Ted Kross, George Vann and Ken Madsen are retired and volunteer every Tuesday at the Elmhurst Historical Museum.

In fact, they have given their time to the museum for many years and continue to keep genealogical and business records or do anything else that needs doing, as well as aid visitors with research.

At about 11 a.m., they break for lunch, so if you are vigilant you might see them at an area restaurant.

Kross has resided in Elmhurst the longest.

“I was born in a house on Third Street about where Bailey’s Restaurant used to be,” he said.

That was his grandparents’ house, but in 1919, when he was 3, his parents bought the house on South Kenilworth Avenue where he still lives.

Vann moved to town at age 6 in 1924, when his father bought a stucco bungalow on Illinois Street built in 1915 as a social hall for the neighborhood families, which his dad converted to a house. His dad eventually sold it to Immanuel Lutheran Church, and it was torn down with a couple of others to enlarge their playground around 1947.

“When I was told they were being torn down, I hurried over but all I saw was a large gravel area,” he said.

Vann has been involved with the museum since just after its creation.

Madsen moved to Elmhurst after he and his wife bought a new ranch house on South Fairfield in 1956. However, he, too, has been involved with the museum for many years, serving on the commission as did Kross and Vann and now transferring written information onto a computer data base.

Vann remembers swimming in the Salt Creek “swimming hole” when the creek used to curve around North Graue Woods before Route 83 was widened and the creek was straightened out to avoid having to build a lot of bridges.

Kross never swam there because every summer his father loaded up the car with family and chickens and their hired girl, Sophie, for the drive to their home on Lake Geneva.

“I did visit the swimming hole when my dad took us kids for a walk over there every Thanksgiving to give my mother a chance to prepare dinner,” he said.

Vann and Kross remember walking to York High School along Snake Road, which is what everyone called Elm Park because of the way it “jogs” around. They also remember the occasional dances held on the second floor of the Mahler building, now Karen Solem’s art gallery and of a social club, which met at Mack’s Golden Pheasant periodically because one of its members was part of the family who owned the restaurant.

“When I was young,” Vann recalls, “I vowed to leave Elmhurst once I grew up, but after two years in the South Pacific during World War II and ending up in Iwo Jima, I couldn’t wait to return here because for me there was no better place in the world to live.”

Kross kept busy as a youth by playing the clarinet in the band in high school and Elmhurst College and had a darkroom in his basement where he developed his photographs.

He made a short film of his father driving around town in his new car in the late 1920s.

Kross also was in the South Pacific during World War II as an air craft controller and just missed being part of the invasion of Japan because of the atomic bomb having been dropped.

Madsen, the youngest of the three, also served in the Army Air Forces in radar training and spent time in Korea after the war with Japan ended.

Vann remembers when the museum was in two rooms on the second floor of Wilder Mansion and staffed with volunteers. They all remember when the museum was moved to the Glos Mansion, and they all took part in helping make it work as a museum whether by revamping the electrical service or building cabinets.

“It was a proud day when the museum could open five days a week with a paid staff,” Vann said. “We all worked hard to make that happen. Now we’re so over crowded we need to find more space.”

Elmhurst has changed enormously since those days when kids swam in the creek or walked down Snake Road to school.

“We’re the last link with the old Elmhurst,” Vann said sadly. “People move more these days so they don’t care about local history as much. It’s too bad.”

Send comments and ideas to elmhurstovereasy@comcast.net.