Naperville resident Doris Knoch Wood was a lifelong learner always looking to give back to the community, those who knew her say.
Her passion for reading and education was seen in many of her endeavors, and evident first in her work as a grade school teacher and later when she taught at Illinois Benedictine College and College of DuPage. Her friend and old neighbor Joan Stelle took a World War II history class that Knoch Wood taught at College of DuPage and described it as nothing short of excellent.
“She got her master’s (degree) when I was 10 years old,” said her daughter, Alice Wood, noting that the thesis was on Naperville during the Great Depression. “She spent hours and hours at the library … she had a permanent place at the kitchen table with her typewriter and she just banged it all out.”
That love for education extended not only to her own endeavors but to making sure other people had the opportunity to pursue it. She served as president of the Naperville Public Library District Board and helped lead the effort to have a new Nichols Library built on Jefferson Avenue in 1983.
“She knew that Naperville would need a bigger space because it was just that little library (on Washington Street) and now look at what it is,” Wood said of her mother, who died on Dec. 21 at the age of 95. “So she could see the growth and the need.”
And that’s not the only way Knoch Wood would give back to Naperville. She would serve on the board of Edward Hospital and spent many years fundraising for Loaves & Fishes. She helped plan Naperville’s 150th anniversary celebration and for decades worked as a hospice volunteer. She and friend Rita Harvard, who also contributed significantly to Naperville, jokingly referred to each other as the “Queen of Naperville.”
“She and Rita grew up in Naperville and they were the same age. They would trade the title of ‘Queen of Naperville’ based on who did the last act of goodwill for the city,” said Wood, one of seven children Knoch Wood had with her husband, Warren. “So Rita always referred to mom as the queen but it was likewise.”
Born on Nov. 24, 1930, Knoch Wood was the second youngest child in her family, which included sisters Marge, Jean and Joanne. Her father, Win Knoch, was a lawyer who later became a federal judge and served on the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Knock Wood was born during the Great Depression but lived a relatively privileged life, according to longtime friend Mary Lou Wehrli.
“I think they recognized the incredible privilege they had because they did have a loving home. They did get together a lot. They did have a lot,” Wehrli said. “I think they recognized that a lot of people didn’t, and some people don’t have happy homes … and I think that was as much of a driver as the realities of individual situations around the community.”
It also reflected the reality of growing up in Naperville back when it was a small rural town, Wehrli said. People helped raise each other’s children and worked to make their community a better place, she said.
“Our grandfather always said, ‘Any community worth living in is worth doing for,’” Wood said.
Growing up, Knoch Wood attended Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, which her family helped rebuild after it burned down in 1922. She was a member her whole life and and it would be the place where Knoch Wood and many of her family would be married, Wehrli said.
While she contributed to Naperville in myriad ways, her most notable accomplishment was persuading residents to approve a referendum to fund construction of new Nichols Library, a major step in the city’s progression and one that still meets the needs of its now 150,000-plus population, she said.
“I think she liked the holistic touch that a library could have on people. Those libraries are traditionally known as a poor man’s university,” Wehrli said.
The effort would fail once before being successful in 1983. The library opened in 1986.
“She was on the board, and then became president of the board when they built the new Nichols Library,” Wood said. “And what I do remember about it is she brought it in ahead of schedule and under budget, and she was so determined to do it right that she talked to people who had built libraries in other towns about what would you do different, that kind of thing.”
In her later years, Knoch Wood participated in Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s “SuperAgers” program, which researched adults over 80 who had brains 20 to 30 years younger than their physical age.
According to her obituary, she believed her participation in the study could have a meaningful impact on the lives of others. After she died, her body was donated to science.
Throughout it all, education was part of her life. She rewrote her graduate thesis because, according to her daughter, she just wanted to. Wehrli remembers taking her to the Morton Arboretum last October, and she spontaneously started reciting “October’s Bright Blue Weather,” a poem she learned in high school.
“It just flowed from her, you know, it was like breathing,” Wehrli said. “She just flowed with the moments. And if this came out of her, this was what was in her soul, and she was pleased to share it. And I’m sure at her advanced age — pretty darn pleased to remember it.”
cstein@chicagotribune.com
