Joe Shacter announced Monday he is trading in the title of president and chief executive officer of the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum to become a full-time dad to twin boys.
Shacter, 43, and his wife, Sara, 38, tried for the last decade to become parents. After seven miscarriages, the couple enlisted the help of a woman to carry the babies, and Jason and Benjamin were born April 2.
Although sleep came in two-to-three-hour increments at the beginning and about 200 cloth diapers are changed each week, every moment as a father has been rewarding, he said.
“Because when one has waited for these joys to arrive for so long, one takes pleasure in watching everything they do,” he said.
The native Chicagoan worked for eight years at the Museum of Science and Industry before moving to his role at the nature museum in November 2000.
Since then, he has helped raise $4.1 million to revamp or replace five of the museum’s six permanent galleries, balanced the budget, increased attendance and improved the museum’s stature, said the museum’s board chairman Patrick Daly.
“We’re just delighted for Joe and Sara,” Daly said. “But it will be a tough position to fill.”
Shacter plans to work through October, when an exhibit on human grossology, or the study of often-gross bodily functions, opens. The museum will put together a search committee within two weeks and hopes to have someone to fill Shacter’s role by the end of the year after a nationwide search, Daly said.
Shacter and his wife, a former high school English teacher and a freelance children’s writer, met in 1988.
After the twins were born at Edward Hospital in Naperville, Shacter remembers the moment he saw his wife emerge as a mother.
“She was with the two carts being wheeled down the hall and she looked at me and burst into tears and I burst into tears and she said, `How would you like to meet your sons?’ And it was just magic,” Shacter said.
He looks forward to the simple acts of fatherhood such as feeding and bathing, and strolling through Grant Park.
He feels certain that seeing the usual sites through the eyes of his children will be an adventure.
“We’ll be exploring the world and telling them about it,” he said.
