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Helen Shaker, helped start St. Jude's Children's Hospital
Helen Elizabeth Shaker was the last surviving member among a small group of Chicago-area couples who in the 1950s laid the groundwork for the creation of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Memphis, Tenn.-based pediatric hospital.
Mrs. Shaker and her husband, Joseph R. Shaker, were core members of Chicago’s tightly knit Lebanese community, and they and five other couples teamed up with comedian and entertainer Danny Thomas, whose dream had been to create such a hospital if he found success.
Mrs. Shaker and her husband remained lifelong friends with Thomas, who had lived in Chicago in the early 1940s before later moving to Los Angeles.
Together, Mrs. Shaker and her husband donated significant sums to St. Jude, said Richard Shadyac Jr., the CEO of American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, St. Jude’s fundraising arm.
“I think the Shaker family is one of those legacy families that has had an incredible impact on St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and on philanthropy in general,” Shadyac said. “They were some of the most generous people in lending not only their resources but also their time and talent.”
Mrs. Shaker, 90, died of natural causes on Thursday, Jan. 15, in her River Forest home, said her son, Joseph.
Born in Pennsylvania, Mrs. Shaker moved to Chicago as a child to live near her older brother, Anthony Abraham, who was 13 years her senior. After high school, she worked first for Marshall Field’s and then as a secretary for an advertising firm run by her brother.
Mrs. Shaker met her husband through Chicago’s Lebanese community. Her husband also had worked at Abraham’s advertising agency before striking out on his own and forming a large recruitment ad agency in 1951. The couple married in 1948. He died in 2006.
The hospital’s beginnings were in Chicago. Thomas, a struggling entertainer based in Detroit during the 1930s, at one point appealed to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes as he debated whether to continue to pursue a career in show business. He promised that if he were successful, he would erect a shrine to St. Jude.
Thomas’ career took off, and he later approached Chicago’s archbishop at the time, Samuel Stritch, about creating a shrine. Stritch, whom Thomas had known since his childhood in Toledo, Ohio, had different plans, informing Thomas that the world had too many shrines and that what was really needed was a children’s hospital.
Thomas, who was Lebanese, assembled a group of Chicago-area couples to discuss creating what would become that hospital. In 1957, Mrs. Shaker, her husband, five other couples and Thomas formed the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, a group that went on to raise large amounts of money for the hospital. The hospital opened in 1962.
“Helen and her husband were two of the kindest, gentlest, most generous and courageous pioneers,” Shadyac said. “They participated in one of the first meetings, if not the very first meeting that gave rise to the charity association, which ultimately led to the hospital being built.”
Stritch, a Tennessee native, recommended placing the hospital in Memphis.
“It took courage to do what they did. You’re talking about 1957, and this couple and generation decided that they were going to build a children’s research hospital and put it in Memphis, a segregated community, and from day one, it would treat kids regardless of their race, creed and religion,” Shadyac said.
Mrs. Shaker and her husband settled in River Forest, where she was a homemaker. Her husband and later her sons served on the board of St. Jude, and she and her husband were major financial supporters of the hospital as it grew.
“She was very proud and obviously very pleased and happy to see an acorn grow into an internationally acclaimed children’s pediatric hospital,” her son said.
Mrs. Shaker, who enjoyed cooking, prided herself on the Sunday evening dinners she would prepare entirely, for groups sometimes as large as 25 or 30 people, her son said.
“Everything was family with her,” her son said. “Nothing pleased her more than having her family around her.”
Mrs. Shaker also is survived by two other sons, Anthony and John; a daughter, Catherine Shaker Breit; 13 grandchildren; and 16 great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Elizabeth, died in January.
Services were held.
Source: www.chicagotribune.com