My dream for Arlington Heights: generosity.(Neighbor)

Byline: Margery Frisbie

Early this summer, a reporter interviewed me for a profile for Digital Cities Home Page, the Internet program to introduce suburban residents to the larger metropolitan area. After some talk about village history, the reporter asked, "What is your dream for Arlington Heights?"

Interviews always impel me to mild indiscretion. Without wondering about the consequences, I suggested that I would wish Arlington Heights to be more generous as a community.

To explain, I told her of Mary Lee Ewalt, executive director of the Arlington Heights Memorial Library in the 1960s when plans were made for the Dunton Street building.

Architect Bob Chaney envisioned a splendid one-story structure with panels of textured limestone. Clear about his dream for the exterior, Chaney approached Ewalt about her dearest wishes for the new library she'd fought for so tenaciously. (There had been strong feeling for an expansion of the old Belmont Avenue facility.)

Ewalt was as sure of her druthers as a 10-year-old about his or her dream bike. She'd been fantasizing about the perfect library ever since the deal to build the new library on Dunton was closed.

"Ideally, I'd like all the stacks around the outside of the building," she said.

She grinned conspiratorially at Chaney. "I'd like all the books totally accessible, so patrons can browse, sampling favorites as they go, choosing a few and keeping them so long as they are interested."

Ewalt even stipulated, "no charge desk." Something of a Left Bank nirvana with no exchange of sous!

Both architect and librarian knew Ewalt's description was a utopian whim. Nonetheless, her largeness of mind influenced the architect as he drew the library's floor plan. And Ewalt's glorious generosity of spirit has continued to influence the library's culture.

Fortunately for the good of our souls, there have always been parallel visions operating in other areas of village life. Two of my heroes are Margaret Schlickman, for many years now a member of the Housing Commission, and Ed Geiss, director of Human Resources in the village. They have persevered valiantly over the years trying to create low-income housing in town.

In touch with the needs of local people suddenly in need, as they've been for decades, Schlickman and Geiss keep gently urging us to be our better selves and to open our community to those who need affordable places to live.

Their current "modest proposal" suggests that developers be given incentives to include units for moderate-income residents in new construction.

There is resistance. There have always been cries that people who can't afford to live in Arlington should shuffle off to Wheeling. Schlickman and Geiss, "more skilled to raise the wretched than to rise," in Oliver Goldsmith's words, keep another vision before us.

Like Mary Lee Ewalt, they ask us to be inclusive and longsighted. They want everything in this town to be as open and wonderful as the library.