The "Brushwood" of the title is Farwell Field, north of Illinois (Brushwood?) Road between Washington Road on the east and Washington Circle on the west.  This is a memoir of Mr. McConnell's childhood growing up facing this Lake Forest College athletic field in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1933 Ralph Jones was the men's coach (p. 12).

Young McConnell's home was the Louis McConnell house that recently was that of the Sorensons and McCoys on the southeast corner of Illinios and Wildwood Roads--of stucco: 587 East Illinois Road (1934 telephone directory, LF-LB Hist. Soc. website).  This house is now (March 2013) proposed for demolition and replacement, having been caught up in the economic and housing debacle of 2008-12. But it is still a dignified, even handsome, stucco-covered, center-hall colonial, with classic features and bearing signs of being a Kelley-built house from ca. 1915-17.  

Senator Charles B. Farwell (1823-1903) donated the land for Farwell Field in 1902-03, at the end of his life of supporting the College.  This athletic field is the only thing named for him, though he gave the funds for North Hall (1880), the Gymnasium (1891, now Hotchkiss Hall), an early women's dorm (Mitchell Hall, 1881-1899), etc.--$300,000,, when J. D. Rockefeller was donating $1 million to found the U. of Chicago, 1892. Farwell had bought a large part of the 1857 Lake Forest 1,200 acre plan in the 1860s, and Farwell Field was part of that land.  Farwell, in addition to a long (and very successful) business/real estate and Cook county political career, was a U.S. representative and senator, between 1870 and 1891 (in the Senate 1887-1891), securing many advantages for Chicago, including the 1893 World's Fair. Charlie Farwell, at twenty-one came to Chicago in 1844 and moved to Lake Forest in 1870, using it as a summer place after he built a town house in Chicacgo in 1884 facing south on the Water Tower park.     

The Mr. Kelley is Alexander Kelley who lived and had his contractor shop and, apparently, his speakeasy at 169 Wildwood Road, from 1921 to 1940 (this writer's home currently, five doors south of Farwell Field). Kelley came from Scotland as a teenager with the first load of Angus cattle imported into the U.S. from Aberdeenshire for James Anderson in 1878.  In the 1890s Kelley built and lived in a large Queen Ann house on Illinois Road, just north of Rosemary on the west side.  Business conditions were poor from 1919 to ca. 1923-24, and Kelley appears to have built his bungalow with a garage and workshop (he was a contractor for sidewalks and houses) at 169 Wildwood Road so he could rent out his main house to Onwentisa members, etc.  He returned to that larger Illinois Road house in 1940, selling his Wildwood Road house then to the local postmaster.  

Miss Kelley--Edna, his daughter--taught school at Gorton and in the summer ran the recreation program on Farwell Field for the City. By the early 1970s she was living in a brick two-story colonial house built by her father south of him and on the west side of Wildwood, now the home of his descendant, Brian Krusmark, and his spouse Linda. Miss Kelley was active in the Guild of the First Presbyterian Church, and contributed to its annual holiday sale beautiful ornaments which she had tatted by hand. The Kelley family became a centennial family of the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society in 2012.    

Ralph Jones had been the caoch of the Chicago Bears football team, 1929-33, and then was head men's coach for the College until 1949.  He coached both baseball and football on Farwell Field, and his football teams were undefeated in the late 1930s.  He had been one of the pioneers of football and continued to experiment with equipment--helmets and gear he tried out on his players. 

Much of Mr. McConnell's account has been corroborated by informal interviews by long-term residents of the neighborhood: the summer program, coach Jones, etc.  But the ice hockey rink on lower Farwell field (now Halas Hall's lcoation) is new information, and other interesting details.   

Note author: Arthur H. Miller, Archivist, ammiller@lakeforest.edu