PEORIA MAGAZINE July 2022

L E G E N D

A PEARL OF A PERSON

BY MIKE BA ILEY

S urvey the landscape of central Illinois the last 20 years and arguably few have left a more lasting imprint on it than a brash native New Yorker and no nonsense Vietnam vet who exited that experience adamant that forever after, he would carve his own path and call ‘em as he saw ‘em. It has been one long andwinding road for Dr. Rick Pearl. Indeed, the Brooklyn-born, Long Island-raised, Manhattan-educated Pearl – with the accent to match, even after 24 years in Illinois – has been a warrior, from his service in Vietnam to Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. He’s been a healer and saver of lives as surgeon in chief at OSF Children’s Hospital of Illinois. He’s been a builder and fundraiser, with his fingerprints all over the design and construction of Children’s Hospital and Jump Trading Simulation and Education Center. Were

it not for being drafted, he might have become an actor. Were it not for the lure of the stage, his future might have been on a football field. For the accomplished pilot, aviation could have been a career. “If I were to write a book, nobody would believe it,” said this man of so many talents, now 77. “I’ve had such a fascinating life, not a boring minute. So much joy and payback – and some pain — but gee whiz.” Rick was the youngest child of Elliott and Ann Pearl, two professional musicians who met during World War II, tied the knot and built a family of five that also included two daughters. Dad owned a leather goods company. Mom sold real estate. Rick’s exammarks would get him into Manhattan’s prestigious Stuyvesant BIG APPLE BORN AND RAISED

High School. Getting there from his Long Island home required waking at dawn and taking one bus and three subway trains, a three-hour round trip commute – worth it for “the best education I ever had.” An influence was a thoughtful, soft spoken football coach, Murl Thrush. “He taught us how to bemen,” in addition to the gridiron skills that would earn Pearl a partial scholarship to the University of Rhode Island. Eventually he would sour on the demands of college athletics, change majors from chemistry to theater and find himself at Providence’s Trinity Repertory Company, along with some who’d someday grace TV and movie screens, notably Katherine Helmond and Blythe Danner. “Because I dropped out of school … I got drafted,” saidPearl. “Thatwas in 1966. That was the start of a very long odyssey” that would cover the next 29 years.

JULY 2022 PEORIA MAGAZINE 45