Roberta (Bobbie) Raymond remembers former Oak Park Village Trustee Theodore Krasnow as someone who “fought for what was good.”
She also recalled him as a philosophical person. So when Raymond heard his daughter, Iris, quote him during Friday’s Tradition of Excellence ceremony, she instantly made the connection. Raymond, president of the Oak Park and River Forest High School Alumni Association, chatted briefly with Iris Krasnow during a reception for honorees and guests after the assembly.
Friday’s event was the 29th annual event honoring alumni who have gone on to excel in various fields. In addition to author and journalist Krasnow, a 1972 OPRF graduate, Phil Radford, executive director of Greenpeace and a 1994 grad was also honored.
Krasnow and Radford spoke to students and staff during back-to-back morning assemblies where they received their awards. Each encouraged students to follow their passions throughout their lives. After the assembly, Krasnow spoke with Wednesday Journal about her late father, and about Oak Park in the ’60s and ’70s. She credited him with helping to make Oak Park a more diverse community.
Raymond, a former president of the Oak Park Housing Center, recalled several progressive Oak Park trustees back then, “Ted” Krasnow being one of them. Mr. Krasnow, who died in 1986, served on the Oak Park village board at a critical time, from 1968 to 1972.
“There were a lot of fair housing laws passed throughout the country, but it was what happened afterward that made the difference,” Raymond said. “[Ted] was a person who was out front in supporting what was right.”
An Oak Park native, Krasnow also recalled the diversity — or lack thereof — in her graduating class.
“When I went to school here, in my class of more than 1,000 kids, there were only two African-American kids in the entire class; and my father was on the board of trustees that definitely changed things around Oak Park, and now we’re the prototypical diverse community in the country,” said Krasnow, a former Dallas Times Herald reporter. She is also an author, her most recent book titled, The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes To Stay Married.
Radford has worked with Greenpeace since 2003, and has served as its director since 2009. Friday was his first time back to OPRF since graduating. He shared with students what got him interested in environmental causes. He confessed to not being the most focused student but said both of his parents were progressive thinkers. That passion eventually rubbed off on him as a student when he learned that an incinerator was being built on the West Side.
“These emit some of the most cancer-causing chemicals known to science,” Radford said, acknowledging his parents who both attended the assembly.
He also recalled being recruited by Chicago activist Julie Samuels to speak as a high school student at public hearings concerning the incinerators. Some of his family members at the time, he says, were also diagnosed with cancer.
“What it really made me question was what is the meaning of life; what is your meaning in life? And I started to think, what should I live for?” Radford said. “What I came to was that the meaning of life is what we create; that we spend our time and spend our energy fighting for the people and places and things that we love.”