When he first got to town, he didn't even know where State Street was, let alone the store his great, great grandfather founded. But once Marshall Field V saw Chicago, he never wanted to leave.
First blush, you'd think it would personally pain Marshall Field to see his name taken off his family's retail empire. Frankly, no. He doesn't even like being called Marshall Field "the fifth." In my Closer Look, why he's more than just a name. He worries about bigger things, like how to raise funds for the various charities he heads and where Mother Earth is headed.
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SUPPELSA: Marshall Field name no more.
FIELD: Right.
SUPPELSA: What do you think?
FIELD: I think it's too bad because I think the great old tradition has gone away. It's just another one -- when big Eastern or foreign companies have picked off Chicago companies and they've disappeared... I think that's kind of sad. I think short term, business-wise, it was a dumb decision of Macy's; because tourists who come to town always have a visit to Fields on the list. Well, they're not going to have Macy's on the list; because they're either not going to want to go or they've seen it in New York or any other spot.
SUPPELSA: So, it's sad in a civic, Chicago heritage, tourist way.
FIELD: Right.
SUPPELSA: Is it sad in a family way?
FIELD: No, not really. We've been out of that company for 50 years or more. While it's wonderful to think about having an ancestor who started something that great, you know, there's a time to move on. That time probably started about 30 years ago. I think the name's run out of gas, frankly. Most of my brothers and sisters and their kids, they don't even live in Chicago. You know, "Chicago" is gone. We're in a world now where people sort of think in bigger areas. And there's a bunch of great new names like [Microsoft founder Bill] Gates, et cetera, and now those should be the names that really stand out in today.
Marshall Field V never ran the store his great, great grandfather founded. But he knows why it lost luster decades ago.
FIELD: The thing that happened is what allowed the WalMarts and Targets of the world to come in. All of the stores that used to have unique supplies of things -- that made it worth your while to go into their store and no one else's -- started to buy from these huge suppliers. So pretty soon, I think the customer learned that everything was pretty much the same and so they lost store name loyalty. They just began to shop price. [That was the] perfect opening for WalMart or Target.
SUPPELSA: Could there be a niche out there somewhere for a department store to find goods you can't find everywhere?
FIELD: Oh sure. I think Neiman Marcus still has a bunch of things that are for Neiman Marcus. And they're still alive.
Marshall Field sees a similar crisis at the local newspaper his family once owned, where he was once publisher, the Chicago Sun-Times.
FIELD: That business, you can argue, thanks to computers, et cetera, doesn't have a glorious future. The biggest strength I see, frankly, in a newspaper today is its newsgathering ability. Or if it really worked on columnists, its writers' ability. And they should really be more of a software supplier than a hard newspaper. They should spend less time worrying about putting out their paper and more time worrying about what's in it.
Field left publishing in 1984, and has since thrown his heart and money at all things environmental. Including running the museum that bears his family's name.
FIELD: I see things at the Field Museum that are fascinating. We've got a gal who measures global warming over time... She figured out that if the average temperature on the globe goes up by 11 degrees, that everything dies. So we're up three.
SUPPELSA: Three now?
FIELD: Yeah. We got eight to go and we're all out of here.
That broad, confident grin says: this is a man who doesn't have to worry about anything. But from his plush office, overlooking the Chicago River, Marshall Field works full-time on causes he loves. The environment? Right at the top. The arts? Not far behind, for this one-time art history major.
Field says his favorite cause is whatever's in front of him. His chief "job," if you will, is raising money. He says it's getting harder than ever. For the first time since moving to Chicago, he says, charities and universities need more money than is out there to give.
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