Gail Rost, founder of the I.D.E.A. Store. Used with permission from Gail Rost.
Gail Rost, 57, grew up washing plastic bags and foil. Now the once-director of the Champaign-Urbana Schools Foundation (CUSF), as well as the co-founder of the I.D.E.A. Store, Rost’s upbringing is reflected in her work at both the foundation and the store.
A product of the CUSF, the I.D.E.A. Store is a creative reusable marketplace where people donate just about anything in an attempt to keep everyday household items from becoming waste.
“Five years ago, the foundation decided there was a real need in this community for getting stuff out of the waste stream,” said Shauna Carey, the education coordinator at the I.D.E.A. Store as well as a board member at the CUSF.
All of the profits from the store then get funneled into the CUSF to help fund grants and scholarships.
“They wanted another source of income besides donations and soliciting funds,” said Carey. Since the store has opened, they have given back more than $25,000 to the foundation.
Rost’s husband, Craig, a volunteer himself, as well as Rost’s behind-the-scenes supporter, has seen the store as a huge success.
“Gail’s vision and endless hours of dedication have made it a very unique place,” he said. “We have new customers all the time, but there are a lot of our regulars that return to see what is new and different about the store each week.”
He said that the I.D.E.A. Store has been a real asset to the foundation, “providing some needed revenue and more exposure in the community for the support of our local schools.”
While the director of the CUSF, Rost was putting in between 70 to 80 hours a week, basically working two full-time jobs, getting paid nothing to work at the store and $60,000 to be the director of the Champaign-Urbana Schools Foundation.
“It’s really, really hard, but it’s my baby and I want it to work because I identify with it and people identify me with it,” she said. “It’s hard, but good hard.”
The I.D.E.A. Store is wall-to-wall full of donors’ odds and ends. Mismatched buttons, empty cassette cases, mannequins, fabric, used crayons: just about anything needed for crafts can be found at the store. Rost said she finds joy in more than just the creative aspect of the store.
“My favorite part of this job is everything from helping people problem solve to figuring out how they can use our materials to do something they’ve never done before,” she said. “I like that challenge.”
For store volunteer Ning Zulauf, these same characteristics are seen in Rost’s personal relationships as well. Born and raised in Taiwan, Zulauf came to Illinois only seven years ago, knowing very little English.
“I first met Gail way back when I started to volunteer here, even before the store opened,” said Zulauf. “At times I feel like a kindergarten kid because of the language barrier and all the craft and material names. I’m still learning, and at times it can be very frustrating, but it’s all brand new.”
Zulauf said that she appreciates how Rost is always guiding her and assisting her as she continues to get adjusted to her work and life in a foreign country.
Born in South America on June 10, 1956, to Betty Ann Glende and Leo Glende, Rost was the youngest of three and the only girl.
“I had two older brothers, Jon and Reed,” she said. “So along with that came privilege, being the baby and a girl. So I was the only one who had their own room, and I was very close to my mother.”
Both of Rost’s parents were part of the World War II era. Having been older teens at the beginning of the war, neither was able to finish college. Her father was a military man, serving in the Korean War in the Navy. Her mother, a graduate of sonographer school, became an administrative secretary after being a stay-at-home mom.
By the time Rost was 3, her father had retired from the Navy and moved his family back to the states, settling in Champaign, within close proximity to the then-thriving Air Force base, Chanute, in Rantoul.
“My father was a career navy man, and so he joined before the war and retired after,” Rost said. “It was then that he decided to work at the University and run the Illini Student Union. My mom was a secretary for the department of African studies.”
Rost attended Dr. Howard Elementary School, Edison Junior High and Central High School, graduating in 1973.
Always involved in music, she played piano and participated in theater, band and orchestra, but focused her attention on chorus in high school. But her two most fond hobbies were sewing and creating her own catalogues and mini science books.
“I sewed, but sewing wasn’t so much a hobby then, it was what I did to get the clothes I wanted,” she said. “I also used to make books all the time. I used to do lots of cut and paste and make my own catalogues and draw my own pictures and make books.”
She then continued her education at the University, earning a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture in 1978, where she met her husband, who was also studying landscape architecture.
“We did all the things that you weren’t supposed to do,” Rost said. “We kind of broke rules. We lived together for two years, which was really bad, so we weren’t allowed to tell anybody. It all had to be a secret.”
Her husband describes her as being a complex person, driven by a higher cause, as opposed to working for money or status.
“When she takes on something like the store, she works constantly to improve it,” he said. “When she does relax she does it well too, knowing how to have fun. She is a great mom to our kids. We are a close family that shares a lot of the same values.”
The couple then moved to Chicago, where both practiced landscape architecture. Gail was with the firm Balsalmo Olson Lewis, and Craig was at Michael Ives and Associates.
“I was the only woman at the firm,” she said. “And I was a feminist — major feminist — so I was the only woman in a male firm of 45 designers, engineers, surveyors and architects. And it was quite an eye-opening experience to do that at the age of 21. Between being asked to go get coffee, to making me cry, it was the whole thing. I gave it two years.”
Gail and Craig moved back to Champaign in 1980, where they got married, and she got a job with a graphic designer in town and decided to go back to school to earn her master’s in graphic design. Pregnant with her first child, Anna, Rost graduated with her master’s in 1984.
“I never went to work for a firm, and I started doing freelance bookwork, design and illustration,” she said. “I used to do a lot of illustrations for science journals and publishers, and I got a part-time job with the U of I being a technical illustrator for the School of Life Science.”
After the birth of her second child, Jon, and her third, Chris, Rost got involved with the Champaign-Urbana Schools Foundation.
“I got civically involved when I had children at home,” she said. “I did not work, so I used my time getting involved in the community and volunteering and doing that kind of thing. I ended up becoming engaged in education as my kids moved through education, and when the director position at the Champaign-Urbana Schools Foundation became available, that’s when I decided to take it. That was almost 13 years ago.”
Although she is no longer the executive director at the CUSF, she wants to remain working full time with the I.D.E.A. store.
“It’s a perfect fit, the I.D.E.A. store,” she said. “Not only does a lot of the ways I try to merchandise our stuff apply concepts of 3-D design from landscape architecture and juxtaposition of objects, I also use my M.F.A. to kind of graphically display what we have as part of how we sell the merchandise.”
With Rost’s background, she said she has the sensitivity toward sustainability and that she understands how to do it.
She said: “There isn’t anything else quite like this in the country. I’m not saying that I was born with it, but I’ve got a good sense about how it should work. And it is … it is working.”