PEORIA MAGAZINE November 2023

• The creation of Meals on Wheels during the 1950s; • The gift of the land for Apostolic Christian Home on Skyline Drive; • The creation of Galena Park Home. In 1956, the Foundation received a special award from the Illinois State Medical Society for making “the most substantial contributions to the health of Illinoisans, for restoring to usefulness physically handicapped persons and for its pilot program to rehabilitate old people who might otherwise spend their declining years in helplessness.” TIME FOR A CHANGE By the mid-1950s, Bill Rutherford, son of Dr. Rutherford and son-in-law of W.H. Sommer, two of the founders, had become the voice of the Forest Park Foundation, with wife Hazel (Sommer’s daughter) always at his side. “Bill was a tax attorney. He was a very good attorney,” said Tomlin. “The money for Forest Park Foun dation came from a wide array of the general public, but mainly the Sommer family and Hazel Rutherford,” he said. “A large part of Forest Park Foundation had come about through the investments made with the funds that came from her side of the Sommer family. “Most of the land that ended up in use by the public in one way or another came … through the Rutherford family,” added Tomlin. “Either Bill or his wife or son had ownership of land they then donated.” In a personal account of the Foun dation, Rutherford wrote: “In the early 1960s, having accomplished our mission on Physical Medicine and Rehabilita tion, we shifted to the area of open space acquisition. Our hospital and geriatrics work had brought us into the subject of community planning, as none had existed in Peoria at that time.” As such, the Foundation was instru mental in getting the Tri-County Re gional Planning Commission established. At a meeting of park board candidates in 1965, Rutherford said, “There is a crisis in this country whereby construction and misuse of land will lead to a situa tion where kids will not have woods to

At any one time, the Foundation had from 35 to 40 members, who elected its officers. The Foundation’s first big project was financing the construction of Forest Park Home, a 114-bed hospital connect ed to and operated by St. Francis Hos pital, to care for elderly patients. The building opened in 1950 and is still in use today, housing acute care patients. The Foundation members soon real ized caring for just the elderly wasn’t exactly their niche, said Tomlin, who would become the organization’s vice president and treasurer. “It was about people who were ill and needed to have a place to receive rehabilitation,” in cluding polio patients and service mem bers injured in World War II. “The reha bilitation portion was really important to the founders, to Bill (Rutherford) and to the Forest Park Foundation.” Hence, the Foundation created the In stitute of Physical Medicine and Rehabil itation (IPMR), which was first located inside Forest Park Home. Additional IPMR locations opened in Methodist Hospital and Proctor Hospital. IPMR existed as an independent, non-profit entity in multiple locations throughout the Tri-County area until merging with OSF in 2015.

Retired attorney Jim Tomlin at Forest Park Nature Center

T he Forest Park Foundation, a gift that has kept on giving to the Peoria area for 84 years, has come to an end. In September the Foundation’s trea surer, local attorney Jim Tomlin, filed the paperwork to dissolve the organi zation, leaving a legacy of generosity and vision. Although the Forest Park Foundation (FPF) came to be known in recent decades for acquiring land for the public good, it started out helping the elderly as its primary mission. Originally named the Forest Park Home Foundation, it was created in 1939 by Dr. Leslie Rutherford, a physician; W.H. Sommer, of the Sommer family that owned Keystone Steel and Wire; and Howard Kinsey, a Peoria business man. They were looking “to discuss a growing problem of what to do about our old people. They were increasing in number and housing was becoming a problem,” Rutherford later said.

Bill & Hazel Rutherford

Other health care- and senior-related donations over the years included: • In 1959, $13,000 for the construction of Kiwanis London House, providing independent living for seniors to this day; • In the early 1960s, the contribu tion of five acres and $25,000 for a 50-unit facility called Lutheran Welfare Home, now Lutheran Hill side Village;

NOVEMBER 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE 89