Carol Elizabeth Burgess (nee Burke), 78, of Fox Lake, unexpectedly passed away Sunday, October 19th, 2025, at Northwestern McHenry Hospital.  She was born June 7th, 1947, in Chicago, to the late John (my Papa) and Vera (nee McKillip - my Gramma) Burke.  I've been dragging my feet on writing her obituary, because I just can't believe this is all really happening, and summing my mother's life up into a few meager paragraphs, not only seems impossible, but it also adds a finality that I just don't want to admit to… she wasn't supposed to leave me this way, we had so many plans set in motion for the next decade, so I'm going to break with the usual obit format, and give a no holds barred history of the legacy she left on this world.

Survivors include her son, John Burgess (me); her siblings, Judith Rochlitz (nee Burke) and Mardell Burns (nee Burke), along with their spouses, children, grand & great-grandchildren, which brings me to a regret I now have to live with for the rest of my life… years ago, my mother purchased her grave plot in Cary, IL at Windridge Memorial Park & Sanctuary, and had engraved on her headstone: "Loving Wife" - "Loving Mother" - "Loving Grandmother" - (NO PRESSURE MOM) - and because I've waited till later in life to start a family with kids of my own, I feel like I robbed her of being a grandmother.  It's a tough pill to swallow, but my mother and I had a very unique relationship that I hope to one day have with children of my own… we were mother and son, best friends, and extremely successful business partners, but I know in my heart she would have given all that success up in the blink of an eye to hold a grandchild.  But that's enough about guilt for now, let's talk about something we all strive both for and from our parents, and that's pride.  Most people know where my mother ended up, and the principles she lived by showing enough compassion and tolerance to all God's creatures (human & animal alike), that she could seriously give Mother friggin' Teresa a run for her money, but to truly understand who she was… you also need to know how it all began.

Raised in a a cold water flat in Chicago with rudimentary features that lacked a hot water supply, to get warm water, they would heat pots on a stove and pour it into a tub to take baths.  When her parents moved the family out to the suburbs of Carpentersville, IL in 1956, she mistakenly thought they were suddenly rich because they had both hot and cold running water.  The house was small, but the home was filled with love, but love and encouragement are two different things.  Her parents were not supportive in the way that she always was to me… instead of telling her to, "Go for it," her interests and dreams were more often met with pessimism and doubt telling her that she'd fail, or that the risks were too great.  I like to think they were just trying to protect her, and thankfully this attitude did nothing do discourage her, if fact, and maybe this is where I get it from, all comments like that did was embolden her.  When she formed her first business and put my parent's home up as collateral, they said, "Don't do that, you'll lose the house."  She replied, "We don't own the house, the bank does."  We'll get back to my mother becoming an entrepreneur more later… first there are a few things from her teens & twenties, long before my arrival on the scene, that deserve center stage.

In 1965, she graduated from Dundee High School.  Her first job was waiting tables at the local Woolworth's Five & Dime, to which her mother was the manger, an experience that would put a strain on their relationship from time-to-time, but also instilled the hard work ethic that she carried throughout the rest of her life, right up until the day she died.  While training, a man upset with her service once asked to speak to the manager.  When she turned and called out, "Momma," the irate man took one look at my grandmother's face, and immediately walked out of the store.  Smart move on his part, and while those early days certainly had their ups & downs, they also planted the seeds of her experience in the hospitality industry that would lead to her one day owning multiple successful bars and restaurants of her own.

My mother was also a genetic lottery winner, and while she never saw it, or ever truly felt comfortable in her own skin, she had the kind of movie star looks that opened a lot of doors.  It was both a blessing and a curse, especially later in life as she transitioned into a business woman, which she eventually learned to use to her advantage, a lesson she taught me to use as well saying, "If someone wants to write you off because of your age or looks, let them, they'll never see you coming, and by the time they do… it'll be too late!"

An early example of this presented itself in the 1960s when she was still in high school.  Not only was she easy on the eyes, she also loved to dance, and when a new TV show on WBKB (Channel 7) called, Record Hop, was in the works to be hosted by Jim Lounsbury, sort of a poor man's Dick Clark, but well-known in the Chicagoland area at the time.  She auditioned and was cast as one of the show's regulars to appear weekly and teach viewers the new and ever evolving dance craze routines of the 1960's.  She was also known for taking cabs to school all the time, not because she felt riding the bus was beneath her, she was just always running late.  If she was short on cash, my Papa would slip her some to help cover the cost… he was never supportive of her interests in dancing and modeling as opportunities arose, but I think that was out of fear when he saw how people looked at her, in his mind, and likely more often true than not, with malicious intent.  Had he known that always being late for school made her a fixture in detention hall after school, he probably would have told her to get her ass out of bed and ride the bus!  I've always pictured her in my mind as Molly Ringwald's character in John Hughes' The Breakfast Club , a little Irish princess surrounded by troublemakers and future criminals.

As my mom left her teenage years in the rearview mirror, she embarked on brief modeling career that would eventually lead her to becoming a Playboy Bunny at the famed Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, WI.  I like to joke that if it wasn't for Hugh Hefner, I wouldn't be alive, as this is where she would meet and fall in love with my father, Robert Michael Burgess, a bartender at the club, who's advances she repeatedly refused, because while attracted to him, her sixth sense was telling her that he was more akin to The Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," than her beloved Beatles' "All You Need Is Love."  Luckily, and unbeknownst to him at the time, she had a dating rule, or maybe more of a guideline, that if a guy had the courage to ask her out more than three times, she would go out on one date with the gentleman to see if there was any kind of spark.  Well to her surprise, and the dismay of her parents, the spark led to fire… surprised by her parent's reservations, she said, "Dad how can you not like him?  He reminds me so much of you."  To which he replied, "I never said I didn't like him, it's seeing too much of myself in him that's the problem."

My Irish family has a history of demons when it comes to drinking and being the life of the party, but your parents forbidding you to see someone just makes things hotter… they may as well have tossed gasoline on the fire!  Which would eventually lead to the birth of me, John Robert Burgess, my name destined to be an unfortunate synonym for restrooms, as both my mom & dad's fathers were named, John.  They didn't continue to work at The Playboy Club for long after I was born, but while there, my mom was continuing to hone her skillset in the hospitality industry, winning Bunny of the Year - 1st Runner Up in 1973, meeting scores of celebrities ranging from a young Michael Jackson, when he was still singing "ABC," to Sonny & Cher when they both still meant what they said while singing, "I Got You Babe."

I too, with my Hollywood career endeavors, have met and worked with many celebrities, but even if I were to someday work with the likes of Jack Nicholson or Tom Hanks, nothing could ever top my favorite celebrity encounter mom experienced during her Playboy Bunny tenure.  Due to her honesty, virtue, and unwavering character, she was often picked to be the hospitality host to the most prestigious VIPS, and in 1972, Sammy Davis Jr. arrived with an entourage to the club.  Her Bunny name was Joey, because someone else already had Carol when mom started working at the club.  She described Sammy as one of the most humble and soft spoken human beings, not just celebrities she had ever met, and was shocked when after he and his crew had wrapped up their meal and given her a huge tip, he gently took her hand, thanked her and said, "Joey, would like to join us to see The Godfather?" The film was in theaters at the time, but difficult for him to see in public, so a local outfit had set up a special private screening for him and his guests to watch together.  Mom being mom, politely thanked him and declined… to which, when I was old enough to fully understand the moment said, "YOU DID WHAT???"  So while mom was making bank, benefiting from the somewhat celebrity status Bunny's received in those days, she quit shortly after my birth in 1975.

While she modeled, and there are many almost golden age of Hollywood style photos of her wearing Bunny outfits, she never posed nude, or agreed to be a Playmate in the magazine - thank God!  Growing up, I got in more than my fair share of fights with other kids saying inappropriate things about my momma, the first of which was my age and height, so I punched him in the face and he ran home crying to his momma… a few days later, it happened again, this time with a kid four years older, and about a foot taller.  I punched him in the face too, he smiled, then popped me back twice as hard, and I went home crying to momma learning the valuable lesson that wasn't going to work all the time.

With both my parents now working odd jobs to make ends meet, my dad started driving a Mack Truck delivering building materials on mostly local hauls so he could come home on a nightly basis, and my mom quickly realized they could be making three times as much money if they owned their own semi-trailer truck, so she formed her first company, RCJ Trucking, Inc. (Robert Carol John).  To buy the truck, which terrified my father, and outraged her parents, they put their home up as collateral, often joking that the truck cost more than the house.  Not only were they successful, they soon purchased another, and now had a two truck operation.

As their business flourished, it was always my dad's dream of owning his own bar, a dream that my mom would soon make become a reality, because in 1985, she brokered a deal selling their trucks to purchase, Jimmy's Tavern, in Fox Lake, IL.  Unfortunately, years later it would also lead to the downfall of their marriage & partnership, not everyone should own a bar… especially if you're an alcoholic.  My dad's dream coming true, would eventually destroy everything else in his life he truly cared about, yet for a time, they were very successful renaming the establishment, Tugboats Tavern, with both business and family times being good - but as the saying goes, "...all good things come to an end."

In 1993, when I graduated high school, a dangerous game of chicken began between my parents.  Taking scores of bad advice, from myself included, we all believed if she threatened divorce, he would realize his family was more important than the bottle, but while we were praying he'd wake up, I don't think he ever believed she'd actually leave.  Suddenly, as I was preparing to leave for college, my parents were sleeping in different rooms and the separation was actually happening… by this point I had lost all respect for my father, how could booze be more important than your wife & son?  But as my father was often heard saying, "Booze goes in, brains go out."

Our personal demons are hard to escape, especially addictions forged by life experiences like Vietnam, and a genetic predisposition to substance abuse, something I remind myself of every time I look in the mirror, because it wasn't until he was gone that I started to realize how much I'm like him, fortunately, I'm a lot like mom too.  These were the demons my Papa immediately recognized in my father upon their first meeting, demons that brought turmoil to his own marriage and relationship with his daughters.  So when neither side blinked from this emotional & financial game of chicken, their divorce was officially on the books, and now my family was in shambles.  Mom still loved him, that was never the problem, so she told her lawyer she didn't want anything, he could have it all, she was heart-broken, her world was crumbling, and owning the bar was his dream not hers, and she didn't want to take that away from him… so after trying to talk some sense into her, the lawyer got up, came around his desk and said, "I wanna shake your hand, I've never met anyone like you."

Then he kicked her out of his office telling her that, "She didn't need a lawyer, she needed a shrink!"  After a long heart-to-heart with her best friend, whom I affectionately call Aunt Beth, that had referred her to this attorney in the first place, as he had represented Beth during her divorce, mom reluctantly relented agreeing to take the house, along with a monthly payment so my father could buy out her share of the business over time.  So while I went off to start college, mom went to work for Motorola, and my pops began a seven year downward spiral that ran both the business and his body into the ground.  Without my mom, Tugboats crumbled like a house of cards, and while I suppose there's some solace to the fact that seven years later, he finally woke up, they were talking / dating again, and it looked as if the impossible was about to happen with my family once again becoming whole.  It was just not meant to be, too much damage had been done, and my father passed peacefully of a heart attack soon after, which was devastating, but at least they had mended bridges, and fortunately, so had we, as the last time I spoke to my father was on my 25th birthday during my first semester of grad school at the University of Southern California.  It was a cordial and loving conversation, which I'm so thankful for, because a month later mom called saying, "Please come home, it's bad… you're father passed away last night."

The day we put my father six feet under, mom, my dad's brother, and myself were all back at the bar having a drink to my old man, and the subject came up about what my plans were for the tavern.  The last thing I wanted to do was quit school, and I had just found out that since their breakup, my father had run the business hundreds of thousands of dollars into the ground.  I couldn't have sold the property to cover all the debt he had racked up since mom's departure, he had put liens on everything just to keep the business afloat and maintain an appearance of success.  The only saving grace, a good portion of that debt was owed to my mom in the form of those monthly payments to buy her out.

I said, "Are you happy working at Motorola?"  To which I already knew the answer was an emphatic, "NO!"  Then proceeded with an idea, a pitch if you will… I had already taken two in-completes knowing that I would likely not be returning to school until after the summer, and made a proposal to my momma… with my business degree, our combined experience in the hospitality industry (I had bartended at TGI Friday's for two years before starting grad school), me throwing parties for the last decade, and our insider knowledge of the area being lifers in not just Fox Lake, but The Chain O' Lakes as a whole, what if we partnered up 50/50, sink everything we have into a phase one of renovations, because while I had lots of ideas, I wasn't willing to give up my dream of filmmaking to run this hole in the wall bar.  I had already sacrificed too much to get there, and getting into USC was the last thing he knew I accomplished.  She smiled and said, "I'm listening."  Later on her sister, my Aunt Mardy, told me that while in the womb my mother would rub her belly and say, "This is my college graduate, and together we're going to conquer the world."  Well, in our own way, we did, and pay attention, because sometimes inception can be a hard thing to pin point, but it is without question that this is the moment everything we accomplished together over the last 25 years… was born.

I continued with, "While I don't know what to call it yet, you're 100% Irish, making me 50% Irish, and given the fact that at one time Fox Lake was in the Guinness Book Of World Records for most bars per capita, it absolutely flabbergasted me (I love it when I can properly & appropriately use that word in a sentence) that the town has never featured an Irish pub, so if nothing else, at least we'll be busy one day a year."  Little did we know the tidal wave that seed had just planted.  Now the really big question - what to call it?  Most people think, based on our personalities, that it was my idea, but while my uncle and I were spitballing generic names that had been used hundreds of times before: Shamrocks, Shenanigans, etc. - my momma nonchalantly suggests… "Well, we could always take a cue from your grandfather and call it Pug Mahones."  I paused, and said… "Where you going?  We're going to Pugs, PMs, Mahoney's," etc. - I love it, it's original, doesn't remind of another Irish bar or franchise, it's perfect - that's it."  With my mom now staring at me wide-eyed & openmouthed, she said, "I was kidding, we can't call it that."  "Why not?"  "Don't you remember why Papa said it all the time?"  Off my head shake, "No."  She said, "It means KISS MY ASS in Gaelic!"  My eyes lit up, and as my Uncle John erupted into laughter… I said, "Now I love it even more!"

Shortly after we filed the necessary paper work, Pug Mahones, Inc., had gone from concept to reality.  I then trademarked the name and purchased the url: www.pugmahones.com.  All that was left was securing the business and liquor licenses with both the state and the Village of Fox Lake.  Now for those of you close to my mom, you know that lying, even bluffing in poker, was not a skillset that existed in her tiny frame.  My father would often joke, "Not robbing a bank with you… knowing that, "WE DID IT," would be the first words out of her mouth.  So being right across from the high school, we decided to keep it secret until all the paperwork had been processed, and the licenses were official to spill the beans, so-to-speak.  We were just praying that no one in the Village office was hardcore Irish, and to our initial dismay, the Village Clerk issuing licenses at the time had last name: Ward (very Irish).  Luckily, she didn't know what it meant, but loved it, and for a split second, I thought the jig was up when she looked right at my mother and said, "It's so unique and Irish sounding, is it a family thing?"  Me standing next to mom with bated breath, suddenly let out a sigh of relief, when she looked back with a Cheshire cat smile, and said, "My father used to say it… all the time."

With signed licenses and construction permits now in hand, we stayed closed for two months to get through the first phase of the redesign, knocking out walls to create a giant horseshoe bar, raising the ceilings, painting the walls a deep hunter green, etc. - and we never felt more love or support when all my high school besties, my brothers-from-other-mothers, to whom they loved as a second mom, and vice-versa, all came out of the woodwork to help get us through that first step of renovations beginning the transformation from, Tugboats Tavern, into what would eventually become: Pug Mahones Irish Pub & Grill.  While I was away at college, most had entered the trades, becoming carpenters, electricians, pavers, etc. - I'm eternally grateful for their love, support, and contributions during one of the most difficult times in our lives… it sped up the incremental transformation that took years to reach the Pugs everyone knows today.

I remember back then, all the naysayers telling us, "No one will ever call this place, Pug Mahones," second guessing every decision made, right down to painting the ceilings black, and what we thought would take 5 years to climb out of the deficit we inherited, was accomplished in less than two, shocking just about everyone in the community, including ourselves.  Not only had we gone from red to black financially, our popularity was snowballing.  Within two years, continuing to invest all profits into the next phase of renovations, even though the place was constantly under construction, we not only became the most popular bar in Fox Lake, we had also broken into the top ten most successful bars in Lake County.  A feat that mom and I never imagined possible, and had someone predicted it the night we decided to partner up and create Pug Mahones, Inc. - we both would have said, "You're nuts!"  Naysayers quickly became copycats, we'd walk into other bars and see they had painted their ceilings black, and shake our heads, thinking it's not the color of the ceiling or walls that's the secret to our success, but keep trying!  Then a few years in, I was home on a break from school, and a new customer, a quiet and observant gentleman, watched me blow into town as I implemented changes that mom and I had decided on together months before, we always made every business decision together, and while we didn't always agree 100%, we always found a compromise to hopefully achieve both our goals for the next big step.  Some things we were both good at, and the rest, where she struggled, I shined, and vice-versa, making us the perfect partnership, with absolute trust.

It's easy to forget when you're the owner, or even staff working behind the bar, it's a lot like being on stage, with all the patrons watching your every move.  After I left, he politely called her over and said, "You know everyone is trying to figure this place out, why it's so successful, and how did it happen so quickly," followed by, "…and I just figured it out."  Mom said, "Oh yeah, and what might that be?"  Assuming his guess would be as ludicrous as every other theory we heard come down the speculation pipeline, he continued… "Now that I've seen it with my own eyes, it's obvious.  It's not this place, it's you and your son.  I watched the two of you interact several times today, and realized he's the flash, most of these ideas came from his brain, he comes home from school, sets things motion, and when he leaves, you're the glue, the rock at the center of it all, that holds the whole operation together.  It's the perfect partnership, and it's that collaboration no one can copy or recreate."  Mom looked at him and said, "I'm not going to confirm or deny your hypothesis, but don't tell anybody."

As things progressed, we built up an extensive staff over the years of bartenders, servers, cooks, bouncers, DJs, etc. - that has a real family feel to it, sort of like the mafia, with everyone affectionately referring to my mother as "Momma Carol," and once you're in, as long as you gave proper notice when quitting, or didn't get fired, you never truly leave the Pug's family.  That's why mom's passing has shaken an entire community, of both current and former staff, as well as loyal patrons spanning the last three decades, to its very core.

In 2010, mom and I branched out into a different area of the hospitality industry, founding Principle Entertainment, LLC, choosing to name our production company after my award winning, USC graduate thesis film, The Powder Puff Principle , a teen angst comedy starring: Clint Howard, Richard Gilliland, Kevin Kilner, Art Lafleur, and Linda Blair.  It was the $10,000 Grand Prize Winner of Haydenfilms On-line Film Festival, and received Accolade Awards for Excellence in both Production & Direction, as well as a write up in American Cinematographer and MovieMaker Magazine .  A year later, we were Co-Executive Producers on my first feature length film, a romantic comedy titled, One Small Hitch, with a cast featuring: Shane McRae, Aubrey Dollar, Robert Belushi, Rebecca Spence, Ron Dean, Heidi Johanningmeier, and Daniel J. Travanti.

It premiered on Valentine's Day, 2015 in the US, and won 72 awards on the festival circuit, including: "Best Picture Comedy" at Cinequest, "Best Picture Comedy" at the California Independent Film Festival, "Best Picture Comedy" at the Sedona International Film Festival, "Best Feature Film" at the Omaha Film Festival, "Best Screenplay" at the Los Angeles Comedy Film Festival, "Best Ensemble Cast" at the Chicago Comedy Film Festival, "Best Director" at the Stony Brook Film Festival, "Best Director" at the Laugh Or Die Comedy Festival, "Rising Star" at the Naples International Film Festival, the "Audience Award" at the Durango Film Festival, the "Audience Award" at the Real To Reel Film Festival, and the "Audience Award" at the Bahamas International Film Festival, just to name a few.

Mom was incredibly proud of our accomplishment, she even pulled double-duty as the production's Payroll Administrator during principal photography, making sure the cost of hiring a payroll company would end up on the screen.  We have two more polished screenplays ready to go, but world-wide pandemics, momma's health, and industry-wide Hollywood strikes, kept delaying follow up efforts with our next production.  Future projects we had slated for completion over the next few years, included making two more independent films in Illinois.  Everything was on track to begin filming the first of the two in October 2026, but now those plans are up in the air.

BARTONVILLE 1888 - a supernatural thriller / horror / dark comedy, largely based on mom's personal experiences and spiritual beliefs, albeit with a high-concept Hollywood spin, deeply saddens me now that she'Il never get to see the film, but I am also eternally grateful that she got to read it before passing, and even more so, elated that she absolutely loved it.  So while her name won't appear in the credits as an Executive Producer this time around, whenever I do complete the film, the credits will simply and prominently say: "For Mom." - much like the credits read: "Thanks Mom!" - under a picture of the usual suspects outside the principal's office in my USC short film, to which I played one of the characters.  The second screenplay, currently titled, The Catch , an unlikely buddy comedy that pairs uptight society girl, Holly Claire, with foul-mouthed hotel maid, Parker Bailey, taking them on a hilarious, crazy train adventure throughout the City of Chicago to lift a curse.  On this one, the end credits will begin with… "Dedicated to the loving memory of Carol Burgess."

With One Small Hitch now completed and racking up awards on the festival circuit, it was time for mom and I to turn our attention back to our interests in the bar & restaurant side of the hospitality industry.  Pugs had seemingly been under construction in one form or another from that day we had taken it over, even going so far as to move the walls in the pool room out to create extra space for new bathrooms, six 8' long family style booths, and 6 video gambling machines.  No one would argue that Pug Mahones was king of the mountain when it came to bars in Fox Lake, even our biggest critics had to concede the point, or they'd sound like idiots.

It would warm our hearts to hear Pugs referred to as "The Gold Mine" or "The Cheers Bar" (my personal fave) - but there was still one thing missing… to truly be crowned "The King" of anything it has to be constant, not just nine months out of the year, and when summer rolled around, while we stayed busy, it was "Cricketville" compared to our dominance during the cooler months of the year.  So in 2015, we quietly began buying up all the property around us starting with the lot immediately adjacent to Pugs and began the slow and sometimes arduous steps of creating The Playground, LLC - d.b.a - The Playground Resort - www.theplaygroundresort.com.

Our goal was never to dominate the summers too, mind you, just stay strong all year long, but with the combined draw of both establishments working in tandem, what used to be our slowest months of the year, would soon become the most successful season of each calendar year moving forward.  I feel it's important to note that all of this was accomplished utilizing the best type of advertising there is… none at all, or more commonly known as: WORD-OF-MOUTH.  We didn't feel traditional advertising was appropriate until all the renovations and construction at both locations was 100% finished, which will finally have been achieved by the end of this year… better late than never I suppose.  I just wish mom had lived long enough to see the next big phase also go from inception to reality, but sometimes life has other plans.

What's the next big phase you ask?  In 2017, when we knew The Playground was soon to become a reality, we quietly started looking for property on the water that we could install piers and shuttle people back-and-forth from their boats to the bars and then back again, but our options were limited, not only were very few lakefront properties for sale at the time, only a fraction of the ones on the market were zoned commercial, but there was one that was for sale in the subdivision directly behind us on Lippincott Point for $500,000, zoned for both that would enable us to install a stick pier with about a half-dozen or so boat slips on each side.

It wasn't ideal, was going to piss of the neighbors something fierce, but with all the legal boxes checked & double checked, there wouldn't have been a thing anybody could do about it.  This was going to be the final move in a long game of chess to put Pug Mahones Irish Pub & Grill and The Playground Resort on the water… CHECKMATE (or so I thought).  The offer was prepared, ready to be submitted the next day, and it matched the seller's asking price so we could get through escrow as quickly as possible before people started asking too many questions. Then mom woke up the next morning and said, "You didn't submit the offer yet, did you?" "Not yet, why?" She continued with… "I want you wait, I had a dream last night that we owned the property on the other side of Chain O' Lakes Marina, and we didn't just have a few piers, I saw an inlet filled with a hundred slips, another tiki bar surrounded by decks, with more volleyball courts and picnic tables scattered all over the place."  I replied, "Last I looked that property was listed at 2.5 million dollars… we can't afford that."  She smiled with a sparkle in her eyes and said, "Yeah, but that was before the housing market crashed, and no one's bought it yet, what I saw last night was't just a dream, it was a vision that we're about to make the wrong move.  I want you to hold off on submitting that offer and quietly look into the property over there, if someone buys the other lot in the mean time, and this doesn't pan out, we'll find another one, but I'm telling you… my dream was a message from the other side that we're meant to own that property. "  As she walked away, I mumbled under my breath something like, "Great, you get a message from the astral plane, and now I have to do all the real work here on planet Earth!"

Well, momma gets what momma wants, so I got to work using my internet ninja skills and soon discovered the property was actually made up of four different parcels, three located in Fox Lake, and one in Ingleside, that combined made up an 18 acre estate.   There were two houses on the Fox Lake side that were old and in need of extensive renovations or bulldozing to build new starting fresh with a clean slate.  None of that mattered much to us though, as it was the property we were interested in, not dream homes on the water.  So with all the current tax assessments and property values now at my fingertips, following standard BUSINESS 101 tactics of starting low and working your way up, we put in a low ball offer of $450,000, to which they quickly rejected, and even went so far as conveying to us through their real estate agent that they were offended by the offer.  Which I not only expected, but was also prepared for, so I set up a meeting with the owners, George & Bonnie, and their real estate agent.

I showed them the binder filled all the information I had gathered justifying the figures, also pointing out that about half the estate was made up of protected cattails, so that portion of the land was essentially unusable, and while true, unbeknownst to them at the time, to us that didn't matter.  Our plans were to redesign the parcels into a resort, so mom and I agreed there was plenty of buildable land to play with, and all the cattails did was add to the natural beauty of the estate.  I also showed them the previous offer I had prepared for the parcel on Lippincott Point, and said, "I'm going to leave this binder with all my research for you to thoroughly go through and verify the information, and when I get home, I'll submit a final take-it-or leave offer of $500,000 to your agent, which was all we could afford, that would expire in three days.  If we didn't hear back before the offer expired, we would be moving forward on the other .5 acre lot, and we wished them the best hoping they would eventually get the kind of offer they were hoping for before the housing market crashed.

For the next three days, mom repeatedly asked if I had heard back from their agent like a little kid asking, "Are we there yet?" - "Are we there yet?" - over-and-over-and-over again, and then, to my shock and utter amazement, during the evening hours of the third day, my cell began to ring and it was their agent calling to say they were accepting our offer.  Mom was staring at me waiting for some kind of indication, and when I smiled and gave her a thumbs up signal, she jumped up and down like a little kid on Christmas morning, and then smiled with that sparkle in her eyes and said, "I told you so." - followed by one of the ten principles she live by: OPEN-MINDEDNESS - "God knows what you need, and how to supply it.  Get out of his way so he can, and quit insisting it be your way."  I'm listing all ten on her memorial card.

Sadly, life has a way of throwing curve balls into plans, regardless of whether they are laid out by humans or "The Almighty" himself… we purchased the estate in 2018, but then the world-wide pandemic, mom's open-heart surgery, and industry wide strikes in Hollywood continuously delayed or derailed every effort to move forward with my next film and our plans for the new resort.  It greatly saddens me that she will not be with me to take these next steps, and see that sparkle in her eyes when I finish the film inspired by her life, nor the look of pride when the estate is redesigned into her vision.  We were finally ready to start phase one in the spring of 2026, and now I am forced to take these steps alone, without my business partner, my best friend, my rock.

The mere thought of moving forward without her seems unbearable and brings me to tears, but then I hear her voice in my head, and with an open-mind, these last few weeks… 'I've been listening."  I'm putting together a retrospective film of my mother's life from start to finish, showcasing the unparalleled impact she had on everyone and everything around her, from cherished family, friends & pets, to total strangers & wildlife… mom's life may have ended on October 19th, 2025, but that's not where her story ends, so in addition to the film that I hope to one day show her grandchildren and say, "This is how amazing your grandmother was…" - I'll also be making an announcement after the screening regarding my additional plans to honor the memory of Carol Elizabeth Burgess.

The screening celebrating mom's life will be held at the Raue Center for the Arts, 26 N. Williams St., Crystal Lake, on Sunday, November 30th, with a pre-screening reception beginning at 1 p.m.

Burial will follow at Windridge Memorial Park & Sanctuary, Cary, IL.

A celebration of Carol's life will be held that Sunday from 5-9 p.m. at The Ellery, 406 W. Woodstock St., Crystal Lake.