Polio kept Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a wheelchair, but it didn’t force him from the White House. Jean Ryan of West Dundee hasn’t let polio stop her from making dreams come true either.
There is a house in Crystal Lake called Orchardview North. It’s Ryan’s, and it’s as much a symbol of freedom as the one in Washington. But Ryan, who is confined to a wheelchair, doesn’t live in the barrier-free ranch tucked onto 5 acres off Illinois Highway 31. She rents it out to disabled and elderly people who need a safe harbor with lots of sunshine and the occasional turtle peering through sliding glass doors.
Ryan’s own home allows her the bliss of freedom despite her dependency upon a respirator. Unable to speak more than a sentence without taking air from a tube that crooks inward like a third arm, Ryan, 75, said of Orchardview North: “I have no money, a little property, but I would not want to have to be in a nursing home. Orchardview North is closer to what our tenants moved out of. It’s not at all like an institution. We want them to do as much as they can for themselves.”
“People are saying, `Yes, maybe I have some limitations, but I don’t want to be isolated in a rest home, because I can still lead a semi-active life,’ ” said Ryan’s son Bill, who lives in nearby Union. “This is one of the answers to that life.”
“Strength through Independence . . . Wisdom through Interdependence”: That’s the mission statement of Orchardview North.
The Crystal Lake home is actually a spinoff of Ryan’s original dream, Orchardview. To be constructed on 6 1/2 acres Ryan owns a half-mile north of her home, Orchardview would be four five-unit apartment buildings, all designed expressly for disabled individuals.
But Orchardview Inc., the band of friends and family who are fiercely loyal to Ryan and her dream, hadn’t yet raised sufficient revenue to seek financing for the ambitious project, for which zoning has been approved, when they got word in 1995 that some disabled high school graduates needed housing. Acting quickly, they funneled savings toward the purchase of the Crystal Lake home, which had been built barrier-free.
When it turned out the students’ parents didn’t want their children to live on their own, Ryan’s board, which now numbers five, decided instead to keep the property for disabled and older adults.
“We kind of put Orchardview on hold because we knew we didn’t have enough money to get started with it,” said Bill Ryan, also a board member. “In the meantime, we stumbled on Orchardview North, and that was more in our grasp immediately. So Mom made that purchase and got that off the ground.”
Ryan hasn’t given up on her original dream. “We just need the money to build it,” she said. “We still want to do Orchardview.”
Orchardview North currently has three residents and employs Vladimir Loukasevich to cook for the group. Outside, there is a pond and a fountain, along with an expansive patio and a garden bed raised to wheelchair height.
Currently, plans are under way for a roll-in shower and renovation of the garage into a fourth bedroom. The shower is being funded by the McHenry County Department of Planning and Development.
“It’s remarkable what they’ve been able to accomplish,” said John Labaj, deputy director of community and economic development for the McHenry County group. “Here was an organization that, up to this point, hadn’t relied on government assistance and had done a lot already.”
Labaj continued: “As a small not-for-profit (organization), they have a strong base with this project but can also look beyond to other facilities they might want to build. More and more, that’s how things are being done in economic development.”
Barbara Bear of the Fox River Valley Center for Independent Living in Elgin, which offers information to people with disabilities, has made referrals to Orchardview North. “To us as a staff, this seems like a good alternative for housing, especially for people who like to live with others around,” Bear said.
Basil DeStefano moved into the house during the fall of 1995. Now in his 50s, this former resident of Lake in the Hills was a printer for 25 years before multiple sclerosis changed his life forever.
“Jean Ryan is a fantastic person because she is handicapped herself, and she knows what handicapped people have to go through,” he said. “For her to manage a place like this is unbelievable for the problems she has. I have a lot of respect for her and envy, sometimes, because she gives me that spark to keep going. (She’s) in a chair, on a respirator, and she maintains some kind of a life. The worst thing for any disabled person is to try to maintain a life.”
At Orchardview North, individual privacy is respected, but there’s truly an atmosphere of interaction, kind of like a family, with a certain undercurrent of excitement, for there are plans to carry out, decisions to make, housemates to help. And that’s the key. Not everything is done for you.
“The thing is,” DeStefano explained, “we’re all in this house together. We all have to get along.”
Marge Ennes moved in a year after DeStefano. “After my husband died, I knew I had to find another place to live, because we’d had our own house in Woodstock, and I couldn’t keep it up anymore,” she said. “I picked up my newspaper one day, and I saw a front page picture of Jean sitting in her chair here. There was a nice article about her plans for this place, and I thought, `Boy, that’s an answer to prayers.’ “
Ennes, too, values the relationships that have grown to be the heart of Orchardview North. “I like the people I live with, and we get along famously,” she said.
Al Falese moved in about two weeks before Ennes. Falese has MS and also is recovering from being hit by a truck while on a scooter.
“I became real good friends with Basil and Marge, and as the months went by, we came to grow together, seemed to stick it out pretty good,” he said.
And then there are Jean Ryan’s volunteers. They are low-key, unassuming, and when you ask them about what they do for Ryan and her dream, they hardly know what to say. But when she needs something, anything at all, they are instantly at her side, surrounding her like a halo.
Elgin residents Pat Hedley and Virginia Bunte have been at Ryan’s side since 1969.
There is Marjorie Zielke of Elgin. And Baxter Lane of Lake in the Hills, who, like all the others, said, “I’m just a volunteer.”
Just. He just drove Ryan out to Scottsdale, Ariz., in her circa 1974 camper van for a visit with her daughter Rae. (Ryan’s other daughter, Gayl, lives in Madison, Wis.) He just uses his muscle to push her wheelchair up the ramp of the van and just switches the cords on her respirator to draw juice from the vintage vehicle’s battery.
In 1954, Life magazine reported that about 15,000 scientific papers had been published on polio since 1789. That same year, the polio vaccine, invented by Dr. Jonas Salk, was administered to 500,000 American children, including Jean Ryan’s three little ones: Billy, Rae and Gayl. Although still an experiment, the vaccine was particularly important for those three, because their mother had contracted the highly contagious virus two years earlier. Life had, in fact, run a two-page spread on the family, including a photo of pretty, 32-year-old Ryan in an iron lung, aptly described by young Billy, now 47, as her “tin can lung.” She stayed within its cylindrical embrace eight long months.
Two years before polio struck, Jean and her husband, Bill, who died in 1990, had purchased the Meadowdale School District 17 building, a real one-room schoolhouse from which Jean had graduated the 8th grade in 1935. In 1958, she opened the Country School Gift Shop there.
That was about the time she started dreaming of a place called Orchardview, and the fundraising began in earnest. There were tag days, dinner dances and yard sales.Today, Jean Ryan explained, profits from the gift shop keep Orchardview North going. She still works several days a week at the shop.
It’s not clear, at this point, exactly when the original Orchardview concept will be built, but Ryan remains hopeful.
“The bank loaned me $206,000,” she said, “flat on my back in bed, a woman all on my own. Can you imagine that? Of course, without all the help over the years, I couldn’t be where I am.”
Doris Whitaker, a South Elgin resident and Orchardview Inc. board member, is an accountant and helped Ryan get financing. “I thought it was great that she had a positive attitude and was striving so hard to put it together. Jean has many plans that she’d like to see implemented. Those are her big dreams, and they’re very, very good.”
Ryan said her three children say she should “enjoy life, travel and do other things. But I keep telling them this is my enjoyment.”
A SKETCH OF SCHOOL MEMORIES
It was more than 150 years ago that folks built a one-room schoolhouse for the farm children whose families had settled way out west in Dundee. The first students are gone, but one of the last to graduate found a way to keep and honor the school that she had so loved. Jean Ryan bought it.
“For me, there’s a lot of nostalgia, history and memories (in the school) and, therefore, I have a great sentimental attachment to it,” said Ryan, whose father also attended the school (she has his report card, dated 1897).
She has done a drawing of the school, which is now home to her Country School Gift Shop.
Holding the paintbrush in her mouth, she painstakingly recorded every brick, every window that looks out on trees without leaves. Set in this winter environment, the school looks a little cold, a little sad.
At the shop, you can buy this picture on a linen calendar or notecards; proceeds go to Orchardview North.
Ryan has also done sketches of St. Francis of Assisi, Queen Anne’s lace along the road, winter scenes and bur oak trees.
“They’re all taken from things I can see from my window,” she said.
