In 1952, former Navy cooks Marvin Hammack and Ray Schimel were running a successful restaurant in Michigan called the Holiday House. The following year, they relocated to Kankakee, where they opened a restaurant that would be known for more than 30 years as Yesteryear.

The catalyst for that change was Kankakee businessman Edwin P. Bergeron, who had stopped for a meal at the Holiday House while on vacation with his wife, Alice. While talking with Hammack and Schimel, he learned they hoped to someday open a larger and more elegant restaurant.

Bergeron, as fate would have it, owned a property that would be ideal for their purposes. In late 1951, he and Alice had purchased a large riverfront house in Kankakee that was both elegant and historic. The building, erected in 1901, was the first of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie House designs. The Bergerons had decided the 6,000-square-foot house, located on a one-acre lot, was too large for their needs.

Jack Klasey came to Kankakee County as a young Journal reporter in 1963, and quickly became hooked on local history. In 1968, he co-authored “Of the People: A Popular History of Kankakee County.” Now retired from a career in the publishing industry, he remains active in the history field as a volunteer and board member at the Kankakee County Museum. He can be contacted at jwklasey@comcast.net.