Articles written by Ken Knutson


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  • Police: auto thieves target residences

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 24, 2024

    Hinsdale Police reported incidents of attempted auto theft that occurred early Saturday morning, July 20, in the village's northeast neighborhood. According to an alert posted on the police department's social media, the incidents took place at approximately 5 a.m. in the area just north of Hinsdale Hospital. An officer noticed a suspicious vehicle in the area, which then fled southbound on the Tri-State Tollway at a high rate of speed. Several hours later, a resident in the...

  • Stray animals now taken to Wheaton

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 24, 2024

    The village of Hinsdale was informed two weeks ago by the Hinsdale Humane Society that the nonprofit agency would not be accepting strays from the village’s police department until a formal agreement is finalized between the two parties. Hinsdale Police Chief Brian King said that, to his knowledge, the village had not operated under a contract for the humane society’s services up to this point but had donated funding in the past. In an email to The Hinsdalean, King said the two have been trying to hammer out a contract for...

  • Verizon armed robber gets 26 years

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 24, 2024

    A former Schaumburg man has been sentenced to 26 years for robbing at gunpoint a Hinsdale Verizon Wireless store in 2022 and a Wheaton Sprint store in 2019, according to DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin’s office. Stephon Little, 31, who has since changed his name to Isa Al Ahad, received his sentence July 18 from DuPage County Associate Judge Joseph Bugos, handing down a 26-year sentence on the Hinsdale robbery and a 21-year sentence on the Wheaton robbery, to be served concurrently. As detailed in a press rel...

  • Hinsdale native gets Halas Hall call

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 17, 2024

    Kiran Amegadjie didn't start playing football until age 13 when he joined the Hinsdale Falcons youth program. "I remember getting hit, and I remember my first headache after a long practice and all the soreness I felt," Amegadjie recounted. "I was like, 'What did I just get myself into?' " The Hinsdale native had no idea he'd gotten himself onto a path that less than 10 years later would lead to the National Football League as the 75th pick in the 2024 Draft by his hometown...

  • Summer school makes the grade in D86

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 17, 2024

    "Why are you willing to spend time on something you're not getting credit for?" The question was posed to rising Hinsdale Central junior Asha Sarai, a student in last week's AP History Writing Workshop, by Alex Mayster, executive director of communications for Hinsdale High School District 86. Sarai had a ready response. "I obviously do care about my academic success," she said, citing the summer slide that can happen. "It's a great way to get back in the mindset of learning...

  • Ask an expert - Business profile - Sullivan Funeral Home

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 17, 2024

    The funeral business has changed in the century since Harry Sullivan made the transition from an accounting career. “The first location was really just a storefront, because they were still doing wakes and everything in homes,” funeral director Brian Sullivan said of the venture his great-grandfather launched in Chicago’s Marquette Manor neighborhood in 1924. For 100 years the Sullivan family has served grieving families, helping them navigate one of the most difficult episo...

  • Parking deck work to last all of July

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 10, 2024

    Work on the downtown parking deck continued this week, limiting access to sections of spaces as part of a project officials hope will be completed by the end of the month. Phase two of the preventative maintenance work on the 4-year-old facility began Monday, according to George Peluso, Hinsdale’s director of public works, who said this portion is expected to be completed early next week, weather permitting. “They’re primarily working in the middle areas of the upper and lower deck,” Peluso explained. “Contractors originall...

  • Hinsdale lands on NASCAR circuit

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 10, 2024

    Local UChicago Medicine AdventHealth staff had reason to follow the NASCAR Chicago Street Race on Sunday after professional driver Erik Jones stopped by the organization's Cancer Institute in Hinsdale Friday. Jones brought his No. 43 UChicago Medicine AdventHealth-branded race car to the 1 Salt Creek Lane facility to promote the sporting event and to raise awareness about skin cancer and other causes close to his heart. In remarks to kick off the pep rally, the 28-year-old...

  • World War II vet has 100 reasons to celebrate

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 10, 2024

    Eight decades ago, Hinsdale's Harold Bogigian was thankful to have made it back from a World War II "suicide run" with the U.S. Navy. A radioman on the SS John Stevenson merchant ship, Bogigian and his fellow crewmen departed New York in January of 1944 on a mission to deliver supplies to Murmansk, Russia, in the Arctic Circle. "My parents were terrified when I left," related Bogigian, who was 19 at the time. "Our mission to Murmansk was probably my most dangerous mission of...

  • Prep stars climb to next level

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 3, 2024

    The collegiate athletic arena awaits a number of recent Hinsdale Central graduates, as well as Hinsdale residents who completed their studies at private schools. These sports standouts shared their fondest high school memories with The Hinsdalean, as well as what excites them as they head to their new campus homes. This is the first of a two-part series. The second installment will run July 11. Fiona Allen, University of Virgina, lacrosse I will most remember ... playing...

  • Board debates discrimination policy

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jul 3, 2024

    The wording of a new discrimination policy was the subject of a protracted discussion at last week’s Hinsdale High School District 86 Board meeting. Policy 2:270 prohibiting discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, color and national origin was on the board’s consent agenda for approval at the June 27 meeting. The provision is in response to the Racism-Free Schools Law passed by the Illinois General Assembly last year, explained board member and policy committee Chair Peggy James, who said districts must enact suc...

  • Get in on Independence Day

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jun 26, 2024

    Summer's biggest celebration is upon us, and Hinsdale residents have plenty of ways to join the party next week with fellow patriots across the country. Nothing marks the season in the village more than the Independence Day festivities right in the downtown business district next Thursday, July 4. Make sure to get a good vantage point for the annual parade, which begins at 10 a.m. It will kick off from Sixth and Garfield streets and travel north on Garfield to First Street,...

  • Woman finds community service outlet in Juniors

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jun 26, 2024

    Shortly after moving to Hinsdale from Chicago in 2021, Hinsdale's Alex LaRoia signed up for a baby music class hoping to enrich the bond with her child. She had no idea the extent to which her personal connections also would flourish. "I met some girls who were in (Hinsdale Junior Woman's Club), and that opened up the floodgates to my entryway to the club," LaRoia said. Leadership posts in Juniors followed, first as new member chair and currently as one of the philanthropy...

  • Devils team soaks in field of dreams

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jun 19, 2024

    Earlier this month, the Hinsdale Devils Black 12U travel baseball team rolled in Cooperstown, N.Y., for a 5-day tournament. Playing in the bucolic upstate New York town at the southern tip of Otsego Lake is a summer rite of passage for hundreds of youth travel programs around the country, not unlike the pilgrimage fans of the sport make to celebrate the icons of the game enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum located there. Devils team member Ryder McLaurin s...

  • D86 board eyes proposed FY25 budget

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jun 19, 2024

    Hinsdale High School District 86 Board members are poised to approve a tentative budget of $136.8 million for fiscal year 2025. At the June 13 committee of the whole meeting, Josh Stephenson, the district's chief financial officer, told the four board members in attendance the proposed spending plan is a balanced one with revenues projected to virtually match expenditures. Expenditures would be 3.8 percent more than the $131.8 million outlay for fiscal year 2024. The revenues...

  • Car wash demise not family's entire mission

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jun 12, 2024

    Fuller’s Car Wash may be willing to close down to settle a lawsuit over the tragic death of 14-year-old Sean Richards of Hinsdale last summer. But Sean’s family said there’s more at stake for both loved ones and the village at large than simply shuttering the business. The latest developments in the matter emerged at Tuesday night’s village board meeting after Sean’s father Brian rose to speak during public comment. After thanking the village for placing jersey barriers outside the car wash exit to prevent vehicles from ente...

  • Local woman looks back on century's harvest

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jun 12, 2024

    Blowing out 100 candles is no small feat. That is unless one employs a hand fan, as Hinsdale's June Franc did when she celebrated becoming a centenarian on May 31. "I'm full of hot air," Franc quipped while sitting on her front walk surrounded by a lush garden. She and her late husband, Harold, started tending their plot on the village's north side in 1958 as Ohio transplants. Harold's engineering career had brought the young family west, and they were smitten by Hinsdale's...

  • Girls lacrosse takes third at state

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jun 7, 2024

    For the sixth straight season, Hinsdale Central girls lacrosse finished among the state's elite. A 10-7 win over Lake Forest Saturday in the third-place game on Central's Dickinson Field avenged a 7-9 loss to the Scouts back on March 14, the first game of the season. It also helped salve the disappointment from the Devils' Friday night defeat to eventual state champ Loyola Academy in a hard-fought contest. "We definitely showed up in (the Lake Forest) game, and felt like we...

  • Ask an expert - THERESA GOODRICH, AUTHOR

    Ken Knutson|Updated Jun 5, 2024

    Why should we visit national parks? Theresa Goodrich recounted a memorable encounter with a group of locals while camping in Badlands National Park several years ago. "Bison just walked right through the field where our tent was pitched," she said, describing the behemoths' use of a picnic table as a scratching post. "A bunch of us were up early and standing on one side of our vehicles because on the other side the bison were having their breakfast." Such out-of-the-ordinary e...

  • Student athlete profile - Aidan Hernandez

    Ken Knutson|Updated May 29, 2024

    Aidan Hernandez Hinsdale How was finishing your Central tennis career with a state title? It feels good. A team title is really great, and especially since it was (head coach John) Naisbitt's last year and a great way to send him off. What do you remember about freshman season? It was a very new experience for me. We had a shortened season because of COVID. I was playing football, too, and football was moved to spring so the two seasons overlapped and it was pretty chaotic. Wh...

  • Creative outlet

    Ken Knutson|Updated May 29, 2024

    Photographer Mike Baker started out by training his lens primarily on subjects he thought would have broad appeal. As he matured as a visual artist, he refocused on images that most captured his own interest. "After a while I felt like I wasn't really growing that much, so I started shooting the things that I like to shoot," Baker said, noting that the shift has given him a signature style. "Now people can say, 'That looks like something Mike Baker would do.' " Baker will be...

  • Teen gains insight on caring for one's neighbor

    Ken Knutson|Updated May 29, 2024

    Hinsdale's Molly McGarry was not familiar with the concept of philanthropy when she began her studies at Nazareth Academy. She is now, thanks to her participation in Community Memorial Foundation's Young Community Changemakers program. Upperclassmen from area schools are invited to apply for the program, known as YC2, designed to educate and empower local youth to become the next generation of philanthropists by sharing their time and treasure for the common good. "We learned...

  • 'Gingerbread house' is heritage to savor

    Ken Knutson|Updated May 29, 2024

    Having breathed new life into an historic R. Harold Zook-designed home several years earlier, Hinsdale's Mimi Collins was well-versed on the celebrated local architect. But Zook's 1920s-built cottage-like dwelling at 4 E. Fifth St. was not on her project wish list when it hit the market last year. After all, Collins had just gone to market with the 7,000-square-foot-plus Roaring Twenties château on Park Avenue that she'd spent two years rehabbing. "I had no intention of...

  • Ask an expert - WILL KUSAK, CENTRAL STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT

    Ken Knutson|Updated May 22, 2024

    What does commencement mean to you? Hinsdale Central student body President Will Kusak will perform his final duty in that role - and as a Red Devil - serving as an emcee of tonight's commencement ceremony. The roughly 600-strong class of 2024 had no in-person eighth-grade graduation due to COVID, and embarked on its high school journey split in halves to promote social distancing on campus. "We were labeled as an 'A day' kid or a 'B day' kid, and that just caused such a stir...

  • Community leans on governmental branch

    Ken Knutson|Updated May 22, 2024

    Hinsdale Seventh-Day Adventist Church wants to improve access for the disabled and the elderly to its building at 201. N. Oak St. by creating a new drive area. But a mature tree occupies the parkway where the driveway would go, a healthy and structurally sound tree that village staff has determined does not meet the criteria to grant the church’s application for removal. Enter the Tree Board. Consisting of Hinsdale Trustees Alexis Braden, Michelle Fisher, Matt Posthuma and Scott Banke, who serves as board chair, the body a...

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