Frederick Ford, real estate executive and first Black Union League Club president, dies at 98

Chicago Tribune

2 days ago

Chicago commercial real estate executive Frederick Ford was the first Black president of the venerable Union League Club of Chicago, a position he used to lobby city officials to build a new main public library instead of repurposing an old Loop department store..
Trained as an accountant, Ford rose to become the chief financial officer and then vice chairman of Draper and Kramer, the Chicago-based real estate developer and property manager founded in 1893.
'Fred was quite brilliant, but beyond the fact that he was brilliant, he was just about the nicest guy you ever met in your life,' said Murray 'Trip' Wolbach III, a retired Draper and Kramer senior vice president. 'He was a numbers person, but he was so much more than that, and what separates Fred in my mind from your typical numbers man is his humanity.'
Ford, 98, died of complications from pneumonia July 14 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said his daughter, Rebecca. Ford lived in Dearborn Park in the Printers Row neighborhood and previously had been a longtime resident of Gary.
Born in St. Louis, Ford was the son of Florence Ford and Lafayette Ford, who had been the president of the National Alliance of Postal Employees. Unable to get into the segregated University of Missouri, Ford moved to Illinois and received a bachelor's degree in accounting in 1948 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he was the first Black president of the student senate. He picked up a master's degree in accounting from the U. of I. the following year, and in 1953 passed Illinois' certified public accountant exam.
While at the U. of I., Ford met his future wife, Dorothy, who was working as a waitress at a YMCA where Ford worked as a lifeguard. The couple married in 1953.
From 1949 until 1951, Ford worked for a small accounting firm founded by Mary T. Washington, who was the first Black female CPA in the U.S. In 1951, he joined Draper and Kramer as an accountant. He soon rose to become supervisor of special accounting and then controller and finally chief financial officer.
Larry Mages, a retired lawyer who represented Draper and Kramer, said Ford was 'unflappable.'
'He was calm — not excitable — and he approached problems, issues and questions very thoughtfully,' Mages said. 'And viscerally, gut instinct-wise, he had very good instincts, but if he had the opportunity to take time to think something through, that's what he did. He was just always kind of a calming influence no matter what was going on around him.'
Mages characterized Ford as a rare talent within Draper and Kramer.
'There are two types of people in the real estate industry: the numbers and finance people and the real estate people,' Mages said. 'He combined those things and had them both.'
Ford joined the YMCA's board of managers in 1965, and in 1968, he was appointed to Gary's school board.
In 1969, Ford was the first Black member admitted to the Union League Club of Chicago. The move was not without controversy, as some members circulated a letter complaining that the club's board had acted 'imprudently in making a major change in tradition without ascertaining fully the wishes of the entire membership,' according to a 1969 Tribune article that quoted the letter.
The club's president at the time, LaSalle National Bank Chairman Milton Darr, had served on the Chicago YMCA board with Ford, and in response to dissident club members, he wrote a letter to the club membership emphasizing that Ford was a 'highly qualified gentleman' and that the action had been taken following normal club admission processes.
Ford told the Tribune in 1969 that 'my relationship with club members has been just fine. I'm at the club about three times a week, and if I had not seen the letter, I would never have known about the incident. Frankly, it hasn't changed my attitude at all. I think it will all blow over in time.'
In 1985, Ford became the club's first Black president for a one-year term, by tradition. Speaking on behalf of the club in 1985, Ford lobbied Chicago Public Library board members to decide against converting the old Goldblatt Bros. department store, at the corner of State Street and Jackson Boulevard, into a permanent central library. He did not think a retrofitted former retail store was adequate.
'We cannot have a good educational system without a good library system,' Ford told the Tribune in 1985.
Ford's was one of several voices raised in opposition to the Goldblatt's plan, and ultimately, city officials decided to construct the Harold Washington Library a block to the south. It opened in 1991.
'I had such admiration for all his accomplishments,' said retired accountant and former Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Chair Lester McKeever, a longtime friend and pioneering Black businessman in Chicago himself. 'He wound up being a leader wherever he went. As the Union League's very first Black president, that was another demonstration of how important he always (was).'
After retiring as Draper and Kramer's chief financial officer in 1991, Ford remained with the firm as vice chairman. He remained in that role for the next two decades or so.
Ford and his wife also had a home in Naples, Florida.
In addition to his daughter and his wife, Ford is survived by a son, Lafayette; a son-in-law, former Tribune reporter Don Terry; and two grandchildren.
A memorial service is planned for September at the Union League Club.