The Northbrook Breakfast Club Unites Glenbrook North Alums

Glenbrook North alum Traci Fine feels “more connected” to others who attended the school, even if she didn’t know them when she was a Spartan herself.

“We connect more with each other than alums of other schools,” said Fine, now a professional makeup artist in the city of Chicago. “I see it everyday. Those of us from GBN feel a sense of closeness, a strong and unique kinship no matter what year we graduated.”

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Recently, Fine has been able to connect with more and more alum - some who walked the stage much earlier, and others much later, than her.

That’s all thanks to the Northbrook Breakfast Club, now a Facebook group that seeks to connect GBN alum all throughout the Chicagoland area by organizing informal breakfast get togethers.

Fine has been the catalyst of the initiative for the last month or so.

There isn’t much too it. Everyone involved is a GBN alum, someone will post something like, “I’m thinking of having breakfast this Sunday in Lincolnshire. Anyone on the north suburbs want to join?”

Those in the group that are available will work out the details, and others may just show up as a last minute plan.

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“A lot of us connected again when Facebook came to be and started doing the breakfasts,” said Fine. “It was super exciting, so one day we thought it might be good to organize a Facebook group out of it.”

Since then, Fine says several groups have went out for breakfast. It’s usually 5-8 people, all connecting and reinforcing old friendships, some creating new ones in the process.

The club’s name may be an obvious choice because of what it’s about, but the connection to the John Hughes classic movie, ‘The Breakfast Club,’ is no coincidence.

“We all claim The Breakfast Club as our experience, because John Hughes is from here,” Fine said. “The film, John Hughes - it is all a big part of us.”

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Thirty years later, and Fine’s “actual” breakfast club is taking off smoothly.

“It has been such a good feeling to see several people I didn’t even know well in school come out and be a part of this,” she said.

The Glenbrook North education “stays with me to this day,” Fine adds, while noting it was the people she went to school with that made the GBN experience so special.

“We grew up in an affluent suburb, but we didn’t realize we were more affluent than others at the time,” she said. “We were just unassuming and low key. It wasn’t until later in life many of us realized how good we had it.”

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Photo, L-R: Joe Cannon, GBN class of ‘79 Traci Fine GBN class of ‘81, Tammy Markelli GBN class of ‘79 and Mary Teresa Gold GBN class of ‘78 met on a recent Sunday afternoon at Walker Bros. in Lincolnshire.