Bart K. Dill moved to Elk Grove Village, or at least tried to, on Jan. 26, 1967, the first day of a blizzard that plastered the Chicago area with more than 20 inches of snow.
Despite the inauspicious beginning, Mr. Dill quickly embraced his new home and became a major player in the suburb, serving long stints on boards overseeing the Park District and library before 10 years as a village trustee.
Mr. Dill, 76, died Thursday, April 16, in his Elk Grove Village home, said his wife, Theresa. He suffered complications from Parkinson’s disease and esophageal cancer.
The move from Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood took longer than anticipated, but Mr. Dill and his young family overcame the blizzard and settled into a newly built home in the northwest suburb. It didn’t take long before he had his hand up to run for a spot on the Park District board.
“Nobody had to approach him, ever. He approached people,” his wife said.
From 1971 until he took ill in 2007, Mr. Dill almost without interruption had a hand in village business.
“No one ever got elected to all three boards in this village except Bart,” Mayor Craig Johnson said. “He put in 34 years in village government. Those are feats that will never be repeated today.”
In 14 years on the Park District Board, Mr. Dill helped develop the village’s golf course and backed the winning entry in a debate over what to name it, Fox Run.
He was the board’s president in 1981 when the village added a unique element to its park system, the Pirates’ Cove children’s theme park, which remains open today.
After two years out of public office, he began a 10-year run on the library board in 1987. During that time, he pushed for a new library because the old one was in a flood plain and was adversely affected by the floods of 1987, Johnson said. A new library on Wellington Avenue opened in September 1990.
As a village trustee from 1997 to 2007, Mr. Dill pushed Village Hall to provide more information to its residents. Board agendas were sent out online at his urging, and he helped initiate a round of Saturday coffees where citizens could come to Village Hall to chat with elected officials, Johnson said.
A Chicago native who grew up in the Bucktown neighborhood, Mr. Dill graduated from Weber High School, then received a bachelor’s degree from St. Benedict’s College, now Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kan., his wife said.
He started with Standard Oil in the 1950s and was supervisor of employee benefits when he retired from Amoco in 1992 after 36 years.
Earlier this decade, he wrote a column for the local newspapers called Bart’s Corner, which he filled with anniversaries and birthdays of residents and news from about town.
“I used to tease him that he was a gossip columnist,” Johnson said. “But he’d say, ‘You don’t realize how important it is for these people to see their families or friends in the paper.'”
Mr. Dill is also survived by a son, David; two daughters, Christina Sitter and Trina Gizel; and eight grandchildren.
Services have been held.
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ttjensen@tribune.com
