Legacy of pioneering park district leader lives on
Olympia Fields nature center offers charms thanks to efforts of Betty Irons
In 1916, Chicago inventor Aldemer M. Bates, who amassed a fortune after patenting an innovative paper bag, built a summer escape on 16 acres near his favorite golf course, now known as Olympia Fields Country Club.
A gift to his wife and three children, the estate included a 13-room mansion, an in-ground swimming pool, a tennis court and a stable near a meadow where his son could practice polo.
That son, Mark, would later make the estate his year-round home, adding a pond and formal showplace gardens which became an attraction for the South Cook County Garden Association.
That patch of land still is taking center stage more than a century later, but now it offers different diversions to a much larger swath of the population, thanks in great part to the tireless efforts of one Betty Irons, a staunch proponent of reconnecting people with nature, and by all accounts a force of nature herself.
Now mostly forested, Irons Oaks Environmental Learning Center at Vollmer Road and Western Avenue offers everyday adventures and excitement among the treetops.
Walking trails are open daily from dawn to dusk and naturalists offer programs for all ages ranging from high ropes courses and monthly night hikes to pre-K nature camps, birthday parties and corporate retreats.
While the parkland south of Vollmer Road now houses a nature center, offices and the bulk of the recreational opportunities, the park operated jointly by the Olympia Fields and Homewood-Flossmoor park districts also contains acreage
north of Vollmer.
That parcel, currently awaiting restoration in the wake of an emerald ash-borer infestation, was originally named Betty Irons Park after she retired from running the H-F Park District board.
The name came unbeknown and unwelcome to her. Irons herself was instrumental in removing her first name from the park, suggesting the combined land on both sides of the preserve be named Irons Oaks.
“No park should be named Betty,” she informed a Chicago Tribune reporter in 1978.
Irons and her husband had settled into her fatherin-law’s nearby Flossmoor summer home after they married in 1953. After Irons was elected president of the Illinois League of Women Voters in the early 1960s, a survey by that group determined Flossmoor residents
wanted a more robust Park District.
Also a Park District commissioner, Irons spent a decade ramping up both funding and programs, eventually becoming the first woman president of the Illinois Association of Park Districts. Five years after leaving the H-F board, Irons, a real estate agent, facilitated the sale of the old Bates estate to the district, donating her commission to a foundation created to run the park, along with four acres of her own land. She also helped coordinate a unique agreement between the H-F and Olympia Fields park districts to jointly run the center.
Cheryl Vargo, director of Iron Oaks Nature Center for the past 12 years, may rival Irons in her passion for both the place and its mission. Connecting residents with their roots in nature is particularly vital these days
in combating pandemic induced isolation, she said. Events including an upcoming Squirrel Appreciation Day, and classes including parent-tot groups and Preschool in the Park are designed to foster connection with the natural world next door.
“I’m of the opinion that the person who is dirtiest had the most fun,” Vargo said.
The center’s mission is offering controlled and supervised risks, safely allowing people to test their boundaries. Part of that testing process could include one of two high-ropes challenge courses or a lesson in belaying at the climbing wall. Each can accommodate groups of 14, and team building has proved popular.
“We were so busy, we needed two courses,” she said.
On a recent tour, Vargo pointed out the outlines of
the Bates’ old tennis court, noting the space was used in the early 1980s for a wheelchair-accessible therapy garden with raised garden beds of varying heights. The former stable, rehabbed down to its foundation in 2005, is now used for classes and event rental space. Workers clearing trees for a walking trail, she recounted, struck metal that turned out to be a golf club, left behind so long ago it was engulfed entirely by a tree.
A climbing wall stands on the site of the Bates mansion, and the hydrangeas lining the former driveway now lead to a parking lot where mounds with mulch remain from a recent Christmas tree recycling program.
Vargo said an initial plan to rehab the old mansion for center offices was deemed prohibitively expensive. The current nature center, constructed along Western Avenue in 2010, offers
programming for toddlers to seniors, “as young at heart as you are,” Vargo said.
It’s also where she worked alone amid the pandemic and taking joy in conducting socially distanced family outings and night hikes, and even just witnessing others combating isolation by reconnecting with nature, such as a man who would visit the park daily for exercise.
Vargo is looking forward to spring and spreading the word with more events and programs, including a nighttime Easter Egg Hunt for grown-ups, and continued chances for children to safely connect with nature. The real goal, Vargo said, is simple.
“We promise to send your kids home filthy and tired,” she said.