SCHOOL CLOSINGS BACK IN THE DAY. I can remember only two school closings back in Elmhurst, Illinois (a Chicago suburb with Chicago weather). One closing was because of weather. We were told that the school was closed because the temperature was minus 20. We played outside for quite a long time that day, and it didn’t seem all that cold.
The other day that school was closed was on the date that General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Chicago, some six years after the end of World War II. This front page from the Chicago Tribune shows that the date was April 26, 1951, so I was eight years old. I was convinced that this was an extremely important historical event that I would remember for the rest of my life. The neighbors let us watch on television General MacArthur getting off the airplane (we wouldn’t have a television set for another year). We also listened to the radio broadcast of the evening ceremonies, which included descriptions of the pictures that the fireworks formed. Column 7 of the Tribune front page provides a minute by minute schedule of the events.