Five Maine East High School alumni officially joined the school’s “Wall of Honor” last Thursday, the first group to be inducted in over a decade.
The induction ceremony on March 6 in the Maine East auditorium honored the late James Bjorken, class of 1952; Jami Gertz, class of 1983; Larry Kramer, class of 1976; Josephine Lee, class of 1993; and Roz Varon, class of 1975.
“This special event [celebrates] five exceptional alumni whose accomplishments have made a lasting impact on both our community and society at large,” Maine Township High School District 207 officials stated on Instagram social media site.
The school’s alumni association offers information about the former students-turned honorees, describing their works on the association’s website.
Also, new inductees spoke at the ceremony.
A stage 4 breast cancer survivor, Varon was Chicago’s first morning TV news traffic reporter and one of the nation’s earliest in the role, spending more than 30 years at ABC7, the website states.
She retired from ABC7 last year.
“For somebody who did traffic for 34 years I didn’t know where I was at,” Varon told Pioneer Press about returning to Maine East Thursday after so many years. “I didn’t recognize any of it except for the auditorium, the stage, the paint deck, the underground costume and makeup area. That hasn’t changed an iota.”
Varon said there were many good things — and memories — at Maine East, from theater being her favorite thing to do, to an “amazing” algebra teacher who made sense of math Varon’s freshman year.
She cited the late George Roger Kleinfeld, a former Maine East drama teacher, as a mentor.
“He would have been the best mentor I had going into theater, any kind of acting, which really translated into radio and television,” Varon said.
She joins a Maine East Wall of Honor that includes former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Tribune Company Chairman, President and CEO Stanton R. Cook.
“What makes it so special is the fact that there are so few people on this Wall of Honor and the last one was 11 years ago, so it’s very prestigious,” Varon said.
Another inductee into the elite group, Kramer served as dean of Stanford Law School and president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and recently was appointed president of The London School of Economics and Political Science, the alumni website states.
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“As I said [in remarks Thursday] on stage, it’s actually the first honor I’ve gotten that I really care about in a weird sort of way,” Kramer told Pioneer Press after the induction ceremony.
Although he lived in New York, San Francisco, Washington, Paris, Tokyo and now London, he said Maine East is still who he is more than anything else.
“I’m always here,” Kramer said. “This is still real life. This will always be home.”
He recalled “not fantastically” playing sports and being better at speech and debate in high school, which he likened to how the 1970s were captured in the TV show “The Wonder Years” and the film “Dazed and Confused.”
“It was still some of the innocence of the ’50s and the stuff that would become the cynicism of the ’80s and ’90s but we weren’t there yet and so it was just this challenging, fantastically difficult and wonderful time,” Kramer said.
He reminisced about spending hours in the wrestling room and the terror and uncertainty of finding someone to sit with in the cafeteria, which was separated from the hallway by a glass wall when he attended Maine East.
“The place, even as it’s redone, is filled with a lot of individual, particular memories of people and moments,” Kramer said.
An Emmy Award-winning and Grammy Award-nominated conductor, pianist, singer and producer, Lee is president of Uniting Voices Chicago (formerly Chicago Children’s Choir) and has spearheaded projects with Chance the Rapper, Yo-Yo Ma, Karol G and Andrea Bocelli, the website states.
“Lee’s original composition ‘Multiverse’ and other works highlight her innovative approach to music as a tool for cultural diplomacy and creative expression,” officials stated on the website.
Gertz starred in films including “The Lost Boys,” “Less Than Zero” and “Twister” and the TV series “Still Standing” and co-founded a production company with her husband, Tony Ressler, with whom she also established the Ressler Gertz Family Foundation, the website states.
“Known for significant contributions to cancer research and other health initiatives, Ms. Gertz has leveraged her platform to champion numerous charitable causes, solidifying her legacy both as a talented performer and a committed philanthropist,” officials stated on the website.
Bjorken made groundbreaking contributions to particle physics particularly through his invention of Bjorken scaling, which revolutionized the understanding of proton and neutron behavior at high energies, the website states.
“Until his final days, he engaged with physics, leaving a lasting legacy in the scientific community and beyond,” officials stated on the website.
Freelancer James C. Svehla contributed.