Reginald “Hats” Adams was a longtime Rush leader who devoted more than half a century to improving the health, well-being and education of Chicagoans.
Director of Rush’s Department of Community Affairs until he died in 2015, Adams paid particular attention to the educational concerns of minority students.
Thanks to his efforts, Rush launched its Science and Math Excellence (SAME) Network in response to the low science, math and reading test scores in Chicago schools in the area surrounding Rush.
Adams also instituted a summer study program for minority college students and summer internships for minority high school students.
“Hats' influence lives on at Rush,” said David Ansell, MD, senior vice president for community health equity for Rush University Medical Center. “His efforts changed countless lives and set us on a course for where we are today.”
‘I was in trouble a lot’
Born in 1940, he grew up in Chicago and was — in his own words — “kind of a bad boy” who spent two years at Montefiore Disciplinary School for Boys and was expelled from Marshall High School after three months.
He then spent several years as a professional pool shark. He also parked cars for events at the Chicago Stadium (later replaced by the United Center), often helping himself to the hats left in the backseat, which earned him the nickname that stuck since 1955.
“I was in trouble a lot. And by the sheer grace of God, I got out of a lot of it,” Adams said.
His life was changed in 1958, when he was recruited to work for the Henry Horner Chicago Boys Club as a game room instructor. He continued working at Henry Horner for 10 years, later as an education and employment counselor and outreach worker.
He then went to work for Mile Square Health Center (at the time a part of Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital, Rush’s predecessor), which led to him becoming a mental health worker in Rush’s Department of Psychiatry. Adams later worked in employee relations before joining Rush’s newly formed Department of Community Relations in 1971.
He acted as a liaison between Rush and community leaders and groups, advised minority employees about workplace and personal matters, and consulted with department heads about workplace issues. The job was fraught with conflicts: Adams earned a reputation as a firebrand and an agitator, even as he found himself on the opposite sides of protests led by Danny Davis, then a social worker and now a U.S. Congressman.
“I had to walk a very thin line. The African-Americans didn’t like me because I was working for this white institution. The white institution didn’t like me because I was a militant. So I had to walk down the middle,” he said. “But I’ve always told the truth. If that’s agitation, I’ve agitated a lot of people over my years at Rush.”
At the same time, he advocated effectively for the institution. In the late 1970s, he took a lead role in obtaining community approval of Rush’s construction of its Atrium Hospital Building (which opened in 1982). “My job is to create friends, and I set out to do that, and that’s what I do,” Hats said.
‘Education is a right, not a privilege’
Adams became director of community affairs in 1980, and 10 years later launched the SAME Network, which he regarded as his greatest professional accomplishment. The initiative began with a lunch conversation with colleagues on Good Friday, 1986, when Adams observed he was the only black person in Rush’s dining room and his dining companions encouraged him to take action to change it.
“We looked at the science and math scores in our community and they were dismal, so we decided to form science and math clubs throughout the community on the West Side,” Hats said. “It’s called SAME, because we wanted the kids in the inner city to have the same opportunity as the kids in the more affluent areas.
“Education is a right, it’s not a privilege. I wanted to be a pool shark, and in the old days that may have been possible. But today with the rapidly changing employment picture, young people need to be educated to use technology and contribute to the fields of science and math.”
Adams also launched another initiative that has become a Rush tradition, the annual Adopt-a-Family Program. Rush employees, individually or in groups, “adopt” families in need identified by local churches and service organizations, purchasing clothing, household supplies, gift cards and other needed items for the families.
Adopt-a-Family began more than 30 years ago when Adams learned of a Rush employee who was in need, it later grew into a community program.
Giving back
A member of Third Baptist Church of Chicago for many years, Adams saw himself as a servant and his career as a destiny and a blessing.
“I don’t think that you can go through life taking. You’ve got to give something back, and my mission is to give back,” he said. “I do it in my job, I do it in my church, I do it in my home. That’s what I like to do. I enjoy giving back.”
