Étienne Hajdu

“Do things here and now, not after you’re gone.  If you have some money, share it.  And if you have some time, do something worthwhile.”  -- Jerome H. Stone

Jerome H. Stone, businessman, civic leader and collector, epitomized the varied sentiments of this personal motto throughout his long and storied 101-year life.  A precocious and intellectually curious child of Russian Jewish immigrants in Chicago, Mr. Stone worked tirelessly to help support his family.  His energies succeeded in turning a simple family corrugated box business into a multi-billion dollar firm, Stone Container Corporation.

With the same vigor, Mr. Stone turned his private attentions to the public institutions that had nurtured both his own personal development and that of the city around him.  Impressed that the local Roosevelt University had developed a curriculum of classes tailored to working adult students, Mr. Stone joined the Board of Trustees in 1953 and served as its chairman from 1969 through 1984.  His passion for Chicago, art and culture compelled him to be a primary fundraiser in the efforts to build the current Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, helping to fundamentally transform the institution into the architectural and civic landmark it is today.

However, Mr. Stone’s most significant and perhaps lasting contribution was for the most personal and poignant of reasons.  While a teenager, Mr. Stone was presented to a sophisticated, well-traveled young woman named Evelyn, who had been the valedictorian of her high school class, was fluent in several languages and was a skilled violinist and pianist.  Evelyn would later become his wife and the mother of his three children, and together in their home the couple would build an outstanding Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art collection celebrating bold colors, graphic lines and industrial energy.

Unfortunately, and tragically, at the prime of both Mr. Stone’s personal and professional successes, Evelyn was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, then a little-understood condition.  Mr. Stone “watched with deep frustration as the mysterious disease took hold of his wife, hollowing out a woman who had once brimmed with talent and a zest for life.”[i]  At the time of her diagnosis, there was little information on Alzheimer’s available even amongst the medical community.  Mr. Stone researched the disease himself and served alongside Evelyn’s caregivers until her death in 1983 at the age of 67.  In 1979, Mr. Stone was invited to a meeting of other support groups interested in creating a broader organization for families and to promote research.  On December 4, 1979, at the first official meeting of the Alzheimer’s Association, Mr. Stone was elected the founding president.

Over the course of more than a century of family life, business achievement and philanthropic endeavors, Jerome H. Stone’s career and personal accomplishments are the very embodiment of worthwhile, and nothing short of extraordinary.

[i]Chicago Sun-Times, Stefano Esposito, “Jerome Stone: Successful businessman, driving force behind Alzheimer’s Association,” 1/2/15