History of the YIFC

The His­tory of For­ever Green & Young Irish Fel­low­ship Club– 1975 to 2010

The gen­e­sis of For­ever Green was a St. Patrick’s Day Party held in 1975 by Tom Moore, who would even­tu­ally become the YIFC’s first Chair­man of the Board. In March, Tom and his wife Kathy invited a cir­cle of friends to their three flat at Belden and Cleve­land in Lin­coln Park to cel­e­brate St. Patrick’s Day. The result was a mob scene of friends from the South-side, West-side and North-side all jammed into the base­ment. Kathy and Tom agreed they would rent a hall to throw their next St. Patrick’s Day party.

In 1976, along with State Sen­a­tor John Culler­ton and John O’Malley (then the in-house coun­sel for the Arch­dio­cese of Chicago), the St. Patrick’s Day party moved to the Ger­ma­nia Club, located at the cor­ner of Ger­ma­nia Place and Clark Street. They wrote and designed the invi­ta­tion, which all three men signed and mailed to their friends. And with that, an insti­tu­tion was born with these words:

Dear Green One:
As every Win­ter becomes Spring,
with the pass­ing of fear there comes the return of hope.
When St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ire­land,
he gave the peo­ple great rea­son to cel­e­brate.
That kind of joy tran­scends any one peo­ple,
or any par­tic­u­lar place in time.
Join us for an Irish Celebration.

Join them they did; the party (at that time known as “Be Green”) drew about 2,000 peo­ple, and the Ger­ma­nia Club could barely hold the participants.

The next year, Tom sent out invi­ta­tions for “Be Green Too,” which dis­persed through the city like a chain let­ter, and Be Green Too quickly became the hottest ticket in town. The party was held in three dif­fer­ent rooms cov­er­ing two floors. There was a rock ‘n roll band in one room, a piano sing-a-long in another room and the Sul­li­van Broth­ers (who con­tin­ued to play at For­ever Green through the ‘90s) in the third room.

The place lit­er­ally rocked. The idea of a party so rau­cous that the floor would shake was appeal­ing to many, and tick­ets to Be Green III were harder to obtain than both of its pre­de­ces­sors. In 1979, the fourth party was coined “Four­ever Green,” and the name stuck (later changed to For­ever Green). In 1980, Tom hosted For­ever Green V, the last party inde­pen­dent of the YIFC. That next year, Tom gave For­ever Green to the Young Irish Fel­low­ship Club.

The Young Irish Fel­low­ship Club is Formed

The Young Irish Fel­low­ship Club of Chicago was founded in early 1980, prin­ci­pally through the efforts of Terry and Roseann LeFevour. In the begin­ning, the Club was thought of as a means of expos­ing younger peo­ple to the Irish Fel­low­ship Club (IFC). The YIFC was incor­po­rated shortly after its founding.

Judge Arthur Dunne, a mem­ber of the Irish Fel­low­ship Club, was elected as liai­son between the IFC and the newly bur­geon­ing YIFC. Judge Dunne guided the Club through the process nec­es­sary to estab­lish itself and gain legitimacy.

In Sep­tem­ber 1980, the infor­mal club met for the first time to elect offi­cers. Mike Hogan was elected the Club’s first Pres­i­dent. Tom Moore was elected the first Chair­man of the Board. Next the Club needed a name. It was debated the name under which the Club would go by. One name that was well liked was ‘TGIF’, for The Grand Irish Fel­low­ship Club, but there was some con­cern that peo­ple might think the Club was try­ing to say we were bet­ter than the IFC. The offi­cers decided on nam­ing the club the Young Irish Fel­low­ship Club.

Another area of sig­nif­i­cant debate was whether the Club would require mem­bers to be of Irish descent. There was a lot of dis­cus­sion about how, 100 to 150 years ago, our Irish rel­a­tives expe­ri­enced prej­u­dice in this coun­try. It was decided that the Club did not want any part of that. The pur­pose of the Club was estab­lished and it was said that YIFC doesn’t care if you’re Irish, Pol­ish, Jew­ish or any­thing else. If you want to sup­port these pur­poses, you are wel­come to join us.

The YIFC Gains Momentum

The LaFevours agree that For­ever Green VI was the event that put the newly formed Club over the top. With the suc­cess of this event and its grow­ing mem­ber­ship, the YIFC began orga­niz­ing an onslaught of events includ­ing the White Sox out­ing (an event that went on until 1999 when the event was con­verted to Cubs/Sox out­ing today). It also began form­ing rela­tion­ships with many bars and estab­lish­ments. Word of the var­i­ous YIFC events was sent to mem­bers on let­ter head that Hogan designed on a bar nap­kin. By the end of the first year, YIFC mem­ber­ship had swelled to 200 people.

With the influx of new YIFC mem­bers added to the estab­lished party-goers, the Ger­ma­nia Club was sim­ply too small to accom­mo­date For­ever Green another year. The next year, the YIFC was able to move For­ever Green into its new and per­ma­nent venue: Navy Pier. Back then, Navy Pier was not the Navy Pier that Chicago enjoys today. Nonethe­less, the event sold out and YIFC had another suc­cess­ful year.

The atten­dance at For­ever Green con­tin­ued to grow. In 1986, the City of Chicago approached the YIFC ask­ing for guid­ance as to how best man­age an event at the site. Until the YIFC came along, no other orga­ni­za­tion had ever hosted a suc­cess­ful, large-scale event at the enor­mous pier.

YIFC Goes Char­i­ta­ble — YIFC and Old St. Pat’s Church

Once the YIFC became an estab­lished entity, it looked to expand its mis­sion. Around this time, Father Jack Wall became pas­tor of Old St. Pat’s Church and was invited to a meet­ing. Father Wall sug­gested the Club move their oper­a­tion over to the Church, the YIFC accepted, embark­ing on a reward­ing rela­tion­ship that still exists.

Ini­tially, the YIFC’s char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions were in kind; the Board of Direc­tors painted the inside of Old St. Pat’s gym­na­sium, sanded the floor, and repainted the sham­rock on the gym floor’s center—complete with DePaul’s Hall of Fame Bas­ket­ball Coach Ray Meyer’s num­ber from his days at St. Pat’s Acad­emy. This grad­u­ally evolved from doing hard labor and assist­ing at mass, to orga­niz­ing events and mak­ing finan­cial donations.

Did you know that the World’s Largest Block Party was orig­i­nally an exten­sion of For­ever Green?

The biggest event orga­nized for Old St. Pat’s by the YIFC was “The World’s Largest Block Party,” a Chicago tra­di­tion that lives on today. In 1985, Father Wall asked the Club to take our For­ever Green Party and put it on the street out­side St. Pat’s in the sum­mer. YIFC gladly accepted and deliv­ered 5,000 peo­ple that first year. This party is now wholly run by Old St. Pat’s.

As the Club became more estab­lished, YIFC began coor­di­nat­ing char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions. Tom Doherty recalls, “We gave $1,500 to a start-up orga­ni­za­tion on the south side which helped deaf chil­dren. They were very gra­cious, the money snow­balled and the orga­ni­za­tion became very suc­cess­ful. I spoke with the group the fol­low­ing year and the woman in charge declined the money. She told me that our dona­tion had made a huge dif­fer­ence, had enabled their group to get of the ground, and she hoped we would take our offered dona­tion and help another start-up group in the same way. It made me feel really good to see the pos­i­tive effect we could make on Chicago’s char­i­ta­ble community.”

Through­out the 1980s and into the 1990s, the Club estab­lished and main­tained sev­eral other tra­di­tions that allowed it to donate pro­ceeds to phil­an­thropic causes. In addi­tion to the annual Sox out­ing, the YIFC spon­sored trips to Notre Dame’s Blue-Gold game, a Can­dle­light Bowl at the Diversey Bowl and a vol­ley­ball league—which it still spon­sors today. Begin­ning in the late ‘80s, the YIFC hosted the Lis­doon­va­rna fes­ti­val. Peo­ple gath­ered at Butch McGuire’s and “Irish Heaven” was set up in the basement.

By 1991, the first year that For­ever Green was moved from St. Patrick’s Day to the Fri­day before, the Club hosted the largest turnout in the his­tory of Navy Pier—over 6,000 guests attended For­ever Green XVII! With a mem­ber­ship base of over 2,000 and sev­eral other sold out For­ever Green cel­e­bra­tions, the YIFC grew to be a pre­mier orga­ni­za­tion in Chicago, all the while con­tin­u­ing its phil­an­thropic endeavors.

The Young Irish Fel­low­ship Club’s accom­plish­ments and grow­ing pres­ence in the city as a phil­an­thropic orga­ni­za­tion, social out­let and cul­tural pro­moter allowed the Club to make dona­tions of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars every year. Cor­po­ra­tions began to seek out the YIFC, want­ing to spon­sor For­ever Green. In line with IRS reg­u­la­tions, the Club filed for Sec­tion 501©(3) in 1997, allow­ing all dona­tions made to the club to become tax deductible.

YIFC in the New Mil­len­nium and Today

YIFC has worked hard to bring new tra­di­tions and events to its mem­bers includ­ing an annual fall golf out­ing, the sum­mer­time Wicker Park Pub Crawl and the extremely suc­cess­ful South­side Pub Crawl held every Jan­u­ary. In addi­tion, the club con­tin­ues to part­ner with and sup­port other Irish cul­tural groups and their events such as Old St. Pat’s World’s Largest Block Party, Irish­fest held at the Irish Amer­i­can Her­itage Cen­ter, Gaelic Park, and Chicago’s Celtic Fest in Grant Park.