A firefighter who served 29 years. A police chief who stopped an assassination. A library that started in a building donated rent-free by a neighbor. A water system purchased piecemeal over four decades. This is the operational history of Orland Park — built by ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
A volunteer fire department flag has survived from 1894 — the oldest known artifact of organized fire protection in Orland Park. For decades, the men who answered the alarm were the same men who ran the feed store, sat behind the barber's chair, and served on the village board. That changed slowly, then all at once. Today, the Orland Fire Protection District is one of the most credentialed fire-rescue agencies on the planet.
The Orland Rural Fire Department was formally organized in 1935, with charter members who read like a roll call of the township's founding families: Fred Lowden, Bob Gilmore Sr., John Leonard, George Schonauer Sr., Walter Stickler, and Mel Haigh. John Leonard served as first president; Fred Lowden as first secretary. Their first apparatus — a 1935 International truck — was exactly the kind of machine you'd expect: basic, reliable, and purchased on the thinnest of budgets.
The formal Orland Fire Protection District came into legal existence after voters approved a referendum in 1968. The district was officially created in 1969, separating fire protection from village government and establishing independent taxing authority. The architect of that transition was Chief Arthur Granat Sr., who had been elected chief in 1957 and would go on to serve 29 years — the longest tenure of any OFPD chief, before or since. Under Granat, the department hired its first full-time employee in 1973 and set the course for professional operations that continue today.
“Ninety-five percent of transported patients rate their OFPD paramedics as ‘excellent.’ That number is not an accident. It is the product of ninety years of institutional commitment to this community.”
OFPD operational data, FY2024| Station | Address | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| HQ / Sta. 1 | 9790 W. 151st Street | District Headquarters |
| Station 2 | 15100 S. 80th Avenue | |
| Station 3 | 15101 Wolf Road | |
| Station 4 | 16515 S. 94th Avenue | Serves Orland Hills |
| Station 5 | 8851 W. 143rd Street | |
| Station 6 | 17640 Wolf Road |
Sources: OFPD official history; Orland Park centennial records; CFAI/CPSE accreditation registry; ISO rating data; FY2025 budget documents.
The village was incorporated May 31, 1892, with a village constable as its first law enforcement presence. For the better part of seven decades, policing in Orland Park looked much like policing everywhere in the suburban ring — modest, local, and personal. The suburban explosion of the 1960s and 1970s changed everything, forcing the department to grow from a handful of officers into a full municipal police agency with specialized divisions, modern technology, and professional training standards.
But no event defines the department's modern identity more than a single day — March 30, 1981 — when a young Secret Service agent named Timothy McCarthy threw himself in front of an assassin's bullet to save the life of President Ronald Reagan. McCarthy survived. He eventually left federal service and came home. In May 1994, he became Orland Park's police chief. He would hold that office for 26 years.
“On March 30, 1981, Timothy McCarthy stepped between John Hinckley Jr.'s bullet and the President of the United States. He took the shot to the chest. He survived. He became a police chief. And in October 2023, the building where his officers work every day was named in his honor — the Timothy J. McCarthy Public Safety Building.”
Orland Park Record — confirmed biographical record2025 Racial Discrimination Lawsuit — William Sanchez
In March 2024, William Sanchez, a 20-year OPPD veteran, was fired. He subsequently filed a racial discrimination lawsuit alleging a discriminatory pattern in promotions: that one white officer was promoted despite a documented blackface photograph and racist remarks, and that another was hired despite comments referencing lynching.
The lawsuit was settled in December 2025 for $524,000 total — $225,000 in compensatory damages and $299,000 in back pay. Sanchez was reinstated to the department. The settlement does not require an admission of wrongdoing, but the dollar amount and reinstatement terms speak for themselves.
Ken Kovac — First Amendment / Facebook Parody Lawsuit
A lawsuit filed by Ken Kovac alleged a First Amendment violation by OPPD, stemming from an arrest connected to a Facebook page that parodied an OPPD Deputy Chief. The case raised substantive constitutional questions about the limits of police action in response to satirical public speech targeting law enforcement officers.
August 2025 — Temporary Restraining Order Against Former Mayor Pekau
Cook County Circuit Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order against former Mayor Keith Pekau in August 2025 for releasing confidential village documents — including materials connected to police department operations. The TRO was part of a broader pattern of legal conflict between the former mayor and the village government following Pekau's 2025 election loss.
Sources: OPPD official records; Chicago Tribune; Daily Southtown; federal and Cook County court filings; Village Board minutes 2022, 2025.
It began with women who believed a community without a library was a community only half-alive. In 1937, the Orland Park Women's Club made founding a public library their central project. They secured WPA Illinois State Library Extension funding. Neighbor Roy Loebe donated the Purple Candle Building rent-free to house the collection. Volunteers stocked the shelves. It was the village taking care of itself — no government mandate, no bureaucracy. Just a community deciding what it needed and building it.
By 1941 the Village Board had formalized what those women built, passing an ordinance establishing a free public library. By 1943 a tax levy referendum passed. By 1970 the books had outgrown the Purple Candle — records were stacked in a bathtub. By 2004 the library had a 93,000-square-foot home at 14921 Ravinia Avenue, complete with architectural awards. The Women's Club would have been proud.
“By 1970, the original library was so full that records were literally stacked in a bathtub. That is what a community that loves its library looks like.”
Orland Park Library institutional historyOctober 4, 2013: Suburban mother Megan Fox witnessed a man viewing pornography on a computer in the Adult Computer Area of the library. She began demanding the library install internet content filters on all adult computers.
February 2014: The Library Board voted 5–2 to maintain its existing policy, allowing adults to view any legal content on adult computers — a decision grounded in First Amendment principles and consistent with American Library Association standards and federal court precedent.
Fox and blogger Kevin DuJan responded with an extensive campaign of FOIA requests and litigation against the library. Library Spokeswoman Bridget Bittman resigned in July 2015 after a defamation lawsuit was filed against her. In March 2015, the library paid a $55,000 settlement in related litigation.
Separately, audit concerns arose over $4,350 spent on video productions commissioned by Bittman and later erased from library records — raising transparency questions that implicated former Director Mary K. Weimar, who resigned in 2014–2015.
A federal judge ultimately ruled that Fox and DuJan's conduct — which the court described as “mean-spirited” — did not violate the law, and dismissed the defamation suit. The controversy attracted national media coverage and became a recurring reference point in debates over public library internet policy across the country.
Sources: Daily Southtown; Chicago Tribune; Orland Park Library Board minutes 2013–2016; federal court filings; ALA policy documents; library official history.
Public works is the department everyone notices when it fails and nobody thinks about when it works. In Orland Park, it works — most of the time, at enormous cost, through infrastructure built across five different decades and now in the middle of a $100 million-plus modernization effort. The department is responsible for everything under your feet and above your head: water mains, sewer lines, storm drains, streets, sidewalks, curbs, potholes, traffic signals, street lights, and bike paths.
The village's most consequential utility decision came in 1985, when Orland Park abandoned well water entirely and joined the Oak Lawn Regional Water System — gaining access to Lake Michigan water and eliminating the need for home water softeners overnight. That was the right call. The infrastructure that enables it is now more than 40 years old, and the village is in the middle of a $300 million response.
“The water infrastructure serving Orland Park is more than 40 years old. Spur 1 — a single 36-inch pipe — is the only thing standing between Orland Park and a water emergency. A $300 million project is underway to fix that. Orland Park's share alone: $75 million.”
Orland Park Public Works infrastructure reviewA public works employee reported to Village Manager Joseph La Margo that two vendors — Mid-America Tree of Mokena and GroundsKeeper Landscape Care LLC — had been repeatedly coming in as the lowest bidder on public works contracts by exactly $25. The pattern was too precise to be coincidence.
The irregularity attracted immediate scrutiny because GroundsKeeper Landscape Care LLC was owned by then-Mayor Keith Pekau. Pekau sold the business in February 2019 — after the complaint had already been filed.
The village retained Jones Day law firm to investigate. After four months, Jones Day found no direct evidence of wrongdoing but recommended continued investigation and called for fixing what it described as the village's “flawed bidding, purchasing and ethics policies.” A follow-up “Mitchell report” was also commissioned.
The $25 pattern was never explained. The mayor who owned one of the two vendors sold his business mid-investigation. The policies Jones Day flagged as flawed were subsequently revised.
Sources: Orland Park village reports; Jones Day investigation summary; Daily Southtown 2018–2019; Village Manager La Margo correspondence; Village Board minutes.
The organizational roots of business advocacy in Orland Park reach back to 1916 — when the predecessor Southwest Towns Chamber of Commerce was formed to coordinate commerce across the southwest suburban townships. That body, documented through 1939, played a direct role in supporting the construction of Southwest Highway in the late 1920s, one of the defining infrastructure investments that shaped the region's commercial future.
The Orland Park Area Chamber of Commerce was formally established in 1958 as a separate not-for-profit corporation, launching with fewer than 12 member businesses. What followed was seven decades of steady, unglamorous organizational work: ribbon cuttings, networking luncheons, golf outings, civic engagement, and the quiet connective tissue of a business community growing together. Today OPACC has more than 400 member businesses and organizations — and its office is housed in a 109-year-old one-room schoolhouse.
Sources: OPACC official history and website; Southwest Towns Chamber records; Orland Park centennial publications; Daily Southtown archives.
Orland Park incorporated on May 31, 1892 — a date that appears on the village seal and anchors this entire history. For 91 years, the village operated under the old aldermanic system of government. On November 5, 1983, voters chose something different: a council-manager form of government, in which an elected village board sets policy and an appointed professional manager runs day-to-day operations.
That structure was designed to insulate administration from political interference. The history of the village manager position — and the legal conflicts it has generated — suggests the wall between politics and administration is thinner than the architects of the 1983 referendum may have hoped.
| Case | Year | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| La Margo v. Village Village manager vs. village; employment dispute with Mayor Pekau |
2020 | Settled; La Margo paid village $30,000; no admission |
| Sanchez v. Village 20-year OPPD veteran; racial discrimination in promotions |
2025 | $524,000 ($225K compensatory + $299K back pay); Sanchez reinstated |
| Kovac v. Village First Amendment; Facebook parody of OPPD deputy chief |
2025 | Pending |
| Village v. Pekau Former mayor released confidential village documents post-election |
2025 | Cook County Circuit Court issued TRO against Pekau, August 2025 |
Sources: Village of Orland Park official records; FY2025/2026 budget documents; Cook County Circuit Court filings; Village Board minutes; Daily Southtown 2017–2025.