Northwestern honors Blackhawks chairman, other supporters at Wirtz Center dedication

Northwestern Now: Summaries

Rocky Wirtz and his wife, Marilyn, at the dedication.EVANSTON - In the 1970s, Northwestern University alumna and supporter Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz ’24, a champion of the arts, helped her alma mater raise the funds needed to build what was then the Theatre and Interpretation Center. Today, her memory lives on in the newly renovated Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts.A gift from her grandson, Chicago Blackhawks chairman William Rockwell “Rocky” Wirtz ’75, and his wife, Marilyn, enabled Northwestern to rename the center in Virginia’s honor in 2014. University leaders honored the Wirtz family and other lead benefactors of the School of Communication at a June 13 ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the official reopening of the fully renovated center.“Northwestern and the Wirtz family have been connected for many decades,” Northwestern President Morton Schapiro told an audience of more than 70 University supporters, trustees, administrators and others in the Wirtz Center’s stunning new blackbox theater.Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz graduated from the University’s undergraduate business school in 1924. Her daughter, Elizabeth “Betty” Wirtz, attended the School of Communication, then the School of Speech, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Rocky Wirtz, who graduated from the School of Communication in 1975, is a University trustee and has served on the School of Communication’s National Advisory Council since 1986.“Our theatre graduates from the School of Communication have shined a spotlight on the overall excellence of Northwestern in a way that nothing else has,” Schapiro added. “Thanks to the Wirtzes, now we have a performance center that is befitting the quality of the work that takes place in this school, and I think that the sky is the limit.”The building was renovated to improve the accessibility and function of existing spaces and to create new classroom, rehearsal and performance spaces.“Looking at all the new plays, new curricula and new students and faculty ...

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