Two DuPage County runs honor girls' deaths

When former Attorney General Jim Ryan's 12-year-old daughter Annie died of a brain tumor in 1997, he and his wife, Marie, wanted to help other families in the same situation. They created a 5K run and walk that raises money for the brain tumor center at Advocate Lutheran General Children's Hospital in Park Ridge.

Since then, the annual run has raised more than $500,000. This year's run definitely added to that total, as nearly 1,500 runners came out to Sunday's run in Elmhurst.

On the other side of DuPage County, more than 700 runners came out for the 9th Annual Jeanine Nicarico Run For Reading. The run is named after the 10-year-old Naperville girl who was murdered in 1983. Family members say Jeanine fell in love with reading and they wanted her name to be associated with something positive.

"So many people know Jeanine's face and her name with a lot of ugliness and a very sad, tragic situation," said Jeanine's sister, Kathy Nicarico, who was 13 at the time of the murder. "As a family, and with our friends, we wanted to change that and make sure people knew that's not who Jeanine was. Jeanine is this, what you see today: smiling faces, family time together, having fun."

While the circumstances of the two girls' deaths differ, both families have taken personal tragedy and turned it into a way to help others. Ryan said the Elmhurst event has been his wife's pursuit since Annie died.

"You have a hole in your heart that will always be there," he said. "But you try to take that and do something positive because there are other kids out there facing the same thing."

Denise Fleig said the brain tumor center houses hundreds of children and could not do a lot of its educational programs without the contribution of the Ryans.

"They turned an incredibly horrific thing (and) out of it, comes something really good," said Fleig, who is involved in the center's family support program.

Many other families who have lost children to brain tumors participated in the run, in hopes of helping others.

In Naperville, the Jeanine Nicarico Memorial Fund for Literacy existed for five years before a teacher at Thayer J. Hill Middle School came up with the idea for the run. It has grown from about 150 participants in 2002 to an all-time high of 738 runners Sunday.

During its existence, the run has raised more than $125,000 in grants for private and public schools in Naperville Unit District 203 and Indian Prairie Unit District 204.

The grants help students who, like Jeanine, had difficulty reading before she met a teacher who helped her overcome her problems.

As a special-education teacher at Lincoln Junior High School in Naperville, Lauren Ewanic has seen firsthand the help the grants have offered. She said she admires the Nicarico family for their desire to make something good out of their tragedy.

"It's neat that the family has been able to draw their strength and do something powerful in Jeanine's name," Ewanic said after completing the 5K run Sunday morning with her husband and two children. "It's amazing what their grants have been able to do for schools."

Kathy Nicarico said the large turnouts each year fund the grants.

"About 95 percent of the people here didn't know Jeanine," she said. "But that energy they bring to this is who she was."