When Des Plaines residents Tom and Lisa Ciesielski set out to renovate their 1962 brick ranch home, they faced the challenge of knocking down walls and erasing the earth-toned decorating scheme that had been lovingly created by the house’s original owners: Tom’s mom and dad.
Retirees Loretta and Richard Ciesielski are now happily settled into their dream home in Hawaii, 3,200 miles away. Yet 36-year-old Tom says that while taking over the family home has stirred up more than a fair share of nostalgia, it also has attracted comments from his dad such as, “Why did you change anything when it was perfectly fine?”
“It’s officially no longer Mom and Dad’s house,” says Tom, who along with Lisa purchased the home from his parents last spring. “It may be hard for them to see all the changes we’ve made. But they were relieved not to have to turn the home over to total strangers because of the sentimental value.”
Call it nostalgia, a sense of All-American pride in one’s hometown, a return to the days when family homesteads passed from generation to generation or simply a bargain too good to pass up. A growing sector of northwest suburban residents is discovering there may be some truth behind the old cliche “There’s no place like home.”
Whether it’s buying their parents’ home or just returning to their hometowns to raise their own families, people are being drawn back to familiar territory.
“There certainly is an interest in going back to one’s roots and traditions,” says Thomas Stengren, a vice president and manager of Starck and Co. Realtors in Arlington Heights. “I’ve even met couples who have driven through their old neighborhoods, and discovered that their old house is back on the market” and they want to buy it.
For the Ciesielskis and their two children, Eric, 5, and Jenna, 2, the family room is a comfortable corner of the house to entertain or simply relax beside the fireplace.
But Tom can remember a time when the family room was still an attached garage, and the true love of his life was a shiny, red 1968 Camaro.
“I bought that car during my high school days, took the engine apart and put it back together again,” he recalls. “That car was my baby.”
Though the Camaro is long gone, Tom still has the same housekey he used as a child, and he and his wife sleep in the bedroom he once shared with his younger brother, John.
“I can still remember having nightmares in this bedroom after I saw the movie `Mary Poppins’-it scared me to death,” he recalls. “When Eric starts school next fall, he’ll go to Brentwood (Elementary School) just like I did. I guess life really does run full circle.”
According to Helmut Pubil, an instructor in anthropology at Harper College in Palatine, the rising number of young couples purchasing family homes from empty-nester parents is just one example of a conservative trend permeating American culture.
“Instead of wanting to carve out their own niche in another part of the country, people are starting to realize, `What’s wrong with staying in the same neighborhood?’ ” says Pubil. “Keeping your roots in the same area you grew up in may be a suburban phenomenom. But in Europe, it has always been a tradition for families to maintain their homesteads.”
Aside from being spared the heartbreak of having to surrender a beloved family home to complete strangers, those who choose to purchase their parents’ home often realize economic benefits as well.
The empty-nesters can offer a lower selling price to their children by avoiding a real estate commission. And elderly parents unable to handle the upkeep involved in being a homeowner may remain in their home if a family member moves in and takes over much of the responsibility, according to Pubil.
“In Europe, it’s very traditional for families to maintain homesteads for hundreds of years,” says Pubil. “Rather than sending an older relative to a senior citizen’s home, the children, in essence, move into the home. With people living longer today, it is economical and allows them to maintain their home and their lifestyle.”
For Bernie and Dan Donovan of Arlington Heights, purchasing a home that had been in Bernie’s family was simply a matter of circumstances. After her mother’s death, Bernie was faced with the tough decision of what to do with the family home and furnishings.
Concluding that they had outgrown their condominium after the birth of their two children, the Donovans in 1990 found themselves moving back into Bernie’s childhood home.
It is a quiet neighborhood of well-kept homes graced by tall shade trees and just a short walk from Olive Elementary School for the couple’s children, Tim, 11, and Lisa, 7. Though the wooded field that Bernie and her friends rode mini-bikes through in the 1960s and ’70s is now the Town and Country Mall, much of what she loved about her hometown has remained unchanged.
“After my mom died, I didn’t want to sever all my ties to this house,” Bernie explains. “I’m a very rooted person who doesn’t like a lot of change, so moving back here felt very comfortable.
“It’s been especially nice for my son because he has good memories of my mom and still feels a presence of Grandma here. It would have been very difficult to sell this house to someone else.”
“I think there’s a trend, certainly in Arlington Heights, to want your own children to enjoy the atmosphere and ambience of the community where you grew up,” says Stengren of Starck and Co.
Fran and Michael Roll of Cary are two “townies” who can remember a time when “everyone knew everyone.”
“I can remember thinking that I couldn’t wait to hit the big time and move on out of Cary,” says Fran Roll, who serves as the president of the board of Cary Community Consolidated School District 26. “But after I tested my wings in a few metropolitan areas, I discovered that I am most comfortable back home.”
Despite the changes in Cary, Fran Roll still believes it is the perfect place to raise Patrick, 14, and Jeffrey, 11.
The boys attended their mom’s alma mater, Oak Knoll Elementary School, and Roll says she and her husband have enjoyed the peace of mind that is inherent to growing up in a community with safe streets and quality schools.
“Everything today has gotten to be so fast-paced and global,” she says, “and I think we all need to feel secure someway, somehow.”
The Rolls are not alone. “One of our lunch moms (lunchroom supervisors) was one of my students when she was in 3rd grade,” says Diane Roster, the media director at Brentwood Elementary School in Des Plaines.
“It’s quite exciting to see the kids I taught coming back to Brentwood with their own children. The school’s located in a really nice neighborhood, and it has not changed a lot. It’s like one big, happy family.”
Though the Rolls are not living in a home passed down from a family member, Fran can still recapture memories of years gone by whenever she visits her best friend, Mary Krenz. Krenz and her husband, Dennis, recently purchased the home Mary’s parents bought in Cary back in 1970.
“Mary’s family didn’t come to town until her sophomore year in high school, so she was a newcomer for a long time,” Roll says. “But she’s a townie now.”
Harper College’s Pubil says there are personal and financial rewards from taking over the family home. Yet he warns that families should continue to expand their horizons beyond their own neighborhood by traveling or even just taking an afternoon to discover cultures that cannot be easily observed in one’s hometown.
“I think the only negative thing about staying in the same neighborhood is you tend to live a bit more restricted lifestyle,” says Pubil.
