Frederick Ford, a pioneering Chicago business executive who helped steer major South Side real estate projects over a 63-year career at Draper and Kramer, has died. He was 98.
Ford died July 14 from pneumonia complications, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. He joined Draper and Kramer in 1951 as a staff accountant and rose to become executive vice president and chief financial officer. He retired in 2014 and served on the firm’s board for more than four decades.
“Those who knew him and worked with him remember his calm authority, his integrity and the pride he took in being a mentor for others, including descendants of Draper and Kramer’s founders, for whom his longevity offered a sense of stability and source of institutional knowledge within a multigenerational family business,” Draper and Kramer CEO Todd Bancroft said, calling Ford a “true leader” who embodied the firm’s commitment to civic and neighborhood development.
Ford played a central role in transformative mid-century multifamily projects including Lake Meadows and Prairie Shores in Bronzeville, both cornerstones of Draper and Kramer’s Chicago portfolio. His tenure at the firm coincided with waves of urban renewal and investment on the city’s South Side, where Ford and his wife were among the first residents of Lake Meadows.
The son of a postal worker and union leader, Ford was born in St. Louis in 1926 and was barred from attending segregated Missouri colleges. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting at the University of Illinois before joining Mary T. Washington & Company, the nation’s first Black woman-led CPA firm, and then moving to Draper and Kramer.
Though best known in real estate circles, Ford made history beyond the industry as well.
In 1969, he became the first Black member — and later the first Black president — of the Union League Club of Chicago, breaking with decades of exclusionary tradition. He was also the first Black president of the University of Illinois Student Senate.
Ford served as vice president of the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago and founded the Gary Educational Development Foundation in Gary, Indiana, where he lived with his wife and raised their two children.
— Judah Duke
Read more
