Mothers Day

Kaylee Elizabeth Stumbaugh expressed just a little displeasure at having to
change her shirt, letting out a few moans of objection as her mother, Susan,
maneuvered her out of her clothes.

She was doing better than the newborn a few rooms over, whose cries could be heard through the walls of West Suburban Hospital’s birthing center, even with the door to Stumbaugh’s room closed.

“It’s amazing what a production putting a shirt on is,” Susan Stumbaugh said, gently lifting her day-old daughter, slipping the shirt under the baby so she could slide another arm into a sleeve.

“Next winter, it will be a shirt, a sweater, coat, mittens and a hat,” her husband, Brandon Stumbaugh, chimed in. He sat on the same chair he had slept on while his wife was at the hospital.

“Hopefully, by next winter, she’ll let me move her arms,” she replied. With her shirt on, Kaylee crooned a little as her mother wrapped her in a fresh blanket, clean of spit-up. “OK,” Susan Stumbaugh said, picking up her daughter. “OK.”

Susan and Brandon Stumbaugh officially became parents at 1:30 a.m. May 2. This weekend will be Susan’s first Mother’s Day. The feeling, she said, is incredible.

“I just laid awake all night last night staring at her thinking, wow, she’s here,” she said.

It’s perfect timing, really.

The Stumbaughs wanted to wait until Susan had finished her master’s degree in library and information sciences before having children. She had just two more pages to write for her last term paper, due at 6 p.m. Wednesday night. Her laptop was open and running next to her hospital bed, her research lying on the table next to it. She knew how to finish the paper. It was just a matter of doing it.

“It’s really hard when you have the baby, even when you know exactly what you’re going to write,” she said.

-Chris LaFortune

Broadview Bowl

Bob Vaughan gets a hug from Dianna Pruim behind the counter at the Broadview Bowl. The popular bowling alley will close this week after nearly 50 years in operation. "Thirty years coming here," Pruim said "Bowling, partying, it's emotional. Rob Hart/Staff Photographer

Bob Vaughan isn't just saying goodbye to the job he's had a quarter century, but to an institution that has been like his extended family.

At the end of business May 6, Broadview Bowl, 2812 S. 17th Ave., will close for good. The sound of bowling balls hitting the lane and crashing into pins will no longer be heard at the bowling alley, after 49 years in business.

Vaughan, 65, who manages the bowling alley, has worked off and on there for 25 years. He was friends with the previous owner who always had a job for him and now things have changed.

"I don't feel good about it," he said. "We'll miss the people a lot."
Broadview Bowl opened in 1958 and in 1982 the bowling alley's general manager, Rudy Gehrke, became the sole owner of the business until his retirement in 2003.
The current owner, Ken Prokopec, has decided to sell the bowling alley, which will make way for a strip mall.

Dianna Pruim, 55, has been a bartender and waitress at the bowling alley for six years, but her relationship with the establishment goes back longer. "I've been hanging here since 1972," she said.

Like a lot of other people, she used to come to the bowling alley and hang out after work at International Harvester, which was located where Home Depot now stands in Broadview Village Square.

"This was our meeting place," she said. "It was kind of a central watering hole."
She said the bowling alley closing for good is heartbreaking.

"It's sad," she said. "All of my friends are here. I met a lot of wonderful people. It's been in this area for over 30 years. Emotionally it's hard. Where do you hang out now?"

-David Pollard