Right in Our Region
New Chapter Begins at Midway Village By Peggy Werner
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essons from the past are valuable in our personal lives and in our collective community life. Two new leaders at Midway Village Museum understand this on a personal and professional level. After spending decades climbing the ladder in corporate positions, both Executive Director Patrick O’Keefe and Marketing Director Luke Fredrickson concluded there comes a point in life when strengthening your own community can be more important than corporate advancement. “I found I wanted to put my experience to work for Patrick O’Keefe
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the good of my own community,” says O’Keefe, hired in 2021 to succeed David Byrnes, who retired from the museum after 22 years. “I suddenly felt being part of a community and investing in that community was more important than just thinking about career goals and the next promotion,” says Fredrickson. “It’s something younger people undervalue.” Born and reared in Rockford, O’Keefe earned degrees from NIU, Rockford University and UW-Madison before working in sales, business development and marketing at Eclipse Inc. for 25 years. He also led Transform Rockford for two years and has been a lifelong community volunteer, serving on a variety of boards. There’s more to life than the highstress, for-profit corporate marketing
Mar 2022 • No. II To advertise call 815-316-2300
world of helping salespeople to meet goals, says O’Keefe. It was the COVID-19 pandemic that led Fredrickson to make a course corLuke Fredrickson rection in his career. He was born in Rockford but attended high school in Las Vegas. He returned to the area 27 years ago to earn his bachelor’s degree at NIU and has since worked in the marketing departments of several companies in our region. “COVID-19 drove home how much family means, and I could see my aging Dad was needing more help and I could see it was time to change priorities,” he
