This summary is largely based on an Oral History transcript by James M. Patterson, a member of the Board of Education during the formation of the Rich High School District and for some years after the Dedication. Mr. Patterson's complete Oral transcript can be found at the Park Forest Public Library, Local History Archives. It was used with the permission of the Park Forest Public Library.

Newspaper articles are still to be mined for further information about the speakers and what they may have said.

Rich Township High School was dedicated on Sunday, December 6, 1953, at two o'clock in a ceremony held in the school gymnasium.(Be sure to see the image after the summary.)

The Dedication Program:

Prelude........................................................................Organ Recital
                Dedication of the Connsonata Organ
                  K. Arthur McAbee,  Staff  Organist
                (Courtesy of W.W.Kimball Co., Chicago)
Presentation of Colors................................................Legionnaires and Students
Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem.............Assemblage
Invocation..................................................................Rev. G. S. Engelmann, D. D. Pastor, United Protestant Church, Park Forest
"This Is My Country"..................................................Raye-Jacobs-Scott
        Rich Township H.S. Chorus - Mr. W. Jay Hoel, Director
Presentation of Platform Guests..................................Mr. James M. Patterson, Member of the Board of Education
        Mr. Robert L. Ringwood,   President of the Board of Education
        Dr. Eric R. Baber,   Superintendent of Rich Township High School
        Miss Beth Parkhurst,   Student of Rich Township High School
        Mr. Vernon L. Nickell,   State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Illinois
        Mr. Noble J. Puffer,   Cook County Superintendent of Schools
        Mr. Jerrold Loebl,   Loebl, Schlossman and Bennett, Architects
        Mr. Glen Chell,   Chell and Anderson, General Contractors
        Mr. Philip Klutznick,   American Community Builders, Inc.
Introduction of the Principal Speaker.........................Dr. William E. McVey, United States Congressman and Distinguished Educator
Dedication Address...................................................Mrs. Oveta Culp Hobby, The Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Washington,  D. C.
Benediction...............................................................Rev. Elmer S. Coogan, Pastor, St. Irenaeus Parish, Park Forest
Postlude....................................................................Organ Selections

SUMMARY:  Mr. Patterson tells of the successful effort to persuade Mrs. Hobby to be the principal speaker at the formal dedication of the new high school building. Oveta Culp Hobby had been named by President Eisenhower as the first Secretary of the newly-created Department of Health, Education and Welfare. HEW, as it soon became known, had been established by Congress on April 11, 1953. Mrs. Hobby was the first director of the Women's Army Corps (WACs), the first woman to become a Colonel, and the only woman to serve in President Eisenhower's Cabinet.

Mr. Patteson and the School Board had decided to ask Mrs. Hobby to speak at the dedication. In the weeks following the creation of HEW,  he and Dr. Baber, Superintendent  of Rich Township High School District 227, obtained an appointment to meet Mrs. Hobby at her office in Washington. Mrs. Hobby refused to even consider their request to dedicate the high school, noting that she had to oversee a budget greater than the income of General Motors', and received over 400 speaking invitations each month. Mr. Patterson responded by noting that she had set aside 20 minutes for their meeting, and that he wished to tell her  "what local citizens - volunteers - have been able to accomplish without one penny of federal aid, [not even applying] for the funds we were entitled to due to the number of service personnel and Argonne and government employees we had. We decided that citizens have to do things on their own and ... we went ahead and did it ourselves." At the conclusion of his story, she said she would send the Superintendent of Public Instruction to dedicate the school. Mr. Patterson responded that they had not invited the Superintendent; they had invited the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. As she eased them out of her office, she gave them "a typical woman's answer. She said, 'I will give it prayerful consideration.'" (Mr. Patterson seemed to think it was a woman's response because it was not yes and not no. But it was simply a political response.)

In the corridor, Dr. Baber asked why he had not accepted the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Mr. Patterson replied: "Don't want Dr. Brownell. I want Oveta Culp Hobby."

They then went to the White House to seek support from the Citizens for Eisenhower Committee (for there had been a very active 'Bipartisan Citizens for Eisenhower' organization in Park Forest). The answer was immediate: "Do you think you are going to get a Cabinet officer to a dink high school in the boondocks? You're out of your minds." Mr. Patterson then went to the office of  William E. McVey (Member of the House of Representatives from the 4th Congressional District) to obtain his assistance. He did not see the Congressman, but he did persuade Dr. McVey's secretary that she and her boss must convince Mrs. Hobby to come to Park Forest. And in mid-summer, when Dr. McVey was in the hospital, Mr. Patterson asked his secretary to telephone Mrs. Hobby's confidential secretary to say: "I've got to know what Sunday in December Mrs. Hobby is going to dedicate that school because Dr. McVey would fire me if I didn't schedule him to be there to greet her and introduce her and present her to the citizens of the area."  Some time later, Dr McVey's secretary called Mr. Patterson to say that it was the Sunday, the sixth of December.

Mrs. Hobby arrived in Chicago on Friday, the fourth of December, and stayed at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. She was thus able to attend several meetings and address a group in Chicago before her Sunday appointment in Park Forest. Mr. Patterson picked her up with one of his company's limousines and a chauffeur, and was accompanied by senior Charles "Chuck" Jonas, President of the Student Council, and junior Beth Parkhurst, Secretary of the Student Council and that they gave her the school's 'Teen-Age Charter', a ten-point code of conduct. [Other sources note that only Chuck Jonas accompanied Mr. Patterson and Mrs. Hobby from Chicago, and that Beth Parkhurst, a platform guest during the dedication ceremony, formally presented the Teen-Age Charter at that time.]

Prior to the Dedication, Mrs. Hobby, Dr. McVey and the other guests were given a tour of Park Forest and a luncheon in the student lounge served by Rich's home economics students.

Mrs. Hobby was a small woman, and Mr. Patterson had to find a box for her to stand on in order for her head to be above the microphone on the podium. [Her speech was expected to be her first major message in the field of education.]

At the end of the ceremony, Mrs. Hobby had to leave quickly to return to Washington. Mr. Patterson did not know how they could easily get out of the gym, with the crowd gathered around her, but she gave him the solution she had learned in the WACs:  get a burly sergeant to take her by the hand and start running at the crowd, which parts and lets you out. And he continued: "I said, 'OK kid, let's go.' And I grabbed her by the hand and ran right straight at the crowd, and just like she said, it parted like the Red Sea and we went out to the car."

[Patterson concluded by saying that he took her to Midway where he had arranged for her to be in a VIP area until her plane left. The Star of December 1, 1953, indicated that she planned to leave Gary by train for Washington.]

The page above appeared in the brochure entitled "Rich Township High School, Park Forest, Illinois," in 1954.

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