Six Bells for Valerie Percy

Kenilworth's famous murder case still unsolved fifty-five years later.

Valerie Percy was brutally murdered in her family’s Kenilworth, Illinois home nearly fifty-five years ago. My family had moved to a home in Kenilworth, a very small, very affluent suburb located in Chicago’s North Shore, about three blocks away from the Percy home less than a year before she was murdered.

Percy’s father was Charles (“Chuck”) Percy, who was nearing the end of an ultimately successful campaign for a U.S. Senate seat, and who had been president of Bell & Howell for fifteen years, dubbed a “boy wonder” businessman, because he became president of the company at the tender age of thirty. Percy served in the Senate for eighteen years.

Valerie was one of five children, including her twin sister, Sharon, who later married John D. Rockefeller IV, who was both a U.S. Senator, and a Governor of West Virginia during his extensive political career. She was twenty-one when she was murdered, and had recently graduated from Cornell. Her father had called her his best precinct captain, for her work on his behalf during the Senate campaign.

The murder remains unsolved. There were prime suspects, including a member of a cross-country burglary gang, who was killed by police after escaping from a Pennsylvania jail (awaiting trial for a charge in a different case), and a mentally-disturbed Kenilworth native, who was killed by his wife a few years later. But, no definitive conclusion to the case has yet been determined.

Although I was too young at the time to appreciate the impact, this murder shook the village of Kenilworth, and, indeed, the entire Chicago area, which, only a few months earlier, had experienced the murder of eight student nurses, at the hand of Richard Speck. Valerie Percy’s murder was the first one recorded in Kenilworth’s history, dating back to 1896, when it was incorporated as a village. I vaguely recall a story about a Kenilworth Boy Scout leader being charged with selling arms to the Iranians as a part of the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980’s, and I’m sure some of Kenilworth’s many corporate chieftains have been involved in some way or another in white-collar crime activities over the years, but, murder, that’s something else altogether.

I don’t know if my parents knew the Percys - Kenilworth was then, and probably still is, a pretty tight-knit community. But, reflecting on this tragic case has caused me to wonder if Valerie experienced some of the memorable things I remember from my formative years in Kenilworth in the late 1960’s, and 1970’s , including:

• The view east from the Northwestern Railroad tracks (pictured below) along Kenilworth Avenue towards Lake Michigan, past the Kenilworth fountain, framed by a canopy of trees (some of which were sacrificed to Dutch Elm disease in the 1960’s).

• The Kenilworth village signs posted on the south end and the north end of the village, on Sheridan Road - one, reflecting a population of 2,800, and the other, 3,000 (Wikipedia reports current population as of the 2010 census to be 2,513 people - perhaps the two signs are now in sync).

• Kenilworth Rebels football, and Little League baseball games at Townley Field, behind Joseph Sears School, and ice skating on that same field in the wintertime, when the huge field was flooded, including a hockey rink located at one end - lacing that small metal token into your skates in the little warming house, with wooden slats on the floor.

• The old stone Kenilworth train station (pictured below), which included a guy who set up shop on the wooden, pew-like seats inside every day, selling the three daily Chicago newspapers (Tribune, Sun-Times, and the Daily News) to commuting businessmen and women, and also selling candy and baseball cards to kids.

  

• Mahoney Park (located about five-hundred yards from the Percy home), a popular picnic spot, and the location of community events.

• Kenilworth Beach, with its rooftop deck, atop Kenilworth’s water works plant, and the steps down to the beach, where the water was never warm enough to swim, and where dead alewives washed up on the beach for several years - pretty gross!

• Joseph Sears Elementary School, which, if Valerie and her siblings attended, they might have encountered such long-term teachers as: Mr, Karp, Mrs. Long, and Coach Keay. Joseph Sears students will remember fondly such grand annual traditions as: Scamper Night (for the girls); Field Day; and the 8th Grade Musical.

• The pedestrian underpass, which led from the back of the school, underneath Green Bay Road, arriving at a small baseball field located on the west side of the railroad tracks.

• The tiny commercial district on Green Bay Road, and around the corner onto Park Drive, which included Blann’s Drugstore on the corner; and two (two!) barber shops: one run by Ray, and the other by Jim - Ray specialized in the buzzcut sported by Pete Rose, and which my brothers and I maintained for an uncomfortably long time, well after it had become unfashionable, and Jim talked nonstop while you were in the barber chair; and a real estate office; and a tiny, one-person post office; and a few other boutique shops.

• The two churches in town - Kenilworth Union Church (in whose memorial garden both my parents’ ashes reside), and the Church of the Holy Comforter, directly across the street on Kenilworth Avenue, and where the body of poet Eugene Field is buried. Kenilworth Union Church was known for its wildly-popular Annual Rummage Sale - we acquired some clothing from that sale, including a sweatshirt bearing the likeness of Johann Sebastian Bach, which I wore until it literally disintegrated.

• The Kenilworth Club (pictured below), which hosted community events, and where we attended ballroom dancing school - my wedding reception was hosted there later. Yes, there was a tree sprouting from its foyer (probably an elm tree, which is why it’s not featured in later pictures).

• Kenilworth Boy Scouts Pancake Breakfast, held at the Kenilworth Club.

• Kenilworth Memorial Day Parade, held a week before every other municipality in the nation, perhaps due to residents wanting to travel to vacation homes on Memorial Day weekend.

• Homer’s Ice Cream Parlor, just over the line into Wilmette, which was a tiny ice cream place when I was a youth, and where Little League managers took the team for ice cream after the game. . .but, only if they won.

• New Trier High School, in neighboring Winnetka, where Chuck Percy went to school - I know this because I was a student there during its 75th Anniversary year, and that yearbook included information regarding notable alumni, including Percy (class of ‘37), alongside other recognizable names such as: Ann-Margret, Rock Hudson, Bruce Dern, Charlton Heston, and Donald Rumsfeld.

• White’s Drugstore, down the street from the high school, and a favorite hangout of New Trier kids.

• The Green Bay Trail, a biking and hiking path which extended for many miles along the Northwestern railroad tracks - I saw a picture of the Percy family posed with their bicycles, including a tandem bike operated by Valerie and her twin sister, Sharon; perhaps they traveled the Green Bay Trail on their bikes.

• Ravinia Park - the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and which also featured pop and rock acts, enabling a picnic dinner on its expansive grounds, while listening to the music.

• Sheridan Road, which meandered along the lakefront of the North Shore, winding from Wilmette on the south, through Kenilworth, and through Winnetka, and then Glencoe, through the ravines, and to the edge of Highland Park.

• Gilson Park, just south in Wilmette - plenty of summertime activities, including the home of Wilmette Harbor, where some Kenilworthians kept boats.

• Plaza Del Lago, a small mall, located just south of Kenilworth, in “No Man’s Land,” a small piece of unincorporated land between Kenilworth and Wilmette - apparently this area used to be a hotbed of illicit activities, back during Prohibition; when I was growing up, it included a Jewel grocery store, and, initially, a Peacock’s Ice Cream store, followed by a place called Chances R, a burger joint where you could throw peanut shells on the floor; a Burhops seafood store came later.

• Herb’s Standard Oil gas station - located just across the street from Plaza Del Lago, I think Herb had already run that station for twenty years by the time we arrived.

• Walker Bros. Original Pancake House - a North Shore tradition for years, on Green Bay Road, in Wilmette.

• The Wilmette Public Library - Kenilworth was too small to have a library, so we used Wilmette’s.

• The Wilmette Life, the Pioneer Press weekly newspaper which virtually everyone in town subscribed to - as with the library, Kenilworth was not large enough to earn its own masthead - just underneath the Wilmette Life title was the tag, “With news of Kenilworth.” Seeing your name or picture in the Wilmette Life was inevitable for longtime Kenilworth residents - hopefully, for a positive achievement, such as an engagement, or hitting a Little League homerun, or enjoying Memorial Day Parade activities (one week earlier than everyone else in the nation), and not in the Police Blotter.

• The Bahai Temple, not five minutes south on Sheridan Road from the edge of Kenilworth - an impressive structure, one of only a handful in the world; I think my first visit there was with a Cub Scout pack, and I have returned there a few times since then.

• And, the city of Chicago - the Sears Tower, and Wrigley Field, and North Michigan Avenue, which people around the world all know about - but, Chicago was (and, still is) so much more.

I’ve likely neglected some obvious, memorable things about Kenilworth in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but it’s not a bad list for a tiny little hamlet, barely more than half-a-mile square, right?

One memorable change that I recall in the wake of Valerie Percy’s murder in 1966 was the implementation, by my parents, of tighter security in our household, including installing double-locks on all doors (even the door to the basement), and insisting that all family-members ring the doorbell six times, in order that those inside could recognize the arrival of a fellow occupant. Yes, the ringing of the doorbell six times had a very specific purpose, but I’d like now to believe that those bells also chimed in honor of Valerie Percy - R.I.P. Valerie.