Two Maine West alumni honored

Hans Wahl has traveled the world in his 30 years as an international human rights activist, but he'll tell you it all started in Des Plaines.

Wahl, Class of 1969, was one of two Maine West Warriors honored Friday when the high school bestowed its second Distinguished Alumni Awards at the Senior Awards Assembly.

The second honoree was Kenneth Piest, an accomplished ophthalmologist and the president of the Class of 1972, who died in 2007 after a battle with leukemia. His sister and mother were at Maine West Friday to accept the award on his behalf.

Wahl, 58, flew to Des Plaines from Paris this week to talk with students and teachers about life as a human rights activist.

In high school, Wahl earned the rank of Eagle Scout, won by only 2 percent of Scouts at that time. He was senior class vice president and a member of both the class council and Thespian Club.

"My years in Des Plaines gave me models of community, friendship and scholarship that have remained with me throughout my life," Wahl said Friday.

"It was here I learned to appreciate the importance of community and the strength and values a tight-knit community gives us."

Wahl left Maine West on a fairly routine track; he graduated from Iowa State University and began teaching sixth grade.

But after the brother of a good friend was executed in a Chilean stadium during the 1973 coup that deposed Salvador Allende, a horrified Wahl sought out Amnesty International to volunteer.

After starting the first Amnesty International chapters in Iowa, Wahl was offered the directorship of the Midwest office. Thus began a 20-year career with the organization, dedicated to ending human rights abuses.

Wahl then moved on to Penal Reform International, a group funded by the United Nations, where he helped train hundreds of prison officials, judges, magistrates and guards in Africa, Asia and Latin America to improve conditions for prisoners.

Today Wahl lives in Paris, on the faculty of an international business school where he teaches MBA students how to attack poverty by coming up with unique business solutions.

He entertained Maine West students with tales about some of those innovative business ideas, ranging from training giant field rats to detect land mines with their advanced sense of smell, to planting mangoes in Kenya that can be easily harvested by HIV/AIDS patients in wheelchairs and subsequently sold to local juicing factories.

Wahl was struck by how much has changed at his alma mater since 1969.

"I am so impressed with Maine West," Wahl said. "There is so much diversity here now and students are encouraged to be much more aware of current events than when I was a student."

Sandy Deines, a volunteer member of the Maine Township High School District 207 Education Foundation, which chose the honorees, said the committee was "so impressed" with Wahl.

"He started out small, working as a teacher, and followed his passion until he was in a position to make an impressive impact on the world," she said.

Accepting the award for Piest was his sister, Kerry Piest and their mother, Elizabeth.

"My brother would have felt so honored and humbled to be nominated and then selected for this great award," said Kerry Piest, who lives in Des Plaines.

"It was very emotional for us, of course, but he would have just been so pleased," she said.

After years of training in ophthalmology specialties at top universities in Chicago, Utah and Philadelphia, Piest settled in San Antonio, Texas, teaching at the University of Texas Health Science Center for four years before opening his own practice.

Piest also was a consultant for the Neurofibromatosis Group and was active with FACES, or Facial Anomalies Clinic and Extended Services, a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting children with complex facial deformities.

Then Piest was struck with leukemia.

Even though he lived in Texas, his family and friends in Des Plaines got involved in helping him find a bone marrow donor. Members of churches held drives in an effort to find a match.

While trying to find a bone marrow donor for himself, Piest and his family established a nonprofit foundation that helps other cancer patients find suitable bone marrow matches. That foundation continues its work today even though Piest lost his fight last fall.

"The committee was so impressed with Ken's work in correcting facial deformities in children. That was very touching to us," Deines said.

"We are only sorry that he couldn't accept the award himself," she said.