Elizabeth McCabe Postell

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. Hyde Park became her home from 1947 to 2013. She completed a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree English Literature. During a trial period of teaching freshman literature at the Gary branch of Indiana University she met her future husband, John, 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 Bam, joining the Hyde Park Garden Fair. She became chair in 1971 and remained so until 1994. She was 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 nephews (and spouses, grand- nieces), a beloved goddaughter and several of John’s nieces and nephews, one sister- in-law and two brothers-in-law. Arrangements entrusted to Chicagoland Cremation Options of Schiller Park, Illinois his.