As we bid farewell to 2019, a year that brought us to our knees in grief and to our feet in triumph and to quiet reckoning as we tried to make sense of it all, I offer my annual list of people I loved meeting in the course of this job. There are 10(ish). I could have included triple that number, but your time and my space is limited.
Rosie Quinn
Rosie Quinn, 8, was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease alopecia when she was 2. All of the hair on her head and body fell out within three weeks and never grew back. Her mom, Paula Quinn, had one of Rosie’s drawings made into a headscarf when Rosie was starting to grow tired of strangers’ stares and questions. “I put it on and I looked in the mirror and I was smiling for five minutes straight,” Rosie told me. “Then I said, ‘I want to give this to all the bald children!'” Now she and her family run Coming Up Rosies, a charity that turns children’s artwork into scarves and superhero capes.
Robert King
Robert King was driving home from work when traffic on Lake Shore Drive slowed to a crawl. He saw a mangled vehicle and pulled over to see if anyone needed help. A man asked for a ride to the hospital, and King obliged. The man, it turned out, was Kofi Atiemo, an organ transplant surgeon from Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The mangled vehicle was an organ transplant vehicle. A patient was prepped and waiting to be transplanted with its contents. “We only have a few hours that these organs are capable of being transplanted,” Kevin Cmunt, president and CEO of Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donor Network, told me. “Robert’s quick action and his generosity to stop and help on his Saturday night, that saved lives.”
Ellen Smith
Ellen Smith opened a box of letters that she and her sisters stashed in a vodka box when they helped their mom downsize. Inside were decades upon decades of letters. Letters between Smith’s mom and dad. Letters to her mom from her mom’s best friend, Millie. Letters to her mom from her fiance, Bern, who was killed in World War II. Her beautiful story reminded me to never underestimate the power of the written word and to cherish the sacred things that are passed down to us.
Molly Pinta
Molly Pinta was in sixth grade when she started a gay-straight alliance at her Buffalo Grove middle school. After attending the Aurora Pride Parade with her parents at the end of that school year, she decided she wanted to help every LGBTQ kid find community and acceptance. In June — at age 12 — she organized the first-ever Buffalo Grove Pride Parade. This kid is headed in the right, loving, just direction — and taking the world with her.
Chuck Wagner
Chuck Wagner spent the summer traversing the country on a farewell tour to his beloved wife, Lorraine — a tour that she planned in exacting detail before she died at age 73. I met him during his Chicago stop and he told me the highlights of their love story, which will inspire and guide me for all my days. “She did this for us,” Wagner said, about the trip his wife planned out. “Her love for our family is never-ending. And we’re following it to a T.”
Beth Finke
Beth Finke teaches memoir writing classes to Chicago senior citizens, nudging her students to contemplate and celebrate their rich and storied lives, even as they preserve them for future generations to see. She lost her sight at age 26, which, she said, gives her a certain kinship with her classes. “I think I can relate to this feeling of knowing you’re capable, but other people don’t see you that way.” I love the way she quietly, beautifully disproves all that.
Dinee Simpson
Dinee Simpson is the only black, female organ transplant surgeon in Chicago, and she spends her days saving lives and healing generations of wounds and mistrust that have resulted from the mistreatment of African Americans by the medical community. “I had patients cry,” Simpson told me. “I had patients hug me. The reaction was incredible, simply because I looked like them.” Her story is a reminder that representation can change, and often save, lives.
Highland Park hockey players
Parker Hara, Jack Elbaum and Sam Shachtman, all hockey players for the Highland Park Giants, passed a car accident on Interstate Highway 294 on their drive to a tournament. On their drive home, lights and sirens were still on the scene. Illinois State Trooper Christopher Lambert, 34, had been killed at the scene. The three teens contacted Lambert’s wife, Halley Martin Lambert, and organized an event to raise funds for her family and raise awareness about safe driving. “Obviously, being seniors in high school, we’re busy sometimes,” Elbaum said. “It can be challenging to carve out some time to help. But it’s completely worth it.”
Gillian Fealy
Gillian Fealy fell in love with the sport of triathlon and opened a shop, Live Grit, that catered to first-timers. Then she started an organization, Live Grit Soars, that trains kids from some of Chicago’s underserved communities to join the sport. “We added ‘soars’ because that’s what we want them to do — soar,” Fealy said. “Whatever that means, wherever they want to go, whatever they want to do, let it be their decision. Not the world’s decision.” And away they go.
Uncomfortable journey travelers
Evanston resident Nina Kavin started planning an “uncomfortable journey” to Montgomery, Alabama, two years ago, when she first read about plans to build the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. In September, she and two busloads of 105 Evanston residents — black, white, Asian, Latinx, Jewish, Christian, doctors, teachers, social workers, police officers, ages 18 to 80 — made the journey together. “I want to go and peel the scab off,” Bruce King told me before they left. “I want to open this wound so I can free flow and cry like a baby and go deeper than I’ve ever imagined possible in the healing process that needs to take place in America.” Talking with King and his fellow travelers was a highlight of my 2019. Reconnecting with them to hear how the trip shaped and changed them is at the top of my to-do list for 2020.
Wishing you all a healthy, peaceful, joy-filled new year.
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