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1950s Featured Legacies Legacies

John Bell (BSJ55)

John R. Bell, lifelong Chicago resident and frequent contributor to national financial and real estate magazines, died in January. He was 89.

Chicago Tribune Obituary

Born in Hammond, Ind., John moved to Chicago as a teenager and resided in Chicago ever since. He segued into writing the John Carmichael Texaco Sports Final for CBS Radio, and later to publicize peacetime atomic energy R&D as a member of the first public information staff at Argonne National Laboratory.

While at Argonne, he initiated coverage of the work that Argonne was doing by contacting CBS journalist Charles Collingwood. This resulted in a one-hour program produced and broadcast nationally on CBS.

John also held several corporate PR positions, including at J. Walter Thompson, General Motors, Montgomery Ward and H. Rozoff and Associates. He added real estate and financial writing to his portfolio when H. Rozoff and Associates obtained a number of real estate and financial accounts.

After he retired, he was a frequent contributor to Mortgage Banking, the official magazine of the Mortgage Banking Association, until it ceased publication in 2016. In writing to his editor at that time, he said that “Mortgage Banking was a unique publication—like no other in its field.” She wrote back agreeing that “the magazine was something very special,” adding “you were part of the magazine’s success.”

His articles for Mortgage Banking included coverage of the growth and recovery of the national office market; profile of Wrightwood Capital, the Chicago-based commercial/real estate finance firm; the growth of mixed use developments; the development of business/industrial parks; the nation’s Downtowns going green; multifamily apartment markets; five-star hotel markets; industrial recovery; the move to Downtowns; and economic growth in gateway cities.

He wrote cover stories for the National Real Estate Investor and his cover story profiles of Chrysler’s CEO Robert Eaton and Wilson Sporting Goods executive Jim Bough appeared in Industry Week (IW).

He was also a contributor to Pension Management, the Journal of Property Management (JPM), Progressive Railroading, Flying Careers, Air Cargo World, and Cahners Assembly Magazine.

John enjoyed music, the theater, and raising English Bulldogs—and said he had created the world’s finest barbecue sauce.

He and his wife, Virginia, celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary Sept. 8, 2019. They have two daughters, Monica (John) Muhs and Vanessa (Leon) LaSota; three grand-daughters, Dr. Amanda (Alex) Saratsis, Sara Muhs, and Leigh (AJ) Grimberg; and two great-grandchildren, Beckett and Eva Saratsis.

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/chicagotribune/obituary.aspx?n=john-r-bell&pid=195132717&fhid=2060

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1990s Class Notes Featured Class Notes

Kris Goodfellow (BSJ92)

Kris Goodfellow  is the state Democratic Party-endorsed candidate for California State Senate, District 23.

Goodfellow was a graphics editor at The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune before running the graphics department at the Associated Press. She left journalism to pursue a career in technology and is currently the chief operating officer and co-owner of Voyager Search, a software company based in Redlands, Calif. For almost two decades, Goodfellow has been active in the community, located between Los Angeles and Palm Springs, but this is her first run for office.

“I got involved in the Hillary campaign in 2015, and when Donald Trump won, it took me a minute to pick myself up off the floor,” Goodfellow said. “But when I did, I decided that I needed to do more. That led me to realize that we need better representation at every level of government — and not only in the blue districts, but the purple and red ones, too.”

Goodfellow has been endorsed not only by the California Democratic Party, but also the California Teachers Association, Planned Parenthood, California League of Conservation Voters, a variety of unions and politicians at the local, state and national level. She has outraised her competitors on both sides of the aisle, shocking the political establishment in this traditionally red district of close to 1 million people.

The California primary is on March 3rd and there are a total of five candidates — three Republicans and two Democrats running. Goodfellow must be one of the top two vote getters to advance in California’s “jungle” primary system. If she wins the election, Goodfellow would be the first woman and the first Democrat to hold this seat in what has been a historically Republican district.

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Event Photos

David Freedman (BSJ81) hosted the Palm Springs event

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Ash Steffy, Dean Charles Whitaker and Rob Weiss (BSJ87) at the Palm Springs event

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Kenneth Piner (MSJ93), Victor Chi (BSJ91) and Ann Lee (MSJ07) at the Jan. 25 NU alumni event “Partnerships in LGBTQ+ Issues” in Palm Springs