Peoria County Bar Association honors 15 members at 114th annual memorial service

Chief Judge Catherine Gorman presided over the Peoria County Bar Association’s 114th continuous memorial service on May 22, 2025, at the Janssen Building in downtown Peoria, where presenters read resolutions honoring 15 members of the local legal community who died in the past year.

The annual ceremony, organized by the bar association’s memorials committee, recognized judges, longtime practitioners and staff whose careers shaped courts and civic life in Peoria County. Dave Miller, chairman of the memorials committee, opened the program and said the ritual is a long-standing chance for the profession to remember colleagues’ service: “This is one of the decided pleasures of my nearly 60 years of practice,” Miller said.

The service combined formal memorial resolutions with personal reminiscences from colleagues and family. Honorees included Donald R. Jackson Sr., a veteran attorney and longtime NAACP leader noted for civil-rights advocacy; Karen L. Kendall, an appellate specialist whose presenters said handled more than 600 appeals; Henry L. Gentry, who helped lead the Peoria Riverfront fireworks project; and Linda Ranieri, the bar association’s executive director for more than 22 years, who was singled out as one of the handful of honorees who were not attorneys but whose administrative work sustained the organization.

Presenters read biographical summaries and resolutions for each person and, in many cases, described the honoree’s particular contributions. For example, speakers credited Henry L. Gentry with early leadership on downtown riverfront events and a first Fourth of July fireworks display that drew large crowds, and they described Donald R. Jackson Sr.’s decades of civil-rights organizing, mentorship of younger attorneys and volunteer work with the NAACP. Presenters also highlighted Karen L. Kendall’s national leadership in appellate practice and her work in developing appellate standards in Illinois.

Several speakers framed the service as both remembrance and professional instruction: in addition to recounting careers, they emphasized mentorship, public service and institutional continuity. Chief Judge Catherine Gorman opened the program and later participated in the presentations; she underscored the role of the court and the bar in carrying forward colleagues’ legacies. Organizers noted that written memorials will be placed on the association record and copies forwarded to family members.

Following the formal presentations, attendees offered brief remembrances. The service closed with an announcement that a reception would follow in the Renaissance Room on the third floor, and with the customary adjournment. The bar association asked that memorial resolutions be forwarded to the families of the deceased and added that the ceremony remains a key annual tradition for Peoria’s legal community.

The service and the resolutions presented are part of the Peoria County Bar Association’s record of memorials; the association said the 114th ceremony reflects a continuous tradition dating to 1911.