Darrell Hartweg

Darrell Hartweg was born and raised in Hancock County, Illinois in the western part of the State.

He attended high school at Carthage, Illinois and enrolled at the University of Illinois in 1960, graduating in 1964 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and a split minor in philosophy and history. He married Donna Smith in 1964 while Donna was entering her senior year at the University of Iowa majoring in Nursing. He began graduate studies in Political Science at Iowa in the summer of 1964, receiving his Master’s Degree in Public Administration in the summer of 1965. He and Donna moved to Champaign in the fall of 1965 where he entered the University of Illinois College of Law, graduating in 1968. They moved to Bloomington, Illinois in September, 1968 and were joined there upon the birth of their first child, Jeff, in 1968 and their daughter, Jennifer, two years later. Darrell began the private practice of Law at that time and retired from the practice at the end of 2019.

Darrell’s first experience with the University YMCA came in the fall of 1960 when he attended the Y’s Freshman Camp. As a sophomore, he became active in the Y. He chaired the Y’s Freshman Camp committee, joined the student Board, and was Vice President of the Board as a senior. Between his junior and senior years, he joined approximately 13 other students from other collegiate Ys around the country in a program called “Buildings for Brotherhood” and traveled to Germany where he and his fellow students worked for one month doing construction work at a YMCA camp outside of Hanover, Germany. After finishing this work, he and the other US students traveled throughout Europe.

Darrell joined the Y’s Board of Trustees in 1987. He was Chair of the Board from 1991 through 2004.

He and Donna continue to reside in Bloomington and spend the colder months in their home in Tucson, Arizona where they often host their children and four grandchildren.