Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [19]
There is Max McGraw, the “Toastmaster” manufacturer, who merged his appliance firm with the Thomas A. Edison interests to create the nation’s fourth largest electrical products giant: the “new” company dates almost to the beginning of the industry. McGraw also operates the Fin ‘n’ Feather Farm, near suburban Elgin – one of the most lavish private-membership fish-and-game preserves anywhere.
There is Walter Heller, head of one of the largest financing firms in the nation and a prominent figure in the motion-picture industry.
And William A. (Pat) Patterson, president of United Air Lines. Pat made it the hard way in commercial aviation – from pioneer to president of one of the great systems. Few persons are better liked or more respected. And Pat still retains the rugged individualism that helped develop commercial aviation in this country. He evinced it recently when he joined with a handful of other leading Republicans to support Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, for re-election. Pat’s explanation was simple, and typical of him: “Daley has been a splendid mayor and he is good for Chicago. Party preference takes a back seat in a case like this.” That’s the way Patterson operates. He wants the best, whether for his passengers or his city.
And then, there are the top executives whose names are more important abroad than in Chicago itself – such as hotel broker Morris DeWoskin, the Caribbean and South American developer who has also boosted Israel through zealous Bonds for Israel sales. And there are the others with almost entirely home-grown fortunes, such as pioneer discount-seller Sol Polk, and prominent auto-dealers Jim (world’s largest Ford agency) Moran, and Zollie (world’s largest Chevrolet agency) Frank.
One of the phenomena of modern America is the economic rise of the Negro, and this is nowhere more evident than in Chicago, where the Negro population has mushroomed to over 800,000. Chicago has one of the largest groups of Negro millionaires in the country. I wish that there was room to list them all, but let me mention just a few – cosmetics manufacturer S. B. Fuller, who parlayed twenty-five dollars in cash into the S. B. Fuller Products Company, which grosses twenty million dollars a year; real-estate tycoon Dempsey Travis; John H. Johnson, publisher of Ebony, Jet, and other national magazines; John Sengstacke, publisher of the Chicago Defender; Earl B. Dickerson, president of the Supreme Life Insurance Company (largest Negro-owned business in the North); A. W. Williams, head of the United Insurance Company; and Truman Gibson, Sr., another insurance executive, and father of Truman Gibson, Jr., the former boxing impresario.
Some Chicago executives are adventure-lovers. Take the late Commander Eugene F. McDonald, Jr., who started a little electronics firm in a garage in the early days of radio – a little firm called Zenith Radio Corporation! Once, when the Commander was selling automobiles, he drove a new car straight up the steps of a Grant Park statue as a publicity stunt. Another time, he publicized his short-wave radios by traveling north into the Arctic Circle and leading Eskimos in a broadcast songfest. The fishing trips and hunts for pirate treasure on his yacht were legendary. On one unforgettable occasion, he fired a shot across the bow of the yacht of Colonel Leon Mandel. (Fortunately, the peace-loving Mandels didn’t return the fire: Mandel’s lovely wife, Carola, is a world champion skeet-shooter.)
Another