Memories of Mary Ann
5 comments June 26th, 2008
I think the first time I met Mary Ann Aiello in person was about six years ago when she was fighting efforts to allow bow hunters to shoot deer in the forest preserves. She stopped by the News Tower and dropped off a VHS tape that showed how deer suffered when a hunter was slightly off target and only wounded the animal instead of killing it.
Over the next few years she would call me now and then about issues she knew the Editorial Board would poke its collective nose in.
We didn’t always agree with her, although I think we did most of the time, but we always had a mutual respect.
One of our biggest disagreements was over the city of Rockford’s plan to buy a hockey team and use the revenues from the team to help pay for renovations to the MetroCentre. We liked the plan; she didn’t.
Last year when the renovations began and some of the MetroCentre concrete was broken up, pieces were packaged (Rockford MetroCentre Renovation: Brick Breaking Ceremony, June 21, 2007) and presented to County Board members and other officials as a memento.
Aiello sent her package to me with a note that said since I was a supporter of the plan and she wasn’t, she thought I’d appreciate it more.
I did. I kept it displayed on my desk in its wrappings for quite a while until my office mates pointed out this winter that it would be a wonderful door stop.
It has been. I never told Mary Ann what I wound up doing with that lump of concrete, but I think she would have appreciated it.
I talked to her last month shortly after I found out she had cancer. She was in good spirits and I thought she could beat the disease even though people who had more facts than I did told me how grim the prognosis was.
She leaves a void on the County Board and in our lives that will be hard to replace. The eighth floor of the Winnebago County Courthouse will seem a lot emptier because she won’t be there.
