LIVING HERE
Yerkes Observatory Board Chair Dianna Colman hands off her ‘leadership’ role.
After six years as Board Chair of the Yerkes Future Foundation (YFF), Dianna Colman stepped off the Yerkes Board of Directors last week, as her second term as a Foundation trustee came to an end. Yerkes Future Foundation was created in 2018 to save Yerkes Observatory. The Foundation negotiated with the University of Chicago (nobody or entity else had a chance!) for the transfer of the Observatory. In May of 2020, YFF took ownership of the fifty acres and all buildings on site. Mrs. Colman, who was among those seeking to support the effort to save, restore, and revitalize Yerkes Observatory that began when the University of Chicago announced its closing in 2018, was tacitly appointed as the organization’s board chair.
Mrs. Colman was a part of the formation of the Foundation, a nonprofit that had as its initial mission the preservation and protection of the historic Observatory, considered by many as one of the most important sites in the history of global science. The organization was formed in April 2018 in response to the announcement that Yerkes would permanently close later that year. In May 2020, the University of Chicago transferred the Observatory and 50 acres of land to Yerkes Future Foundation as a gift to the community and to escape surrendering all of it to the children of Mr. Yerkes who had founded and paid for the facility.
Her successor, local resident and previous YFF vice-chair Tom Nickols, was elected unanimously to serve as the Chairman of the Yerkes Future Foundation Board of Directors, a three-year term he began officially on January 1. Mrs. Colman will continue to serve as the Co-Chair of the Yerkes Master Plan Campaign Committee, which oversees fundraising for the educational mission and ongoing restoration of the building and grounds.
The Yerkes serves much less as an educational role than it once did and participation with the public remains very limited. The University of Chicago was neither kind nor fair nor holding real scholastic integrity in its hands when all this was ‘accomplished.’ No matter its origin or whatever character that may be existent in its operations the observatory remains a grand historical chapter in Williams Bay and Geneva Lake history.
Todd Krause, Lake Geneva’s great mayor.
Todd has promised to get Channel Twenty-Five back alive so that the public can watch the city meetings without having to become computer experts and try to find those meetings using streaming tools. Channel 25 is not yet live, although apparently, and finally, the equipment has been ordered to allow for the connection of the new multi-hundred thousand dollar transmitting equipment to the television channel. The GSR has been a big voice in getting the channel back. More people who know what’s going on in the city certainly prevent some things from going on that are not in the public’s best interest. We, and you should also, put faith in Todd to come through and there is little doubt he won’t as he’s all over this right now.
