Donna la pietra biography of barack

Another big project: fundraising for Chicago , the group behind the city's Olympics bid. Her clients' galas often break records. In , the Field Museum assembled a host committee of 22 big names, rather than a small group of co-chairs, for its gala opening of an exhibit on the World's Columbian Exposition. That's less obvious. Over the years, she has declined several requests to be profiled, citing a career-long policy of avoiding publicity.

The most recent attempt prompted her to call me and issue a polite request to abandon the story. According to her bio on her firm's website, she grew up in Park Ridge and graduated from Indiana University with a degree in broadcast journalism. According to public records, she is 64 and lives in the DePaul area. Were it not for her low-key appearance at events, one might think she is a ghost.

It's difficult to get clients and former colleagues to talk about her. I tried more than a dozen, and most declined after checking with Hurley. Clients say Hurley possesses a thorough knowledge of the city's philanthropic-social landscape and helps nonprofits identify people on their boards and donor lists who can reach out to potential contributors.

Kurtis: We have conservation easements on all but eight acres. In the easements we have 25 acres of restored prairie. You have to work a little at that. You cut down all the invasives and burn it, and then wait for the native plants to come back. In addition to that, we have 33 acres of oak hickory forest that is native. La Pietra: In those days it was rain forests and going to South America and pointing the finger somewhere else and then realizing hey wait a minute, we have a bit of an environmental problem ourselves.

We became very interested in the notion of having land put back together and trying to avoid the blacktopping of all of exurbia. La Pietra: It was a really exciting time when we were trying not only to put on a newscast that would attract an audience, but a newscast that would do it with news and this sort of fight against happy talk. It was amazing and I was just given a lot of rope.

Kabuki drop? Kurtis smiles. At one end, about 10 feet up, looms an arched opening: a tiny Juliet balcony, complete with a polished oak balustrade. Kurtis remarks offhandedly that they performed the same demonstration for Robert Redford when he visited a few months earlier.

Donna la pietra biography of barack

The Robert Redford? Kurtis laughs. A few moments later, he pulls up outside in an eight-seater golf cart he uses to tootle around the grounds. Over the next two-plus hours, I get the grand tour, including a stop at a genuine split-rail treehouse. Next stop is a swarming bee colony, followed by a small orchard with not-quite-ripe apples hanging pendulously, then the prairie grass pastures.

A walled English garden, winding stone paths, and a labyrinth of hedges scroll by as we bump along. A tour of the main house, led by La Pietra, is equally wonder filled, beginning with the great room, where scars on the floor, the fluttering toe-shoe scuffs of Joffrey Ballet dancers, mark a special charity performance. On top of one dresser is a display of all things Anchorman , the Will Ferrell comedy that Kurtis memorably narrated.

But no one lives a life free of setbacks and pain. Kurtis is no exception. For this article, however, he talked about both at length and with an unflinching candor. I later asked him why he finally decided to do so. His features softened and his voice, the Voice, thickened. If ever a person seemed fated for a calling, it was Bill Kurtis. Even when he was a boy in Independence, Kansas, a farm-and-picket-fence town of about 10, two and a half hours due south of the capital, Topeka, teachers remarked on his basso profundo voice, his mature demeanor.

As he grew into his teens, his physical appearance caught up; he was tall, square shouldered, and already anchorman handsome. Still pining to be close to the game, he put his energy into another outlet: play-by-play for the local radio station. His middle name and, by extension, his childhood nickname, Horty came from his mother, Wilma Mary Horton; his last name, which he would change to the more broadcast-friendly Kurtis down the road, owed to his father, William A.

Kurtis can put his finger on one contributing factor: Because his father was in the military, his family moved often in his early years, and Kurtis was able to escape the flat Midwestern twang of his peers. In most other ways, however, he reaped the benefits of small-town Middle America, and that included his work ethic, which would serve him well in what would become a globetrotting career in journalism.

He even swept the floors after his shift. To some, it might have seemed two-bit. He spent the next few years working at bigger stations in Topeka and taking classes at the University of Kansas, 30 minutes away in Lawrence. He was also dating Helen Scott, whom he had met in high school. She attended Pittsburg State in southern Kansas, and each weekend Kurtis would make the two-and-a-half-hour drive down Highway 69 to pay her court.

For a safety net, after a six-month hitch in the Marine Corps, he opted to study law at Washburn University in Topeka. By this time, he and Helen were married, and Helen was working as a teacher. His final year, the two welcomed a baby girl, Mary Kristin four years later, they added a boy, Scott , and just before graduating in , Kurtis accepted a job with a personal injury law firm in Wichita.

It was while preparing for the bar exam that a year-old Kurtis agreed to fill in on an early-evening TV newscast in Topeka. A friend of his, a reporter, wanted to get a head start on a vacation. What could possibly happen? At just after 7 p. How, Kurtis wondered, could he convince listeners that a catastrophe was looming? The storm leveled large portions of Topeka, leaving 17 dead and hundreds more injured.

By the time it was all over, Kurtis had spent 24 hours straight on the air, part of that time devoted to reading the names of survivors for worried relatives whose phone lines were down. His performance under pressure earned him more than attaboys from city officials. The station wanted him as a street reporter. But anyone unaware of his journalism bona fides should know these things about Bill Kurtis:.

He covered the —71 trial of Charles Manson, which, in terms of sensationalism, rivals that of O. He won a national Emmy in for an in—depth investigation of the effects of Agent Orange on Vietnam vets. The article got attention in the highest reaches of the U. He saw me as a potential problem. This is an Irish town. Very articulate. He knew everything, he was tireless, and he was willing to look into anything.

The station tinkered with the traditional format, placing the anchor desk in the newsroom. None of this was an act. The two proved a perfect pair: Kurtis, the dignified anchor with the straight delivery, and Jacobson, the scrappy, shoot-from-the-hip conscience of the people. The combination clicked for viewers too. The newscast slowly rose from worst to first in the ratings.

As close as the two seemed onscreen, though, they rarely socialized off. Just as Kurtis was finding his footing as an anchor, he was dealing with a devastating development at home. In , doctors diagnosed his wife, Helen, with breast cancer. Worry touched every aspect of their lives. Nothing worked. In the late spring of , Kurtis was in Africa covering a tribal massacre when he received a call that Helen had taken a turn for the worse.

He returned to find her in a coma.