A DGHS Docuseries by Jim Toth
While I hadn’t grown up in Downers Grove, I have lived and raised my two children here for nearly a decade now. Within that time, I have begun a love affair with our town that has stoked a passion to better understand its history. Luckily for me, my relationship with the Downers Grove Historical Society has allowed me to take my skillset as a cultural documentarian, storyteller, and filmmaker and help create “something tangible,” from this history that might otherwise evaporate without documentation. In doing so, we have created a film series titled “History Happens Here” which is supported by donated efforts of myself, Vice President Greg Elisha, and Board President Amy Gassen.
During a 2022 planning session for the Historical Society, I was pulled aside by Village Council Commissioner, and current Historical Society Director, Rich Kulovany. Enthused with our first documentary of the Main Street cemetery (with Lois Sterba) Rich thought it would be a real gift to Downers Grove to document the life and history of one of our living treasures, the Mochel family, specifically Doris Hawk and John W. Mochel, Jr., the surviving family and former proprietors of one of Main Street’s founding and longest running businesses.
As previously mentioned, I didn’t live here during Mochel Hardware’s Main Street days, however, I have seen enough street signs, plaques, and artifacts to know that this store and the “Mochel” name was indeed significant to the history of Downers Grove. What I learned along the way, was how important the Mochel family was to our collective village’s past and prosperity.
John, now 96, was the third-generation proprietor of Mochel’s Hardware (now Happy Dog Barkery), a family business that provided tools, feed supplies, and hardware to the farming communities of Downers Grove in the late 1800s and met the ever-changing needs of a progressive village through the 1990s.
John and Doris, who still reside in Downers Grove, for nearly 100 years now, were kind enough to invite us into their home, and vividly recall their childhoods in Downers Grove, all the way through high school, falling in love, college, and then marrying and raising their children here.
Through interviews conducted by Rich Kulovany, Bruce Swanson (another DGHS Board Director), me, and their daughter Leslie Mochel, we captured spirited conversations that were sprinkled with anecdotes of shipping off to the South Pacific to serve our country in a World War, building homes and businesses here in town, loving and losing family members and so much more. Running nearly 40 minutes, watching this film is a wonderful way to contextually experience a bit of our collective photographic Downers Grove history that might otherwise be lost to time.
This project was a wonderful, learning experience for me, and one, that I really hope you’ll appreciate. I’m also thrilled to report that we are in the middle of producing our third-in-our-series of “History Happens Here,” with Willis, Shirley, and Chris Johnson, about the Johnson Family, Tivoli Theatre, Tivoli Hotel, and Classic Cinemas. Stay tuned, as that feature will be “Coming Soon!”
