Solar eclipse wows McHenry County as sun and moon converge for light-and-dark show

In parks and parking lots, on driveways and decks, people in McHenry County stopped what they were doing Monday to gaze up at the sky for a rare solar eclipse.

The convergence of sun and the moon from earth’s vantage point sparked wonder and excitement.

[ Photo: The eclipse, as celebrated in McHenry County  ]

At the Nature Center in Crystal Lake, which held a special viewing event, some brought picnics and blankets and spread out across the lawn during their lunch breaks on sunny, blue-skied day with temperatures approaching a moderate 70 degrees – near-perfect weather for the occasion and a welcome respite from last week’s snow and unseasonable cold. Local resident Samantha Weinstein brought her two kids as a “great learning experience.” Her daughter Adeline declared the eclipse beautiful.

Will Sutphin, recreation supervisor at the Nature Center, run by the Crystal Lake Park District, said it’s “nice to see people interested in a space event ... Everyone is learning and experiencing nature and that’s what we’re here for.”

McHenry County College’s Paul Hamill, science professor and in-house meteorologist, had originally planned to head to downstate Indiana to watch the eclipse. But when his car started making noises on Friday, he instead decided to set up two telescopes and TV screens outside of the Liebmann Institute for Science Innovation. More than 100 students, faculty, staff and family members joined in the celebration which included music, trivia and eclipse-themed snacks.

Those snacks included Moon Pies, Starbursts, Milky Way bars, Sunkist soda, Sunny D orange juice and Eclipse gum. Marla Garrison, director of the science institute, was in charge of the trivia questions and keeping everything running. “Having an astronomer as a docent makes a huge difference” in making the event perfect, Garrison said.

A music playlist included songs ranging from Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” to and Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and other space-and-sky-related songs. But the deejay timed the Pink Floyd song “Eclipse” to play, with the line “the sun is eclipsed by the moon” at 1:22 p.m., when the moon first appeared in the sky.

“It was a little like timing ‘The Wizard of Oz’ to “The Dark Side of the Moon,’” Garrison said, referring to the urban legend that the album and the movie can be played in synch.

Hamill and his astronomy students were not the only class to take advantage of the learning moments afforded by the eclipse. Photography professor Justin Schmitz had his film photography class out. He used a 4″x5″ pinhole camera to attempt to capture the event, and made a “Bonnie Tyler pinhole camera” to view the eclipse without hurting eyes.

He won’t know until he can develop the film from the pinhole camera if he caught any of the eclipse on film, Schmitz said.

Breaking Bread owner Chris Plazak hosted a viewing party at his Cary restaurant location. Over 30 people showed up and he ran out of eclipse glasses quickly, but attendees were sharing their glasses so everyone had a chance to look.

“It made it more of a Breaking Bread kind of a thing,” he said.

Employees from neighboring businesses like the MC Nail Salon and Starbucks also stopped at Breaking Bread to catch a glimpse of the solar event with the community. Plazak plans to host another viewing party when the next solar eclipse will be visible from McHenry County in 2044.

“In 20 years, I’m going to buy a lot more glasses,” Plazak said.

About 12:15 p.m., Monday dozens of people waited inside Hometown Eye Care in Lake in the Hills to spend $2 to buy their special glasses. People could be heard saying they should have come earlier, noting the line was long.

During the cosmic event, hundreds of children could be heard laughing and yelling excitedly from Huntley’s District 158 Square Barn campus in Algonquin as the moon began to cover the sun. At one point, they began singing “You are My Sunshine.”

Crickets got louder as the lighting and shadowing changed in the sky and on the ground and the wind grew stronger and colder.

Over at McHenry Northwestern Hospital Huntley, babies born Monday were gifted by the hospital with baby-sized sunglasses to commemorate the event.

Martha Munoz, of Hampshire, scheduled her C-Section at for April 8, a few days ahead of her due date. Her baby boy, Benjamin, was born at 7:56 a.m. According to her 8-year-old daughter, who would be watching the eclipse at school, “she thinks it is lucky” to be born during the once-in-a-lifetime event.

Benjamin came into the world at 21 inches and 8.6 pounds, Munoz said. Coming into the world on the day of the eclipse “is something special for him to read and write about, the fact that he was born on the eclipse day.”

It was an early day for her and Benjamin’s father, Reuben Rodriguez. They went into the hospital at 5:15 a.m. for the scheduled procedure.

Back at MCC, one daughter could attest to being attuned to all things astronomical and eclipse related. Cori Hamill, Paul Hamill’s 23-year-old daughter, was on hand to watch Monday’s sky with her dad. “I knew he had (eclipse) glasses,” she said.

Her family has sat on the porch looking through telescopes – or having their dad pull to the side of the road to watch an event – over the years, Cori Hamill said. Her favorite events are watching meteor showers and looking for falling stars.

There’s also a family story that on her parents’ first date, Paul Hamill pulled to the side of the road to pick up a hailstone, cut it in half, and show his date the layers inside. “He always knows what things are,” Cori Hamill said.

Northwest Herald reporter Amanda Marrazzo contributed.