October 23, 2000
Contact: Peter Bailley
news@knox.edu
309-341-7715
Gail Youngren, former director of the Knox-Lombard Fifty Year Club, died Sunday, Oct. 22, 2000. She was 96. Funeral services were held Thursday at 1 p.m. at the Oneida United Methodist Church. Memorials may be made to the Oneida United Methodist Church or the Knox-Lombard Fifty Year Club.
(from the Knox Alumnus, 1992)
Gail Youngren is the kind of person who moves mountains. Mountains of personalized birthday cards, mountains of volunteer work to keep the Knox-Lombard Fifty Year Club running smoothly. Mountains of... well... solid rock.
Like the 9,000-pound boulder placed on the former campus of her beloved Lombard College (now Galesburg's Lombard Middle School).
"We wanted something to show where Lombard College had been... something that would match 'remembrance Rock' at the Carl Sandburg cottage," Youngren says. Growing up in Galesburg, Carl Sandburg had frequented the Knox campus, but he attended Lombard, where he studied with the multi-faceted scholar Philip Green Wright. When Lombard closed in 1930, Lombard students were allowed to complete their degrees at Knox, and Lombard alumni were welcomed into the Knox family.
Youngren and Marjorie Powell, Lombard '33, eventually located what appeared to be a suitable stone, buried on a farm in Stark County, northeast of Galesburg. "When we went there, we could only see about one-square-foot of rock. We had no idea how big it was," she says.
Buying the rock for $20 was the least of her problems. Weighing in at four-and-one-half tons, it had to be excavated and cleaned, moved to the monument firm that set the plaque, transported to Galesburg and mounted on a six-foot-deep foundation. ...
Youngren applies her own hand to another daunting task -- inscribing personal greetings on more than 1,600 birthday cards mailed annually to members of the FYC.
The personalized birthday greeting is "one of the things that members like. Some keep all the cards they've received. They put them on their refrigerators," Youngren says. Each year, the cards bear a different scene, usually drawn from Knox or Lombard history. They generate dozens of letters, notes and phone calls in response.
Youngren rejects any suggestion that the cards be produced mechanically. "I feel people need special attention," she responds. The Fifty Year Club is a specialist at giving attention. Individualized name tags are prepared for each event, and all photos are identified in the Fifty Year Club Bulletin.
The Knox Lombard Fifty Year Club was founded in 1943, under the leadership of Edward Caldwell and Earnest Elmo Calkins, for alumni of Knox and Lombard Colleges who have been out of school for at least fifty years. Youngren was recruited in 1970 by Knox legend and long-time FYC director Max Goodsill. Her assignment was to help organize a reunion for Lombard alumni -- the first since the school had closed in 1930.
Youngren was FYC president from 1979 to 1982, then, upon Goodsill's retirement, was appointed director and editor of the Fifty Year Club Bulletin -- positions she held until her own retirement in 1997.
Youngren's "true talents lie in organization and motivation," according to a profile prepared by the FYC in 1987. "Whatever needs to be planned and implemented, one can count on Gail to see that the job gets done, and unfailingly she persuades the right person to do it."
Youngren graduated from Lombard in 1927 with a degree in mathematics. She taught for three years in Stronghurst, Illinois, then for eight years in Clinton, Iowa, before returning to Galesburg to help care for her mother. In Galesburg she began her career in business with Liquid Carbonic, as a materials expediter during World War II. She later served as a cost supervisor for Midwest manufacturing and its successor, Admiral Corp. (now Galesburg-Maytag Refrigeration Products), before retiring in 1969.
Youngren's devotion to Lombard is well known. You might say that anyone who meets her very quickly learns a lot about Knox's distinguished cross-town rival, which was founded in 1851 and closed during the Great Depression. But how many know this: At the time that she entered Lombard, Youngren confesses, "I would have preferred to go to Knox." Among other factors, she says she wanted to study home economics, which Lombard had in its curriculum.
But after a year at Lombard, she ran up against a course in art and design. "Well, I couldn't do art any more than I could fly a plane," she says. "I knew then I had to change my mind.
"Lombard had an outstanding math instructor, Nell Miller, so I changed to mathematics, and I've never regretted it." She participated in hockey, basketball and soccer, gained membership to English and science honor societies, and graduated magna cum laude.
The "laudes" haven't stopped since. She's won recognition not only from Knox and the Fifty Year Club, but also the Oliver Wendell Holmes Club, which gave her its "Today's Woman" award in 1986. she was a leader in the multiple Sclerosis Society's early door-to-door campaigns in Galesburg and Knox County.
"Gail is committed to helping Lombard live on, and that's something every Knox alum can be proud of, too, said John Mohr, vice president for development and alumni affairs. "Gail approaches her work with great dedication and a very strong sense of mission that succeeds at involving everybody."
-end-
First printed in the Knox Alumnus, April 1992, pp 10-12.
This news release: http://www.knox.edu/knox//news_events/2001/Youngren_Bio.html
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