Toast of the Town : Pennies Add Up for Landmine Victims, Chicago Tribune
May 31, 2004

By Lucinda Hahn
Chicago Tribune staff reporter

“I’m actually missing one final - U.S. history,” admitted Kyleigh Kühn, 17, who skipped the exam to attend the Center for International Rehabilitation awards dinner Wednesday night. Like any wily teenager, though, she found a way to justify her absence: “I figure we’re making history here.”

Kühn certainly has. In September she started a penny collection, Pennies for Peace, at her high school in Marin County, Calif., hoping to raise $1,000 for land mine victims; in three months, the program mushroomed to include 75 schools, amassing $70,000.

Since then, she has been honored by Secretary of State Colin Powell and flooded with e-mails from advice-seeking teens overseas. “They want to collect rubles for peace, pesos for peace,” Kühn remarked, receiving a standing ovation as she accepted a youth leadership award.

Its work has gained more resonance as the war in Iraq continues shattering lives and limbs. “There used to always be the question, “Why should I care?'” said Smith, during cocktails at the Hyatt Regency on East Wacker Drive. “I don’t hear that question much anymore.”

As his mother, Jean Kennedy Smith, the former ambassador to Ireland, and cousin Christopher Kennedy, president of Merchandise Mart Properties Inc., mingled nearby, Smith greeted the night's other honoree, Bobby Muller. The inspiration for Bruce Springsteen's song “Born in the U.S.A.,” Muller founded the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, which now assists 14 war-ravaged countries, and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

Rendered a paraplegic when a bullet shattered his spine in combat, Muller came home in 1969 and campaigned for legal rights for veterans and the disabled. “I’d go to the airport not knowing if I'd be allowed on the plane - it was 50-50,” he said. “Now, I don’t worry.” Donna La Pietra, who emceed the evening with Bill Kurtis, looked on, remarking, “He’s my role model for protesting.”

Next to him sat Kim Phuc, the Vietnamese photographed as a naked girl fleeing a 1972 napalm attack. Phuc, who lives in Canada with her husband and two sons, travels as a UNESCO goodwill ambassador- with still-painful scarring from burns over 65 percent of her body. “I pray a lot,” she said. “And my husband gives me great massages.”

Others attending included People’s Energy CEO Thomas Patrick; philanthropists Mimi and Bud Frankel; Grace Barry, president of The Economic Club of Chicago; and Health Ventures managing partner Terry Lierman, a CIR board member who told the crowd: “While we’ve been here for the past two hours, four people have been killed or maimed by land mines.”

The CIR’s projects work to improve those and other dismal statistics: While 20 million disabled people in developing countries need wheelchairs, less than 1 percent own or have access to them.

To that end, the CIR recently set up a factory in India where disabled workers make wheelchairs specially designed to navigate the difficult terrain of Afghanistan. The chairs will be distributed by residents in Kabul - where about half the amputees are children.

“We’re all about sustainability,” said Nikola Prvulov, the CIR's field operation manager, who has been traveling to India to start the program. “We want to work with the people to build something they can take over when we leave.”

Lucinda Hahn is at lhahn.com