Garrison Keillor to speak at University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital celebration, Nov. 3

October 20, 2004

Writer and humorist Garrison Keillor, known for his radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," will speak at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 3, at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, 5850 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago. Keillor's appearance is in honor of the upcoming opening of the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital. Tickets to this event are sold out.

"A Prairie Home Companion" blends together music, interviews and old-fashioned comic sketches. During the show, Keillor tells tales of fictional characters that live in Lake Wobegone, "the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve."

Keillor began the show in 1974 in front of an audience of 12 people inside a St. Paul, Minn., theater. He ended the program in 1987, but revived it in 1989 in New York as "The American Company." Keillor returned to Minnesota and in 1993 resumed the name "A Prairie Home Companion."

Today more than 4 million fans listen to Keillor's show each week on more than 558 public radio stations.

Besides "A Prairie Home Companion," Keillor also hosts a daily radio program called "The Writer's Almanac." He is the author of several books, including Lake Wobegone Days (1985), Leaving Home (1987), The Book of Guys (1993), Love Me (2003), Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts From the Heart of America (2004), and children's books: Cat, You Better Come Home (1995) and The Old Man Who Loved Cheese (1996). He also contributes to The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly and Time magazine.

Keillor is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Grammy Award for his recording of "Lake Wobegone Days," two ACE Awards for cable television and a George Foster Peabody Award in 1980 for "A Prairie Home Companion." He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame at Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications in 1994.

Chicago's newest children's hospital

The University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, which opens this winter, is a $135-million facility, designed to be at the forefront of pediatric care. It offers a state-of-the-art, family-focused environment for all inpatient pediatric services at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

Chicago Comer Children's Hospital provides the optimal setting for the rapidly advancing technologies of pediatric medicine. It includes two 30-bed medical/surgical units, predominantly private rooms and a two-story, 30-bed pediatric intensive care unit, more than twice the capacity of the current unit. The neonatal intensive care unit, one of the largest in the Midwest, will have 65 beds. The new hospital also will have six surgical suites, with operating rooms, 21 preoperative areas and recovery rooms designed to suit the specific needs of pediatric and newborn surgical patients.