Local Women’s Contributions Reflected in Women’s History Month

Lynne Sell, Director of Kids Hope in Huntley.

HUNTLEY – Contributions to history, culture and society are the three tenets of Women’s History Month this March. For our story,  MyHuntleyNews.com chose two women from lists supplied to us by the Huntley Public Library and the Village of Huntley. MHN requested lists of women that have met at least one if not all of the tenets, effectively distinguishing themselves over their lifetime.

The two women for this year’s Huntley area recognition chosen by MyHuntleyNews.com are Betty Zirk and Lynne Sell.

A lifelong resident of Huntley, Zirk embodies the motto, “Friendly Village with Country Charm.”  The 95-year-old easily talks about her roots in Huntley’s history from several perspectives. Raised on a farm, she’s at home discussing agriculture but also Betty is at home discussing a Huntley timeline of business, retail, and residential growth.

The progress of America is very much tied into the plethora of women’s accomplishments.  These “accomplishments” also cleared the way for recognition of women.

Zirk, the daughter of Huntley Mayor Albert Boncosky (1957-to-1961) and his wife, Kate, was involved in a myriad of community projects through her service as a board member with the Grafton Food Pantry and Grafton Township, and service as treasurer of the Huntley American Legion Post 673 and Trinity Lutheran Church in Huntley.

Friends refer to Zirk as “Energizer Betty or Fireball,” nicknames that leave her daughters, Vicki, Kathy, and Nancy smiling and chuckling ever so slightly, respecting their mother’s tremendous drive to do good things in the community she has loved for so long.  Somewhat recently, they’ve begun suggesting she slow down for health reasons and because of message repetition, the daughters believe there’s evidence she’s finally listening to them.

“Time for me to step out of some of these things.  Good to bring in new ideas and younger people, maybe they’ll have fresher thoughts,” Zirk said.

Betty’s three daughters listened to the phone interview for Women’s History Month between MyHuntleyNews.com and their mother. Zirk’s daughters offered to help add a little extra detail in the interview but confirmed what they already knew that Mom has a strong handle on her answers.

“She’s still sharp,” they chimed in, but maybe slightly hard of hearing they told this reporter.

Asked whether Betty is still on the go, she said, “Not as much because of COVID. Not out so much anymore with the food pantry, I’m just active taking care of myself,” Zirk said.

But for many years, Betty’s efforts told a story of service as a board member of Grafton Township.  She worked tirelessly in senior programming.

“By the time I got involved in Grafton Township, my parents were in that age group.  I thought there were few activities for seniors in Huntley,” Zirk said.

For the Grafton Food Pantry, Zirk would travel around the Huntley area and pick up donation boxes packed with food and drop the food off at the food pantry for distribution.

“I wouldn’t have bothered to be on the committees if I didn’t enjoy all the activities. I was just trying to do some good and that’s where my efforts were,” Zirk stressed.

Step back to the 1930s to find out what it was in Betty’s early life that motivated her to become a strong advocate of community involvement. She grew up on a 300 acre farm, one of the biggest farms in the Huntley area, so big the farm included 100 acres of woods and swamp, and 180 acres of tillable farmland. Zirk remembers when the cows were walked through the main part of town before Route 47 was built.

The northern half of the Boncosky family farm eventually became a development called Talamore while the south half remains undeveloped all the way to the railroad tracks. Before the family moved off the farm, Betty used to drive the pickup truck in the farm field and pick up piles of hay and straw for the animals.  Her father and mother received plenty of help from Betty and her siblings handling chores inside and outside.

In 1942, the Boncosky family moved into the town of Huntley, selling off the family farm. Albert began working for a powder plant making ammunition to support the military during World War II.  Betty experienced rationing for the war effort.

“We rationed gasoline. We were allowed to only buy so many gallons of gas per week because the war needed all the gas,” Zirk recalls.

When Betty married Robert in 1955, television sets were just becoming commonplace in one’s home.  The sets were black and white and required a roof antenna.

“My husband built our own TV set and the set worked fine. The reception from Chicago wasn’t that great but we had to get up in the air to get better reception,” Zirk said.

Betty Zirk has lived her life according to a rule she had set forth for her daughters and son as one daughter remembers, “Leave wherever you are better than when you arrived.”

Lynne Sell and Zirk are both strong believers in helping where they perceive a need.

You might say Sell has 2 Hopes.  Sell is director of Kids Hope of Willow Creek Huntley and she serves as a board member and volunteer at Shepherd’s Hope Chicago in Englewood (south side of Chicago).

In 2020, school administrators closed school buildings because of the contagious nature of coronavirus.The Kids Hope program was affected. The success of this particular program at Martin Elementary School in District 158 is geared to adult mentors going into the school and personally meeting with selected third, fourth, and fifth graders. As director of the mentor program through Willow Creek Huntley for Martin, Sell knows relationships matter.

“The idea is to try and help these kids become the best they can be early on and hopefully make things go better for them as they grow up,” Sell said.

Kids Hope USA is a national mentoring program combining a church with a school and an understanding of agreement on the separation of church and state.

What Kids Hope did not have for 2020 were third graders at Martin Elementary School.

“We didn’t get new third graders because the schools had plenty to deal with without having to figure out new students for the program remotely and that’s been another problem. We could possibly do Zoom sessions with the kids but they spend a lot of time on Zoom, so it’s not all that exciting to meet with another adult over Zoom,”  Sell said.  “We’ve had fourth and fifth graders and the mentors.”  Sell emphasizes mentors have worked to maintain connections through emails or cards so hopefully when fall comes, the group can reconnect.

“Right now, we have 15 mentors(for fourth and fifth graders). We’ve had up to 23 mentors but we don’t have any third graders this year. They couldn’t be recruited,” Sell explained, describing the difficulty COVID has presented. “We start each year with new third graders but this year because they weren’t in school at the beginning of the school year, we didn’t get new third graders,” Sell said.

A mentor meets with a student during their lunch recess. “The mentors are very dedicated to being there for the student but COVID has definitely made that impossible,” Sell said.  “They’d play games, create activities, and have a conversation and lunch together.” The primary goal for adult mentors is in encouraging, listening, and motivating young people, person-to-person. They’d have this extra adult attention once a week for three years.

It’s fairly easy to recognize the value Sell places on the Kids Hope program and how she wishes the program can return to the one-to-one mentor/student method before COVID.  “Forty minutes alone with an adult who is focused entirely on the child is not all that common anymore. Over a long period of time, you make more of a connection than you might think you could do in 40 minutes,” Sell said.

Some of the activities for Kids Hope involve crafts. “Sometimes conversation flows better during activities. We don’t feel the kids are facing an interrogation. It’s a relationship…so you build it. They’ll have lunch together, sometimes reading, sometimes making things, and sometimes doing random acts of kindness with no expectation of anything in return,” Sell said.

Sell not only directs the mentor program of Kids Hope through Willow Creek Huntley, but she and her husband volunteer at a community center on the south side of Chicago in the Englewood community. They’ve volunteered for the past 12 years, helping with donations that turned a closed Chicago Public School into a community center with a gym, student mentoring program, soup kitchen, auditorium, vision and medical clinic, basketball skills clinics, churches, and food pantry.

Sell reminds us, “These are simple things people can do if they choose to make it their focus.”