Dagmar E. Norgan is remembered by family and friends as a wise woman who had the foresight to invest with her husband in two McDonald’s restaurants during that company’s fledging years.
Those restaurants, one in Glenview, the other in Libertyville, would grow to more than a dozen McDonald’s that her family would at one time own and operate. Mrs. Norgan currently co-owned restaurants in Deerfield, Lincolnshire and Vernon Hills.
“My mother was a gentle, kind woman,” said her son, Ken. “She had a lot of her own opinions but was very understanding of others’ opinions, which I thought was terrific.
“She was very smart with her life, her finances.”
Mrs. Norgan, 90, of Northbrook, died of kidney failure, Saturday, Dec. 24, in Glenbrook Hospital in Glenview.
She was born Dagmar Widlund in Chicago to parents who had immigrated to the U.S. from Stockholm before World War I.
After graduating from Roosevelt High School, Mrs. Norgan found a job during the Depression as a secretary for an insurance company in the Loop and, on a blind date, met George Norgan, who co-owned a car dealership with his father in Chicago. The couple married in 1939.
About the same time that Mrs. Norgan’s husband and father-in-law were thinking of getting out of the car business, McDonald’s founder, Ray Kroc, was looking for investors.
“Mom and Dad were friends of Ray Kroc, so Mom and Dad took a chance,” said Ken Norgan. “They opened their first restaurant in 1958 in Glenview, restaurant number 101 and the second, number 119, that same year in Libertyville. I can remember working at them during high school, making hamburgers.”
After her husband died in 1975, Mrs. Norgan with her son, Ken, continued to own and operate McDonald’s restaurants.
While raising her family in Lincolnwood during the 1940s and ’50s, Mrs. Norgan was a member of the Lincolnwood school board. During that time, the nine-room schoolhouse evolved into a three-school campus, Lincoln Hall, Todd Hall and Rutledge Hall.
“She was the one who named each of the schools to make a connection to Abraham Lincoln,” her son said. “She was very proud of that.”
Mrs. Norgan formed friendships easily, said her longtime friend, Suzanne Frazier.
“She was very classy, elegant, yet very approachable,” Frazier said. “She was a very sweet woman, caring, generous, attentive. I always enjoyed her company. She was one of those people that you felt better after having been with her; there was something very elevating about her.”
Through the years, Mrs. Norgan had various hobbies, including fishing and boating at Loon Lake, near Yorkville in Kendall County, where the family spent their summers. She also enjoyed needlework, playing golf and bridge, and liked to make crafts at Covenant Village in Northbrook where she moved 15 years ago.
Other survivors include another son, William Bruce; and a granddaughter.
A service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at N.H. Scott and Hanekamp Funeral Home, 1240 Waukegan Rd., Glenview.
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bsherlock@tribune.com
