From the Vault of Art Shay: Genius

\<b\>Bob Galvin - March 1981\<\/b\> \<i\>Fortune\<\/i\> magazine was in a three-day holiday hurry for me to photograph Motorola President Bob Galvin and his three regular tennis partners in Libertyville. \"One condition,\" said Galvin. \"I want copies of the pictures before you send them to \<i\>Fortune\<\/i\>.\" It was Sunday, I protested, and not allowed by \<i\>Fortune\<\/i\>, but would get the slides back by Wednesday and... \"Not fast enough,\" said Galvin. \"The last New York cargo flight is midnight.\"\r\n\r\nThus he finagled me out of my own raw film, called in his Motorola darkroom staff and delivered my own film to me (in a Motorola van) developed by Motorola, at home by 10 p.m. so I could ship it by midnight. As he took my film this billionaire laughed. He said, \"Now I won\'t have to pay you or \<i\>Fortune\<\/i\> for reproducing the slides \<i\>and\<\/i\> I\'ll be able to deliver them to my friends by dinner time.\" His joy in having outwitted \<i\>Fortune\<\/i\> and me by a few hours and saving a few bucks left me with a mixed view of how a great executive\'s mind functioned. I bought some Motorola stock, thinking the company was in frugal hands. This turned out to be a mistake. Parsimony doesn\'t necessarily make for winning leadership. Maybe some Republican will read this and take heed. Or read it to Obama. (Art Shay)

\<b\>Ted Fujita - March 1981\<\/b\> Fujita, a delightful University of Chicago professor, invited me, for \<i\>Fortune\<\/i\>, to photograph what was known as his tempest in a teacup. Fujita had computed the math and physics necessary to duplicate a genuine mini-tornado in his lab! If you listened closely you could faintly hear the roar. (Art Shay)

\<b\>Bill Wirtz - January 1974\<\/b\> Wirtz was a sports and real estate genius who owned the Chicago Blackhawks (as his son Rocky does to this day) and erect the gigantic building he called the Furniture Mart. My wife dragged me to this Mart so we would see our Herman Miller suite, Eames chairs and other fancy first house furniture before buying it from Sol Polk. I was at the burgeoning Mart that Wirtz built the other day on a medical visit. The vast structure in the 600 block of Lake Shore Drive is now completely refurbished as a medical center, an adjunct to the Northwestern University medical colossus. My worn out knees, now under experimental treatment by the Stryker Drug artificial joint company, had ironically, in part, become worn out walking through Bill Wirtz\'s Furniture Mart in its halcyon days of oak and rosewood. And here they were again on their figurative knees or last legs, praying for relief from pain. (Art Shay)

\<b\>Leigh and Mary Block - 1958\<\/b\> I photographed Inland Steel heir Leigh Block and his wife Mary, both great art collectors, in the then-new Inland Steel showplace building. Brilliant people and great art fanciers both, Leigh invited me to show him some of my work for their Block Museum of Art on the Northwestern Evanston Campus, but he died in 1973. A few years ago someone from the museum called to ask me if I was interested in submitting some pictures for possible display in three or four years. I did so - this was before the popularity of disks - and at a time Studs had convinced me it was possible to live into one\'s mid-nineties. I included the above picture and several others of Leigh Block as prints they might be interested in buying. They returned everything except my three color prints of the Blocks, saying their then-director, when back from vacation, would decide whether he wanted to purchase them and get in touch with me. Maybe he\'s still on vacation. The Museum has minimally stiffed me, maximally done what the Nazis did to greater Jewish art- confiscated it. Apparently the geniality and smarts of the founders have left the building. I can\'t imagine what use the museum has for my unreturned pictures. I hope for a brochure of the founders, who were smart people who had done business with Picasso and the like. And would have exhibited or at least returned my pictures. (Art Shay)

\<b\>Gary Stern - March 1981\<\/b\> I remember space-game tycoon Gary Stern leaping up on his desk, which supported a Mickey Mouse statue, and showing off his favorite TV game boxes. He rattled off myriad details about his creations that seemed brilliant, and he did well in a field he had loved since boyhood. A Chicago adornment. (Art Shay)

\<b\>Chicago Board of Trade - 1984\<\/b\> Early on the Board of Trade began using portable computers to track the world\'s markets. I had permission to shoot these geniuses on the balcony and, using a deceptively wide angle lens, threw in the secretive floor of the exchange as lagniappe. (Art Shay)

\<b\>Gene Bordinat - August 1973\<\/b\> Bordinat was the Ford design genius who, I believe (with help from Lee Iococca and other design aces), came up with the latter-day Mustang that kept Ford alive during the leaner years. While helping create the Mustang, Bordinat, leading a design team of 900 between 1963-73, had a hand in the design of every one of the 52 million cars Ford produced. He was married to a gorgeous Dior model who collected books. The company\'s policy on showing pictures of upcoming models was to cover the cars. Bordinat had a sense of humor and let me shoot the picture the company way - and then reverse the gag - cover the designer but let the car show. We all got in trouble. My favorite Ford picture was of a non-family designer named Ford who had designed the classic 1949 post-war Ford. \<i\>Fortune\<\/i\> wanted to show design genius Ford in front of this car on its 25th anniversary. So the Ford PR people dragged one in from their museum and I did the shot. It left an oil stain on the parquet floor. About a year later \<i\>Fortune\<\/i\> got a letter from a high school car-nut kid in Ohio: \"We had shot the wrong car - a 1950, not a 1949. The genius was in the details. Or in the kid. (Art Shay)