When former Palos Heights Mayor Dean Koldenhoven spoke out two years ago against those who opposed an Islamic group’s efforts to convert a local church into a mosque, he was vilified by some of the suburb’s City Council members and many community residents.
His stand is believed to have contributed to his failure to win re-election in April 2001. But his actions against bigotry and religious intolerance did not go unnoticed.
On Monday, Koldenhoven, 66, was named a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award by the Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston.
“Unbelievable,” said Koldenhoven when reached by telephone at his Palos Heights home Monday. “It’s surreal. I’m overwhelmed at receiving such an honor.”
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan also is being honored for, among other things, helping organize the world’s response to international terrorism and the global AIDS epidemic.
In addition, a special Profile in Courage Award in Public Service is being awarded to the “thousands of selfless public servants” who demonstrated “extraordinary courage and heroism” in response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11.
The awards, presented annually since 1989, are named for Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Profiles in Courage,” which recounts the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their political careers to fight for what they believed in.
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Among past winners are former Connecticut Gov. Lowell Weicker Jr., U.S. Rep. Henry Gonzalez (D-Texas), U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and former President Gerald Ford.
Koldenhoven, who has been campaigning for his son-in-law, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Paul Vallas, said he learned of the award by telephone over the weekend from Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, the former president’s daughter.
“When I picked up the telephone and the person at the other end identified herself as Caroline Kennedy, I said, `You mean the Caroline Kennedy?’ She laughed and said, yes, that Caroline Kennedy and added that she just loved making these kinds of telephone calls.”
Koldenhoven was selected for a Profile in Courage Award by a bipartisan committee of national political and community leaders. The committee members included Kennedy Schlossberg; U.S. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine); and presidential historian and author David McCullough, among others.
The committee considers elected officials who have demonstrated the kind of political courage described by Kennedy in his book, his daughter said in a statement.
“President Kennedy felt his greatest admiration for those in politics who had the courage to make decisions of conscience without fear of the consequences,” Kennedy Schlossberg said. “It is this unique kind of courage for which we honor Dean Koldenhoven and Secretary General Kofi Annan.”
Koldenhoven upset many Palos Heights residents in May 2000 when he blocked efforts by some City Council members to derail plans by the Al Salam Mosque Foundation to buy a Christian church at 6600 W. 127th St. and convert it into a mosque.
“It hurts me,” Koldenhoven said at the time. “Here we are, coming up on Memorial Day. People fought and died for these freedoms; we talk about these freedoms.
“But then some people decide they’re not freedoms for everyone.”
As the sale of the church to the mosque foundation progressed, some council members argued that the church was needed by the city for a park gymnasium, even though the idea had been rejected two years earlier because the church was considered too small.
When that effort failed, the council proposed paying the mosque foundation $200,000 to abandon its plans.
A majority of council members voted in favor of the payoff and the foundation eventually accepted the offer. Koldenhoven vetoed the offer in July 2000, calling it an “embarrassment” and an “insult” to the Muslim community.
“Government has no place in this issue,” Koldenhoven said at the time.
In the end, after Palos Heights received much national attention, the foundation abandoned its efforts to buy the church, citing apprehension about establishing a mosque in a community where it was not wanted.
Asked on Monday whether he would do anything differently, Koldenhoven said he “wouldn’t change a thing. Government had no place in that issue. It was a real estate matter.”
Koldenhoven and Annan will be presented the award by Kennedy Schlossberg at a ceremony scheduled for May 6 at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston.