The Bean Bag-in-President Gary’s Face competition last Friday put the wraps on the S.M.A.R.T. Competition, which was won by the Western Conference "Holiday Gift Goliaths’" Leslie Day, Carol Gerhardt, Darleen McFarland, Geoff Roehll and Ray Wyzguski. In a frenzy of national Rotary conference sign-up activity, the Goliaths piled up 56 points to edge out the Eastern Conference Sunrise Saints by the slimmest of margins. Had Dawn Ruth turned in her nine sign-up/volunteer points a day sooner, the Saints would have gone marching in with shouldered 3-irons. The Eastern Conference prevailed over their Western counterparts, thanks to some muscle from the PADS Patriots and Clean Sweepers.

Joe Lichter’s action photos of the bag toss are on the Sunrise Web site. Go into the Members Page and click on S.M.A.R.T. If you’ve forgotten the ID and password, call Joe or Bruce Dixon.

Over one-quarter (29) of the Sunrise membership plans to attend the Chicago meeting. Twenty-seven members have signed up for a total of 68 hours of volunteer work. "You’ll get out of the Convention what you put into it," says chairman Tom Greenberg, who urges everyone who can to get involved with this 100-year anniversary event.

Our Fifth annual Beaux Arts Ball, "A Night in Paradise" – in this case, the Brazilian Rain Forest without the Boa Constrictors and Tree Sloths - is fast approaching. The event, to benefit the Naperville Sunrise Fund for the Arts, will be held February 19^th at the Holiday Inn Select. There will be cocktails, dinner, dancing and silent and live auctions. Nicki Scott reports that Moser Enterprises and the First National Bank of Naperville each chipped in $5,000 sponsorships. Other sponsors include Casey’s Foods, Charles Vincent George Design Group and Macon Corporation. Auction fans will bid on a private wine tasting for 10 and Goodman Theater tickets for "The Story," with a limo provided by Barb Knuckles. Bwana Trevor Morgan has volunteered to be a Jungle Guide. You can, too.

North Central College’s plans to make Naperville a regional hub for theater, music and other art forms was given shape at the January 28th meeting by President Hal Wilde. Key to the multi-million dollar project is a fine arts center to be located at the northwest corner of Ellsworth and Chicago. Plans call for a 680-seat music hall with what Dr. Wilde called "knock your sox off acoustics" that the Chicago Symphony would envy. The building also will have a 150-seat black box theater and a dance studio facing Chicago Avenue. The goal is to link the downtown business center with the college campus and provide world class facilities for theater, music and the visual arts, and to draw great companies, such as the Goodman and Steppenwolf Theaters and the Chicago Lyric Opera. The new facility would replace Schoenherr Hall (below, foreground), the house next door and a maintenance facility off camera to the left.

A block away, on the northwest corner of Ellsworth and Van Buren, is another link in the fine arts chain, the Grace Evangelical Church. Dr. Wilde said the church was purchased in September "with the intent of putting all of our (visual) arts programs in there and taking the sanctuary and converting it into a thrusting theater space." Here, the public will be treated to paintings, photographs, studio and other visual arts, as well as small-venue stage productions. Dr. Wilde expects the church portion to open this fall. A thrust stage theater, which will seat 350-plus people, will open later.

Old Grace

The Fine Arts District also would include an improved,1,050-seat theater in Pfeiffer Hall (310 E. Benton Ave.), the 150-seat Koten chapel in the Student Services building (329 E. School St.) and, on the same block, Heininger auditorium in the Larrance Academic Center (100-plus seats). The total project cost is estimated at $30-million, of which the college has about half in hand.

At our January 21^st meeting, the guest speaker was Janet Bornancin, executive director of the Glenn Ellen-based Greater DuPage MYM (MELD for Young Moms). This free program provides parenting support services to adolescent parents, including home visits by para-professionals who work with young moms and their families. Among their achievements: Ninety-six percent of the children are immunized, and 96 percent of participants of appropriate ages complete high school or receive their GED.