Debbie Stoery

BILL PEKARA (BP):Good afternoon, and welcome to Northbrook Voices, an oral history project sponsored by the Northbrook Public Library and the Northbrook Historical Society. Today is April 3rd, 2025. My name is Bill Pekara, and I’m pleased to welcome Debbie Stoery, who has lived in Northbrook on and off since 1953. Debbie, what brought you to Northbrook? 

DEBBIE STOERY (DS): My parents brought me because I was one year old.

BP: Great. What was Northbrook like when you first moved here? 

DS: There were very few residents. There were very few paved roads. And I just remember a lot of fields and a very small community. 

BP: Would you like to talk about your parents’ experience? 

DS: Absolutely. I think they were enthusiastic about building a community. My dad was on the school board. Both of my parents are very active in the Saint Peter’s Church, which no longer exists as it merged with Northfield Community Church. They served as election officials. They were very involved in neighborhood social events and all community events, from a pancake breakfast to 4th of July and so on. And a thing I think was most distinctive about their involvement was the work that they did with the head of the Park District at the time, Joe Doud, to establish the Northbrook Sports Center.

BP: What year was that? 

DS:The Grand opening was in 1968. And we’re about to have our 55th anniversary ice show at the Northbrook rink. 

BP: Would you like to talk a little bit about your experiences with the ice show? 

DS: Well, absolutely. I will say this. My mother was a skater, and I did start skating at 18 months on single runner blades, but that was in a snow suit in the middle of the rink for babysitting so she could skate. And I had to beg for lessons. When I was seven years old, I saw an ice show and I thought, oh, that’s like my flying dreams. And it just attracted me. So I begged for lessons, but I quickly progressed through classes in a studio, a small rink in Park Ridge. And then she knew in about eight months she said, if you’re really serious, I have to take you to a good coach.

So that meant we had to drive over two hours to a training center, the Wagon Wheel Ice Arena, at the Wagon Wheel Resort in Rockton, Illinois. So I was already past my competitive career when the rink opened here, but my sister was still skating. My brother became captain of the hockey team because he had learned to skate early from an early age. I had a knee injury when I was 14, torn cartilage. And that, the scientific advances at the time, in 1966, did not permit very quick resolution of that. So I couldn’t-I had surgery only a year and a half later with a full leg cast for six weeks, etc.. So I never went back to competitive skating, but I did participate in the first ice show and did start teaching when I was a senior in high school. So I’m very thrilled that the program has continued to blossom over these years and that I’m still vertical. And 55 years later, they’re excited to have me in the alumni show. So we’ll see. That’s coming up in May. 

BP: It’s really great. You were talking about high school. Do you have any things you’d like to talk about growing up in Northbrook? 

DS: Well, yes. I will say that our kindergarten was in what was called the old Maple School, which doesn’t exist, and it was so precious. We had a graduation, we had a lovely diploma for our graduation, and we made our own grass skirts for a hula dance out of newspapers, and we painted them. So, you know, I just have a great memory of that.

My early years were extraordinarily boring for me because I was an academic prodigy, and so I was given college material in junior high–but not really any help–and I sort of resented that people, officials, were taking credit for my hard work. My parents never pushed me. The superintendent and the principal met with my parents and asked if they would have me skip high school and just go to college, but they felt socially that would be inappropriate and I think that was a wise decision. When I was 16. They said, now you can go to college, but I was enjoying theater and finally having something in common with people my own age. I didn’t choose to go. In fact, I invented the gap year in 1970 because I wrote my parents a letter and I said, I know I will continue my education, but I’m not really sure what I want to study, and I need a break.

I was first in my class, and I didn’t work as hard as 2 and 5 and 10 and whatever, but you still had to do some, what I would say, stupid things to get the top grade. And I was always motivated to have the best grades simply so I could miss school because when I skated I didn’t go to school every day because we had to travel so far.

And so even in high school, I kept set up and I never went to school a whole day in four years. And I was very proud that I could still be first in the class. But I just had that feeling myself. Nobody told me that, my parents didn’t push me. I just thought, you know, they can’t complain if I have the best grades.

And I even bribed the Junior honors math teacher to not do all the homework because she wanted to do, like, some ton of homework. That to me was ridiculous. And I said, as long as I get to top grade, is it okay if I don’t do all the homework? I’ll sit in the front of the class, I’ll hand in my homework last, and of course there is nothing online and so on. But that was the only way. And I said I won’t tell anybody. And if in any way she was uncomfortable with the deal, fine. Because a year before, they let me just go into the math resource center and teach myself geometry, I didn’t have to go to class. So that was saving time from homework, too. I just took the test, but the teacher never knew that I was–they thought I was transferred to a different class, you know? So it’s like, you know, I learned early on to try to control what I could control. And, you know, I wasn’t disadvantaging anybody else, but I did feel that I had some wonderful teachers in high school at Glenbrook North and I’m very, very appreciative of those that were absolutely outstanding, those that, you know, gave me that opportunity to pursue things at my own pace. When the teacher wasn’t giving what I was willing to give, then I made sure that my counselor knew about it and I had to go to the dean once. I didn’t have an appointment, I was sitting with the gangbangers, a few in the town at the time, and the dean was like, what are you doing here? So I said, well, I just want to tell you in advance that I’m going to be ditching English class now, this was senior year. Okay. Because a teacher keeps talking about walking her dog for the first five minutes of class, and I keep coming in late, and everybody knows what the deal is, and I wait until she’s done, and then I sit down. But, I said, I’m just going to be teaching myself French in the library. So that’s where you could find me. 

BP: And the dean was ok with that?

DS: Well, the dean was dumbfounded, absolutely dumbfounded. So I, you know, I graduated. I mean, what can I say? 

BP: If you don’t mind saying, what year did you graduate?

DS: In 1970. 

BP: 1970. So the high school changed a lot since then.

DS: Well the thing was at the time what did irritate me was that they had a whole assembly for sports awards, a whole assembly. They had monster trophies for the football players and this and that. And I worked for four years to be valedictorian and I got a tiny little trophy and no big assembly or anything. And so at this, people were getting these huge awards for one season, not even a whole year of their sport. And the town was sports oriented and I’m, I’m, you know, I’ve been coaching figure skating for 55 years. So I think sports have tremendous value. But I did feel that it was a total rip off for all the kids that put effort into four years of academic work and to have it sidelined in that manner was pretty outrageous. 

BP: I wonder if things have changed since then or not. 

DS: I’m afraid to find out, I don’t know. 

BP: You did bring a document that has you from 1969. Miss Northbrook. Is that correct? 

DS: So, yes, I had, you know, wonderful activities in school.

Thanks to my knee injury, I started in theater my freshman year. I couldn’t walk, so I really couldn’t try out. I got a very small part in a comedy. The amazing thing to me was that my whole life had been eat, sleep, skate, go to school—my closest friends were my competitors in a single sport.

I was always one of the last people standing at the spelling bee, while everybody else got to goof around and throw things in the back of the room for an hour, you know? So it was really amazing, in theater, to experience the absolutely foreign concept of cooperation—that all of us were working toward a common goal. That was life-changing for me, and I’m ever grateful for that.

So yes, I was very involved in theater and community theater, as well as the Northbrook Theater. I was a teen representative for WLS radio, which was kind of a really cool thing at the time.

With the academic accomplishments I had, I was—somehow—and I was not a cheerleader or anything—just, Junior Miss did rely on your academics and your interview. The Junior Miss Pageant never had a bathing suit portion like Miss America or anything. There was a talent portion, and that ended up—winning the scholarship. That actually made me a professional in my sport. In those days, if you had any money, even a college scholarship associated with your sport, you were considered professional. Not that I wanted to compete—or could have—at that time, in 1970, but that’s how I started coaching.

The choreographer was the director of the rink, and she said, “Well, since you’re professional, would you like to teach some classes?” And like any seventeen-and-a-half-year-old girl, I think even today, you would think, money for clothes. I mean, that just hasn’t changed. Everything else has changed, but I don’t think that has. So that’s how I started.

BP: That’s great. Would you like to talk about your experiences teaching here in Northbrook? How many years did you say?

DS: Well, you know, I was on the staff, through my time at Northwestern. My first student in Junior Worlds, which – who is not only the most accomplished skater in Northbrook, in the whole history of the town, as a figure skater–

BP: Who is that?

DS: Bunny Blake. 1980. Team USA. There have been synchronized skaters as part of a team recently, but very few are Northbrook residents—if any. I’m not positive on that. But no one, as a single skater, has come that far or farther. That put me on the international team, as well as another student who was a silver medalist in ’82.

I was very honored to teach three of my four Olympic competitors at Northbrook. It’s really not been very well recognized by the community. Even at the ice rink, you don’t see figure skaters honored. There’s a lot for speed skating. At the time they built the rink, it was called the “Speed Skating Capital of the World.” My dad used to say, “Why don’t you speed skate? Every time you go around the rink, you’d get another medal.” And I would say, “You cannot pay me.”

I used to go to the Tower Rink, where the speed skaters trained out on the perimeter, and I would do my low spins and jumps in the middle. We had much colder winters in those days.

One of my most precious childhood memories was having a whole week off school and just tunneling in the snow for hours and hours. Eventually, Mom would dig us out. The snowsuit would be frozen, and you’d get your hot chocolate and a hot bath to defrost. There was so much snow. Of course, they did really have the ability to properly plow or rectify things.

There were a lot of dirt roads then, too. But that was precious.

BP: One of the pictures you brought in was you at the Tower Rink, which is probably on this land right here.The library, I don’t think was here.

DS: Right adjacent to the library. 

BP: The picture of you is from 1957. 

DS: That’s correct. Yeah. No, it wasn’t. No. The old library was such a precious. And we had the little cards and it was a whole.  But I love libraries. And I will say that I would put my life down for this Northbrook Public Library. I would put my life down. It is the most important thing, not only in Northbrook, but to me. Libraries for our society are the most precious and I hope that they will continue to have the discipline and the freedom that we have now, at least in the state of Illinois, that we fight to maintain it.  Because I will be I will be laying down in the street if anybody tries to mess with our library,

BP That’s great. That’s encouraging for those of us who are here right now at the library, that’s that’s very that’s very good.   Back when this was just all the rink. Do you have any memories of it?

DS:  Well, when you’re smaller, everything looks bigger. Okay. But yes, I had my very first date at 8 or 9 years old, at the tower rink where some boy called up. I can’t believe my parents would let me do it, but the cars were very wide in those days, and I remember that we sat, like, on opposite sides, like squinching into the door when we were riding in the back seat and the dad picked me up. And then, because I was already, maybe I was a nine, third or fourth grade, who would hear of going on a date at that age I don’t understand, I, but, I was already learned, you know, I was a good skater. So the boy offered to lace my skates and I was like, no, thank you, I can do it And then he was like, offering to help me onto th ice. I was like, no, thank you. And so I went spinning in the middle. And he was kind of like a fast sort of skater. And he would whiz around me and every time I’d come out, he kind of whizzed by. Right? And of course, it’s in the winter time, so it’s dark soon and it was getting colder and there was just a payphone and so after a while I didn’t quite see him. I never spoke to him after we went on the ice and I called my dad to come pick me up. That’s my whole date but it was right here. But I’ve come back to the tower rink to skate as precious memories, because it’s only here for a few days now.  It used to be for months and the Meadowhill was a huge speed skating oval. And I would go there in junior high and, you know, Olympic speed skaters who actually training, 

BP: In  the intro, I said that you were here in Northbrook in 1953, then you’ve come back and are you back in Northbrook?

DS:  Yes, I’m a resident now. 

BP: How long have you been back in Northbrook? 

DS: Came back, my first husband and I came back to help out. We actually took a place in Glencoe, when my dad got dementia. And then my mom didn’t like having a nighttime caretaker, so I basically kind of started staying at my parent’s house in Northbrook, and my dad passed, and then my husband died from Mersa and, then my mom was, also had different type of dementia and, and, difficulty. So, I moved in with her, and she also passed away several years ago. 

BP: So you’re still here then. That’s great. So anything else about your childhood that you’d like to share about growing up in Northbrook?

DS: I think that we have so much to be proud of, of how our school evolved. Because think about this. I believe that we had the first driver’s ed course in the state of Illinois, maybe one of the few in the country. I know that my Spanish teacher, Doctor Steiner, she was one of the people that invented the AP in Spanish and was on the board of APs and to think that we had so much leadership, on a national basis, just from our community, it was absolutely terrific. And to think of how it’s blossomed in so many ways to go from what was a farming and rural environment, to, such a broad base of arts, culture, community business, many attorneys here, many people involved in national issues, Go Green.  I mean, I’m very, very proud to be in this community and to see how much people today are contributing, just like my parents did and I hope to now too that I’ve evolved, past the elder care, demands of elder care.

BP: Is there anything that you’re looking forward to in the future in Northbrook or in your career?

DS: I don’t have a good answer for that because I, struggling to be in the present, from the sudden passing of my second husband and yesterday was the second anniversary of our engagement. So, just to be, thankful to be healthy, to, know that I have the opportunity to pursue my purpose in life, to glorify God and spread joy is that, that opportunity is ahead of me, at every moment and so the best I can ask of myself is to set a good example and to continue to honor my health and do everything I can for my brain so that I can be a contributing member to society.

BP:  Debbie, thank you so much for participating in Northbrook Voices. Your memories of your life in Northbrook are going to add a very unique and personal perspective about the history of our town. Thank you.