Latest news with #RandMcNally
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Chicago private equity firm has stake in Gaza aid company
By Aram Roston WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A Chicago-based private equity firm - controlled by a member of the family that founded American publishing company Rand McNally - has an "economic interest" in the logistics company involved in a controversial new aid distribution operation in Gaza. McNally Capital, founded in 2008 by Ward McNally, helped "support the establishment" of Safe Reach Solutions, a McNally Capital spokesperson told Reuters. SRS is a for-profit company established in Wyoming in November, state incorporation records show. It is in the spotlight for its involvement with the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which last week started distributing aid in the war-torn Palestinian enclave. The foundation paused work on Wednesday after a series of deadly shootings near the distribution sites of people on their way to pick up aid. It has suffered from the departure of senior personnel. "McNally Capital has provided administrative advice to SRS and worked in collaboration with multiple parties to enable SRS to carry out its mission," the spokesperson said. "While McNally Capital has an economic interest in SRS, the firm does not actively manage SRS or have a day-to-day operating role." SRS is run by a former CIA official named Phil Reilly, but its ownership has not previously been disclosed. Reuters has not been able to establish who funds the newly created foundation. The spokesperson did not provide details of the scale of the investment in SRS by McNally Capital, which says it has $380 million under management. McNally Capital founder Ward McNally is the great great great grandson of the co-founder of Rand McNally. The McNally family sold the publishing company in 1997. A spokesperson for SRS confirmed it worked with the foundation, also known as GHF, but did not answer specific questions about ownership. GHF, which resumed aid distribution on Thursday, did not respond to a request for comment While Israel and the United States have both said they don't finance the operation, they have pushed the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it, arguing that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that. Israel blocked almost all aid into Gaza for 11 weeks until May 19, and has since only allowed limited deliveries in, mostly managed by the new GHF operation. This week GHF pressed Israel to boost civilian safety beyond the perimeter of its distribution sites after Gazan health officials said at least 27 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded by Israeli fire near one of the food distribution sites on Tuesday, the third consecutive day of chaos and bloodshed to blight the aid operation. The Israeli military said its forces on Tuesday had opened fire on a group of people they viewed as a threat after they left a designated access route near the distribution center in Rafah. It said it was investigating what had happened. The U.N and most other aid groups have refused to work with GHF because they say it is not neutral and that the distribution model militarizes aid and forces displacement. SRS subcontracts with U.S. private security firm UG Solutions, which provides armed U.S. military veterans to guard the distribution sites and transportation of the aid, two sources familiar with the operations said. UG Solutions did not respond to a request for comment. The SRS spokesperson said in a statement that under Reilly's leadership, "SRS brings together a multidisciplinary team of experts in security, supply chain management, and humanitarian affairs." McNally Capital has investments in defense contracting companies. Among the firms it acquired was Orbis Operations, a firm that specializes in hiring former CIA officers. Orbis did not return calls for comment. Reilly used to work for Orbis.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive-Gaza aid logistics company funded by Chicago private equity firm
By Aram Roston WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A Chicago-based private equity firm - controlled by a member of the family that founded American publishing company Rand McNally - has an "economic interest" in the logistics company involved in a controversial new aid distribution operation in Gaza. McNally Capital, founded in 2008 by Ward McNally, helped "support the establishment" of Safe Reach Solutions, a McNally Capital spokesperson told Reuters. SRS is a for-profit company established in Wyoming in November, state incorporation records show. It is in the spotlight for its involvement with the U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which last week started distributing aid in the war-torn Palestinian enclave. The foundation paused work on Wednesday after a series of deadly shootings close to its operations and has suffered from the departure of senior personnel. "McNally Capital has provided administrative advice to SRS and worked in collaboration with multiple parties to enable SRS to carry out its mission," the spokesperson said. "While McNally Capital has an economic interest in SRS, the firm does not actively manage SRS or have a day-to-day operating role." SRS is run by a former CIA official named Phil Reilly, but its ownership has not previously been disclosed. Reuters has not been able to establish who funds the newly created foundation. The spokesperson did not provide details of the scale of the investment in SRS by McNally Capital, which says it has $380 million under management. McNally Capital founder Ward McNally is the great great great grandson of the co-founder of Rand McNally. The McNally family sold the publishing company in 1997. A spokesperson for SRS confirmed it worked with the foundation, also known as GHF, but did not answer specific questions about ownership. GHF, which resumed aid distribution on Thursday, did not respond to a request for comment While Israel and the United States have both said they don't finance the operation, they have pushed the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it, arguing that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that. Israel blocked almost all aid into Gaza for 11 weeks until May 19, and has since only allowed limited deliveries in, mostly managed by the new GHF operation. This week GHF pressed Israel to boost civilian safety beyond the perimeter of its distribution sites after Gazan health officials said at least 27 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded by Israeli fire near one of the food distribution sites on Tuesday, the third consecutive day of chaos and bloodshed to blight the aid operation. The Israeli military said its forces on Tuesday had opened fire on a group of people they viewed as a threat after they left a designated access route near the distribution center in Rafah. It said it was investigating what had happened. The U.N and most other aid groups have refused to work with GHF because they say it is not neutral and that the distribution model militarizes aid and forces displacement. The SRS spokesperson said in a statement that under Reilly's leadership, "SRS brings together a multidisciplinary team of experts in security, supply chain management, and humanitarian affairs." McNally Capital has investments in defense contracting companies. Among the firms it acquired was Orbis Operations, a firm that specializes in hiring former CIA officers. Orbis did not return calls for comment. Reilly used to work for Orbis.
Chicago Tribune
01-06-2025
- Automotive
- Chicago Tribune
Rand McNally maps helped travelers find their way
Now is the time of year when families start thinking about a summer vacation. In the pre-internet era, that meant getting out the creased, dog-eared maps from the car's glove compartment. Spread across a kitchen table, the maps fueled dreams of cross-country travel, unburdened by the reality of endless hours in an overstuffed vehicle. Those vacation planners are indebted to Rand McNally. The Chicago area-based publisher pioneered road maps that were distributed at gas stations, beginning with Gulf Oil, in 1920. From time to time, the company had stores stocked with maps, atlases and guide books Road maps were a logical extension of Rand McNally's business plan. It had published railroad maps since 1872. Still, it had to learn a new trick to produce road maps. It isn't difficult to match a railroad map to a railroad. Its freight and passenger cars carry the line's logo. Stations and freight depots bear its name. But America's early highways weren't lined with numbered signs. So how would a motorist know where they were by following a wiggly line on a map? John Brink, a Rand McNally cartographer, came up with a solution: Creating symbols for highways that were printed on the road maps and also put on signs attached to electrical and telephone poles along those roads. He won $100 in a contest the company ran for employees to develop new map products. The company advertised Brink's creation with the slogan 'Follow the Blazed Trail,' Janice Petterchak reported in 'Mapping A Life's Journey, The Legacy of Andrew McNally III.' The original cardboard signs were damaged by the weather. Others were pilfered by vandals, prompting a revised method: Painting the telegraph poles and advertising: 'Follow the Painted Poles.' If a map user got on a highway to their destination, the painted poles kept them headed the right way. But towns might have several highways, so a map user could choose the wrong one. Because of that, another system of road identification was created by H. Sargent Michaels. His 'Photographic Automobile Maps' provided pictures of intersections and turning points along a route. Rand McNally purchased the rights to it and in 1909 issued 'The Rand McNally Photo-Auto Guides.' 'My mother and father took a busman's honeymoon to Milwaukee,' Andrew McNally III, the company's leader from 1948 to 1974, told the Tribune in 1982. 'They took pictures of every turnoff from here to there. So came the Chicago-to-Milwaukee guide.' A newspaper clipping in the family's scrapbook continued the story: 'He also took pictures of puzzling intersections, and when his company — Rand McNally & Co. — printed the road map resulting from his trip, white arrows in the pictures the honeymooners had taken showed which route to follow.' Around 1917, numbers were substituted for symbols and painted poles, eventually leading to the numbering of all major roads in the United States. Andrew III's great-grandfather was Andrew McNally, an apprentice from Ireland hired in the late 1850s by William H. Rand who had a small print shop on Lake Street. At first, they did printing for the Chicago Tribune. But with an increasing number of railroad lines coming to Chicago, the partners decided to concentrate on the railroad industry. The Tribune predicted, 'It cannot but at once attain a wide circulation.' But on Oct. 8, 1871, their building was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire. McNally had the foresight, according to company lore, to bury two of their printing machines in the sand at Lake Michigan. When the fire ended, the company was able to resume business with the salvaged equipment and within a short time were printing 100,000 tickets a day. In 1872, their first map appeared in the company's 'Railroad Guide.' Theirs was the first American company to produce maps from wax engravings — a method McNally learned in Ireland. Instead of creating new plates for updates, they could patch existing plates, dramatically reducing production costs. Shortly, they added a touch of class by including verses by poet Robert Browning in the timetables of the Chicago and Alton Railroad. They also inspired another artist. Helen Beck did a striptease act at Chicago's 1933 World's Fair. Cecil B. De Mille, the famed Hollywood director, said she needed a catchier name. Spotting a Rand McNally map on her agent's wall, the stage name 'Sally Rand' was chosen. The company's influence went well beyond helping vacationers navigate the nation's roads. Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean, used Rand McNally railroad maps to navigate when flying over land. During World War II, a boatload of refugees fled Japanese-occupied Java and made it to Australia by charting the thousands of miles of their escape with a Rand McNally Pocket Atlas. As the company prospered, Andrew III, whose father Andrew McNally II ran the company from 1933 to 1948, came of age thinking nothing of taking off for faraway places. During his freshman year at North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka, he visited an uncle in England. Subsequently he and a chum returned there. They had an audience with the prime minister and the prince of Wales. The lord mayor of London hosted a luncheon where they met authors and artists interested in British-American relations, according to Petterchak's book. During World War II, Andrew III volunteered, and, after a quickie officer's training course was commissioned a lieutenant in the Army Map Service. He was mildly surprised we won 'with maps primarily based on outdated British cartography,' he told a reporter. Andrew III succeeded his father as Rand McNally's president in 1948. The company expanded greatly during his tenure at the top. Upon taking over, he decided to move the headquarters from their cramped building at Clark and Harrison streets to a spacious campus in Skokie. It became the largest mapmaker in the United States, printing tickets for airlines and publishing books, atlases and globes and even later expanded into storefronts. The McNallys had majority control of the company and didn't have to answer to stockholders with different ideas. Ward, the company's founder, died in 1890, having been in ill health and selling his share of the business to the McNallys, and they never made a public stock offering. In 1994, Andrew III said, tongue in cheek, that 'the reason the business stays in the family, is that we never got rich enough to neglect it.' But printed maps were becoming a thing of the past as computers became prevalent, and Andrew III's successors didn't share his reservations about selling the company piecemeal. In 1997, the family divested itself of the business. Its corporate offices in Skokie were sold in 2008 to Ida Crown Jewish Academy.
Chicago Tribune
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Author Peter Ferry is back, as his novel ‘Old Heart' becomes a movie
The teacher and novelist Peter Ferry is dead. He died at age 77, less than a year ago, on the morning of Sept.17 to be precise, but he was the topic of conversation recently when a couple of creative guys were telling me about him and talking about his novel 'Old Heart' and how it became a movie. 'He was a wonderful guy,' said Gary Houston, long a prominent presence as an actor and director on the local theater scene and a former newspaperman, now a managing editor of the literary Chicago Quarterly Magazine, which published some of Ferry's short stories. 'And he really inspired me to start writing fiction even after many years of never trying.' 'I fell in love with Peter's book and immediately called him and told him I wanted to make a movie based on it,' said Roger Rapoport, a writer, investigative reporter, producer and all-around creative dynamo. (He's also the brother of former Chicago sports columnist Ron Rapoport.) 'I hadn't known him, but he was just wonderful, the perfect collaborator. He was so supportive, always coming up with great ideas and sharing his knowledge that enriched the project.' Ferry will not get to see the movie, which begins a national tour that brings it to our Chopin Theatre on June 4 for the premiere of 'Old Heart,' the feature-length movie based on Ferry's second and last novel. Among the guests will be Houston and Rapoport; co-director Kirk Wahamaki will also be there, along with actors Jamelle Sargent, Edward Gaines and Eva Doueiri, who is flying in from Amsterdam. Ferry's widow, Carolyn, will be there, as will daughter Lizzie and son Griffin, and surely others. Ferry had many friends and admirers 'Peter did get to see the stage adaptation of the novel when it was performed in Michigan,' said Rapoport, who wrote and produced the stage version and the movie. 'He liked it, was proud and I knew he could envision the film.' Ferry was a native of West Virginia who moved to Chicago as a teenager. After college at Ohio and Northwestern Universities and a few years writing and editing textbooks at Rand McNally, he spent three decades teaching English and writing at Lake Forest High School. Among his students were actor Vince Vaughn and author Dave Eggers, one of the leading literary figures of our time, who has said of Ferry, 'He was a very erudite guy with a wry wit, and he understood the strange sense of humor my friends and I had. We became fanboys of Mr. Ferry, and he was our hero and mentor. And he and I stayed in touch for the next 35 years.' Eggers told me this after Ferry died: 'I think I mention Mr. Ferry and his second career as a novelist once a week, whenever I encounter someone trying to write a novel later in life. Mr. Ferry really showed you could do it, and do so at the very highest level.' While teaching, Ferry also wrote stories for the Tribune's travel section and worked on what would be his first novel, 'Travel Writing,' published in 2008. 'Old Heart' came out in 2015 and reviewing it for this newspaper I called it 'a stunning story. In bright and precise prose.' It tells of 85-year-old Tom Johnson, a Black World War II veteran who decides, much to the alarm of his maybe-dad-should-be-in-a-nursing-home grown children, to find the woman whom he believes to have been the great love of his life, lost over decades and, perhaps, for good. And so off he goes, to a lovely town in the Netherlands. Johnson's identity as a Black veteran is an essential element of the story. 'That's the thing, on top of its inherent power, this novel, this film is so topical. It is in its way the ultimate DEI movie, a story that deals with race in the armed services, and the story of the Red Ball Express,' Rapoport says, explaining that famed trucking operation in Europe that carried supplies to the rapidly advancing U.S. forces, especially crucial following the D-Day landing. The young Tom Johnson drove for the express and the film offers terrific and dramatic flashbacks, some of which detail the reasons why the drivers were almost all Black. It was because the U.S. Army was segregated at the time, with Black soldiers not serving in combat. 'We filmed in Michigan and in the Netherlands and Peter's knowledge of both places (he had a home in Michigan and has lived and taught in the Netherlands) allowed for terrific and knowing details,' Rapoport said. 'When it was in shape to screen for various technical people, editors and such who really know movies, they were all impressed and engaged.' Houston has seen the film and likes it too. He says, 'I was so pleased that the film follows the novel faithfully. It brings out the novel's values, the idea that we should live life the way we want to, that we don't have to throw in the towel when we get old, and that irresistible notion of finding a lost love after more than 50 years.' We both almost simultaneously remembered and spoke a line from the film, when Johnson says, 'I might be old but I am still a human being.' It would be unfair to tell you how the movie ends. So I won't. All I'll say is it's nice to have Peter Ferry still with us, on the pages of his books and now compellingly and entertainingly on screens.
Buzz Feed
05-05-2025
- General
- Buzz Feed
Boomers And Gen X'ers, Tell Us Which Products And Trends Were All The Rage But Have Now Disappeared
Though trends and products are often reimagined and revisited every few decades, many end up vanishing from present-day society completely. So, older folks (Boomers, Gen-X, and older Millennials), what trends or products were once popular but have since disappeared? Maybe you remember when SO MANY fast-food places and restaurants had salad bars... Maybe you remember the days of driving somewhere new with only one of those thick Rand McNally map books to help you get there... Maybe your kid was blown away by your "red-eye" photos from the '80s and '90s because their iPhones automatically edit them out... Or maybe you remember the days when cereal boxes had ACTUAL toys in them!
