HC FOUNDATION Hinsdale Central Foundation
Hinsdale Central High School building, brick and glass facade

The Twenty-Eighth Volume · 1997 – 2025

The Hinsdale Central
Hall of Fame

Two hundred inductees and counting. Writers and senators, scientists and athletes, builders and breakers — every one of them walked these halls first.

Hall of Fame · Class of 2021 · Author

Tomi Adeyemi rewrote the YA shelf — and started here.

The Children of Blood and Bone author topped the New York Times list before she was thirty. Twenty years earlier, she was a Red Devil with a notebook.

Before the world tour, before the seven-figure deal, before the trilogy that sold in thirty-plus languages, Tomi Adeyemi was writing in study hall at Hinsdale Central High School. She has credited the school's writing program — and the teachers who took her drafts seriously — as the place where she first understood that the books on the shelves had been written by people, and that she could be one of those people.

The Hall of Fame inducted her in 2021. The induction is a record. The work, of course, is its own record — and the next volume is already being written by Red Devils sitting in those same classrooms today.

Read the full induction citation →

Browse the volumes

Twenty-eight years of inductees, by decade.

A sampling from the archive

Five names. One archive of two hundred.

Bill Veeck

2001 · Baseball

Owner and showman who reshaped Major League Baseball; Hall of Fame executive.

Judy Biggert

1997 · Public Service

U.S. Representative for Illinois's 13th District, 1999–2013.

Mary-Dell Chilton, PhD

2009 · Science

Wolf Prize laureate; founding figure of plant genetic engineering.

Leslie Hindman

2004 · Arts & Auction

Auctioneer; appraiser, PBS Antiques Roadshow.

Tomi Adeyemi

2021 · Letters

NYT-bestselling author of Children of Blood and Bone.

Submissions open year-round

Nominate an alum.

Know a graduate whose work belongs in the next volume? Tell us their story — the committee reviews every submission, and the right name in the right year carries weight.

Submit a nomination →

Saturday, October 18, 2025

Attend the Gala.

The annual Hall of Fame Induction Gala — the night the new volume is read aloud, the inductees are honored, and the next year of programs is funded.

Reserve tickets →