Valerie Bowman Jarrett's uncle (mother's [Barbara Taylor Bowman] sister's [Lauranita Taylor Dugas] husband):
Lester J. Dugas Jr., 74, Businessman, Civic Leader
September 03, 1999|By Margaret O'Brien, Tribune Staff Writer.
Lester J. Dugas Jr., 74, a retired businessman and a pioneer in many social, civic and professional causes, died Monday in Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, Chicago.
He was the first African-American senior manager for Commonwealth Edison, where he worked for 35 years and paved the way for other minorities in the company. At the time of his retirement, he was the division vice president for Chicago South.
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Beyond Commonwealth Edison, Mr. Dugas also opened the door at the Economic Club of Chicago as its first African-American member.
He was well-known for his professional accomplishments, but even better known for his committed support of friends and civic causes.
“He and his family were very much a part of the civic fabric of this city,” said Edward Horner, executive vice president for development and public affairs at the Art Institute of Chicago. “He was a major presence and will be sorely missed.”
At the Art Institute, Mr. Dugas was chairman of the Leadership Advisory Committee and worked to make the museum's collection more appealing and available to an increasingly diverse audience.
He was also dedicated to health care. He was a board member at Children's Memorial Hospital for 30 years, past president of the board at Provident Hospital, chairman of the Foundation for Critical Care Medicine and an active member of the Illinois Hospital Association.
As a retired professional, he served as a board member of the Kenwood Group Inc., chairman of the executive committee of Hyde Park Bank, senior director and distributor for NSA Inc. and trustee for the Kenwood Growth and Income mutual fund.
Mr. Dugas served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Afterward, he earned a degree in electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There, he was one of the founding members of the Beta Omicron chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.
Mr. Dugas was a senior warden at the Church of St. Paul the Redeemer in Hyde Park. He was chairman of the building and grounds committee and spearheaded the restoration of the church bell tower in memory of his mother-in-law, Dorothy J. Taylor.
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TRIBUTE TO LATE MR. LESTER JOSEPH DUGAS, JR.
Presented By
ALDERMAN HAIRSTON (5TH Ward) And
ALDERMAN PRECKWINKLE (4th Ward):
http://www.engr.wisc.edu/alumni/perspective/27.1/dugas.html
Dugas, one of the founding members of the Beta Omicron Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, graduated from the college with a degree in electrical engineering in 1949. He met his future wife, Lauranita Taylor, while they were both students at UW-Madison. The couple moved to Chicago, where Dugas worked with the electric utility company Commonwealth Edison. He worked for the company for 35 years, and retired as a division vice president.
He became the first African-American senior manager there and began to hone his own management skills, focusing on promoting and rewarding competence without regard to race and gender. Dugas recruited talented African-American students for internships and employment with Commonwealth Edison. He also promoted a woman to division engineer for the first time in the company's history.
Commonwealth Edison employees were encouraged to share their talents through a forum Dugas created. Dugas’s commitment to interpersonal relationships is illustrated in his 1977 trip to Russia as part of a U.S. Department of Energy exchange program. The following year he reciprocated the invitation by hosting Russian engineers at his home in Chicago. He was one of only a few asked to return for the completion of the program a year later.
The Dugases played a major role in the university's efforts to reach out to traditionally under-represented alumni and recruited students in the Chicago area. Often, they opened their home to host events that encouraged others to become involved in the university. Beyond the Chicago area, they helped identify alumni across the country and maintained contact with them, strongly advocating for the support of students and educational programs.
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http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/lauranita-dugas-41
Lifetime educator Lauranita Taylor Dugas was born on December 2, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois to Dorothy and Robert Taylor. Her father was the first black commissioner of the Chicago Housing Authority, an organization he worked with for eleven years. In 1944, Dugas graduated from Parker High School and moved to Wisconsin to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she received her B.A. degree in sociology. In 1949, Dugas married Lester J. Dugas Jr., an electrical engineering student at the time who then became the first black senior manager of Commonwealth Edison in Chicago.
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Dugas lived (50th and S. Woodlawn Ave.) doors down from Bill Ayers, Valerie Bowman Jarrett, Vernon Jarrett, Cass Sunstein, et al. (ZabaSearch)
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In a lovely Hyde Park apartment, Dorothy Taylor was discussing the times and legacy of her late husband, Robert Rochon Taylor. Chicagoans, and students of urban misadventures, know the name, if not a thing about him.
He's the Robert Taylor after whom the 28-building mess called the Robert Taylor Homes-the world's largest public housing project-is named. He died in 1957, four years before the project went up, but suffers in absentia the ignominy of his name being synonymous for a disaster.
(snip)
Taylor is the worldly matriarch of a sprawling and prestigious black family. Its members include granddaughter Valerie Jarrett, the Chicago Planning and Economic Development Commissioner, and grandniece Antoinette Cook Bush (”I consider her like my granddaughter”), expected to be named by President Clinton as the first black and first woman to head the Federal Communications Commission. Valerie was married to a son of columnist Vernon Jarrett; Cook's stepfather is Vernon Jordan, the Washington insider and civil rights leader.
(snip)
...Taylor and Dorothy moved into them that same year, soon after the birth of Valerie's mom, Chicagoan Barbara Bowman. Their second daughter, and Gail Dugas’ mother, is Chicagoan Lauranita Dugas.
(snip)
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wiki: To one reporter's e-mailed question about her divorce, she replied, “Married in (Dr. William Robert Jarrett) 1983, separated in 1987, and divorced in 1988. Enough said.”[7] In a Vogue profile, she further explained “We grew up together. We were friends since childhood. In a sense, he was the boy next door. I married without really appreciating how hard divorce would be.”
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http://watch.pair.com/synarchy-3.html
THOMAS G. AYERS & BARACK OBAMA
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http://keywiki.org/index.php/Vernon_Jarrett#Vernon_Jarrett_and_Harold_Washington
Vernon Jarrett was also a fan of Barack Obama. He watched his career from its early stages and became an influential supporter.
In 1992 Obama worked for the ACORN offshoot, Project Vote to register black voters in aid of the Senate Campaign of Carol Moseley Braun-who had strong Communist Party USA ties and was Harold Washington's legislative floor leader.
Obama helped Carol Moseley Braun win her Senate seat, then took it over himself in 2004-backed by the same communist/socialist alliance that had elected Washington and Moseley Braun.
Commenting on the 1992 race, Vernon Jarrett wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times of August 11th 1992;
Good news! Good news! Project Vote, a collectivity of 10 church-based community organizations dedicated to black voter registration, is off and running. Project Vote is increasing its rolls at a 7,000-per-week clip...If Project Vote is to reach its goal of registering 150,000 out of an estimated 400,000 unregistered blacks statewide, “it must average 10,000 rather than 7,000 every week,” says Barack Obama, the program's executive director...
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http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/valerie_jarrett/
Valerie Jarrett daughter wedding: Besides Obama, who was there
By Lynn Sweet on June 17, 2012
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2008/11/24/ms-jarrett-goes-to-washington.html
(Valerie Jarrett's) timing couldn’t have been better. Harold Washington had become the city’s first African-American mayor and Jarrett wanted to be part of his administration. Judd Miner, then Washington’s Corporation Counsel, recruited Jarrett to the city’s law department.
A few years later, after he’d returned to his law firm, Miner would make another hiring coup, recruiting the president of the Harvard Law Review, Barack Obama. Miner, in fact, was one of Obama’s earliest connections to an assortment of wealthy Jewish and African-American Chicago Democrats who would assist him at every stage of his political career.
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http://spectator.org/archives/2011/07/05/letting-obama-be-obama/print
Significantly, it was Judd Miner, who formed a law firm with Allison Davis—Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland—who personally says that he recruited Valerie to the city’s Law Department, getting her initially involved with the Washington administration. Jarrett “wasn’t happy with private practice,” Miner told the Chicago Sun-Times, “and she wanted to get involved in the Washington administration.” The firm represented a number of groups that partnered with private developers to build and manage “affordable” housing. Speaking of whom, the firm’s partners were familiar with Chicago businessman Tony Rezko. (More on this momentarily.)
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http://keywiki.org/index.php/Vernon_Jarrett
Vernon Jarrett also played a major role in the election of Chicago's first black Mayor Harold Washington.
According to aWashington Postobituary May 25th 2004;
Mr. Jarrett continually shone a light on African American history and pertinent issues in Chicago and throughout the country. He stoked the political embers in Chicago that led to the 1983 election of the city's first African American mayor, Harold Washington.
Vernon Jarrett was a key influence in Washington's decision to run for the Chicago mayoralty and remained a key supporter through his four year tenure.