The presence of Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso took many of the 230 guests at a North Shore party by surprise.
It wasn’t because of the setting: the former 46-room lakeside estate in Lake Bluff of meatpacking mogul Lester Armour, now the home of James A. Friedman. The mansion’s soaring ceilings and marbled floors had backdropped high-society parties, Hollywood movies and most recently a couple of TV episodes of “The Untouchables.”
More Top Picks Best Whiskey Decanters For Men
The surprise was that Einstein and his illustrious companions had a lot in common with relatives and friends of the partygoers.
The event last weekend was the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Learning Disabilities Association’s silent and live auction benefit, which raised about $16,000 for teacher training and public education about LD.
Even though the partygoers consisted of parents of LD children, the parents’ friends and local school administrators, many of them were astounded by the famous people with learning disabilities whose pictures and stories were scattered around the silent-auction tables. And the program listed additional names such as Thomas Edison, Cher, Tom Cruise, Nelson Rockefeller and Robin Williams.
“People are looking at the pictures of famous people and saying, `They really had a learning disability?’ ” said benefit co-chairwoman Linda Coe. When asked why the amazement, Coe said, “People assume that someone who is successful does not have a learning problem.”
The success-LD combo no longer surprised benefit supporter Vass Alkafaji, an accounting professor at Northeastern University. Alkafaji and wife Nasreen, who have an LD child, had recently moved to Lake Forest because they heard the schools understood and provided for learning-disabled youngsters.
During his child’s diagnosis it dawned on Alkafaji that he too probably had a learning disability. “And I have a PH.D,” he said.
Nasreen praised the association’s educational efforts.
“I like that the LDA brings learning disability to the public attention,” she said.
Friedman said it was his pleasure to open the house for the benefit, but not only because of his own two children with learning disabilities.
The recent host of a benefit for underpriviledged youngsters, Friedman said earnestly, “I try to help children.”