By Mary Ann Armbruster
Deb and Tom Dougherty had just finished remodeling and rehabbing an 1894 farm house in, Princeville, when Tom came home one day and said, “My favorite house on Moss Avenue is for sale. Let’s go take a look.” Deb was feeling the winter ice and isolation in Princeville where they were 45 minutes away from everything and had recently struggled to free their automobile from a monstrous snow bank. “OK,” she said, “let’s go look.”
Now, three years later, they and Beamish, their Golden Retriever, are happily part of the Moss-Bradley neighborhood in a 126 year old home on Moss Avenue. For Tom, it’s a return to the family stomping grounds. His grandfather and father before him grew up here. As a boy, Tom lived on Cooper Street near the Bradley campus. Like his father, he attended St. Mark’s Grade School. He then went on to Spalding, and the University of Illinois. As an adult he rehabbed and lived in a house on Sherman Avenue. Deb says they feel a friendly connectedness and very much at home on Moss Avenue.
Deb’s grew up in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, graduated from U of I at Springfield and ISU. She has been a teacher for 25 years, and has been teaching History and Political Science at Illinois Central College for 18 years. Tom has had a long career in landscaping, beginning at the age of 16 working for Tie City on Farmington Road and is now the owner his own company, Good Earth Landscaping. In fact, he and Deb met 10 years ago this Spring at the Home Show in Peoria where she had gone with a friend to get ideas for the yard of her home in Washington. She says that Tom came to her home offering “mulch samples” though in reality he only had available one color of mulch.
Deb and Tom’s family includes Tom’s children, MJ, attending Columbia College in Chicago, William, a student at ICC, and Douglas, at home in Dwight, Illinois. Deb’s parents will soon become Moss Avenue residents themselves, becoming neighbors of their daughter and son-in-law.
Both Tom and Deb are active in the community with a special interest in history. Deb is currently President of the Peoria Historical Society, on the boards of Moss Bradley Residential Association and the Riverfront Museum, and a member of the Peoria Historical Preservation Commission. Tom is Vice President of the Moss-Bradley Revolving Fund, on the board of Keep Peoria Beautiful, volunteers as a Rotary Club member in a reading program at Trewyn School, and is Commodore of the Wharf Harbor Boat Club.
For the past six years, the Boat Club has become a special part of the Dougherty’s lives. Their love of history prompted the name of their boat, “Whiskey River” in honor of Peoria’s part in the brewing and liquor industries. Beamish (named after another industry product) joins them in his own life jacket as they set aside time to spend on the river with the many friends they’ve made through their boating hobby.
The Dougherty’s look forward to many busy and happy years in their Moss-Bradley home. Of the seemingly endless stream of maintenance and preservation activities necessary in an older home, Tom says, “We’re comfortable in steadily setting priorities and working toward our goals.”