James Crown, Chicago businessman and avid philanthropist, dies at age 70

James Crown, a scion of a wealthy Chicago family who held key positions in companies as diverse as General Dynamics, Sara Lee, and JPMorgan Chase, and who became a pivotal early supporter of an up-and-coming politician named Barack Obama, died in Woody Creek, Colo. , on Sunday, his 70th birthday.

Mr Crown’s family said in a statement that he died in a single-vehicle accident at Aspen Motorsports Park track. The statement gave no further details about how he died.

Mr. Crown was the CEO of Henry Crown & Company, the family’s private investment company. The company is named for his grandfather, the son of a Lithuanian sweatshop worker, who built a family business selling sand, gravel, lime and coal into a multibillion-dollar business empire in Chicago.

James Crown was also the chief executive officer and major shareholder of the defense and aerospace company General Dynamics; former chairman of Sarah Lee who helped split the company into beverage and food divisions; and a board member of JPMorgan.

Mr. Crown, an avid philanthropist, met Mr. Obama in 2003, as he was preparing to run for the US Senate in Illinois, and became an enthusiastic supporter.

Mr. Obama was defeated in 2000 in a congressional race against the incumbent Democratic party. His advisers said he needed a closer relationship with Chicago’s Jewish voters. They also said he needed money, Mr. Crown provided both.

“I was impressed by his sensitivity, his intelligence, his values ​​and the way he behaved during that campaign,” said Mr. Crown in 2007 to The New York Times.

Mr. Crown and his family donated a total of $112,500 to Mr. Obama during the Democratic primary, and Chicago’s Jewish leaders raised hundreds of thousands more during the campaign. Mr. Obama won the primary, then defeated Alan Keyes for the Senate seat and began the national political career that would take him to the White House.

A few years later, Mr. Crown Mr. Crown’s main presidential fundraiser. Obama in Illinois. When Mr. Obama ran for president in 2008, he released a list of earmarks he had obtained as a senator, including $750,000 to help renovate a space center named after Henry Crown at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

In 2014, Mr. Obama mr. Crown as a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, an independent group that advises the President on the effectiveness and objectives of U.S. intelligence agencies.

“When Barack was still an unlikely candidate for the U.S. Senate, Jim became one of his fiercest advocates and most perceptive advisers,” Obama and his wife Michelle said in a statement. rack on Monday. “He believed in our family and worked hard to convince others in Chicago that they could too.”

Another beneficiary of Mr. Crown’s generosity was the University of Chicago, where he served as chairman of the board of trustees from 2003 to 2009. The university named its social services school the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice after Mr. Crown and his wife, Paula, donated $75 million in 2021.

After Obama left the White House, Crown continued to mingle with world leaders, including President Biden, whom he saw last week at a state dinner for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“Jim lived through a great Chicago story — one that connected our nation’s industrious past with an ever-hopeful future,” Biden said in a statement. rack. “He grew up the great-grandson of a sweatshop worker whose son turned a construction supply company into an empire. Throughout his career as a business and community leader, Jim continued to propel that legacy.

Mr. Crown was a director of Bank One, a consumer banking giant in the Midwest and South, from 1991 to 2004, when JPMorgan took it over in a deal worth about $58 billion. After the merger, he remained as a board member.

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chairman and CEO, wrote in a statement that Mr. Crown “has been a trusted advisor to me for nearly 20 years and has played a key role in helping our company navigate numerous business and economic challenges.”

Mr. Crown and two other Board members, David Cote and Ellen Futter, received criticism in 2013 after JPMorgan lost more than $6 billion in a credit derivative bet. The loss drew control by federal regulatorsdemands for more robust risk management and intense criticism of Mr. Dimon.

James Schine Crown was born in Chicago on June 25, 1953 to Lester and Renée (Schine) Crown. His mother also comes from a wealthy family — her father, J. Myer Schine, made a fortune in real estate and hotels — and she is a director of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and created an honors program at Syracuse University.

Lester Crown was General Dynamics’ largest shareholder for many years. He also became a minority owner of the Chicago Bulls and New York Yankees.

The Crown family fortune began with Henry Crown, James’s grandfather, born Henry Krinsky, whose father changed the family name to Crown when Henry was a boy. Henry left school in the eighth grade and eventually started the family building materials business with his brother, which he expanded to include railroads, meatpacks, hotels and, for a time, a major interest in the Empire State Building.

2020, Forbes magazine ranked the Crown family as the 34th richest in the United States, with an estimated net worth of $10.2 billion.

James Crown graduated from New Trier West High School in Northfield, Illinois (now part of New Trier High School) in 1972. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., in 1976.

In 1983, he became a vice president at Salomon, where he met Paula Hannaway, an investment banker. They married in 1985 and moved to Chicago, where Mr. Crown joined his family’s investment firm.

In addition to his wife and his parents, Mr. Crown is survived by two brothers, Steve and Daniel; four sisters, Patricia (known as PC), Susan, Sara and Janet Crown; three daughters, Torie, Hayley and Summer Crown; a son, W. Andrew Crown; and two grandsons.

Mr. Crown, who had a home in Aspen, was also an avid skier and managing partner of the Aspen Skiing Company, which operates a resort.

The family statement did not say what Mr. Crown was doing at Aspen Motorsports Park when the accident occurred. The parks website says members meet to race twice a week, usually a qualifying session followed by two races of “fast wheel-to-wheel action” in “Spec Racer Toyotas”.

The racetrack did not respond to phone calls or an email.

Mr. Crown recently began an effort to address gun violence in Chicago by encouraging the city’s business leaders to create thousands of jobs in underserved areas of the city, provide millions of dollars for civil violence and law enforcement intervention programs, and low-income communities. support incomes.

He said the effort would help both Chicago’s upper echelon and lower-income residents.

“You have altruism,” Mr. Crown said The Chicago Sun Times. “But you also have the enlightened self-interest of: I want to be safe, I want my employees to come to work, I want the tourists to patronize my business, whatever that is.”

Emily Flitter contributed reporting.