Features
Hope, Patti and Joel Clousing say, is what they always had for their 19-year-old son Keenan -- despite the seven trips to rehab, the multiple stints in jail, the three horrific overdoses and the heroin addiction that ultimately took his life in March 2014.
As the mother of four disabled children and the wife of a laid-off husband, Joan Evans was all too accustomed to dealing with adversity. But then the Elk Grove woman and her family were faced with a new challenge: stage three breast cancer.
Shortly after this story was published, a Hawthorn Woods couple donated a wheelchair-accessible van to the family.
More than 2,000 letters are scattered across George Lutz's dining room table.
The handwritten thank yous and crayon drawn patriotic pictures -- a majority of which were made by Wheaton area students -- were part of a surprise "mail call" that occurred when the World War II veteran took an Honor Flight in September 2014 to Washington, D.C.
Lutz died almost a year later, and his son took time to write me a heartfelt letter, as detailed in the column below.
"The death of a 95-year-old World War II veteran touched a 26-year-old reporter in a way few stories do. And it reminded her-- and many of us in the newsroom -- what there is to love about the newspaper business, writes Jim Davis, DuPage/Fox Valley editor." Read more.
