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 | | Martin Gapshis | | | Inducted 2007 [Now Deceased] | | | Photo: ISRAEL WRIGHT | | Martin Gapshis, 60, president of Progress Printing, for long-standing service to the city of Chicago, including the City’s green initiatives, Lakefront Supportive Housing, Chicago International Film Festival,
the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the NAMES Project, and the Center on Halsted.
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| Martin Gapshis, a Chicago native, has
served both the city and its LGBT Mcommunities throughout most of his
adult life, demonstrating a quiet commitment to
improving the lives of others. | |
| As the president of Progress Printing
Corporation for many years, he has shown
extraordinary generosity with his time and his
company’s resources, making in-kind donations
to virtually every not-for-profit organization in
the city, particularly benefiting those in the LGBT communities. He cares deeply
about fair and honest governance of organizations, the enrichment of
programming, attention to board representation, and many other issues, which
has made him an effective leader in numerous organizations.
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| For the past five years, Gapshis has served as a Capital Campaign Leadership
Campaign Co-Chairman for Center on Halsted, Chicago’s new LGBT
community center, helping to raise $20 million for construction of the largest
center of its kind in the United States today. He has served on the board of the
AIDS Foundation of Chicago; currently serves on the emeritus board of
Cinema/Chicago, parent organization of the annual Chicago International Film
Festival; and is on the Costume Council of the Chicago History Museum. | |
| He has also provided important help to Chicago garden show activities and to the
city’s landscape and rooftop gardens initiatives, aiding Chicago to become a
“green city.” For eight years, Gapshis co-chaired an annual Celebration of Home
and Garden tour in Michiana (the Michigan-Indiana border region), benefiting
Chicago’s Lakefront Supportive Housing organization (now known as Mercy
Housing Lakefront), and in 2003 he was given a community leadership award by
the organization. | |
| On February 10, 1995, Mayor Richard M. Daley declared “Martin Gapshis Day”
in Chicago, in honor of Gapshis’s having received the “Biggest Heart in
Chicago” Award from the Hearts Foundation, an AIDS fundraising organization.
In 2004, Gapshis received the NAMES Project’s Hopeful Spirit Award, which
acknowledged his steadfast dedication to the AIDS Memorial Quilt and to the
eradication of HIV/AIDS. | |
| In his very understated way, Martin Gapshis has always worked hard to make a
difference, demonstrating his belief in the basic human rights that must be
secured for all—housing, health care, personal safety, and the opportunity to
succeed. He is a leader and role model for LGBT communities, not only for all his
contributions and accomplishments, but for his ever-present humility and the
depth of his kind and generous spirit. Martin Gapshis died August 30, 2010. | |
| This biography is as of the induction date. It has not been updated. |
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