Inspired by the title of the Lake Forest based movie Ordinary People, in her column “Real Ordinary People,” senior Teresa Fawcett outlines the stories and the lives of the real, ordinary people from the Lake Forest/Lake Bluff communities.
Town spirit is sprinkled all over the tree-lined streets of the small village 6,000 call home in Lake Bluff. The Bluffers, as they are called, who swim in the lake and name turkeys on street corners embrace the small community like it’s nothing but a close friend. There are Jeeps parked in driveways, music trailing from the Gazebo uptown, dog walkers, kids on playgrounds, small businesses making names, and by the high school – there’s a red convertible, rumbling down Sheridan Rd. It’s difficult not to associate a name with the car, as the license plate, OHARA, transcribed in all its shining crimson pride and glory, roams our small community. And in the driver seat? Lake Bluff President, former principal and teacher of LBMS, Ms. Kathy O’Hara.
For anyone growing up and living in Lake Bluff, Kathy O’Hara has been perhaps the name to know around town year after year. She is involved, dedicated, and an advocate for the ideas and changes she believes in. It’s hard to imagine the Lake Bluff/ Forest Community without her. She is engrained in our village and conversely, the community is embedded in her. She is Lake Bluff’s president, a former principal, and educator.
Although she spent her last year of high school in neighboring Lincolnshire, O’Hara had never heard of Lake Bluff until she saw an opportunity for a job opening at Lake Bluff Middle School a few years after graduating college.
O’Hara grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, but moved to Lincolnshire when she was 17.
“To be honest,” she admitted, “I pretty much blew off my senior year of high school. I was not happy about moving here.” Although she was involved in intramural sports, the yearbook committee, and the Spanish Club, as a senior in high school, the young O’Hara did not seem to portray the presidential traits of her future self.
After high school, she attended Illinois State University, “mainly because [she] could get in.” She majored in history and political science, and as a college student dreamed of becoming a history teacher, not just because she enjoyed learning and teaching history, but because she felt an understanding for the importance of history that she did not feel was emphasized in her own school days.
“I felt that since history is primarily stories about human experiences. It should be exciting and interesting,” She recounted. “I felt I could do a better job of bringing to life those stories and relating them to students present experiences than my previous teachers.”
It was this passion for teaching that led her to teaching social studies at Lake Bluff Middle School later in her career. Although she originally began her job at LBMS with the intention of teaching there as a pit stop before moving on to becoming a high school history teacher, she found that she loved teaching middle school and stayed in Lake Bluff. She taught 7th and 8th grade social studies before becoming principal of the middle wchool after 19 years of teaching history. She was principal for 17 years, running the day-to-day tasks of the small middle school, interacting with students and families alike, making changes and improvements in programs, projects, and the curriculum. She eventually retired from this position in 2005.
As if principal and teacher of LBMS didn’t give her enough firm roots in the community, O’Hara ran for President/Mayor of Lake Bluff (according to O’Hara these terms are interchangeable) in 2007 after seeing changes in the community that she wanted to be a part of. To this day, she is the CEO of the village and, with the help of the village administrator, runs the day-to-day tasks of the town. It is through O’Hara that a slew of advisors, chiefs, and officials are elected in the town.
“I love our village, its sometimes small town atmosphere and events that draw in our residents, along with the fact that many people who grew up here have chosen to come back and live [here],” O’Hara recounted as her favorite part of Lake Bluff.
Without question, O’Hara is speaking of the block parties, the summer evenings spent eating tacos on Center Ave., days passed riding bikes to Sunrise Beach, the downtown streets bursting at their seams at the 4th of July Parade, and the sound of taps drifting over Lake Michigan from the northern naval base in Fort Sheridan.
O’Hara has had her license plate for over 35 years. “In case [she] ever got confused, at least [she] would know which car was [hers].” As a kid, her father told her that convertibles were both impractical and expensive. She told him that when she was older, convertibles were the only car she would ever buy.
