The Event: The Les Turner ALS Foundation offered “Hope Through Caring” at the Loews Hotel in Chicago on Feb. 27. Filled to capacity with more than 450 guests, the annual gala honored Madeleine and Joe Glossberg, and Joan and Paul Rubschlager.
Founded in 1977, Les Turner ALS Foundation is Chicago’s leader in research and patient care serving nearly 90 percent of area ALS patients. The foundation raises funds for research, helps provide everything from ramps to counseling for patients and families, and increases public awareness of ALS.
Cause célebre: “My grandmother and my uncle both died of ALS,” explained event emcee and ABC7 meteorologist, Phil Schwarz of Elmhurst. “When you hear what some of these people are going through today it really is upsetting.”
Every 90 minutes someone in the US is diagnosed with ALS and every 90 minutes someone with ALS dies.
“But they are making advances and there is a lot of exciting research,” said Schwarz.
Steve Wells of Vernon Hills designs software that allows people with ALS to have a voice via a computer, the kind of system used by legendary theoretical physicist/cosmologist, Stephen Hawking.
“People with ALS, with an otherwise perfectly-healthy mind, are trapped inside, their bodies completely failing them. So the ability to “let people out” to express themselves is super significant,” said Wells whose devices work for people with various stages of mobility.
“We work with people when they have first been diagnosed all the way to people who can move nothing but their eyes,” explained Wells. Hawking uses one such device to communicate by using a single cheek muscle.
“They changed our life,” is how Karen Toole of Elmhurst, whose husband Matt was diagnosed with ALS in 2010, describes the help they’ve received from Les Turner ALS Foundation..
Bottom line: The event raised more than $550,000 for Les Turner ALS Foundation work..