A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Philanthropist script
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Listen

Garrison Keillor: Gary Comer has done some wonderful work as a philanthropist around the world but especially here in the Chicago. He has done a great deal that's gone unnoticed and unheralded. The Comers Childrens Hospital at the U of Chicago is one you know about, but the electronic petting zoo in Naperville ---- this gives children a chance to see and touch electronic devices they have only heard about ---- things like dial telephones (SFX), typewriters (SFX), mimeographs (SFX), cb radios (SFX), film strip projectors (SFX) and of course record players (SFX).

He started Habitat for Humility which is building garages across the South Side for husbands so they can have a place to hang out during those tense periods in a marriage when even a big house can feel too small. The garage comes with a lawn chair and a bucket of sand for an ashtray and some magazines.

He is handing out thousands of free "GAP Fillers" to young men which are denim bands two feet wide that go around your waist and fill in the gap between your belt and your waist.

He created R.A.S.H.- Reading Ain't So Hard, helping public officials learn to read newspapers. If the leaders would read, we might think about following.