Gottlieb joins Loyola
Yesterday at noon, Loyola Medical Center and Gottlieb Hospital held a joint news conference to announce that the Melrose Park community hospital (that would be Gottlieb) has joined the Loyola University Health System. Since many Oak Park and River Forest residents use the hospital (and particularly its fitness center), we thought you'd like to know.
Fox news: fair and balanced sightings
To our relief, it looks as if our red fox (we should hold a naming contest) has escaped any close encounters of the predatory kind with wiley coyotes (see Inside Report, Jan. 23). Unlike Les "Wilee Coyote" Golden, we are fox lovers, so we were concerned about incursions into our fox-tolerant den.
Fortunately, a number of readers quickly reassured us.
"He trotted right by me one night in December while I shoveled snow-like, 'thanks for the clear path,'" said Greer Haseman, a broker with Town Square Associates in River Forest. "I actually thought it was my Sheltie for a second. Then a few days later, while walking said Sheltie, we saw the red fox sitting in a sunny spot in a front yard across the street from where we were, very quiet. He looked at us, we looked at him, and while I did take a picture with my cellphone, it was too far away to tell what it was, so I deleted it. We moved on and he stayed in the sun. All in all both encounters were very nice."
Don Lewis "spotted him last Thursday morning [Jan. 17], trotting down the middle of the 500 block of Forest Avenue while waiting for a cab to pick me up to go the airport at 4:30 a.m."
The next two reports were more objective than you might expect for Fox News:
"I saw a (the?) red fox at 9:30 a.m. on Sat., Jan. 19, on the grounds of Roosevelt Middle School in River Forest (at Lathrop and Oak)," wrote Alison Nelson. "He was heading due east."
The most recent-and most authoritative-comes from Elizabeth Austin, communications director for Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn (so it has to be true): "The red fox-or at least, a red fox-was walking down the sidewalk on Paulina a little before 9 p.m. on Friday evening [Jan. 25]. It was heading toward Harlem. It looked just like a Disney fox, absent the little green hat."
Please keep us apprised of the whereabouts of what's-his-name (her name?).
Mann Elementary kindergartner dies
The Mann Elementary School community is mourning the death of one of its students. Benjamin Wellner, a kindergarten student at Mann, 921 N. Kenilworth, died suddenly Monday afternoon, according to a statement release by Principal Nimisha Kumar on Tuesday. No additional information was released as of press time.
"There can be no more devastating loss to a parent than the loss of a child, and our hearts and thoughts go out to Benjamin's family," the statement read.
The District 97 crisis team was available all day Tuesday to help students, according to the statement. Kumar was unavailable for comment.
Clarification
In the Jan. 23 issue of Wednesday Journal, River Forest Village President Frank Paris is quoted saying, "I'll answer any question except if you ask me how many times I sodomized my parent. Those kinds of questions can't be asked."
What Mr. Paris actually said was, "I'll answer any question except if you ask me how many times I sodomized my parrot."
Wednesday Journal regrets the error.
Correction
In an article last week that ran in the sports section, the name of former OPRF boys water polo coach, Jim Lock Jr., was misspelled. Wednesday Journal regrets the error.
