#100YearsAgoToday Ralph Jones, legendary football coach who led the Chicago Bears to the 1932 NFL championship, began the first of two lengthy stints coaching in Lake Forest. As a pro coach, Jones was famous for creating the T-formation offensive alignment.
He was hired by Lake Forest Academy as athletic director; he would also coach football and basketball at the school. During his time at LFA from 1920 to 1929, Jones’ teams saw tremendous success, to the tune of 76-6 in football, 94-9 in basketball.
Following his three years as head coach for the Chicago Bears from 1930-32, Jones returned to Lake Forest and led the athletic department at Lake Forest College. There he also coached football, basketball and baseball. He led the LFC football team to two undefeated seasons in 1938 and 1940, and his LFC baseball teams won five consecutive conference titles. | |
#100YearsAgoToday Chicagoans and Lake Foresters were buzzing with news of a potential new club planned in Lake Forest (on an 80-acre site south of Westleigh and Green Bay - see map). To be named “El Mirasol,” after a club in Santa Barbara, this was to be a residential club community, with no golf course or athletic features (those being unnecessary given the proximity of Onwentsia, Old Elm, and Shoreacres). A central clubhouse would contain sumptuous patios, reception rooms and dining rooms along with sleeping quarters for servants; up to 40 members would erect their own cottages on the surrounding club grounds. According to architect Benjamin Marshall, a promoter of the plan, “It is just a club to solve the servant question more than anything else. … There will be a system of small taxis maintained to carry the meals prepared at the central kitchen to the various residences and bungalows.” At the time of all this press, no officers had been elected nor sketches of the clubhouse drawn. Of course, we know today that El Mirasol was never built; the idea was likely a casualty of the worsening economic climate as the U.S. entered a sharp deflationary recession. By 1922, the time of the map pictured, the tract of land under discussion had been subdivided into 10-acre lots and the club plan abandoned. | |
