miles around.”
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The chemo seemed to work, and she went into remission. Her hair grew back, and she got a new job at Osco. Then last fall she discovered a lump in her armpit. On November 20 doctors told her the cancer had spread to her brain. “You can have no idea how devastated I was,” she wrote. “This was the darkest hour for me.” She started chemotherapy again, and her weight dropped from almost 200 pounds to 140 in a month.
In 1928 aboveground tanks were built on the site to store liquefied natural gas. In 1931 they were demolished, though the tar wells were left intact. In 1938 the utility that would become ComEd started using the site as a vehicle garage and repair yard, and in 1954 it transferred the site to Northern Illinois Gas Company, which later became Nicor. In 1959 the land was sold to the village of Oak Park, which in 1965 turned it over to the park district. The park district put in two baseball diamonds, the play lot, green space, tree-lined paths, and a sledding hill.
Sheila’s lawsuit charges that workers building Barrie Park in the 60s had noticed coal tar at the site. But Black says that since no one knew it was carcinogenic then, no one would have thought it was a problem. “The U.S. EPA didn’t even exist until 1970, and there was no hazardous-waste legislation until 1976,” he says. “People just didn’t consider this an issue at that time.”
The suit also stated, “The plaintiff…will be deprived of enjoying a normal life and livelihood,” and it asked the court to “fully and fairly compensate her for all her losses.” Sheila’s attorneys called a press conference to announce the suit, and the story made the TV news.
