Your say - Huntley: Reader-submitted essays
We asked you what made your community special. Here's what readers had to way about Huntley:
A loving Huntley checklist
What I love about Huntley:
• I can still see farms with horses and cows; something I would get excited to see on a drive outside the city as a kid and I still get excited to see them. I am saddened when a farm is gone.
• The Farmer’s Market in the Square. What a great sense of community and being able to meet and talk to so many people while enjoying music and local goods.
• Tom’s Farm for everything!
• Deicke Park for its beauty and recreation.
• St. Mary Church for meeting the spiritual needs of our family.
• Dairy Mart for being such a great treat to adults and kids alike.
• Our town leaders, fire department and police department for the terrific job they do on a daily basis.
Karen Radaszewski
In mom’s footsteps
Little did I know 15 years ago, when my mother lived in Huntley, that I too would come to reside here.
As a daughter charged with the responsibility of overseeing my mother’s aging process, I found the businesses of Huntley and its people to be hard-working, caring about their neighbors, and pitching in to offer assistance.
Fifteen years later, my husband and I now reside in Huntley. We have great neighbors in our Southwind subdivision, an active school district (158), and a community that has much to offer.
Although Huntley has shown rapid growth in the past few years, it still has that small-town, home-like feeling.
The fire and police departments provide a safe community and are vigilant in serving its residents. People of all ages are always welcome at the Huntley Library and are offered many opportunities for growth and enjoyment.
Our newest community addition of the Centegra Campus provides health care services as well as a state-of-the-art Healthbridge Wellness Center. Being a member there, I am actively participating in taking responsibility for my health and seeing many other Huntley residents doing the same.
I’m proud of my hometown and will continue to reside here until retirement.
Beth Wendt
Huntley brings family together
We previously lived in Milwaukee. My husband’s job moved us back to Illinois. My sister was in Lake in the Hills, so Huntley was close – much closer than Wisconsin. Plus, I had just had our daughter, so it was nice to be home. We convinced my parents to move to Del Webb and, ta da, family – together in a town that was nice, warm and welcoming.
In Wisconsin, we knew no neighbors. Here, there is even a great Web site filled with fun, nice people there to help out. Our “real” neighbors are great, too. Everyone is here to have fun and help one another. That is a neighborhood, and I love mine.
My first thoughts when we arrived? HOME.
Lori Hornickel
History helps Huntley standout
Huntley has a town full of residents willing to help out – our Grafton Township Food Pantry, our schools are filled with volunteers, our clubs and service organizations do so much!
The Huntley Chamber of Commerce is filled with fun-loving, caring, profit driven, businesses that continue to “give back” to our town over and over again.
Give Huntley residents a real cause – a challenge – and they are to help out. Our Sun City residents are unique. As a group, they offer some of the brightest professional minds, the most loving and caring “army of volunteers” that do amazing things! They have donated hand-made blankets to Afghanistan children. They help out reading programs at our schools. They have entertaining groups that perform outside the gates of Sun City to make others smile. There is a club or group for every interest! Sun City is almost half of our population, but they really add a lot of unique quality to our town.
Huntley is unique to some of our neighbors, in that we have history. We celebrated 150 years in 2001. We have two local historians who volunteer at our library to archive our past. We have many residents who know our history, collect items from its past, or live in some of our historical homes. This helps us be grounded in a way some new towns can not know. We work hard to preserve the history while still making room for new ideas.
Personally, I have moved more than 30 times, but finally feel Huntley is “home.” When you are new to Huntley, you are welcomed with open arms. We may have almost 23,000 people, but we still do feel like “the friendly village with country charm!” Welcome! Huntley is the best!
Pam Fender
Village trustee
Town center a link to past
Huntley’s historic town center gets our vote for one of the best things about our village.
The lovely town square park and the many historic buildings surrounding it connect Huntley’s past to the present.
Among those edifices, we are glad to see preserved the 1863 First Congregational Church, which is the oldest church in continuous use in McHenry County, and the 1875 Huntley School, which was built on the site of the previous 1861 school.
The John G. Kelley house on the north side of the square, and the many business buildings on the south and west ends of the square, have been in continuous use in Huntley for more than 100 years.
Nancy Bacheller and Mary Bet Manning
