Latest news with #GlenbrookNorthHighSchool
Chicago Tribune
27-05-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Northbrook remembers ‘those men and women' at Memorial Day parade, ceremony
Northbrook residents of all ages turned out Monday to watch the village's Memorial Day parade and and observe the Village Green Park program to honor members of the military who died in service to the nation. People brought chairs and blankets to line the streets in a parade route which began at Greenbriar School and headed east under the railroad tracks to Meadow Road, turning on Shermer Road to the Village Green. Local schools and Scouting groups participated and the parade ended with many of the people who attended the parade following the procession in the barricaded streets to the park. The Glenbrook North High School marching band again provided the trumpet player, Olivia LaCerra of Northbrook, who sounded taps to conclude the podium and stage program in the park's ball field. LaCerra's extended family from Park Ridge came to observe the moment. LaCerra spoke of the honor of playing as a, 'big remembrance for all the veterans and for people who served and aren't here today. 'It's just a big honor to be playing for everybody here,' LaCerra said. Speakers at the podium included representatives from the Sons of the American Legion and the George W. Benjamin American Legion Post 791 of Northbrook. The keynote speaker was John Ustich, Northbrook's chief of police and a United States Navy veteran. He urged attendees to reflect as they continued their Memorial Day weekend with home barbecues or other gatherings. 'Please take a moment to remember that freedom truly is not free,' Ustich said, 'and remember those men and women, because without them, we would probably be here in a completely different situation and having a totally different conversation.'
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Daywatch: ‘The Breakfast Club' in the era of Gen Z
Good morning, Chicago. Exactly 40 years after they first met in Saturday morning detention, every member of the original Breakfast Club — the popular girl (Molly Ringwald), the jock (Emilio Estevez), the recluse (Ally Sheedy), the nerd (Anthony Michael Hall), the rebel (Judd Nelson) — will reunite tomorrow for the first time since 1985. The occasion is C2E2, the annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo at McCormick Place. A couple of days before the Breakfast Club was set to visit the South Loop, the Tribune's Christopher Borrelli met with six teenagers at Glenbrook North High School to watch 'The Breakfast Club' itself. Most had never seen it. But all were well aware of its outsized legacy in the long hallways of this sleek 72-year-old North Shore institution: John Hughes, the film's director and writer, a man who arguably helped shape the way we think about teenagers, based the movie on his own experiences as a student at Glenbrook North. Here's what the Gen Z teens said of the Gen X film. And here are the top stories you need to know to start your day, including how Mayor Brandon Johnson is responding to President Donald Trump's threat to revoke federal aid, an offer to help cover property tax bills for some and what to do this weekend. Today's eNewspaper edition | Subscribe to more newsletters | Asking Eric | Horoscopes | Puzzles & Games | Today in History A federal judge is allowing the Trump administration to move forward with a requirement that everyone in the U.S. illegally must register with the federal government, in a move that could have far-reaching repercussions for immigrants across the country. In a ruling yesterday, Judge Trevor Neil McFadden sided with the administration, which had argued that they were simply enforcing an already existing requirement for everyone in the country who wasn't an American citizen to register with the government. The requirement goes into effect today. Mayor Brandon Johnson sought to reassure Chicagoans that his administration would defend itself against President Donald Trump's latest threat to strip cities with sanctuary policies for immigrants of federal aid. Less than a year after a sheriff's officer fatally shot a Black Springfield woman, the Illinois Senate has passed two measures aimed at issues raised during nationwide protests over the shooting. One bill would prohibit law enforcement agencies from hiring any cops unless they authorize previous police departments they worked for to make their employment records available. The second would allow Sangamon County to create a process for countywide elected officials to be recalled through a referendum vote in the 2026 election. Both bills now head to the Illinois House. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle yesterday acknowledged difficulties with the expensive, long-delayed and glitch-ridden computer overhaul of the county's property tax system, but she insisted the endeavor was worthwhile to get critical county data off a dangerously outdated computer system. Read the investigation: How a plan to streamline Cook County, state computer systems led to massive costs and delays Cook County to offer $1,000 relief to help cover property tax bills for some Burr Ridge businessman Omar Maani told a federal jury yesterday that he started bribing public officials when he was still in his 20s, making money hand-over-fist as a real estate developer and co-founder of lucrative red light camera company SafeSpeed LLC. Maani's stark portrayal of old-school Chicago graft — and his admitted role in it — came during his cross-examination in the bribery trial of state Sen. Emil Jones III, who is charged with soliciting $5,000 from Maani as well as a part-time job for his legislative intern in exchange for Jones' help in Springfield with legislation important to SafeSpeed. It's one of many cases made by Maani, who began cooperating with the FBI after being confronted in January 2018 and spent nearly two years undercover, wearing wires and hidden video recorders as he held court with elected officials at steakhouses, pancake restaurants and a suburban cigar lounge where Maani had a hidden interest. Watch the secretly recorded video presented as evidence in court A Cook County judge yesterday found a man guilty of threatening then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who last month testified that receiving the profane and racist missive was traumatizing to her and her family. A conservative group this week asked the U.S. Department of Justice to file criminal charges against a Deerfield school district amid allegations that officials forced middle school students to change into gym clothes in front of a transgender classmate. The request, which does not necessarily mean charges will be filed, comes about two weeks after the Justice Department announced it was investigating whether the alleged incident violated Title IX, a law that prohibits schools from discriminating against female students. Such violations can result in a loss of federal funding. Mary Baggett and CHA are pointing fingers at one another. Baggett says the housing authority is not keeping its contractual obligation to rehab Brooks Homes, the 330-unit building where she and other CHA residents live adjacent to the new soccer facility. The Chicago Fire, CHA and its residents signed a legal agreement as a part of the land lease deal on the terms of the Brooks Homes redevelopment. CHA says resident leaders are becoming a liability to construction projects following a CHA Office of the Inspector General report. Michelle Obama has finally shut down speculation that she and former President Barack Obama are headed for divorce, while admitting her newfound independence has fueled the rumors. We already saw '24 Sox refugees Yoán Moncada and Nicky Lopez return to the South Side in the opening series with the Los Angeles Angels, during which Sox fans lustily booed Moncada, writes Paul Sullivan. This weekend we'll see the return of pitcher Garrett Crochet, the White Sox's lone All-Star representative last year, in a three-game series with the Boston Red Sox. Skid hits 8 for White Sox, who are promoting Chase Meidroth. 3 takeaways from the sweep in Cleveland. Connor Bedard always has been a fast learner, but he just wants to be faster. Period. And that's going to be the Chicago Blackhawks forward's focus this offseason: speed. 'Change it up a bit,' Bedard told the Tribune. 'I always work super hard, I think working extra smart and doing everything, (but) the big thing for me is just increasing my speed. Blackhawks put up 3 goals in 93 seconds in a 5-2 win: 'That's what our team is capable of doing' A film that does the doomscrolling for you, 'Drop' relies on a great deal of nervous, life-and-death messaging, writes Tribune film critic Michael Phillips. As digitally dropped threats from an unknown predator grow increasingly sinister during the protagonist's big date at a Chicago restaurant, the messages blast across the big screen in huge letters, or plaster an entire wall of the ladies' restroom. Also around the area this weekend, Ani DiFranco plays Thalia Hall and Gallagher Way hosts a watch party for the Masters Tournament.
Chicago Tribune
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
‘Breakfast Club' is reuniting at C2E2. What do Gen-Zers at John Hughes' school think of the Gen-X movie?
On Saturday morning, exactly 40 years after they first met in Saturday morning detention, every member of the original Breakfast Club — the popular girl (Molly Ringwald), the jock (Emilio Estevez), the recluse (Ally Sheedy), the nerd (Anthony Michael Hall), the rebel (Judd Nelson) — will reunite, for the first time since 1985. The occasion is C2E2, the annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo at McCormick Place. But here's the thing about high-school reunions: Nothing changes. Even when everything about your old high school changes. As in, transforms so radically in five decades that a student there now would have trouble relating to a student there 40 years ago. A couple of days before the Breakfast Club was set to visit the South Loop, I met with six teenagers at Glenbrook North High School to watch 'The Breakfast Club' itself. Most had never seen it. But all were well aware of its outsized legacy in the long hallways of this sleek 72-year-old North Shore institution: John Hughes, the film's director and writer, a man who arguably helped shape the way we think about teenagers, based the movie on his own experiences as a student at Glenbrook North. He didn't shoot there; the set was Maine North High School in Des Plaines, which had closed a few years before filming, partly because of declining enrollment. Baby boomers built too many schools, then didn't make enough Gen-Xers. That's ancient history to Gen-Zers. Within 10 minutes of clicking the play button, I felt like I was introducing these six students to a great new revolutionary invention called the cotton gin. Judd Nelson threw one of his many tantrums in the film: Avery DiCocco, chipper, vice president of the student association, a senior, with a scrutinizing expression, shook her head and said, 'I mean, that would be all over Snapchat.' The others nodded. When the school's vice principal took a sip from a water fountain, DiCocco pounced: 'Nope! We carry water bottles — nobody drinks directly out of the fountains.' They were warming to time travel. There's a scene where Judd Nelson is locked in a closet by the principal. Asher Panfil, senior, a sports guy, seated in an egg chair, said to the screen: 'If that happened in Northbrook, his parents would sue so fast.' Beside him, Drew Horvath, another sports guy, said: ' So fast.' Beside them, senior Kady Serlin, aspiring filmmaker: 'What if there was a fire? That's a liability issue.' Samantha Katz, senior, in a baggy gray sweatshirt, craned her head back: 'It's pretty hard to even get detention in this school now.' Lincoln Brown, junior, in a green hoodie, added wryly: 'There are rumors …' Katz looked to assistant principal Michael Tarjan seated nearby: 'Do we even still do a Saturday morning detention?' Actually, they do; there's one thing that hasn't changed. But none of them have ever done anything bad enough to warrant such a sentence. 'I've actually heard everyone in Saturday detention are friends,' said Horvath, waving at another scene in which the Breakfast Club are bickering strangers, not yet knowable to one another. 'I've heard they get like an hour for lunch, they get to leave 15 minutes early and it's not even strict.' On screen, the vice principal (played by character actor Paul Gleason) was threatening someone again; he's always threatening someone or shoving. The real students cringed every time. 'No,' said Serlin, 'you're not allowed to threaten students.' Panfil, who has practice for one sport or another nearly every morning, said, 'I don't know the last time I had a free Saturday morning.' 'The Breakfast Club,' a film that felt so immediate and revealing if you were a certain age in 1985, is now, in 2025, a clearing house of the unthinkable, the expired and probably litigious. As they watched, the students cataloged what had changed in 40 years: They don't use lockers anymore (even though old lockers still line many Glenbrook hallways); they prefer backpacks. And they certainly don't write gay slurs in huge letters down the front of those lockers, as in the film: 'We'd get an email about that,' Horvath said, with a deadpan understatement. The books and magazines in the film's library? They rarely check out books on their own and never read magazines. Also, nobody smokes cigarettes anymore; school bathrooms are installed with silent alarms in case of vaping. When Molly Ringwald was dropped off by her father in a BMW, they noted some students here drive BMWs themselves; the parking lot has seen its share of Teslas, too. Glenbrook North, which serves Northbrook, is in one of the richest ZIP codes in the state. As for those clothes … They definitely would not be putting so much work into a Saturday morning wardrobe. (More than a few students here wear pajamas to class, a nearby adult whispered.) Still, Ringwald, prim, poised, in long leather boots and an expensive brown sack of a jacket — yeah, OK, they could picture her being a student here. 'We do have a few Mollys,' Panfil said. But when Nelson sticks his head under Ringwald's skirt, the room agreed: Today, Molly would sue. When Nelson says she is starting to look fat, you could feel a collective recoil in the room. 'That would never fly,' DiCocco said. 'A guy calling a girl 'fat' would cross a line.' 'Culturally, things definitely changed,' Serlin said. Horvath: 'At least, another student would have said something to (Nelson) by now.' Panfil: 'I mean, who would even put that much effort into trolling anyone today?' We sat in a handsome student lounge. Set into a wall in large letters: 'Be Positive. Be Proud. Be Spartan' — the sort of hopeful reinforcement, the film argues extravagantly, that boomers could not provide in the 1980s. There were egg chairs and brightly colored leather stools that wouldn't look out of place in a tech startup or a very cool daycare center. Glenbrook is more like the sunny high schools I think I remember from John Hughes movies than the actual schools in his movies. It's reality overtaking fiction. Hughes himself, who died in 2009 at 59, knew lots about that. He was, as his films suggest, something of an outsider at Glenbrook North — yet a ridiculously self-confident one. At Glenbrook, Hughes took to dressing modish, like Bob Dylan. He didn't care about fitting in. He once told an interviewer, if he was made fun of, he'd think, 'That's OK. Picasso would like me.' After he became a filmmaker, he could be just as sanctimonious as a 15-year-old. It became his superpower. As journalist Bruce Handy writes in 'Hollywood High' — an upcoming history of teen movies that places 'Breakfast Club' in a continuum alongside 'Rebel Without a Cause' and many others — his legacy is showing that high school is actually dominated by various 'tribes' of social class, not just the big, blah 'teenage monoculture' Hollywood used to depict high school. What this meant in 1985 was that 'The Breakfast Club' seemed to boil away the chaff of high school and reveal the sensitive you. Being a teenager in Hughesville meant brief moments of connection with people who understand, then, bittersweetly, a life of comparable bleakness. It flattered a teenager's self-importance and offered truths only a teenager could know: The pressure is impossible, your parents don't listen, and yet, inevitably, you become your parents. As Ally Sheedy says, your heart dies when you get older. Yes, I remember thinking at 14, it does, as if I knew. It's here, when 'The Breakfast Club' goes deep, the Glenbrook Six connected the most. As 'Breakfast Club' character after character took their swings delivering soliloquies about pressure and parents and popularity, the students went quiet for long stretches and just listened. The film's view of the insular nature of cliques: 'I'd say, generally, everyone has their friend group and stick to that,' said DiCocco. That part hasn't changed much. But when asked if they have good relationships with parents — the film's adults being emotionally absent — the students said they do, almost in unison, way too fast for a Gen-Xer's ears. They're disgustingly well-adjusted. But Hughes' understanding of pressure — spot on. After Emilio Estevez describes the intensity of a father demanding a devoted athlete, Panfil said quietly: 'That's still a thing today.' They describe friends groomed to be athletes since they could stand, and practicing musical instruments for absurdly long times. Brown said there is pressure to keep grades up, 'just not to the extent in this movie.' Anthony Michael Hall's Brian is in detention for bringing a flare gun to school, pressure to excel leading to suicidal overtures. That gun, at Glenbrook, would mean an automatic expulsion now, no question, they said. 'But (the movie) doesn't get how this pressure doesn't just come from parents, but peers,' Panfil said. 'It's very competitive,' Katz seconded. 'Especially around now,' said Horvath, 'when you see people committing to really good schools for college and it starts to make you think less of the schools you applied to.' When some of the film's characters are mocked for taking part in afterschool activities, the students shook their heads: none of them can think of a classmate who isn't involved in activities. And then the film's vice principal mentioned he makes $31,000 a year. Reader, there were actual gasps. Katz grabbed her phone and quickly researched education salaries in the 1980s: 'Yup!' she said, waving her iPhone screen that showed a medium $31,000 for assistant principals around 1980. About the movie's reliance on stereotypes — they see a smidge of truth. But, wisely, they see themselves as containing multitudes. Brown played football, now he's involved in theater: 'I see a little of all of these characters in me.' Katz recognized having a little Ringwald and some Anthony Michael Hall. Horvath said he's seen as 'the tall sports guy,' but his favorite activity has actually been youth government groups. 'It's hard to find just a jock anymore,' said DiCocco. Also, she said she doubts, as Sheedy, says, the heart dies when you become an adult: 'I think passions just change and you find joy in other things and the heart just becomes different then.' Horvath: 'I know I won't be able to play football my whole life. Lincoln, you might be able to get on stage and perform your whole life …' Brown: 'I could. But probably won't.' Horvath: 'Some things you can only experience in high school. Then, maybe, what she means is that part of your heart probably does die when you lose what you once loved to do.' Katz: 'But this idea of everyone trudging towards a miserable adulthood — at least now, we're encouraged to go for dreams. Drew, I remember you saying you wanted to be a very specific kind of doctor. A lot of us are not all that uncertain. We are …' 'Lucky,' Serlin said. As the movie ended, they sat in silence. 'Somebody should remake it,' Serlin said. She's studying film at New York University in the fall. 'But it would need five completely different new stereotypes to be accurate,' Panfil said. 'And more diversity,' Serlin said. 'And yet,' Horvath said, 'in that remake, in 2025, the Breakfast Club would all be silent and on their phones — the whole detention. They wouldn't talk to each other at all. OK, maybe they could do a group chat? But whatever it would look like, it wouldn't look like, what, like 40 years ago?'
CBS News
04-04-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
Glenbrook North coach Dave Weber is proud as onetime player Jon Scheyer coaches to Final Four
You may not be a Duke fan, but if you know your Illinois high school basketball history, it's hard not to cheer for Blue Devils Head Coach Jon Scheyer — one of the best players ever from the Chicago area and the entire state of Illinois. Glenbrook North High School basketball coach Dave Weber mentored the legend, who is now in San Antonio chasing a national championship as a coach. The trophy case at Glenbrook North High School is filled with memories of a special time for Weber — coaching Scheyer as the present-day Duke Coach helped Glenbrook North win a state championship in 2005. "It was just for this community to have that, to have Jon to win a state championship and have those great teams. It's hard to explain how good he was — and the thing about him was he did it in a classy way," Scheyer said. "And some of the games, the individual games he played were, I don't know if anybody can match that. I think one of the games I'll always remember is a super sectional at Loyola University against Waukegan. He had 48 that night. When the games were bigger, Jon played bigger." Weber, who coached Glenbrook North for 25 years, is now getting to enjoy watching his former player lead Duke to the Final Four. "Truly, I'm loving this whole experience," Weber said. "You know, obviously he's done well in the past, but this year is really special. " But it can be a bit stressful at times. "It is a little nerve-wracking for me, though — I'll be honest. I woke up last Saturday, and I said: 'Why I am so uptight? Why am I anxious?' And I thought, 'Oh, Duke's playing today, and this is their chance to go to the Final Four," said Weber. "So I do feel some stress watching him. It's kind of interesting for an old coach to feel that way. " Even when Scheyer was dominating on the court with the Spartans at Glenbrook North some 20 years ago, Dave had a feeling that someday, he would be a pretty good coach as well. "I knew he was going to be a coach. I thought he was going to play in the NBA, but then he had that injury where he couldn't continue his career. Especially after that injury, he kept coming back here. We'd talk. He always wanted to play, but he wasn't healthy enough to play. He loves the game. He understands the game. Some players just don't get it, and he did. He did from his freshman year on. So I always thought, and I thought he'd be a great coach too — and he's shown that right now." And Weber thinks Scheyer's experiences should help him as he coaches in a Final Four for the first time. "He's seen what it takes to win championships. He did it in high school. He played in 2010—they won the championship. He was an assistant coach. And now here he is as the head coach. So he knows what it takes," Weber said. "It's not going to be easy. This is going to be a tough weekend for them." And hopefully not too stressful a weekend for Coach Weber. In Northbrook, Matt Zahn, CBS News Chicago.
