As a trained electrician in the early 1950s, Samuel Hanes banded together with other skilled laborers in DuPage County to build a community center.
Mr. Hanes would work after he got home from his job with Commonwealth Edison Co. and on the weekends until the center, across the road from his home near Downers Grove, was built.
He did it because “he had such a strong sense of community, the same one he learned growing up on his family farm in Papineau,” said his daughter Ruthanne.
Mr. Hanes, 98, died Friday, June 2, of pneumonia at Edward Hospital in Naperville.
Born in 1907, Mr. Hanes grew up fishing and tending to the farm.
His daughter recalled how Mr. Hanes often would tell about the winter trek he and his sibling would make to the schoolhouse as a boy. One of eight children, he said that he and his siblings each received a hot potato from their mother to warm their hands, the same one that would fill their stomachs at lunch.
Mr. Hanes was 15 when he took charge of the farm after his father died.
Mr. Hanes’ five older siblings already had moved to Chicago, and the task of running the farm proved too much to handle for him, his mother and two younger brothers, ages 8 and 10, his daughter said. He was forced to sell the property about a year later, she said.
Mr. Hanes scratched out a living working on other farms in the community until his early 20s when he moved in with one of his brothers in Chicago and took a job with Edison
He was laid off during the Depression and took a job in the stockyards for several years before returning to Edison, where he worked as an electrician until he retired in 1972.
Mr. Hanes was exempt from the draft during World War II because his job was too important, his daughter said. “He had to keep the lights burning,” she said.
Bob Kupres, who worked with Mr. Hanes for 34 years at Edison, concurred. “When the lights went out in the city, we got the call, no matter the time and even on holidays. We were like doctors.”
In 1940 Mr. Hanes married his wife, Kathryn, and moved into a home in Chicago’s Ashburn neighborhood where the couple had two children. They moved near Downers Grove about five years later, where the couple had one more child.
Mr. Hanes had a passion for cars and could often be found in his garage underneath one. His interest began at age 12 on the farm when Mr. Hanes’ father put him behind the wheel of a Model T and told him, “go out in that field, but don’t hit any livestock,” his daughter said.
The community center Mr. Hanes helped to build was named the North Fairview Homeowners Association Community Center and hosted everything from wedding receptions to Boy Scout events before it was torn down in the mid-1990s, his daughter said.
Mr. Hanes acted as the building custodian and was active in the center’s youth programs, leading a number of fishing trips for children, his daughter said.
Age was relative to Mr. Hanes, who was 92 when he climbed underneath a car and fixed a broken muffler while returning from a trip to Arkansas, said his nephew, Frank Hanes.
“He was a very kind and caring uncle,” said his niece, Mary Pierce. “The family meant everything to him. He never missed a family reunion.”
Other survivors include his son, Joseph; seven grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. A memorial service is being planned for August.
