New Editor Reflects On Growing Up In Joliet

JOLIET, IL - Most of my warmest childhood memories trace back to my hometown of Joliet, growing up across from Nowell Park. As a youngster, my whole world revolved around the Clearview subdivision, an older, predominately Italian neighborhood on the city's southeast side. We lived on Gardner Street and two streets behind our house lived my mother's parents.

As a kid, I was fascinated with fire engines. Thankfully, my parents made it a point to take me around Joliet to tour all the city's fire stations. Joliet firefighters were always welcoming and friendly. They let me hop on their red fire engines and get a first-hand tour of their facilities - a big deal for a small kid.

From preschool through eighth grade, I attended St. Mary Nativity Grade School on Broadway. This was where I was often singled out by my first grade teacher for craning my neck to look out the window. I was obsessed with the long Santa Fe trains rumbling through Joliet off in the distance. For me, first grade's noon-hour recess meant playing "Charlie's Angels" with a number of my female classmates. But our reenactment of "Charlie's Angels" episodes didn't last after some of the playground chaperones informed our teacher that there was kissing going on at the playground. From that point forward, I stuck to sports during school recess: Nerf football and Wiffle Ball games on the church parking lot along Broadway.

Sports were a big part of my youth in Joliet, and most of our summers were spent at St. Joe's Park - where I learned the concept of camaraderie - and how to get used to losing. Second grade marked my first season of Little League and our team lost its first 19 or so games of the season. When we finally won our first game toward the season's end, our gracious Little League commissioner gave our team coupons at the concessions stand for free pizza and lemonade. It felt like we had won the World Series.

When I was in fourth grade, my younger brother and I got a paper route. We delivered 50 copies of The Herald-News, seven days a week, rain or shine. We had a couple of terrific businesses along our route, Welsch's Red-E-Mix Concrete and the former Shortley's Corner Bar. Welsch's regularly gave us big tips for hand-delivering the daily newspaper inside their main offices along Gardner Street. The Shortley's bartender always poured me a free cup of soda as I finished up my route.

Around the time I was a paperboy, I took an interest in journalism. I attended a Career Day event at The Herald-News. In 1993, after my sophomore year at Eastern Illinois University, I returned to The Herald-News as a summer news intern. However, working in journalism often requires mobility. I moved away from Illinois in 2000 to work as one of the metro editors for the Green Bay newspaper. From there, I spent nine years in Omaha, Nebraska, and nearly five years in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Fast-forward to June. I jumped at the chance to return to my roots after finding out that Patch was in the process of hiring a new editor for Joliet, Shorewood and Channahon-Minooka.

When I was a child, Joliet's population signs proclaimed, "90,000." Nowadays, the city is on the brink of 150,000 residents. It's the third largest city in Illinois.

With more than 20 years of experience as both a reporter and editor at several metropolitan newspapers across the Midwest, I'm excited to be back home. I'm excited about the direction of Patch. And I'm excited to delve into the news of the day, stories that will help you better evaluate your public officials across Joliet, Will County government and the surrounding communities.

And if you have story ideas, particularly on the watchdog and investigative fronts, and also if you know of people who would make a terrific human-interest profile, please reach out to me at john.ferak@patch.com