The most durable connection between two people is shared experience. It can form an enduring link of trust, respect and unconditional support linking one person with the other.
A smile, a touch or a memory during can be the trigger that opens the heart and survives the years.
The poets call it love.
Myrtle Martin and Don DeMarco may quibble a little about the word “love,” but they know better. The story of the two who first crossed paths in the early, tumultuous years in the history of Park Forest smacks of a stronger than steel emotional attachment.
It began as a casual friendship between two people trying to change life for many, but soon became an enduring link that now spans more than 60 years.
Their still unfinished story began in an era in which they both were working to break racial barriers in both the village and the south suburbs.
DeMarco came to Park Forest in 1971, hired as the assistant to Village Manager Bob Pierce and specifically delegated to deal with racial matters in the community. This was at that time in which some 200 Black families lived in town, one of which included the Martins and their three young children.
In the decade he worked in the village, DeMarco developed programs on how to combat housing discrimination fostered by real estate practices trying to create a dual housing market.
Meanwhile, Martin devoted her energy to integrate Park Forest-Chicago Heights School District 163.
“From early on, Myrtle Martin played a major role in guaranteeing fairness and equity for everyone in our village,” says village Mayor Joe Woods.
“After being discriminated against in her efforts to rent in Park Forest, she subsequently acquired a co-op residence and threw herself into the struggle to assure fair housing opportunities for anyone who wanted to live in our community,” Woods said.
As one of the early African-American homeowners in Park Forest, Martin became active with the Commission on Human Relations and eventually became its chairperson.
“In the days when fighting for fair housing in the south suburbs was a necessity, Myrtle was a warrior! We owe so much to her dedicated action,” Woods said.
Before he left Park Forest for a similar post in Shaker Heights, Ohio, in 1982, DeMarco married on July 4, 1976. It was a marriage that lasted until her death in 2006.
Meanwhile Martin had divorced her abusive husband in 1976 and quickly became part of the social and political scene in the village.
So much, one might say, for anything more than a slightly amicable and trivial connection between the two.
It was a chance posting by Jane Nicoll, the archivist for the Park Forest Historical Society, that re-connected the dots between the two.
“I can’t remember what it was I wanted to know, but both Myrtle and Don were on the “To” list, Nicoll says.
That probably was in 2017, when DeMarco successfully nominated Bill and Juanita Simpson to the Park Forest Hall of Fame. By then both he and Martin were also among the inductees.
There is a telling photograph of all members present at the ceremony that day. DeMarco is seated next to Martin.
“I was trying to find out if she still smoked,” he said with a grin.
There was more. Martin admits “we had a long professional relationship” and when both were single “a short, intense personal one. Somewhere along the way an enduring love developed that never ended and waited its turn.”
There was more that needed to be done.
DeMarco lives in Pittsboro, North Carolina, some 750 miles from Park Forest The “how are we going to do this” question needed to be negotiated.
Over the next few years, there were abundant texts between the two on how this could be done. Martin saved them all.
“I remember listening to a Nat King Cole record of “September Song,” DeMarco said.
He might have caught the phrase “one hasn’t got time for the waiting game,” and later, “These precious days I’d spend with you.”
From 2021 on, they are together, six months in Park Forest and six months together in Pittsboro.
One hasn’t got time for the waiting game.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.
