A lunchtime speaker series that began in a Chicago rectory more than 40 years ago will hold its next gathering downtown on Friday, November 6, when former Obama White House aides Cody Keenan and Josh Earnest take the stage at the Union League Club of Chicago. The First Friday Club of Chicago has reached its 41st year, offering what it calls lively in-person conversations between prominent speakers and a crowd that regularly numbers in the hundreds.
The club traces back to June 1986, when Rev. John Cusick started it alongside Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who served as its first speaker, according to the First Friday Club of Chicago. Cusick, a native South Sider who grew up at 85th Place and California Avenue, had served as director of young adult ministry for the archdiocese and worked at Old St. Patrick's Church with Rev. Jack Wall before founding the club, per a Chicago Tribune column by Rick Kogan. He formally retired from the priesthood in July 2014, with his final Mass at Old St. Patrick's drawing a standing-room-only crowd, the Chicago Tribune reported at the time.
Cusick remains the club's chaplain and still works with a volunteer board of directors to pick each season's speakers, per the Tribune column. He said his sermons over the years came from memory rather than notes. He had no siblings, growing up an only son, according to the same column.
More Than 50,000 Attendees Across Four Decades
Since 1986, members and guests have met on the first Friday of each month from October through May, with the club saying it gathers 200 to 400 people monthly and that more than 50,000 people have attended its speaker presentations over the years, per the First Friday Club of Chicago's own account. The club describes its mission as giving men and women a forum to connect work, faith, values and the issues shaping their daily lives, and it says it is not affiliated with any church, religion or other organization. The First Friday Club of Cleveland is a similarly named organization; the Chicago chapter operates independently.
Gatherings are held at the Union League Club of Chicago at 65 W. Jackson Blvd., where lunch is served alongside the program, per the Tribune column. Presentations are usually followed by an audience question session. Father Cusick told Chicago Catholic that few organizations can still gather 200 people at noon on a Friday in downtown Chicago in the years after COVID, adding that the club can. The group also said it makes a special effort to recruit speakers across different professions and fields, from business to the arts to religious life, as Chicago Catholic reported when the season opened October 2 with former Baxter CEO and Northwestern Kellogg professor Harry Kraemer.
Obama Alumni Headline This Month's Lunch
This month's speakers, Cody Keenan and Josh Earnest, both served in the Obama White House — Keenan as the president's speechwriter and Earnest as press secretary from 2014 to 2017, according to Northwestern Now. The two have discussed the presidency. Keenan now teaches at Northwestern, is a partner at a speechwriting firm, and wrote Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America, according to the Tribune column. Earnest has since worked as an NBC News analyst and is now executive vice president of communications and advertising for United Airlines, per the same column. Tickets for the November 6 noon event cost $67, the Tribune column noted.
