Nothing lasts forever but a series of events presented by the First Friday Club of Chicago has quietly reached its 41st year and continues to do what it has always done, which is offer an oasis of lively conversation, and often wisdom and wit, in this frenetic planet.
As the world has become an increasingly remote and icy place — thanks a lot to social media platform X and Zoom and all the other internet forms of communicating — this event continues to reaffirm the human need for gathering in person and listening to someone smart say something interesting.
“I am stunned that this is still going,” says John Cusick, who started it all in September 1986 with Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. “Stunned but pleased.”
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Cusick had then just started working at Old St. Patrick’s Church with Rev. Jack Wall. The two men would help transform the parish from being in danger of closing to one of the most vital and popular in town. Cusick was the director of the Young Adult Ministry for the archdiocese and regularly presided at Old St. Pat’s Masses, offering sermons that, amazingly, were not written down. “They all came off the top of my head.”
He was invited to speak at the First Friday Club of Cleveland, which started in 1958. He knew a good idea when he saw one, and so the First Friday Club of Chicago was born.
The list of people who have spoken forms a history of the city. It would not be possible to name them all here, but you can have a look and in so doing you’ll find such people as Richard M. Daley (three times); journalists Howard Reich, Blair Kamin and Barbara Mahany; TV’s John Callaway, Carol Marin, Bill Kurtis and Tim Weigel; radio’s Roy Leonard and Paul Harvey; Scott Turow, Rick Telander, Lester Munson and Marv Levy.
The gatherings take place at the Union League Club of Chicago, a venerable private club and striking setting. Lunch is served and the food is very good.
This month will have a pair of speakers: Cody Keenan and Josh Earnest.
Keenan was a speechwriter for former President Barack Obama and Earnest was one of his press secretaries. Cusick is excited, saying, “We’ve already had more than 200 reservations. I know these names are not as well known as many but enough people are aware of them and are eager to hear what it is really like inside the White House.”
One thing worth knowing, and it could be asked during an audience question session that usually follows all presentations: “Mr. Keenan, what is it like to have some of your words displayed on the exterior of the Obama Center, words taken from a speech on which you and Obama collaborated?”
Keenan is now a partner at a speechwriting firm, teaches at his undergraduate alma mater, Northwestern University, and has written “Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America.”
Earnest is executive vice president of communications and advertising for United Airlines. His previous life in politics featured being White House press secretary from 2014 to 2017 and later being an analyst for NBC News.
This First Fridays season will continue with priest Gary Graf; Lynn Gordon, founder of the Madonna Mission; Myetie Hamilton, chief executive officer of Leadership Greater Chicago; radio’s Terri Hemmert; public health expert Dr. Selwyn Rogers Jr. and restaurateur Phil Stefani.
Cusick is a persuasive guy and a genuine Chicagoan, a native South Sider who grew up at 85th Place and California Avenue. He was the only son of a railroad worker dad, George, and a homemaker mom, Florence. “It was the wrong side of the tracks in Beverly,” he said of his modest circumstances. He told me that he found religion, his life calling, with early memories of 6:30 morning Mass ever fresh. “Catholicism is a blood type and I was a church rat,” he told me long ago. “There was a cultural comfort growing up in the Catholic neighborhood, and my earliest heroes were the parish priests.”
He formally retired from the priesthood in July 2014 with his final official Mass attracting a standing-room-only crowd to Old St. Pat’s. Not sure what “retired” means, since he appears to be as busy as ever.
He remains First Fridays Club Chaplain, working with a volunteer board of directors to select speakers. He is often called on by friends and others for things joyful (weddings) and sorrowful (funerals). He remains a thoughtful and buoyant man. The First Friday Club reflects not only his eclectic interests but also, as he puts it, his “desire to bring people together, to bring people who lead or have led a valued life in front of others to share. Some of our best speakers have shared things that have little to do with their work. One man came believing that he was to speak as if at a business luncheon, and it didn’t take long for him to realize this was not some sort of business forum, and I watched and heard him give a moving talk.”
If you go
First Friday Club of Chicago next meets at noon Nov. 6 at Union League Club of Chicago, 65 W. Jackson Blvd.; tickets $67 at firstfridayclubchicago.org