Successful president & CEO of Shedd Aquarium has died

 This really has nothing to do with Shedd School although the Shedd Aquarium both share the same namesake former Marshall Field's CEO John G. Shedd. One of my favorite memories from school was going on a field trip to the Shedd Aquarium. Of course that trip took place before this man Ted Beattie who recently passed away took over the Aquarium for 22 years.

Before arriving at the Shedd Aquarium he worked for the Cincinnati Zoo, also the suburban Brookfield Zoo and in 1994 arrived at the Aquarium. He left his position as President & CEO in 2016.

Here's more from the Tribune:

In 1994, Beattie was hired to be the Shedd’s third president and CEO. During his tenure, the Shedd perennially ranked as Chicago’s No. 1 or No. 2 paid attraction among zoos and museums. Among the projects he oversaw were the $47 million Wild Reef area and a $79 million rehab of the Abbott Oceanarium.

“He was really hardworking, but he got everything by building a consensus — that’s how he would do that,” said former Illinois Attorney General Ty Fahner, a former Shedd Aquarium board chair. “That’s how he was able to build the Shedd to its size today.”

Beattie told the Tribune in 2015 that he wanted the Shedd “to be the friendliest place in town. Out of that statement we would manage our programs.”

Beattie played a role in the transformation of the museum campus that contains the Shedd, the Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum of Natural History, and he also focused on developing talent at the aquarium.

Retired Lincoln Park Zoo CEO Kevin Bell, a longtime friend, recalled Beattie’s laserlike focus on developing leaders.

“The thing Ted was most proud of in terms of his accomplishments was his work with leadership,” Bell said. “Talk to most people around our industry, and those are the words that are going to come up.”

Fahner noted the numerous leaders of zoos and aquariums across the U.S. who once had worked for Beattie. “He’s got like 11 or 12 people (who worked for him) who are just kind of a diaspora all around the country,” Fahner said. “They were all disciples of Ted’s.”

Well I wonder how they're doing these days.

Come to think of it, time to pay that place another visit and share it on the YouTube channel. 

h/t CapFax

Sun-Times: Ted Kimbrough, who led Chicago schools through reform of early 1990s, dead at 83

Sun-Times photo of Ted Kimbrough

I vaguely remember former CPS Superintendent Ted Kimbrough. His time as head of the schools if I believed the news seemed rocky. Even to me as a very young grade schooler at Shedd School.

Kimbrough passed away on April 16, 2018!

Born Theopolis Dudley Kimbrough in Chicago, he grew up on Dodge Avenue in Evanston. After deliveries from the milkman, he liked to zip around the neighborhood sipping the cream off the tops of milk bottles. He went to Evanston Township High School and played for the school football team, the Wildkits, according to his son Blake.

Mr. Kimbrough got his bachelor’s degree in education from Northern Illinois University and a master’s degree in education from California State University in Los Angeles, his son said.

He spent 26 years with the Los Angeles Unified School District and served as school chief in Compton, California, before arriving in Chicago in 1990. Mr. Kimbrough was hired to help guide the system through its early days of school reform, a titanic shift of authority from the schools’ central-office headquarters to newly elected and empowered local school councils.

Not unexpectedly, the historic decentralization was a rocky one. Power squabbles included assertions that LSCs based hiring on race or ethnicity and that contracts were given to cronies.

Within two years, Mayor Richard M. Daley was hinting he was disenchanted with Mr. Kimbrough and student performance. But the superintendent said he couldn’t be fully responsible for a system where major decisions were made by LSCs and the principals they hired.

In addition to the landmark reform effort, Mr. Kimbrough also had to deal with the system’s regular financial crises.

By 1993, the Chicago school board bought out his contract. He went on to serve as superintendent of schools in Sacramento. He retired in 1997.