Please Join Us!
Right now, our Centennial celebration is in the early planning stages with help from a team of three: Tracey Mendrek, Charlie Orth and Mary Rhodes.
We’re putting out a call to all Northfielders who would like to contribute or help as our plans take momentum. Can you help us organize our “history room” at Village Hall? Any ideas for fun exhibits or activities the day of the event? Any other thoughts about ways we can celebrate? The best way to reach us is centennial@northfieldil.org. Thanks so much!
Tracey Mendrek—A Northfield resident for 35 years, Tracey is president of Northfield’s Village Board. Her four-year term runs through 2029. She is currently CFO of a leading crisis communication and issues management firm, and brings her strong financial management and planning skills to her leadership role in Northfield. Tracey’s life in Northfield has always been one of service: she has served on the boards of the Community Nursery School and the Sunset Ridge PTO, and was actively involved in the Home Rule Referendum in 2010, and the issue of widening of Willow Road. She grew up in central Illinois to parents who were outstanding golfers, a lifelong passion. She says she asked Charlie Orth and Mary Rhodes to help plan Northfield’s Centennial Celebration because of Charlie’s many years of service and leadership in our community, and Mary’s interest in our town’s history. Tracey says she is dedicated to making sure that our Village preserves the stories and lessons from our past to be highlighted this year for future generations.
Charles Orth—Charlie has lived in Northfield his whole life, 66 years, and is currently in his second term as a Northfield Village Trustee. His four-year term runs through 2027. He currently serves as a liaison to the Architecture Commission, the Centennial Project, School District 37 and the Winnetka Park Board. Charlie was raised by his great aunt, and grew up over the former Northfield Foods grocery store at 1652 Willow Road. He got his first job at age ten working for the store, and later made food deliveries; he says he’s been to just about every Northfield home. Charlie attended St. Phillips the Apostle School and New Trier West. He was a Batallion Chief with the Village of Wilmette for 30 years. He also served as a fire marshall with the Highland Park fire department; a fire inspector with the Libertyville fire department; and an on-call fireman in Northfield. He was president and vice president of St. Phillip’s school board; a member of the Northfield Caucus; and a Cubmaster with Pack 17 in Northfield. He says working in municipal government for more than four decades has given him unique insights and experience that he can now give back in his role as a Village Trustee. Now retired, he says he is dedicated to devoting his time and energy to the town that helped raise him, and shape his life.
Mary Rhodes—Mary’s parents moved to Northfield in 1953, and built their first home at 256 Ingram Street when she was two. Jim Clarkson was her neighbor, and she remembers riding her tricycle on the gravel streets of Bosworth and Ingram. Her family later moved to Valley Way, and she grew up a proud Northfielder, graduating from Sunset Ridge and New Trier West, where her class was the first to attend for four years. Mary has always been interested in Northfield’s history, beginning with a research paper she wrote on Northfield for a New Trier writing class in 1967, and then found decades later in the Village archives. She wrote a history of Sunset Ridge School—“It Takes a Village”—for the school’s 75 th anniversary in 1999, and wrote the marketing materials for the school’s most recent referendum that passed in 2001. She developed a popular exhibit at Northfield library telling our town’s story in 2015. Since then, she has kept and stored many historical documents that she is thrilled the Village of Northfield will now archive and make available to anyone interested in Northfield history.
