Bam Elizabeth McCabe Postell

Bam (Elizabeth) McCabe Postell, 95, left us on November 6, 2020. Elizabeth, born in Oak Park, Illinois and raised in Milwaukee, was known as Betty Anne McCabe for years. Her college friends took her initials and renamed her Bam and it stuck firmly. After two years at Milwaukee State Teachers College as a music major (she played the oboe), she rejoined my family, now back in Chicago. Her first job, which she loved, was cutting up chickens into parts for a retail chicken store. She then went to secretarial school, and did 10 years of such work, the last three managing the Registrar's Office at the University of Chicago. Hyde Park became was home from 1947 to 2013. She obtained her BA and an MA in English literature. During a trial period of teaching freshman literature at the Gary branch of Indiana University she met her future husband who was also teaching there. They married in 1964 and had the good fortune to buy an old Queen Anne house in Kenwood, where they spent many happy years together entertaining, travelling, gardening and golfing, and for her, joining the Hyde Park Garden Fair. It was an annual spring sale event, all volunteer, to encourage gardening in the absence of a garden center. She became its chair in 1971 and remained so until 1994. She loved the work as she loved gardening; She enlarged the fair each year and added a fall sale of bulbs and mums. Both events are still happening every spring, and fall. She also was active in the local chapter and the national board of The Herb Society of America. Bam was always politically active. She and John became involved in the campaign of Al Raby for alderman, and later in the Harold Washington campaign. When John died in 1991, she moved from the big old empty house a couple of years later to an apartment in Hyde Park. She continued to travel, took lots of adult education courses, and enjoyed time with friends and family. Bam enjoyed the Lyric Opera, plays, movies, and concerts. Bam moved to the Mather retirement home in Evanston in 2013 staying involved in activities she loved. She spent the last years of her life writing her memoirs as well as other stories. She is survived by her 7 nieces and nephew (and spouses, grand-nieces and a great-grand-niece), a beloved goddaughter and several of John's nieces and nephews, one sister-in-law and two brothers-in-law.