Five Seasons Family Sports Club in Burr Ridge is welcoming guest speaker and activist Doug McConnell to its café on Thursday, March 1.
McConnell’s arrival marks the culmination of the club’s participation in “A Long Swim,” an initiative that McConnell launched to honor his father, who died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
In addition to making a presentation that begins at 6 p.m., McConnell will give “A Long Swim” caps to all participants. Refreshments will be served at the event at 6901 S. Madison, which is free and open to the public.
At Five Seasons, the effort began three months ago. (See the original story here at TribLocal: http://tinyurl.com/cjwltwv).
About 20 club members, from those as young as 11 to lifetime swimmers who are more than 50 years old, have participated in the fund-raiser. Swimmers committed to covering 30 miles in the club’s indoor pool during the three-month period and received pledges from donors.
Among those who were the first to complete the mission: Nancy Elwert, Patrice Perez, Mykolas Tamonis and Dzuigas Guntorius. In addition, Mark Zaborniak, the Five Seasons Aquatics Director, gave special mention to Tom O’Toole, who completed the swim three times over for a total of 90 miles.
“The pool has been a lot busier, even in the mornings,” noted Zaborniak, who also completed the 30-mile challenge. “We notice the difference, especially with the young kids. They really took to it and stepped it up during their practices. Instead of covering their usual one-half mile, they’ve been bumping it up to one mile.”
So far, the effort has raised more than $2,000 to benefit the Les Turner ALS Foundation and that figure could climb higher as more participants work to reach the distance they pledged to complete.
Last summer, McConnell swam the English Channel. The feat, which involves zig-zagging at times to cope with the currents of the water, meant that McConnell had to swim more than 32 miles to finish. He is training for another swim later this year, from Catalina Island, off the coast of California.
The issue is particularly poignant at Five Seasons. One of the club’s swimming instructors, Rita Hagarty, lost her mother, Eileen, to ALS last year and Chief Club Officer Bob Diamond’s wife, Shari, has been a nurse consultant for the Les Turner Foundation for many years.
A progressive neurodegenerative disease, ALS is often fatal within two to five years of diagnosis.
Located at 6901 S. Madison, Five Seasons has a strong aquatics program history that is bolstered by an outdoor pool that is among the best in the region. The pool is open daily from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. (9 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays) and 66 lengths of the pool amount to a mile, so completing the long swim represents swimming nearly 2,000 lengths.
For more details, please visit http://www.ALongSwim.com/, which includes a blog and a way to make a donation directly online. McConnell's wife, Susan, has created a blog at http://www.mybionicboyfriend.com.
Also, Five Seasons’ page on Facebook is http://www.facebook.com/FiveSeasonsBurrRidge.
About the Les Turner ALS Foundation
The Les Turner organization has helped raise funds and awareness in the ALS community for over 30 years and is nationally recognized as one of the leaders supporting state of the art patient care and ALS research.
The Foundation funds two full-time ALS research laboratories and a state of the art patient care center at Northwestern University, in Chicago. Additionally, the Les Turner Foundation provides valuable patient service programs including professional in home RN and LSCW home visits, support groups, an equipment and speech device pool and grants for patients and their families living with this disease.
For more information about the Les Turner ALS Foundation, visit http://www.LesTurnerALS.org or call 847-679-3311
