April, 2006 My Fellow Rotarians - Rotary's Global History Fellowship

District 6440 Histories 2005
Larry Rosser, CEO of Opportunity, Inc., an organization that employs handicapped people, asked for
help with an outing of their employees at a golf driving range. A large group of employees attended,
and were coached by volunteers from our Club on how to handle a golf club and achieve a proper swing.
The group had a great experience. Bob Barnard, a long-time member of our Club and a prominent
citizen of Highland Park, initiated a drive each fall for warm winter clothes for indigent families in the
Highland Park-Highwood area. These drives were always successful in collecting a large quantity of
these clothes. These drives have been a yearly project, and have continued after Bob’s death several
years ago.
The late Willie Cortesi organized yearly Rotary fellowship visits to Arlington Race Track. With his
knowledge of horses, he gave tips as to likely winners. Without Willie, a visit to the Race Track will
never be quite the same.
Highland Park Rotary Club continued its annual Bocce tournament with the Winnetka Club, sometimes
with the participation of the Highland Park Good Morning Club. This tradition continued to several
years, but stopped when the Winnetka Club lost interest.
In 1997 we had a huge Fundraiser honoring John Cortesi for his many outstanding contributions to our
community. John was a long-standing member of our Club until his death in 2002. The Highland Park
Country Club was packed with people from the entire community as well as Club members, in honoring
Our charity contribution reached an all-time high of $43,500, divided among The Holiday Drive,
Bethany Early Childhood Center, District 113 Operation Snowball (an anti-drug club), Family Network,
Family Services of South Lake County, Heller Nature Center Summer Scholarships, Communities in
Partnership Summer School Scholarships, Highland Park Community Day Care Center, Highland Park
Historical Society, Opportunity, Inc., Right From The Start, School-Age Child Care Fund, Suburban
Fine Arts Center, Tri-Con Child Care Center, United Way of Highland Park, Immaculate Conception
Pre-School Scholarships, and Immaculate Conception Memorial Garden. Long-time Rotarian Dr. Albert
Slepyan was honored by the University of Illinois, where he is Emeritus Professor of Dermatology, for
his contribution to the University of Illinois Foundation. There was an extensive write-up in its
publication, “Investing in Illinois.” In 1997 our Club had as a speaker Bruce Johnson, former member,
as was his father Marshall Johnson, who was an outstanding landscape architect, and son-in-law of
world-famous landscape architect Jens Jensen. Jens started his career in the Cook County park system,
working his way from laborer to Superintendent. He developed a “prairie style” of landscaping, keeping
things low and horizontal, in harmony with Frank Lloyd Wright’s style. He designed many estates on
the North Shore.
Jack Zimmerman, of the Ravinia Festival, gave an illuminating talk on its history, Walter Damrosch, a
famous conductor often heard on his weekly broadcasts with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra,
conducted at Ravinia in 1905, playing two concerts seven days a week. Ravinia was then a popular
entertainment park with rides and a carnival atmosphere. The scene next moves to 1936, Frederick
Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in the midst of the depression, announced to the
audience that unless the musicians of the orchestra could find more work that it was likely that the
orchestra would lose the bulk of its players. This galvanized some of the audience to find more work for
them, and the result was the Ravinia Festival.
In April 1998 the Club hosted six students from the Northern Ireland Exchange Program—“Toward A
Better Understanding” (TABU). They visited the Chicago Violence Prevention Program, a met with
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