By Meredith VanKampen Krantz
There is a house on Downer Place that has been standing longer than anyone alive can remember. It was built in 1894, the same decade Ellis Island opened its arms, a country still becoming. A judge built it, a native son of Aurora named Russell B. Goodwin, who studied at the local seminary, read law by lamplight, and rose to serve as assistant attorney general under two presidents. He put up a turret and ornate gables, building the kind of home meant to outlast its owner.
I did not know Judge Russell B. Goodwin. But I have lived inside the shape of his ambition. To build something solid, something beautiful, something meant to outlast you.
After him came others. A manufacturing president at the turn of the century. Families whose names I mostly know by mentions, Stephens, McWethy, Harkinson, Sperry, Ruffalo, Bradley, each living out their ordinary American days inside these walls. Raising children. Setting tables. Hosting family holidays and celebrations. Watching them grow up and leave home. Welcoming grandchildren. The walls held all of it.
My family arrived in 1996. I was young, and the house was enormous and full of possibility. I grew up inside it alongside my brother and sister, learned its every creak the way you learn a place that becomes part of you. I loved bringing friends over. The house had a way of making people feel welcome, and I think we all wanted to share that. I left for college in 2007, came back for a few years after, and then went on to build my own family and my own life. But the house stayed with me the way formative things do. As something solid. As a home.
The house did not simply hold us. My parents, Pam and Shawn VanKampen, held it. They gave more to that house than most people will ever know. Years of weekends. Careful decisions made on a family budget. The willingness to learn what the house needed and give it that, even when it was hard. The great trees in the yard dropped leaves every fall that had to be raked, and my dad made sure the piles were always taller than we were. Later he did the same for his grandchildren. They restored the original wraparound porch, preserved the painted gables, tended every detail with a love that was never about investment or return. It was about respect for what came before, for every family that had called it home, and for the street, the city, and the community the house had always been part of. That kind of care is not glamorous work. It is patient and costly and done mostly unseen.
If they taught me anything, it is this: To inherit something worthy and return it to the world better than you found it.
That is what I feel about this country, too. Not that it is perfect. Not that it has always been. But that it is worth the labor of love. Worth the restoration. Worth the careful hands, the vision, and the willingness to invest in something larger than yourself.
Now my parents are moving on. The house at 1205 W. Downer will pass to new hands, as it has passed before, as it will pass again. And it occurs to me that this is not a sad thing, not entirely. It is the way homes work. It is the way countries work. No one generation owns the story. We are each given a chapter, and the most we can hope is that we read it carefully, honor it, and leave the pages in good enough condition for whoever comes next.
America turns 250 this year. She has passed through many hands too. She has been built up and tested and restored and argued over and loved fiercely and taken for granted and loved again. She has survived all of it because enough people, in enough generations, chose to be keepers rather than simply residents. Chose to see the character and believe it was worth saving.
My parents believed that about a house on Downer Place. I believe it about this country. And as I write this, I find those two things are not separate at all. They are the same faith, expressed at different scales.
I have loved living here. I love this country the same way.