A Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper
Therese M. Simoneau, 77, of Clifton, Ill., passed away Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, at Riverside Hospital in Kankakee.
She was born on Aug. 29, 1949, in Watseka, Ill., to Adlore and Veronica Dwyer Simoneau. Her parents are deceased, as are her brothers, Joseph B. Simoneau and Jon A. Simoneau, and her sisters, Yvonne M. Chandler and Veronica "Nikki" A. Noble.
Surviving are her daughter, Briton Pyne (Dyfed Pritchard), of Charleston, S.C., and son, Adam Pyne (Anna), of Chicago, Ill. Also surviving are her grandchildren: Lily, Claire and Jack; sister Rosemary Glenney of Conroe, Texas; and sister-in-law Rosalie Simoneau of Clifton.
Therese learned business early. While still in grade school, she worked alongside her mother in the family grocery store in L’Erable, where she picked up practical business skills — working with customers, and the discipline of a small enterprise — that would serve her for the rest of her life.
She graduated from Central High School in 1967 and earned her bachelor of science in education from Illinois State University in Bloomington Normal in January 1971, where she wrote for the ISU Vidette. She went on to work as a staff writer for the Bloomington Pantagraph before becoming editor and publisher of the Clifton Advocate in 1972 — among the youngest editors and publishers in Illinois to date, and ultimately the longest-serving editor in the Advocate's history.
Those early years asked for double duty. As a young editor, Therese worked nights to get the paper out for publication with two toddlers keeping her company in the office — a playpen near the desk, deadlines met all the same. Her family and readers remembered the arrangement fondly, and it said a great deal about how she carried both callings at once.
For 54 years, Therese helped ensure her community's stories made it to print. She devoted more than half a century to a responsibility both demanding and deeply personal: keeping a hometown newspaper coming out week after week, without missing an edition.
Simoneau, whose life and legacy are being remembered, had recently celebrated the newspaper’s 134 years of continuous operation. Her own 54 years of uninterrupted publication represent an extraordinary chapter in that history, a record of perseverance that helped carry a small-town institution across generations.
A community newspaper’s work is measured in by more than the number of issues it publishes. It is measured in the lives it records, the questions it brings forward and the connections it preserves. Over Simoneau’s long tenure, The Advocate continued to serve as a place where the everyday life of Clifton, Ashkum, Chebanse and the surrounding area mattered.
Her achievement was not simply longevity. It was continuity.
Through changing times and the growing challenges facing local newspapers, Simoneau sustained the weekly commitment readers depended on. Each edition renewed a promise that the community would have a record of its own. Those issues are now the town's memory and her legacy.
A Celebration of Life will be held at a future date. A private burial will be at L’Erable Cemetery.
Memorials in her name may be made to the Kankakee County Historical Society for the French Heritage Museum.
