Left with memories, they’re going on and giving back. All over the metropolitan area, families are creating programs that benefit others while remembering lost loved ones.
For Karen and Bill Yaeger of Mokena, taking up where their late son Bill left off brought a flood of emotions and memories. But with the recent success of the first Bill Yaeger Memorial Pace Setter Walk for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, Karen Yaeger says, “We’re finally involved in something Billy cared about.”
For Elizabeth LeGrand of Westmont, helping other children learn gives purpose to her late son’s life. “It’s not a question of why someone you love died,” she says. “The question is why they lived.”
The Yaegers found that question easy to answer, given Bill’s enthusiasm for life and his concern for others in spite of his struggle with a severe case of Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract. In 1996, at 33, Yaeger died from complications of the disease.
“It was almost as if Bill knew he had to do things fast,” remembers his wife, Karen, who now lives in Mt. Prospect with their children, Will, 8, and Samantha, 6. She joined her husband as a volunteer, organizing and participating in walks.
“Bill knew that there wasn’t much they could do for him, but he was touched by his work with children with Crohn’s and motivated to do something,” she says.
Bill and Karen Yaeger lived in Bolingbrook. She is a teacher in Naperville District 203, and he worked at Maryville Academy in Des Plaines, first as a counselor to troubled youth and later as an administrator.
“It was a privilege to work with Bill. I do this for a living,” says Kathleen Durkin, executive director of Illinois Carol Fisher Chapter of the foundation, “but Bill taught me so much about what is important.”
“As a trustee and a visitor to individuals newly diagnosed with Crohn’s, Bill inspired everyone he worked with, and he showed them how important it was to give back.”
It was no surprise, Durkin says, that his family has the same spirit. The unusual thing was that the Oct. 3 walk raised $34,000, when first-time walks are a success if they earn $10,000.
“We knew in our hearts that we wanted to do something,” says Yaeger’s mother, Karen. “I didn’t want Billy to slip away from us. With the walk, I felt that he was there with us.”
The Mokena couple spent the spring and summer preparing for the walk. Bill Yaeger said the event, which ran in conjunction with 30 walks across the nation, made people aware and raised money for research. Yaeger’s younger brother Glenn, who lives in Hinsdale, reminded the 200 walkers of his brother’s “let’s do it” spirit.
So they did it on a rainy Sunday morning, walking three miles in Mokena, the town in which Bill grew up. Yaeger’s children walked the route with their mom, Will pulling Samantha in a wagon.
“We all lost someone we loved,” says Yaeger’s mother, “but life goes on. If they can just find a cure to help others with Crohn’s and to keep another family from watching someone they love suffer like Billy did.”
Elizabeth LeGrand believes that her son, Mike, lived so that other children might find success in school, and that’s the mission of the Michael Allen LeGrand Memorial Scholarship and Neuroscience Research Foundation.
Mike died of multiple sclerosis in 1997 at 23, but before he was diagnosed with MS in high school, he knew what it was to fight an uphill battle. Mike had learning disabilities; by 5th grade, he had a D- average, and his self-esteem was in the basement, LeGrand recalls.
LeGrand decided her son was not learning disabled, but learning delayed. She moved him to another school where teachers tapped into his potential and learning style. By the 8th grade, he was maintaining a B average and earning awards.
In high school, Mike volunteered as a tutor and dreamed of becoming a teacher. He graduated in a wheelchair and went on to community college. But MS kept him in and out of hospitals, and completing a semester became increasingly difficult. “At the end,” LeGrand said, “he expressed his concern that he might be forgotten, and he reminded me, `Mom, I would have made a good teacher.’ “
The foundation assists teachers and provides seed money for scholarships to community colleges for children who are learning delayed. “Most teachers are doing their best with what they have,” LeGrand says. “My goal is to provide resources, to give teachers tools to help children learn. As for the scholarships, kids like Mike wouldn’t have had a chance, but they have dreams too.”
LeGrand is regional coordinator of continuing medical education at Hinsdale Hospital in Hinsdale. She works another 30 hours or more a week organizing workshops and recruiting specialists to give workshops in Chicago and suburban schools.
At Fox Valley Montessori School in Aurora, administrator Nancy Banaszak says, “The workshop presented to our teachers gave them new insight and the tools for simple, non-invasive and fun ways to reach each child and discover his style of learning.”
The scholarships are in the planning stages for fall of 2000, LeGrand says, and dependent on income from the workshops, for which she charges on a sliding scale.
“There is no greater love than when parents can gather the strength to give purpose to the life, not the death, of their child,” LeGrand says. “I miss Mike a lot, but he was really sick for so long. I don’t wish that Mike would be here in his state of health. I believe in better things. On a rainy day, I tell people that I see Mike swimming in the clouds.”
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For more information on the LeGrand foundation, call 800-991-7836. For information on the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, call 800-932-2423, ext. 212.
