From its basement beginnings, the Children’s Center of Cicero and Berwyn has evolved into a network offering support and aid to area families.
Patricia Makris, founder and executive director of the center, died today as the result of cancer.
Ron Kiefer, a member and past president of the center’s Board of Directors, has known Makris since the 1960s.
“She was the one who got the community together and was behind getting this started,” he said.
Makris opened the Children’s Center in 1978 in a church basement. Now, the nonprofit has seven locations in both Cicero and Berwyn and provides educational programming, offers parenting resources and support to help improve children’s home lives.
An interim executive director had been appointed to the center while Makris — a former resident of Berwyn — received rehabilitation for cancer.
“We had hoped that she would be back,” said Kiefer.
When Kiefer was principal at Burnham School in Cicero, he would hear his teachers remark about how they could tell if a child had gone through the Children’s Center.
“The opportunities that the center provides for kids really does make a difference in their education,” he said.
The center’s interim director, Vickie Piet, said about 1,500 children and families participate in the center’s programs and services on an annual basis.
Site director Lurlean Chodora said Makris tried to remain involved with the center by working from home.
“But it was difficult when she was trying to rehabilitate herself to get well,” she said.
Chodora knew Makris as a woman concerned for the education of all the children in the community, not just those who attended the Children’s center.
Giving an example of how involved Makris was with the Children’s Center, Chodora said children who returned to the center for continued help would remember Makris, even as they got older. And Makris was always willing to listen or help those children, Chodora said.
Both Piet and Chodora were friends with Makris.
“She was a remarkable woman. No one will ever be able to fill her shoes.” said Piet.
“She had some pretty big shoes to fill,” said Chodora.
Read the original article from MySuburbanLife.com.
Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services