OP_033017

46 | March 30, 2017 | The orland park prairie sports
opprairie.com
McMillan’s sports efforts key to volunteer work
Jon DePaolis
Freelance Reporter
By day, Dan McMillan
is tasked with keeping a
close eye on an Orland Park
dealership’s finances. By
night, his biggest budgeting
concerns are where to best
spend his time in service to
Orland Park.
McMillan, chief financial
officer of Joe Rizza Enterprises,
has been named the
2016 Orland Park Adult
Volunteer of the Year. He
recently was presented with
an award at the State of the
Village event.
McMillan’s volunteer resume
is extensive. He participates
yearly in the Polar
Plunge, supports the Orland
Park Special Recreation Association,
hosts two local
television shows to bring
awareness to local businesses
and athletes, performs in
local plays for the Orland
Park Theatre Troupe, dresses
as Santa Claus for the Village’s
tree lighting and the
Polar Express, and raises
funds for Misericordia and
St. Baldrick’s.
Perhaps the area McMillan
has most impacted has
been youth sports in the area.
He has been a commissioner
and coach for the Orland
Youth Association, coaching
basketball and baseball. He
coached for the Orland Magic
basketball team, and won
three championships with
the Orland Park Pioneers
football program as a coach.
He still volunteers as a board
member and announcer for
the Pioneers.
Mayor Dan McLaughlin
pointed to the work McMillan
does with the Pioneers as
a reason he was named Volunteer
of the Year.
“He started a golf outing
to benefit not only Sandburg’s
football but also the
local youth football teams,”
McLaughlin said. “It’s been
a huge success. They raise a
ton of money for those two
sports programs.
“He’s up there in the booth
calling football games. He is
in our theater troupe. Just
about any time you ask him
to volunteer for something,
he’s jumping in. It’s amazing.
He puts so much time
in.”
If you ask McMillan what
motivates him, it goes back
to when he was younger.
“When you’re young, you
don’t always realize it,” Mc-
Millan said. “You don’t realize
what certain people do
for you.”
McMillan grew up in a
small town called Monroe in
Michigan. He played football
at Ida High School.
“There are only a few
things in life that you can
still hold onto and say that
it still is how it was back
when I was in high school,”
he said. “One is Friday night
lights — high school football.”
McMillan, who grew up
in a single-parent household,
said his football coach at Ida
was the first one to really
show him the way.
“I never knew my father,”
he said. “My high school
football coach — who we
called Coach O — he was
the kind of guy who was
always there when I needed
it.”
McMillan said a team rule
stated he had to keep his hair
cut short. But his family was
so poor he could not afford
to get it done.
“Coach O would take me
to the barbershop in Ida to
get me a haircut,” McMillan
recalled. “He was the driver’s
ed teacher, and he was
the one who taught me how
to drive.”
Later, when McMillan
went off to Adrian College
to play football, he wound
up meeting another influential
figure in his life — a law
professor.
“He was just a really good
guy who took an interest as
a kind of counselor,” Mc-
Millan said. “I didn’t realize
until I got into the workplace
that this guy could have been
a million-dollar lawyer. But
he chose to make a difference
in the academic world
for students as a professor.”
The professor steered Mc-
Millan — at the time a prelaw
student — toward accounting.
McMillan also pointed to
his employer as an influence.
“Joe Rizza is a really good
guy,” McMillan said. “He
doesn’t take credit for it,
but he does a phenomenal
amount of [work in the community].
You have no idea of
just how many people he really
helps with his charitable
giving. I see that and the
good it does.”
Dan McMillan watches as he is announced the 2016 Adult Volunteer of the Year at Orland
Park’s recent State of the Village address. Photo submitted
Giving back to youth sports
McMillan has been married
to his wife, Debbie, for
28 years. He has two children,
Ashley and Nick. They
moved to Orland Park in the
early 2000s.
When Nick started playing
youth sports, McMillan
started to get involved with
his son’s basketball teams.
“It was more fun and interesting
than just sitting
on the sidelines,” he said.
“I started to coach, and so I
coached the travel team and
other teams. And I wound up
getting involved with the inner
city basketball leagues.”
Some of the children he
got to coach while working
with those leagues included
future stars like Jabari Parker
and Jahlil Okafor.
“It’s all a lot of fun, but it
all goes back to my upbringing
in Ida,” he said. “It was
such a close-knit community.
No matter wherever
you are, I always look at it
like you have to help people
out.”
After years of volunteering
with the Pioneers, he
was contacted by another Pioneers
member asking him
to put together a fundraiser
for the program.
“We started out as the Pioneers
Golf Outing, to raise
funds to buy some extra
equipment,” McMillan said.
“Then, we got to know the
people over at Sandburg.
They asked me about giving
them some tips about doing
a golf outing. But, the more
we talked, we decided that
because the Pioneers are a
feeder program for Sandburg,
why we didn’t just
combine it and make it a Pioneers
and Sandburg outing,
while also bringing in a few
charities.”
Through that, he met Orland
Park legend Pat Fitzgerald
— the football coach of
Northwestern University,
who played for the Pioneers
and Sandburg. Fitzgerald
helped McMillan brainstorm
some of the charities, like
Misericordia and the Alliance
Against Intoxicated
Motorists.
Initially, the Gridiron Golf
Classic drew roughly 100
golfers. But it steadily grew
to the point that the past two
years have seen more than
300 golfers.
“In the nine years we’ve
done it, we’ve netted over
and been able to distribute
over $350,000 to the youth
football and charities,” he
said.
The next outing is to take
place June 22 at Silver Lake
Country Club in Orland Park.
Volunteer of the Year
McMillan said upon learning
he had been named the
Adult Volunteer of the Year,
he had a mixture of feelings
— mainly being both humbled
and embarrassed.
“I do these things not for
an award,” he said. “But it
is always nice to be recognized.
If it never happened,
I’d have been fine. I am going
to keep doing everything
I’m doing.”
And that is quite a lot in
the community — one that
he thinks of as “Mayberry
with amenities.”
“With Orland Park, I treat
it like I treat Ida,” he said.
“It’s got that small-town feel,
but you’ve got all the conveniences
you’ve come to expect
in the 21st century.”
And McMillan does not
plan on stopping his charitable
efforts any time soon. He
simply is having too much
fun with them.
“It’s like that saying: You
should always feel grateful
for what you have and not
worry about what you don’t
have,” he said. “Because if
you worry about what you
don’t have, you’re never going
to be grateful.”