Shedd President and CEO Ted A. Beattie said, “In my 30-plus years in the aquarium and zoo profession, I feel so privileged to have worked with this wonderful man, who was so committed, dedicated and supportive of this institution.”
Mr. Reed was the last surviving person to have known the aquarium’s founder, and during the institution’s 75th anniversary in 2005, he was frequently sought for his recollections of Mr. Shedd as a family man. He said his grandfather instilled in him the values of honesty, integrity, hard work and civic responsibility, and, incidentally, set him on his career path.
Mr. Reed proudly described himself as “a railroader.” He was captivated by trains, beginning with early transcontinental trips on the Santa Fe to visit his grandpa’s winter home in California in the 1920s. He remembered the opening day of the aquarium in May 1930 mainly for the Nautilus, a custom-built railroad car used to collect and transport fishes, which was parked on a spur next to the new marble temple to aquatic life. “I wanted to be a porter on that railroad car,” Mr. Reed confided at a 1994 party honoring him at Shedd. “But [Director] Walter Chute didn’t think much of the idea.”
Mr. Reed was born on June 9, 1917, to Kersey Coates and Helen Shedd Reed (later Keith). His mother was the younger daughter of John Graves and Mary Porter Shedd. His father was an attorney and the secretary/treasurer of Marshall Field’s and Company. At the time, John G. Shedd was the president of Field’s, then the world’s largest department store. Mr. Reed had an older sister, Mary. The family lived on Astor Street, and Mr. Reed, who loved baseball, would take the bus to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs play. On Sunday afternoons, the Reeds often visited “Grandpa” at Mr. Shedd’s 24-room mansion on Drexel Boulevard. But the younger John got to know his grandfather best on the annual spring rail trips to Mr. Shedd’s Pasadena home between 1922 and 1926, when Mr. Shedd died.
During these visits, Grandpa Shedd loved to take his extended family on motor tours in two chauffeured Pierce-Arrow automobiles. “On one occasion, we made a trip to San Francisco,” Mr. Reed said in a 2004 interview at the aquarium. “It took three days to get there in those days, but during that time, we got to know Grandpa very well.” He added that his railroad career was no coincidence. “I always wanted to work for the Santa Fe because of those trips,” although he pictured himself as an engineer rather than executive.
Mr. Reed attended Chicago Latin School. When he and friends visited Shedd Aquarium, he said, “we just looked at the fish like all the other kids would do. I mean, everybody knew what the name was, but we just sort of took it for granted.” He went on to attend Hotchkiss, a prestigious boarding school in Connecticut; the Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico, which combined rigorous outdoor living with a classical education; and Yale, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial administration in 1939. He completed an advanced management program at Harvard in 1955.
Immediately after college, Mr. Reed applied with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway for a position as a locomotive engineer. He was told, however, that “No Yale man could shovel enough coal to get an engine from Chicago to Joliet.” Instead, he began his career as a test assistant in Topeka, but left in 1940 to enlist in the U.S. Naval Reserve, attending the V-7 midshipmen’s program at Annapolis and earning an ensign’s commission. He served throughout World War II on the destroyer USS Niblack, which escorted convoys and supported landing missions in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Pacific. Mr. Reed climbed the ranks, serving as chief engineer, damage control officer, executive officer and, for a time, acting skipper. He was awarded a Bronze Star for meritorious service and left the Navy in 1946 as a lieutenant commander.
The same year, he married Marjorie Lindsay, of Winnetka. The couple raised five children.
Mr. Reed also resumed his career at Santa Fe Railway, moving his growing family as he was posted to district offices in Texas, Colorado and Missouri. The Reeds returned to the Chicago area when he was promoted to assistant to the vice president in 1954. Ultimately he became president and CEO of the railway and later of Santa Fe Industries, coordinating the railway, natural resources and energy divisions until his retirement in 1983. He was called back from 1987 to 1988 to again serve in that capacity to complete the company’s merger into the Santa Fe Southern Pacific. Even after a second retirement, he continued to have an office at the downtown headquarters.
In 1970, Modern Railways magazine honored him as its Man of the Year. His career spanned the golden age of the great passenger trains, the switch from steam to diesel locomotives, deregulation and major mergers. And while he never got to work aboard Shedd's original Nautilus railroad car, upon joining the aquarium's board of trustees in 1961, he arrange for the Santa Fe to haul the Nautilus II on the spring collecting trip to the Pacific. In the board minutes, it was reported, "[T]he interest in this project shown by trustee John Shedd Reed resulted in unusually expeditious and courteous handling all along the way."
Because of his business acumen and professional connections, Mr. Reed was elected president of the Shedd board in 1984 to lead the aquarium through the greatest change in its history: the building of the Oceanarium. The addition would nearly double the size of the aquarium and bring whales, dolphins and other marine mammals to Chicago in a structure combining display habitats, educational installations and a veterinary/breeding facility.
In the 2004 interview, Mr. Reed admitted that he and other conservative board members took a hard look at the feasibility of the project, both fiscally — the final cost was $47.2 million — and technologically, examining the needs of whales and dolphins in an inland aquarium. “We thrashed it over very seriously before we went ahead,” he said. “But after looking at all the pros and cons, we decided this was the thing to do.”
Mr. Reed took the lead on fundraising, recruiting his many colleagues in the Chicago business community to support this major addition to the city’s cultural and educational landscape. He was a major benefactor himself, setting a generous example with $1.7 million in gifts. With nearly half of the project's $43 million budget already pledged, on Sept. 17, 1987, he presided over the ceremonial laying of the underwater cornerstone, which was actually dropped by crane into about 15 feet of water (see photo above).
“John always provided the board with a strong commitment to sound, thoughtful and conservative fiscal management,” Beattie said. “He did not like long-term debt, and to this day, we have no debt on this popular addition to the aquarium.”
When the Oceanarium opened in 1991, Mr. Reed declared the Pacific white-sided dolphins and the sea otters to be his favorite animals.
When Mr. Reed stepped down as board president in 1994, he was feted with a gala, but he never missed a beat in his board work. He was especially proud when his oldest child, Ginevra Reed Ralph, was elected a trustee, extending Shedd family investment in the aquarium into a fourth generation. Mr. Reed was a fixture on the Finance and Investment Committees. Pairing white athletic shoes with his business suit, he usually strode the 12 blocks from his office in the Santa Fe building on Michigan Avenue to board meetings at Shedd. Otherwise he arrived in his subcompact car. Mr. Reed eschewed the conspicuous trappings of wealth and was proud of his frugality.
He and his wife did make annual bicycle tours of France, with Mr. Reed for years pedaling a vintage three-speed Hercules. From his extensive travels in the United States and abroad, he was convinced that Shedd was “the finest aquarium in the world.” Mr. Reed also enjoyed skiing, tennis and golf. Like his grandfather, his club memberships included Old Elm.
He served on many corporate and civic boards, including Kraft, Inc.; the Northern Trust Company; Premark International; Alliance Française de Chicago; Chicago Zoological Society; Field Museum; the Hotchkiss School; Lake Forest Library; Museum of Science and Industry; and Chicago Sunday Evening Club. He was past president of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation and of the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry. He was a member of the Commercial Club of Chicago; National 4-H Council Resource Development Committee; American Railway Engineering Association; American Association of Railroad Superintendents; and National Freight Traffic Association.
In addition to his wife, Marjorie, and daughter Ginevra, Mr. Reed is survived by another daughter, Helen; three sons, L. Keith, Peter and John Shedd, Jr.; seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Mr. Reed delighted in bringing the newest generation of John G. Shedd’s descendants to the aquarium, but that enjoyment also extended to being amid the throngs of schoolchildren that visit daily to see the fishes, whales and dolphins. “It’s very satisfying to see them enjoying it,”
he said.
