This village`s name is short and sweet for a reason.
In 1843, when this part of the south suburbs was little more than the farmland and forests claimed by founder Willard Wood and a few other settlers, a circuit-riding minister came calling.
The minister asked Wood the ”place`s” name, said Raymond Piepenbrink, a longtime local historian. It really didn`t have one yet, Wood is said to have answered, but it sorely needed a name if it was to get the post office it was angling for.
An extremely helpful sort, the minister asked Wood what kind of name would suffice. Something short, easy to pronounce and spell, Wood said.
The minister riffled through his wellthumbed Bible, searching for some candidates. For obvious reasons, names such as Ephesus, Thessalonica and Iconium were quickly eliminated, but he hit paydirt near the end of the Book of Acts, in a passage recounting one of St. Paul`s journeys.
”How`s Crete?” he asked.
To founding father Wood, it had a nice ring. No matter that his fledgling village bore little resemblance to the craggy isle in the Aegean Sea, or that it didn`t have a single Greek resident. ”Crete” just sounded right.
Wood might have reconsidered if he could have foreseen that 146 years later, his community`s citizens would refer proudly to themselves as
”Cretans,” or that former residents would be known to some punsters as
”ex-Cretians.” But how could he have known?
Present-day Crete, a rustic village of about 5,000, still does not have much of a Greek population. But it might as well be an island to most Chicagoans.
Although, as the crow flies, it is only 35 miles south of Chicago`s Loop, many folks believe that it is in southern Illinois somewhere, maybe near Cairo. And Chicago area maps do not always help matters. Some show Crete, but just barely. On others it falls below the bottom border.
Actually, it is just a little farther from downtown Chicago than Naperville, but Crete still seems more a remote country village than a suburb. To date, the Will County village has escaped the kind of development experienced by other municipalities on Chicago`s periphery. This has been a mixed blessing.
It is a friendly place where crime is mainly something that happens somewhere else.
”A monthly police report might have one reported battery on it, and it`s likely to be a couple of teenage boys fighting in the high school parking lot,” said Becky Johnson, a Crete housewife and five-year resident who moved here with her husband from Rockford.
Johnson, who serves on the village`s civilian advisory board, said she knows some folks who don`t even lock up their houses. There were only 33 burglaries in 1988, and only eight violent crimes, according to Illinois State Police figures.
The schools still seem to work; the junior high school recently won a national award for excellence. Reportedly, an occasional eagle still can be spotted near the village. Corn that grows as high as an elephant`s eye lines either side of a road leading into town.
”We still have that old-timey feeling,” said Bob Kraemer, owner of the Brauhaus, a Crete restaurant and bar, and a lifelong resident.
But Crete is a one-stoplight town with two gas stations and a weary-looking bowling alley as main attractions at its major intersection. Commuter train service was halted years ago. It lacks a large supermarket, department store, car dealership or fast-food restaurant. Folks have to go to neighboring towns a few miles away to find many of these.
In fact, there are so few local businesses of consequence that residents shoulder the lion`s share of the tax burden.
”Crete is a bedroom community,” Piepenbrink said. ”There`s no industry to speak of. It`s the kind of place you come back to at night to sleep, then you leave it to go to work.”
Some long for the day when light industry might be lured to the village to expand the tax base.
According to village officials, Cretans complain mostly about high property taxes. A visitor who stopped at a filling station found that even young Cretans complain.
”We don`t get what we`re paying for,” said Kerry Hodges, a senior at Crete-Monee High School, while he pumped gas. He complained that his school doesn`t have a pool.
For its part, the district said the school may lack a pool, but a new science department with labs and lecture rooms was added recently. And since Crete-Monee is a unified school district where taxes support kindergarten through 12th grade, its tax rates will seem high compared to but one part of the taxes found in dual school districts, where one tax supports kindergarten through 8th grades and another, 9th through 12th grades, said Bruce Sechtell, assistant superintendent for business and finance.
But do not get the notion that Crete is just a high-taxed rural backwater with a few isolated brick and clapboard farmhouses. In the downtown residential district are solid looking Victorians, bungalows and ranch-style homes on tree-lined streets.
Bruce Hackel, a local real estate agent and village trustee, said their prices range from $75,000 to $150,000, with the average being around $90,000 to $100,000.
”Crete`s a hot market,” he said. ”If those houses are clean and priced right, they`re gone in a week; forget it.”
In the village`s several subdivisions, and on other tracts, are stylish houses most North Shore suburbs would be proud of. Crete even has a few rambling mansions and a stately country club with large homes on two golf courses.
Steve Trout, former pitcher for the Sox and Cubs, used to live here. Art Canfield, retired head of the eponymous soda company, still does. And it was rumored that a massive house with an indoor pool was being built by Michael Jordan, although now the rumor appears to have been groundless.
Also, how many villages are just a quick trot from a race track? Balmoral Park, owned by a group led by George Steinbrenner`s son-in-law, Stephen Swindal, is just south of Crete.
What it comes down to is, ”We`d like it to stay the same, but we know it can`t,” said Mayor Mike Einhorn, 38. ”We want to give up as little as possible to retain our character and at the same time take a few steps forward.”
And what is that character? According to history of the village, published by Crete`s historical society in 1980, Cretans ”are typical of what Midwesterners are at their best-proud, independent, mostly God-fearing and hard-working good folk. In other respects Crete is unique-no longer rural and not quite suburban. A patina of sophistication overlays the essence of rural country charm. Crete has its own schisms, oddities and anachronisms.”
Crete does have its share of oddities. On a corner lot in a subdivision filled with standard suburban split-levels stands a relatively new, modern log cabin home. It is weirdly out of place, no doubt owned by one of those
”proud, independent” Cretans.
A local developer, asking for anonymity, said: ”I wouldn`t want to live across the street from that. It really belongs on five acres back in the woods.”
Henry Veldhuizen, a heavy machinery operator, who built the house with the help of his two sons and has dwelled there for two years, said some of his neighbors were up in arms at first:
”They called the mayor and the developer. I thought they were going to burn my logs after they were delivered.”
But the furor died down as the house rose and the neighbors saw it was not going to be a one-room, dirt floor cabin.
”Now we`re friends,” he said of his neighbors.
Leading a visitor on a tour of Crete, Lynn Wiley, a resident since 1938, recalled an erstwhile publisher of the Crete Record:
”He was a burly man, about 6 foot 3. He was totally deaf. You can imagine the problem he had gathering the news.”
As far as anachronisms go, look no further than the Crete F-Men, where
”F” stands for Farm. The F-Men evolved directly from the Anti-Horse Thief Association, a group of farmers who banded during the Depression to stop the pilfering of chickens and livestock. The F-Men, though more of a social group now, still can be deputized by the sheriff, just like in frontier days, to help catch an outlaw.
If there is any detectable schism in Crete at present, it is caused by the competing visions of Crete`s future as represented by those who believe development is healthy and those who want to keep the village pretty much the way it is.
The planned construction of a $50 million strip shopping and office center on a nearby section of Int. Hwy. 394, the Calumet Expressway, is awaited by many Cretans such as Johnson ”with bated breath,” she said.
To be built along the highway that links Crete to Chicago, the center is supposed to be anchored by a Garofalo`s supermarket and include a True Value hardware store and maybe a fast-food restaurant. Word is that the mall`s developers, Connaught Co., of nearby Steger, also might be considering a motel on the property.
In recent years, Mayor Einhorn has appealed to Metra to begin commuter rail service between Crete and downtown Chicago, with a terminus preferably on the western side of the Loop. He sees such service as vital for attracting light industry as well as residents.
”I`d like to have some of those guys with starched collars from the Board of Trade building $450,000 houses here,” he said. But he said the agency has questioned whether there would be enough local demand for train service.
Einhorn also believes that a third Chicago-area airport in the southeast suburbs could be in Crete`s best interest for the sake of growth.
”At some point we`re going to have to deal with the airport question,”
he said.
But James Cavanaugh is a vocal opponent of development, especially if it includes a south suburban airport. The politicians and developers are out to
”ruin the semirural lifestyle that brought people here in the first place,” said Cavanaugh, a claims adjuster who lives just outside of Crete, in Crete Township, which itself has a population of about 7,000.
”It`s not easy taking care of 5 to 15 acres of lawn,” Cavanaugh said.
”But people here are willing to put up with it because they enjoy it. We like our way of life, and we`re saying to the developers, `Take it easy. Give us a chance to enjoy what we have.”`
Crete officials do not aspire to be the next Schaumburg, Mayor Einhorn said. They would settle for becoming the next Long Grove, a tourist attraction boasting a quaint rehabbed downtown district.
To that end, Crete is trying to become something of a tourist destination for antiques. It now is home to 12 antiques shops. Linda Morgan, who owns Granny`s Crazy Quilts, has spearheaded the drive, even bringing busloads of antiques lovers into Crete. She has obtained local contributions and matching State of Illinois funds to pay for radio ads. The group has also gotten an occassional Michigan Avenue window display in the Britannica Building to promote its wares, she said.
While Crete is behind her efforts now, it has not always been so. Two years ago she launched her campaign by calling a meeting of Crete`s business community in a local park. Only three people showed up.
There is talk of a new downtown parking lot so tourist buses won`t need to park in overgrown alleys. And the citizen advisory board was considering planting trees to beautify the business district.
After a board debate it was decided that trees can block merchants`
signs, would drop their leaves and harbor birds that drop other organic substances.
”Trees took a beating” at the board meeting, said Chuck Roberts, Crete`s public relations man.
The village may try bushes instead.
