EXCLUSIVE: Mokena mayor opens up about health emergency that led to 4-month absence from Village Board
Fleischer: ‘I was very lucky. Somebody was looking out for me. It wasn’t my time.’
MOKENA, Ill. — When it came time for Mayor Frank Fleischer to address the Village of Mokena Board of Trustees at the end of his first meeting back after four months, he paraphrased a quote from author Mark Twain.
“I think it is really apropos now — rumors of my demise have been very much exaggerated,” he said at the close of the Monday, June 13 meeting. “I feel good, and I’m the mayor of Mokena — and I’m going to be the mayor of Mokena for a long time. I want people to understand that. You voted me into this office. You put me here for a reason. You want me to do the job I’ve been doing for the past nine years, and I’m going to do it.”
But for Fleischer, who last attended the Jan. 24 meeting before sustaining a fall at his home on Feb. 11, his return to the dais was not a sure thing.
Fleischer sat down with Richard Free Press after the June 13 meeting to answer questions about what happened, how long his recovery process took and why he decided to not issue a health update with more information prior to his return to the boardroom.
“I was very lucky,” Fleischer said during the interview. “Somebody was looking out for me. It wasn’t my time.”
‘I was pretty much gone before I hit the floor’
It was around 9 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 11, when Fleischer hung up the phone in the kitchen of his home in Mokena.
He remembers that clearly. But a few seconds later?
“I hung up the phone … and I have no idea until I woke up in the hospital,” Fleischer said. “I was pretty much gone before I hit the floor.”
He and his doctors later learned that what Fleischer was experiencing was heart failure — which differs from a heart attack in that the former is when blood flow is cut off to the heart, whereas heart failure is when the heart struggles to or cannot pump blood throughout a person’s body.
For Fleischer, in the moment, it meant that he lost consciousness. His wife, Laurie, found him on the kitchen floor.
“My wife saved my life,” Fleischer said. “She called 911 and worked on CPR until one of the officers came.”
That — coupled with the lifesaving actions taken by first responders on the way to Silver Cross Hospital’s emergency room in New Lenox — were crucial to Fleischer’s eventual recovery.
Fleischer was grateful for their work in keeping his heart beating, his blood pumping and improving his chances for a recovery.
Long road to recovery
Fleischer was initially treated at Silver Cross but was eventually transferred to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was stabilized. At that point, the doctors there went ahead with a previously planned procedure. He said he intends to keep that procedure private, but he noted it was scheduled prior to the Feb. 11 medical event.
In those hectic first few days, however, the Village released a statement to alert the community about Fleischer’s hospitalization. The press release was light on details about the mayor’s condition.
“We didn’t know if I was going to get out of it, so nobody was trying to lie to anybody,” Fleischer said.
Slowly but surely, Fleischer did get out of it. Did everything have to go right? Yes — but it did.
“I have no short-term memory loss or long-term memory loss,” Fleischer said. “I have all my cognitive faculties, because of therapy. My mind is just as analytical as it was before all this happened. In fact, in some cases, I almost feel that certain things got stronger. Don’t ask me why that is. I have no idea.”
Soon, he was transferred back to Silver Cross Hospital to begin inpatient therapy for approximately two weeks.
“When you are laid out for 21 days, your muscles start to atrophy,” Fleischer said. “My mind was fine. But I just couldn’t [move] – immobile.”
Once that was completed, his next hurdle to clear was 12 weeks of outpatient therapy at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Homewood.
But that came with a perk — he was discharged from the hospital and allowed to return home to Mokena.
“That was a nice feeling,” he said, laughing. “I had enough of hospitals and hospital food. They try their darndest, but it just doesn’t work. You ever try sleeping in a hospital? Hospital and sleep – those two words don’t go together.”
Trust in the Village Board members
During the June 13 interview, Fleischer was in good spirits. He had reason to be — about 90 minutes prior, he had made his return to the boardroom.
But was that good humor a result of recovery? Did he have any doubts during his health scare?
The answer was mixed.
“You look at things – things that used to be important and [realize] they aren’t that important,” he said. “Your family and being there for them, being healthy – that is foremost [of importance]. This other stuff? It’s not as big a deal when you’re not feeling good.
“But I didn’t get excited. I knew I was going to be taken care of, because we have the best care ever in 2022. I knew I was going to be OK if I did what I was supposed to [with the therapy]. [I had] no depression at all.”
What he did have, though, was the unsettling things being said about him on social media during his time away from the Village Board. Ultimately, it was part of the reason he decided against issuing a lengthier statement about his health over the past four months.
“I saw what was going on in social media, and I didn’t say anything,” he said. “My wife and I said we weren’t going to say anything at that point. People are not going to believe you, or they are going to make something out of it [that isn’t true]. So, we waited.
“I wanted to walk to this seat [at the dais] like I did the last time in [January]. I didn’t want to limp. I didn’t want to crawl.”
He also trusted that the other members of the Village Board could handle the meetings temporarily without him.
“Tinley Park, Orland Park, Frankfort weren’t attacking Mokena, and I don’t have an atomic button I have to press,” Fleischer said. “I have a good Village Board. [Trustee] George [Metanias] is a big boy, who knows what he is doing. He ran the meetings and didn’t skip a beat. And I have one hell of a staff.”
One example of his confidence in all of them came when the bids for the construction of a new police facility came in higher than anticipated. The Village Board members discussed and debated the issue for several weeks before moving forward and agreeing on alternative financing options to cover the remainder of the project.
“You play the cards you’re dealt,” Fleischer said. “There is no guarantee that if we waited another two or three months that it would have been [cheaper]. This is what we were given, and we are lucky enough to be in a position to pay for it. You do it. To me, that was a no-brainer. And as long as they came together at the end, you are going to have disagreements up here. But in the end, they [did come] together, they [approved] it, and they moved on. That’s all I can ask for.”
The ugly side of politics
During his months of recovery, Fleischer was buoyed by support from family, friends, colleagues, and Mokena residents. He was flooded with cards and phone calls wishing him well.
“When you are sitting there and doing this [therapy], you start to wonder if people really give a damn,” he said. “When you get [messages] like that, it really humbles you. You really realize that you are doing the right things.”
But it was not all an outpouring of care and concern. Besides the negative social media posts Fleischer said he saw online, he also had to contend with something he called “ridiculous” — people using the Freedom of Information Act process to obtain copies of his wife’s phone call to 911 on Feb. 11.
“Why in heaven’s name does politics have to get personal?” he said. “It’s crazy. People actually [requested records of] my wife calling up 911 — and they gave it to them.
“Why would you want that? It’s my wife’s personal moment. She’s scared as hell. Why would you do that to someone? You have to be one sick puppy for wanting that.”
And every time the request was made and fulfilled, it brought Laurie Fleischer back to that day — forcing her to relive it over and over again.
“It was one of the worst days of her life,” Fleischer said.
Staying joyful … for now
During the June 13 meeting, Fleischer said he wanted to keep his comments just to the joy he felt for being back and expressing how lucky he felt. But with that came the note that he plans to open up about some of the other things he was not happy about while he was away.
One instance he expanded on when asked about it by Richard Free Press later that evening was a comment made by Michael Moran — a former Board of Fire and Police Commission member — at the May 23 meeting.
Moran asked for the Village attorney and board members to resign for their roles in the firing of a police commander and allowing the appeal of the case to go to Will County Court. Ultimately, the court favored on the side of the BOFPC, which reversed the Village’s original decision.
Moran has alleged in the past that the Village’s decision to later not reappoint or replace other BOFPC members was retaliatory.
“You think I would reappoint any of them after that tirade?” Fleischer said regarding the former commissioner’s comments at the May 23 meeting. “That is why they are not on the board – because of that kind of stuff. They felt that they were more important not only than the police department but also the Village of Mokena.
“That was wrong. You don’t do that. Put your big boy pants on. You weren’t reappointed. I made the decision to remove them all. I made the decision that I wanted them all to go. That’s my job as mayor.
“I lost confidence in them. As mayor, as a leader, when you lose confidence in your people, you don’t hang on to them. You get rid of them. That’s what happened.
“He didn’t agree with it, and that’s fine. But when you go up there and start disrespecting people – I hope that showed everybody why I made my decision.”
Fleischer also had a message for anyone questioning whether he would finish his term in office, which is through April 2025.
“You better believe it,” he said. “[Residents] voted for me. How could I turn my back on them?
“We’ve lived here for 45 years. I’ve coached their kids. My whole life is here. This isn’t a game. I really give a damn about the Village. It means too much to me.”