GLORIA DANIELS, CEO, DIAMOND DEANE & DANIELS COMMUNICATIONS GROUP TRIBUTE SPEECH TO HER 40-YEAR MENTOR RECEIVES STANDING OVIATION

September 25-Chicago, Illinois—Gloria Daniels was in attendance at Dr. Gloria Jackson Bacon’s 70th birthday celebration this past Friday, September 21, held on the campus of UIC. The celebration was a resounding success. Family, friends, colleagues and even former patients from around the nation flocked to share love and appreciation for all Bacon-Jackson has done through the years, not only for them, but for the less fortunate and our society in general.

The spirited celebration was full of a lively mix of instrumental and gospel music, champagne toasts, and inspirational speeches. Among the guest speakers included, Lesly Condi, Consulate General of the Republic of Haiti in Chicago, and Gloria Daniels, CEO of Diamond Deane & Daniels Communications Group, Inc. a fifteen-year old integrated marketing and special events Management Company based in Los Angeles and Chicago. Daniels spoke of how her former employer,and mentor, Jackson-Bacon believed enough in her to give her her first job as a teenage mother living in Altgeld Gardens housing projects. Daniels states that until she met Jackson-Bacon she had “no hope, no plan and no money and desperately searching for a way to give her children a better life.” Daniels’ gratitude was evident to the room full of guests as they nodded, confirmed, and clapped throughout Daniels’ speech. Her passionate and eloquent delivery brought the crowd to their feet in a resounding standing ovation as she told them that it is because Jackson-Bacon was who she was then that caused her, her children and her children’s children to be the successes they are today; and further, because of who Jackson-Bacon is now the participants in Jackson-Bacon’s Project 18 program will be successes in the future.

Just two years out of medical school in 1964, Gloria Jackson went to Altgeld Gardens, an impoverished community and housing projects on Chicago's South Side to work in a local clinic for what she thought would be several months. Five years later, she had become so engrossed in the patients' unmet needs and so appalled by the lack of quality public health services that she left that facility and started a new medical clinic, handling thousands of patients a year for the next few decades. The Clinic in Altgeld had a big impact on the community when it opened in 1970.

Nearly 30 years later, in 1997, on the completion of a modern state-of-the-art facility, Jackson Bacon retired as Medical Director, continuing as a consultant until 2001. Satisfied that the clinic would continue to do critical work, she was also eager to do more than traditional health care to help the children she cared for succeed in life. "I saw that the medicine that people came to the doctor for was only a little piece of the care they needed," Jackson Bacon recalls. "They had so many other needs." Therefore, in 2004, at age 67, Jackson Bacon founded Project 18, a 501 (c) nonprofit program under the auspices of the Altgeld Community Foundation, in an long-term effort to change the lives of low-income children from birth to age 18 by equipping their parents with the motivation and skills to inspire and guide their children to achieve success - emotionally, socially, physically, and academically. “Daniels,in her moving remarks, stated to all in attendance“Dr. Gloria Jackson-Bacon was my Project 18, thirty-nine years ago. “

Jackson Bacon says, "unless you're going to take a child from his parents, you've got to train parents because they're the ones who create a lot of the child's environment.”

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Diamond Deane & Daniels Communications Group, Inc. is an integrated marketing communications company with locations in Chicago and Studio City, California. They specialize in special events management, public relations, community outreach and marketing.

Car’rol Furlough, PR Department
Diamond Deane & Daniels Communications Group, Inc. – Chicago
www.diamonddeanedanielscommunications.com
312/683-5313/Chicago - 818/332-3303-Studio City, CA