Obituary
John Allen McElwain IV.
Naples, Florida, 33-year resident, deceased December 17, 2010
He was born in 1932, the youngest of three, in the Hinsdale, Illinois residence of John Allen McElwain III. of Evanston, and Catherine Jane McKenna of Lagrange.
Having had polio as a teenager and being raised Christian Scientist, he still managed to follow a great athletic family tradition and eventually was able to captain both his Knox College tennis and wrestling teams.
In 1958, he married Mary Stevens, also of Hinsdale, where he moved back to after his military service and raised four children: Brian (Cathy) of Downers Grove, IL; Bob (Samantha) of Naples, FL; John Farley of Salt Lake City, UT; and Allison (Brendan) Schallert of Los Angeles, CA.
He was preceded in death by his elder brother, Edward (Helen) of Tucson, AZ and elder sister, Phyllis (Richard) Forward of Hinsdale, IL.
Allen was a visionary and had several interesting careers. He started as a printing salesman for his father. He started and sold a mail order marketing company based on an IBM 64K machine that was of the punch card era (think chad ). Later he started, with John Morris (florist) Hinsdale Realty. He set up several major real estate partnerships that owned a hunting property (Princeton, IL), a tree nursery (Ottawa, IL), a nursing home (Hinsdale, IL), and also The Oak Park/River Forest Indoor Racquet Club.
Unquestionably he was most happy in Naples, Florida which he was introduced to when his in-laws, Eloise and Bus Stevens, moved there from Hinsdale in 1968. In Naples, Allen was involved in a multitude of real estate ventures. The most significant was Naples (Cay) at Sea Gate Drive. This also initiated the decline of his own enterprise as the project became deadlocked during the economic recession of the early 1980’s when the same sort of over-lending crisis present now was also present then. Regardless of his professional woes, he retained his values and was really at home in Naples. His web of friends and contacts there were his greatest asset.
Allen found a very special spiritual home: Celebration Beach Church, an outdoor church in which dogs were welcome. Any donations in his memory should be directed to their “Paws in the Park” group.