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Two centuries between them
Friendship Club members Irene Tupy (left) who turned 100 Jan. 23 and fellow member Sylvia Kloska who will turn 100 on Friday, Feb. 15, share a laugh at the club meeting at Our Lady, Mother of the Church on Tuesday. | Curtis Lehmkuhl~Sun-Times Media
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Updated: February 24, 2013 8:45PM
Irene Tupy and Sylvia Kloska have a lot in common.
In addition to living across the street from each other on the 8400 block of Sunnyside Avenue in Chicago for more than 50 years, the two also turn 100 this year.
And they are parishioners of Our Lady, Mother of the Church, on Lawrence Avenue just east of River Road.
Tupy celebrated her birthday Jan. 23, while Kloska will celebrate hers Feb. 15.
“I’ve lived here for 56 years,” Kloska noted.
Tupy was a little more elusive.
“It’s been 50-something years,” she said. “The houses were just being built at the time.”
Both were married many years and neither couple had any children, said Tupy’s stepdaughter, Jackie Froehlich.
“Sylvia married a second time, and that’s how she wound up with me and my family,” Froelich said with a laugh. “There’s my husband Bob and three children. The fourth one passed away.”
Kloska said the area has benefited from many improvements since she moved in.
“The neighborhood has gotten better, the people are better,” she said.
Tupy noted public transportation was nonexistent when she moved in.
“There were no buses,” she said.
Now the area is served by a couple of Pace suburban bus routes.
“We stay in the neighborhood because we love it,” Tupy noted.
Still very much on the ball, Tupy and Kloska continue to be involved in the community as members of the church’s Friendship Club and Women’s Club.
“They’re best friends,” Froelich added.~.
