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News
Oswego hotel staffer to help carry Olympic torch : News : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisOswego hotel staffer to help carry Olympic torch
| Kozlowicz hopes to inspire local high school special needs students
| by Matt Schury
| 3/15/2012
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Tom Kozlowicz says he'll probably have his parents on his mind when he is handed the Olympic Torch this summer in England.
Kozlowicz, 66, of Yorkville is an assistant manager at the Holiday Inn Express in Oswego. He was selected by the Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), the British-based parent company of Holiday Inn, to be a runner at the 2012 Olympic games in London this summer.
Kozlowicz credits his deceased parents with putting the torch in his hand so to speak.
"It's their values and a lot of things they give you that determined who you are," he said. "I really had two wonderful parents that gave good values," he said.
Kozlowicz's impressive lifelong volunteer and community work caught the attention of IHG officials.
He worked with the Volunteers in Service to America (now called AmeriCorps) when he graduated from college, serving two years on an Indian reservation in Utah. More recently he has volunteered and served on the resource counsel with Big Brothers Big Sisters for 12 years since he moved to Kendall County in 2000.
Kozlowicz also works with a vocational development program at Oswego East High School and Oswego High School.
He has run an after-care addiction treatment program for nine years at Provena Mercy Medical Center in Aurora, helping people who have recently finished a 28-day addiction program.
He said that he hopes to be an inspiration to the special needs kids he volunteers with at the high schools.
"They see that you are a very normal person and not a like a big jock or something," he said. "And the reason why you get there-it's not just a matter of making money-it's what you give back to society. I've always said that service is our rent for living on earth."
Anita Patel, general manger of the Holiday Inn Express, nominated Kozlowicz for the honor and he was selected this November as just one of 18 people to represent the United States. He is the only person from Illinois and was chosen for his humanitarian and volunteer work, Patel said.
Patel said she nominated Kozlowicz because he fit the criteria of what they were looking for in an extraordinary individual though she had no guarantee he would be selected. She added that Kozlowicz is always upbeat and helps out wherever he can.
During the blizzard in February 2011, Patel says, Kozlowicz came in and brushed the snow off people's cars to save them time.
"He is a fantastic leader," she said. "We are very excited for him and he is very deserving of this honor."
IHG is the housing sponsor for the Olympic Village where athletes will be living during the games. The corporation selected just 71 of it's employees worldwide to run with the torch.
"Out of 300,000, I was chosen to be one of the Olympic carriers," Kozlowicz said. "It is humbling to represent the United States," he said.
Before working in the hospitality industry, Kozlowicz says he served over 20 years as a CEO at a financial institution and was chairman of the state Board of Trade association.
The Franklin Park native adds that he had three turns of good fortune that happened near each other.
"I found out that I was going to be confirmed for the Olympics, which was a very awesome and humbling experience; I found out that I didn't have bladder cancer, which was an awesome situation," he said.
Lastly he learned that an anonymous donor gave $4,200 to Big Brothers Big Sisters.
As for the torch runners, about 95 percent are from England and the rest will be from other countries, he said. The torch will be carried a total of 7,000 miles throughout England. He doesn't know where he will be running in the queue but he did say that he will be carrying the torch for a short distance.
"It's approximately three football fields. I'm sure when I'm doing it it will feel like 8,000 miles," he said. "Everyone has what they say is a bucket to fill in their life and who would have ever expected this to come your way."
Each torch runner has their own torch to carry that is then lit for the next runner and the final torch lights the Olympic flame during the opening ceremonies and burns during the games in July.
Kozlowicz says he can't wait to me the other extraordinary people who have been selected as torch runners.
"I'm looking forward to some of the other people who are going to be the other runners," he said. "I'm sure that they have some phenomenal stories and things that they have done."
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