Park Forest’s McCray had a passion for progress
When Alicia Rodman McCray was selected to the Park Forest Hall of Fame in 2013, she was lauded as “the embodiment of the term public citizen.”
Truer words were never spoken.
From its earliest days as a village, it has been part of the community mantra that if you wanted to get something done in Park Forest, ask the women who would discuss what needed fixing in the village and told their husbands to “do something.”
Today, however, women mind the public store. Alicia Rodman McCray, who died late last month at age 72, did something as she saw the issues at hand and demanded changes.
She championed better education for children while serving on the Matteson Elementary District 162 Board and sought better housing opportunities as president of the South Suburban Housing Center and the Cook County Housing Authority. She also was a loyal supporter of the arts as president of the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra.
Alicia was a founding member of the Black Student Union at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As an officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, she established internships for school-age Black women interested in financial careers.
As a member of the YMCA National Board of Directors, she traveled to China, Kenya and Australia to organize programs empowering women.
Both Alicia and her late husband, Robert McCray, were Park Forest Village Board members. While Robert served four full terms on the board from 2005 until his death in 2019, she was first appointed in 1991 and elected to a full term one year later. Along with her husband, she was on the village’s Mediation Task Force and was the director of Governors State University’s Metropolitan Institute for Leadership in Education.
During her 26 years as a member of the sprawling District 162 Board, which serves parts of five suburbs, she championed the formation of a public charter school, a goal fulfilled with the 2010 opening of Southland College Prep School in Richton Park.
“She was very articulate and very passionate about education” said Park Forest Trustee Theresa Settles, adding “she was also a kind and generous person.”
Although it was evident both Alicia and Robert McCray were
passionate in their desire to create opportunities for all citizens, they were different in their approaches. At times, Robert McCray wore his outspoken desire for change on his sleeve while Alicia was a quiet yet determined fighter for better schools and decent housing for all citizens.
They achieved their goals in completely different manners. One could never forget Robert’s outraged complaint at a preelection candidate forum (one in which he was not up for reelection) that there were “too many lies” being spoken by one candidate.
In the last year of his life, and while ill, the story goes that when new Mayor Jon Vanderbilt tried to replace longtime Village Manager Tom Mick in 2019, it was McCray’s passionate support for Mick in a closed-door session at a Village Board meeting that scuttled the scheme.
I never heard Alicia McCray raise her voice in public, but no one who knew her doubted her fire and passion for change. They both had steel fists, but if so Alicia always wore kid gloves.
The muscular infirmity that assaulted her in later years slowed her down but did not stop her. Almost to the end, she was like that Timex watch that “takes a licking but keeps on ticking.”
This past Saturday, friends and family joined for tribute to Alicia Rodman McCray at Southland Prep, the school she championed. It was there that former Park Forest Mayor Ron Bean said he wondered how she found time to do the things she did.
“I never knew anyone who had such a passion for what she was doing. She was just a good person to know,” he said.
Another tribute, at 4:30 p.m. this Saturday at the Tall Grass Art Center in downtown Park Forest, will also honor her life and her never-ending passion for progress.