Glory, Darkness, Light: A History of the Union League Club of Chicago

Glory, Darkness, Light: A History of the Union League Club of Chicago By James D. Nowlan A review by Jack Winans Jim Nowlan, after three years of intensive research, has finished his history of the Union League Club of Chicago. The League history is a fascinating insight into Chicago and Illinois state politics and progress - from Adler to Yerkes. Jim worked on the book while concurrently maintaining a staggering workload, including the rebirth of "The Stark County News," teaching at the University of Illinois, serving on many state and local committees and constantly responding to reporters and politi-cians in need of his insightful comments on the current state of Illinois Republican Party debacles. Jim was a member of the University Club but, after completing the book, resigned and joined the Union League Club. As Jim puts it, "I don't think I would have found the club attractive at all in the period of the 1930s into the 1970s. In fact, I joined the University Club in 1981 because it was the first club to admit women, as I recall, in the Chicago area region. And while that wasn't a litmus test, it seemed a little more progressive than the Union League Club, which would have probably been the primary competitor of those two clubs, which seemed to reach out to similar types of young, upwardly mobile professionals and middle-aged folks. But today, the Un-ion League Club seems to be quite progressive in its policies towards its mission; in fact, this is not a litmus test for me either. I think that they just admitted their first openly gay member, which would cause members from the 1940s to just twirl in their graves. "The early club was an alternative to the very stuffy Chicago clubs, and there were other clubs like the Union League Club that were ports in the storm from the muck out in the street for people who needed to do business over lunch and simply wanted a refined setting in which to do it. I think the Union League Club is different in that it originally had a civic mission, which it has maintained. "The Union League Club, probably through its Public Affairs [Committee] and Boys and Girls Clubs and maybe to some extent its Civics and Arts Foundation, does give the members who want to be active, opportunities to utilize, through the club, to be involved in good works, and a very high percentage contribute, and within that percentage quite a few actually participate directly. And I found that to be valuable, those activities to be valuable dimensions of the club, although many other non-profit groups do similar kinds of things. But it is nice to see a club with good purposes." "I think the club, and I think I said so in the final chapter, probably needs to find a mission or an issue for this age and burnish or re-vise the tradition being a mover and shaker on something important and valuable to the city or to the state. Jim was raised, as his dad was, a very conservative Republican, but says, "I'm kind of a mushy moderate as I age." Jennif