Charitable Barrington couple chosen to light holiday tree
Barrington residents Susan and Doug McConnell will get the honor of lighting the village's holiday tree in recognition of their charitable endeavors.
They'll perform the duty at about 5 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, in downtown Barrington. The annual community tree lighting will be part of a festival running from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. that features a petting zoo, tours of Barrington's White House, free carriage rides, a visit from Santa Claus and more.
"Susan and Doug McConnell have dedicated their lives to serving the Barrington community," states a village board resolution that officially granted them the tree-lighting honor.
Susan McConnell, who's volunteered her talent as photographer to many charitable organizations over the years, including the JourneyCare hospice in Barrington, founded Let It Be Us. Her nonprofit is dedicated to changing the landscape of foster care and adoption in Illinois.
Let It Be Us has worked to connect hundreds of foster children with foster families in the state. McConnell's group organized two informational sessions on adoption and foster care in Libertyville and Woodstock after the death this year of Andrew "AJ" Freund, the Crystal Lake 5-year-old who authorities say was abused and killed by his parents.
Doug McConnell has become known for using long-distance swims to raise money for Northwestern University's collaborative research of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also know as Lou Gehrig's disease or ALS. It's a progressive neuromuscular disease without prevention or cure.
In his most recent fundraiser in August for the nonprofit A Long Swim, which he founded to benefit ALS research, McConnell was pulled from the Atlantic Ocean due to dangerous conditions only a half-mile short of touching land in his jaunt from Nantucket's Eel Point to the Edgartown lighthouse on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.
McConnell went about 18 miles in his effort to achieve what could have been the longest Atlantic Ocean swim between two well-known Massachusetts islands.
After swimming the English Channel under strict rules in 2011, he's gone around Manhattan, Molokai Channel in Hawaii, Catalina Channel in California and the length of Tampa Bay. The jaunts have led to about $500,000 in donations to A Long Swim for the ALS research.