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Oct 2009  |  By Dorothy Andries  |  Comments

Face to Face with Dorothy Andries: Kim Madden of Lake Forest Heats Things Up for Open Lands

Things got hot in Lake Forest's Old Town in September.

To celebrate autumn, the municipality, one of the few in the state that allows leaf-burning, host a huge bonfire every year.

Kim Knauz Madden of Lake Forest is always right there, cheering as the dry leaves burst into flame.

Along with her husband William Madden, Kim chairs a celebration surrounding the event, titled "Bagpipes and Bonfires," a benefit for Lake Forest Open Lands at the Middlefork Farm Nature Preserve off Waukegan Road.

Open Lands, an initiative by the community to preserve natural, undeveloped spaces in the 19-square-mile city, is especially close to the Kim's heart. Her parents, William and Inge Knauz, have been supporters of Open Lands for decades. 

"I think I was about 12-years-old when my mother got a call from Wes and Sue Dixon about the property at the end of Laurel," she says. "It was going to be subdivided and some members of the community wanted to pool their money and buy it." It would then be donated to the Open Land Conservancy, which started in the late '60s.

"We played poo-sticks there," she says, the childhood memory lighting up the face of the mother of two almost-grown children. "We'd each drop a stick in the Skokie Drainage Ditch and then run to the other side of the bridge and see whose stick came out first. It was a great place for kids to play."

The efforts of that handful of Lake Forest residents have been exceptionally successful. When Open Lands started in 1967, the group's goal was to create one protected nature preserve. Today the organization manages more than 800 acres, has established 6 nature preserves and an environmental education program.

The tradition of the bonfire started at Ragdale. The property on North Green Bay Road and its 50-acre site was once the home of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw and his family. It's now an artists' colony, with the Shaw Prairie behind the home, stretching as far as Route 41.

"The story is that Evelyn Shaw, one of Howard's daughters, started a bonfire every year as an incentive to get her children to do yard work," says Susan Tillett, director of Ragdale. "As they cleaned up the brush they would put it in a big pile and at the end of the summer, a bonfire was their reward. The children of the neighborhood were invited to enjoy it, too."

According to Ragdale history, the conflagration was held every year from 1908 until 2002, becoming a much-anticipated event in Lake Forest. This year it was moved to Middlefork because the crowd has grown too large for Shaw Prairie.