Late Wheeling Rotary Club president helped lead fight against polio
This story has been corrected to say that Jack Blane met with Bill Gates Sr., the father of the billionaire entrepreneur who founded Microsoft Corp.
When Jack Blane met Bill Gates Sr. - the father of the billionaire entrepreneur - at a dinner event, he talked about his lifelong passion to wipe out the scourge of polio.
That conversation would help spur a multibillion dollar commitment from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fight the disease, Blane's daughter Barbara Toney says.
At the time, Blane was already a force behind Rotary International's PolioPlus campaign, the first initiative to eradicate the highly infectious disease by vaccinating children. He was the international executive coordinator in the effort's earliest days from 1986 to 1988. In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was formed, bringing together Rotary International, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would join the group and has contributed nearly $3 billion since 2007.
"When I think about what one man was able to accomplish, it's astounding to me," Toney said of her father. "So when people say, 'I can't make a difference,' you very much can make a difference."
Blane, a Highland Park resident and two-time president of the Rotary Club of Wheeling, died Feb. 19. He was 94.
Polio struck Blane's life at an early age. During his summer Boy Scout camp in 1937, an outbreak killed two boys and paralyzed six others. Blane and the remaining Boy Scouts were sent home early and quarantined until school began because no polio vaccine was available.
"It hit close to me," Blane told the Daily Herald in a story last year. "I felt blessed not to have been afflicted, and I wanted to pay the fact I hadn't experienced any problems forward."
Blane committed his life to service. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942 and served eight years in the reserves. He went on to work for Ekco Products Co. in Wheeling and eventually became president. It later merged into American Home Products.
After retiring in 1985, he was a president and director of the Highland Park Public Library, city council member and city treasurer. He founded the Highland Park Community Foundation and was awarded numerous awards for public service. Blane was the president of the Rotary Club of Wheeling in 1975 and again just last year.
Blane was married to his wife Joan for 61 years and they had three children: Toney, John Blane and Nancy Guerra, who has died.
Toney remembers the family's home in Highland Park being filled with music, particularly the sounds of her father playing his accordion.
"He was someone who I always respected - who had high expectations for the three of us," Toney said.
Blane had high expectations for himself, too. He wanted to see polio eradicated and came very close to that goal. Cases have declined by 99 percent since 1988, and more than 16 million people have been saved from paralysis, according to the World Health Organization.
"When he got involved in something, it was never halfway," Toney said. "It was always 150 percent."
A celebration of life will be at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Highland Park High School. Donations in Blane's memory can be sent to End Polio Now at rotary.org or the Highland Park Community Foundation at hpcommunityfoundation.com.