Fueled by founder and president, Chesterton sophomore Lana Glazer, high school’s Philanthropy Club raises $13,078 for Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com
Never mind that she was just a couple of months past her 15th birthday and still not quite in her sophomore year at Chesterton High School, Lana Glazer was full of gratitude for all that Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago had done for her kid sister Liza and decided it was time to start giving back.
So, Lana started by emailing assistant principal Adam Tenbarge last summer and informed him she wanted to put on a dance marathon at school for the benefit of the hospital.
“Mr. Tenbarge told me I would have to either add onto a club or create my own club,” Glazer said. “So, I founded the Philanthropy Club. I’m the president of that.”
Every club must line up a faculty sponsor/mentor, and Lana knew just the person she wanted to ask: Adam Schultz, whose AP Art History class she so enjoyed as a freshman. He said yes, of course.
Glazer founded the club, which has grown to 30 members, in November. The Philanthropy Club held a series of fundraisers, including selling T-shirts from a table near the entrance to the gym at home basketball games. Lana and many of the club’s members are on the dance team that performs at basketball games, so she had to arrange for someone to be in charge at the table, except for the 30 minutes she was available.
And then there was the bake sale that the club held at Strack & Van Til.
“I had the club bake a bunch of goodies and we were at Strack’s from 11 to 5,” she said. “We were out front, but it was really cold, so we moved inside, and we were set up right after you check out. People passed us and we would tell them it was for Lurie and then they would give more. I couldn’t believe we raised $1,500 in one day.”
The generosity of friends helped as well.
“We also had peer to peer fundraisers where members of the club sent their link to people and they donated online,” Glazer said.
The dance marathon and the website for donations was set up by Children’s Miracle Network. Lurie Children’s Hospital is the Children’s Miracle Network hopsital for this region. Lana met regularly online with Hannah Monte, her point of contact at Children’s Miracle Network for pointers on how to run the dance marathon.
The club met at school every Wednesday from 7:30 a.m. to 8 a.m.
All the while, Lana organized the club’s signature event, the dance marathon, which took place Saturday night in the fieldhouse.
Strobe lights and a deejay set the mood and students and even some parents danced the night away during a three-hour event that not only celebrated the hard work done by the Philanthropy Club in its first year but also raised money for a cause dear to the Glazer family.
Lana’s sister Liza, now 11 and then 6, spent most of a year receiving treatments at Lurie after being diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma in her right leg.
“She went to the hospital to get treated and she’s all better now,” Lana said. “But I knew I wanted to do something. A dance marathon is supposed to recognize the health care workers who don’t get to sit down during the entire shift. IU was the first one to have a dance marathon. It’s usually for colleges, but I brought it to high school. Usually, it’s 24 hours of standing up and dancing, just to represent what someone would do at the hospital without getting to sit down. Obviously, can’t do that here, so we made it three hours.”
What started as a desire for a dance marathon has evolved into a Philanthropy Club that Lana is determined for it to grow in size and scope in her final two years in high school.
“And then I will pass it on to someone else and I hope it continues to grow,” she said.
Youthful exuberance being what it is, young people sometimes reach too high. Lana set an aggressive fundraising goal, all right, for the first-year of the Philanthropy Club: $10,000. But even if the club fell short, every penny would be appreciated.
The evening that included Liza speaking briefly to the audience and Lana conducting a brief interview of a girl, age 6, currently being treated at Lurie for a brain tumor, built toward what Lana called “the final reveal” of the total of the funds raised. Seventeen girls from the Philanthropy Club, most of them wearing tutus as part of their wardrobe, stood in a line in front of the deejay. Seven girls standing in the middle of the line each held up a placard simultaneously. One dollar sign, followed by two numbers, then a comma, then three more numbers revealed the dollar amount raised: $13,078.
Goal met, shattered in fact.
“Everything in our account goes to Lurie at the end of the week,” Glazer said. “We’re going to do this again next year.”
Preparing for the event included arranging donations from local businesses. Lana rattled off some of those donations: “Strack & Van Til donated a $100 gift card and we went shopping and bought a bunch of stuff for the night. Family Express donated 12 dozen cases of water, five dozen cookies and five dozen donuts; 15 pizzas from Domino’s, one tray of chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-A, all the T-shirts donated by Blythe’s.”
The website is closed for this year, but those interested in donating to push the first-year contribution of the Philanthropy Club past $13,078 can do so by writing a check to Chesterton High School Philanthropy Club, and the money will be forwarded to Lurie. If the check arrives late, it will be deposited in the Philanthropy Club account to kick off next year’s fundraising.
“Everyone at the high school was super supportive of it,” Glazer said. “Mr. Schultz has been a great sponsor. He knows I’m self-sufficient, so he let me run the meetings, but he was always there, and he always came through whenever we needed something.”
Glazer said that principal Brent Martinson “was really excited about it, and Mr. Tenbarge and (assistant principal) and Mr. (Robert) Blumenthal were really excited about it.”
They have reason to be excited about having Glazer as a student the school. She will finish her sophomore year with six AP credits and plans to take five AP classes next year.
“I’m a little scared of that,” she said.
Just a little, though. After all, she carries a 5.09 GPA. She wants to attend the alma mater of her parents, Chad and Orlee Glazer, both graduates of Duke University. And she would like to become a pediatric surgeon. She aims high. And, if the Philanthropy Club tells you anything it’s that when she reaches her goals, she keeps soaring.