Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [22]
During World War II, tragedy struck again when Nathan Goldblatt died of cancer at the peak of his career. Grief-stricken, brother Maurice channeled his energies from business into charity work. Today, the Goldblatt Brothers Foundation is one of the nation’s most significant, giving more than one million dollars in a single grant for a University of Chicago cancer research center, named for Nathan. The surviving brothers are national leaders both in the American Heart Association and in the American Cancer Society. The Goldblatts also are given much credit for establishment of the National Heart Institute at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1946 Maurice made a poignant, unrehearsed speech to a Senate committee. Soon afterward, Congress created the new center.
State Street’s Wieboldt and Mandel families also are among Chicago’s most generous philanthropists. The Wieboldt Foundation, honoring the German immigrant who established the family chain of Chicago neighborhood stores, has given millions of dollars to social agencies and other local organizations. Chief monuments to the Mandel Brothers – whose chain now is merged with Wieboldt’s – are Michael Reese Hospital (the late Leon Mandel headed its building committee) and the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall.
The late Morris B. Sachs, the onetime door-to-door salesman whose firm sponsored the famed Sachs Amateur Hour for twenty-four years, also gave generously – not only of his money, but of himself. I’ll never forget one charity telethon in which we both participated. Despite his partial physical disability, Morris remained at my side for the entire twenty-four hours. He once produced an entire radio amateur hour with nothing but blind contestants. Chicagoans also will long remember his service as City Treasurer – for which he accepted no pay – and his gallant but unsuccessful primary election campaign for the governorship of Illinois.
For years the “dean” of State Street was clothier Henry C. Lytton, who refused to retire from participation in the operation of the famous shops bearing his name until he was over a hundred years old. I’ll always remember the spirit he demonstrated at his centennial celebration in 1946. After posing for pictures which showed him cutting a huge cake model of State Street’s stores, he playfully nudged a neighbor, David Mayer of the Maurice L. Rothschild Company, and then took a swing with the knife, which cut the replica of the Rothschild store in two!
Only Mrs. Myrtle Walgreen of the drugstore empire could compare with Lytton for vigorous old age. A globetrotter and a camera enthusiast, she flew her own airplane for years. Next time you pass a drugstore hot lunch counter, you might reflect that it was she who originated the idea, at the first Walgreen outlet at Thirty-ninth and Bowen. “She’d make the soup in big pots at home,” says her son Charles, “then carry them over herself!”
What are Chicago tycoons really like?
Some have been ruthless – like the late Sam Insull, whose hunger for power led to his downfall, and forced his son, Samuel, Jr., now an insurance broker, to begin life anew at forty. Some shirk their civic responsibilities, and make all Chicagoans pay in lowered quality of government and city planning. A handful even actively co-operate with syndicate hoodlums, undermining the economy and community of which they’re a part.
But as anyone familiar with Chicago knows, Our Town is rich in enlightened and civic-minded businessmen. We have such cultural leaders as William McCormick Blair, Alfred C. Stepan, Jr., and Leonard Spacek of the Lyric Opera. We have such art patrons as Arnold (Maremont Corporation) Maremont, adman Earle Ludgin, Sterling (Morton Salt) Morton, Lou (Ambassador Hotels