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Monday, May 3, 2010 – Daily News – 5B 100-year-old fights to keep her farm from foreclosure MONEE, Ill. (MCT) — Let the bankers come with their foreclosure notices. Invite the building inspec- tors, too. At 100 years old, Agnes Albinger has lived on her 70-acre patch of farmland longer than most of those people have been alive. She has seen two World Wars come and go, survived the Depression — in part by subsisting on minnow stew — and raised 40 foster chil- dren. Now, she has become a rallying point in this rural community as she fights to keep her farm. "I'll never leave," she said one recent morning, as she stood with a walker on her sagging front porch, looking out over the fields she tended for most of her life. "I'd like to stay here until I die. This is my home. This was my land. I owned everything once. I worked awful hard on this place to make it what it was." As Albinger faces fore- closure on the property where she has lived since 1949, a coalition of friends and strangers has mobilized to help the woman everyone calls "Aunt Aggie." They have set up a website, saveagnesfarm.com, and volunteered to help with cleaning and repairs. On a recent Saturday, nearly 100 people showed up to clear brush and haul away rusting farm equipment. For many in Will Coun- ty, Ill., helping Albinger seems to be one of the few ways they can push back against the waves of fore- closures and layoffs that have swept the nation. "It goes further than what's happening to Agnes. This same thing is happen- ing all over. The value of American land is going down, homes are foreclos- ing. All these bankers think about is how much money they can make," said Jim Armstrong, 59, a friend who helped organize volun- teers. "They don't care that there's people who live on this land, people who love this land." As for Albinger, she says she'd rather die than leave. Her body is stooped with age and her hands are gnarled from decades of labor. But her mind seems sharp, and she fiercely defends her right to live independently. "Nursing homes are made for people who cannot help them- selves," said Albinger, who gets around with a walker and who has a live-in care- taker to help with the heav- ier chores. "I can cook my own meals. I can do my own dishes. I can do every- thing myself." But the question of her best interests remains com- plicated. The farm itself has fallen into disrepair. The yard is strewn with cast-off furniture, stacks of old trac- tor tires, two abandoned cars. The porch is piled with junk. The roof leaks and, until recently, Albinger kept her last chicken inside the house, to protect it from rac- coons. And yet, when asked what the place means to her, Albinger replied simply: "Home. Don't you have a home? Then you know what it means. It's security. Love. Peacefulness." The fifth of 11 siblings, Albinger was born in 1909 to Lithuanian immigrant farmers who cultivated land they rented near Kankakee. Ill, As a child, she attended class in a one-room school house, herded cows on the open prairie and helped plow fields with a team of horses. After a failed har- vest, the family moved to Chicago, where in 1940 Albinger married her hus- band Matthew. "A wonder- ful husband," she said. The couple couldn't have children of their own, so they became foster parents, taking in the orphaned and abandoned. They bought the farm in Monee in 1949. Back then, Albinger said the land was still "all prairies, all over. Wild ani- mals, everywhere you could see." But, a few years after they purchased the property, Matthew died of a heart ail- ment, she and family mem- bers said. "When my husband died, I had the four (foster) kids," Albinger recalled. "And the welfare let me keep them. They said they'll be company for me. As they grew up, I got more." Over the years, she raised 35 boys and 5 girls. In 1969, she was nominated for Cook County Foster Mother of the Year, accord- ing to news clippings. "She taught me every- thing _ how to live and sur- vive," said Michael Foll- mann, 54, who had bounced between more than a dozen "pretty brutal" foster homes by the time he came to Albinger's farm. "I was a hot-headed young boy at the age of 9 after all the stuff that happened to me. I didn't trust or believe in anybody. Then Agnes stepped into my life and taught me what state records was formed by Albinger's niece, Bridget M. Gruzdis, 47. In an e-mail response to questions from the Tribune, Gruzdis said Phoenix Hori- zon was created "for the sole purpose of land devel- opment and sale." Over six years, Albinger and Gruzdis took a series of mortgages, eventually bor- rowing $700,000, according to court and land records. Albinger says she might MCT photo 100-year-old Agnes Albinger stands on the porch of her 70-acre Monee, Ill. it was like to trust people again, to have faith in peo- ple." "In my opinion, she saved my life," said Greg Crosby, 54, who was 5 years old when his father abandoned him and five other siblings. The children had been malnourished and close to starvation, Crosby said, when Albinger took them in _ all six kids _ and made sure that the state did- n't split them up. "She taught us how to garden and things like that. She taught us to take care of animals. It meant everything." "I got my work ethic and, I think, my integrity through her," said Greg's brother, Ray Crosby, 57. "I still call her mom,'" said Richard Rose, 49, who was 6 years old when he came to the farm. "Who knows where I would be if it wasn't for her." Albinger introduced her foster children to the won- ders of farm life. She showed them how to feed baby chicks by dripping water off a fingertip, and how to use a hand crank to separate the milk from the cream. She kept all sorts of animals including, at times, two peacocks, a pony and a monkey. Life followed the rhythms of the seasons. They planted in the spring, cut hay in the summer and brought turnips into the cel- lar in the fall. As years passed, the children grew up and moved away. But Albinger kept the farm going and, even well into her 80s, still milked the cows by hand and kept a few head of beef cattle. "I used to overhaul my own tractors. I did all my own field work," she said. "I wasn't afraid of work." The farm had been free of debt, family members said, until 2000 when court and land records show that Albinger took a $100,000 mortgage on the property. Albinger then began to sign over parcels of land to a trust and also to a company called Phoenix Horizon, LLC, which according to have signed some papers but never knew about the mortgage debt. As recently as last week, a prospective buyer walked the property, which was put on the mar- ket a few years ago by Phoenix Horizon and is list- ed for $4.6 million, accord- ing to Ron Sales, a real estate agent in the area. But Albinger and family mem- bers said they didn't even know the farm was for sale. Monee Deputy Police Chief John Cipkar said that the department is investigat- ing and detectives are trying to determine if "Agnes was in full knowledge of what she was doing" when she signed. Gruzdis said in her e- mail that Albinger is suffer- ing from dementia _ an assertion that other family members dispute. She said that Albinger was involved in the formation of Phoenix Horizon and that the mort- gages were taken to cover Albinger's expenses and to "provide funds for Phoenix Horizon's business objec- tives." "Agnes absolutely did know," Gruzdis wrote. "Agnes was personally involved and signed all doc- uments with her own hand." HOME SERVICES DIRECTORY $7900 Runs Every Monday - Wednesday - Friday $8900 with a 3 month commitment Blinds Need Blinds? C A L L P A U L Paul Stubbs Blinds & Draperies www.nsbd.biz Lic.#906022 first month service to first 20 callers. 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