The Downers Grove Historical Society is pleased to announce that Jim Toth has been selected to be the 2024 Historian of the Year. Upon his arrival in Downers Grove in 2015, Toth swiftly immersed himself in the activities of the Historical Society. Soon thereafter he was on the Board of Directors. His keen awareness of the wealth of local historical knowledge led him and Liz Chalberg, then president of DGHS, to ponder, “How can we contemporize this knowledge?” He needed to find someone to create a web app for the Main Street Cemetery to make it easier to access the information about who is buried there. He looked around and found … himself! Thus Toth embarked on his first Historical Society project, “The Downers Grove Main Street Cemetery” which encompassed pictures, audio biographies, and written stories about those early settlers. The project started Toth on the path of preserving historical knowledge in formats that are informative and easy to enjoy.
