| Michael Koenig, a 2005 graduate of Libertyville High School whose family recently moved to Des Plaines, hates cancer with such a passion that it has led him to spend countless hours working to find a cure.
“My grandfather died of lung cancer in 1997 and I don’t want to see people suffer like that anymore,” Koenig, a student at Concordia University in River Forest, says. “I realized then that cancer not only affects the person with it, but also the family as a whole.” That is why Koenig is hoping to spread a Lake County cancer-fighting phenomenon to Cook County. Members of Mount Prospect’s St. Cecilia Catholic Church, 700 S. Meier Road, have given Koenig permission to hold a Concert for Life to benefit the American Cancer Society at the church next spring or summer. He’s looking for help to pull it off. A Concert for Life is a traveling concert featuring professional pianist and singer Matthew Wessel, whose own father died of brain cancer in 1997. Since 2001 Wessel and his musician friends have been holding benefit concerts for the American Cancer Society in churches throughout Lake County. They have raised $104,300 for the cause thus far. Koenig wants to bring the concerts south. “I attended my first Concert for Life in Gurnee in March, 2004,” he says. “I had to be dragged there by some of my friends but it turned out to be one of those things that grows on you. The music is not comparable to anything I have ever heard. It’s the type of music where you can sit back and think about the wonderful things that we all have in our lives.” Before he knew it, Koenig was organizing his own Concert for Life at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Libertyville, an event which attracted between 600 and 700 people and raised more than $8,000 for the fight against cancer. “A Concert for Life is such an amazing thing that I wish everyone could see and be part of one,” he says. “It makes you feel so good and makes you want to help others, which is what everything is all about. All of the money raised goes to cancer research, housing for families whose members are receiving treatment, free wigs for patients and things like that. When you know that, it just makes you want to work harder.” Koenig says he’s looking for people willing to help solicit raffle prizes and other donations for the silent auction and raffles he plans to run between sets of the concert. That is when most of the money to fight cancer was raised at his Libertyville concert in May 2005. A Web site, donated by Cherry One Web graphic design company in Chicago, has been set up at www.concertforlife2007.com. Anyone interested in helping Koenig can also e-mail him at concertforlife2007@yahoo.com. “It’s always a wonderful thing to see someone with the combination of passion, determination and youth that Mike has,” says Matt Wessel, founder of Concerts for Life. “He did an amazing job with the CFL in Libertyville back in 2005, raising over $8,000 for the American Cancer Society. He was able to take the tradition we started in Gurnee and expand upon it, giving the town of Libertyville something to call its own. I hope we can do another show there in the future and I’m definitely looking forward to working with Mike again this summer. I have no doubt that the entire event will be a success.” An employee of the Milwaukee Bucks professional basketball organization, Wessel says its only uncertainty about the basketball playoffs, and consequently his schedule, that’s keeping him from setting an exact date for the concert. |
| mattwesselmusic.com |
| letters (read what people are saying about my music) CONCERT FOR LIFE SPREADS by jean murphy | daily herald (lake county, IL) | november 20, 2006 |