Jack Lawson Bishop Jr.

Jack Bishop Jr., the originator and driving force behind the Chicago Purchasing Management Index (Chicago PMI) passed away March 28, 2019, at his home in Skokie, IL, with family and friends at his side. He was 79.

Jack was 7 years old when he first demonstrated a flair for business and entrepreneurship that would mould his life’s work. He wrote, directed and produced a play titled, “Found a Peanut.” He charged parents a penny to attend, netting himself “almost a dollar.”

During the post WWII construction boom in Denver, CO, where Jack and his family lived, he discovered he could make a 90% margin by delivering sodas to carpenters and bricklayers. The men flipped Jack silver dollars until his career was cut short when the foreman objected to a 10 year old climbing scaffolding to make deliveries.

Jack developed an enormous paper route among other ventures during high school, earning enough to pay his expenses, buy clothes and purchase major appliances for his family. His Junior Achievement project was so well managed that he was busted as a trust and forbidden to continue when he avoided Junior Achievement’s 30% tax by paying his employees in scrip, valued at the end of the year to leave no profits.

Despite an obvious aptitude for tax law and business, Jack’s high school counselor encouraged him to become a chemical engineer. He graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder, having been active in campus politics, editing the engineers’ newspaper and participating in the engineers’ follies.

While a chemical engineer at Dow Corning in Midland, MI, Jack met and married Donna Leavens, a biochemist. In addition to their day jobs, Jack and Donna helped her father run the family farm.

After five years designing chemical products, Jack, Donna and their two year old daughter moved to Urbana, IL, where in 22 months Jack completed coursework and exams for a multidisciplinary doctorate (economics, econometrics, statistical analysis, industrial psychology and finance), while Donna learned Japanese. During their lunch hour, Jack and Donna rewrote and updated Insect Disease and Weed Control. They then returned to Dow Corning where Jack redesigned the company’s ordering system for his doctoral thesis.

At Dow Corning, Jack was assigned to head the computer department. Though not the job he sought, Jack’s assignment placed him in the right spot to learn about the burgeoning computer field and its application to large business.

Opposed to the Vietnam war, Jack, Donna, a Dow Chemical employee and a minister stood on the steps of the Methodist church and read the names of Americans killed in the war. For their efforts, the Dow Chemical employee was fired and Jack was never promoted again. He left Dow Corning to take strategic planning jobs at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Louisville, at the May Company in St. Louis and at Brunswick Corporation in Lake Forest, IL, bringing the family to Evanston.

Under takeover attack, Brunswick later dismissed a large number of employees; Jack was the last to go and, at age 40, he decided to form a consulting business. He earned nothing the first year so he took over household duties (his specialty: Chinese and Indian cooking) and spent time with his youngest two children while Donna worked outside the home.

Soon Jack was selected to head Northwestern University’s business incubator and technology transfer project, where he guided budding entrepreneurs for five years.

Donna fell ill just after Jack became director of Nebraska’s state research and development authority. Brain cancer took Donna in 1990. Heartbroken, Jack returned to Chicago to finish raising their youngest child while engaging in global consulting that took him to 20 countries during the next 10 years.

Jack’s goal in working with developing economies was to help small and medium businesses succeed so they could create jobs and raise living standards. In 1993-4 he spent seven months in Russia supporting the transition to a market economy, at a time when Russia lived under a “Wild West” mentality as various factions jockeyed to control the country’s wealth.

Jack made more than 15 trips to Egypt. On one six-month assignment, he designed and oversaw construction of a business incubator in the Nile Delta. While there, Jack also spent time with his then six-year-old grandson, teaching him English and forging a lifelong bond.

In 2004, a business friend recruited Jack to go to Iraq to help the country recover from the U.S. invasion. Jack arrived one year post-invasion, when factions within Iraq began serious fighting. Jack returned home after six weeks in Iraq, believing it was wrong to take money for services he could not provide and or further risk his life for nothing,

Jack soon left Iraq wheeling an enormous mound of luggage through a deserted Baghdad International Airport, having brought many books and work papers anticipating a six-month assignment in Iraq. When the airline desk staffer scowled as he approached, Jack knew what to say: “I am a donkey.”

The donkey is looked down upon in Iraqi society and instead of focusing on his massive carry-on, the woman scolded him, saying, “You cannot say you are a donkey! That is insulting.”

Jack replied, “Why not? My president is a donkey.” The woman waved him through.

Jack also worked with deputy mayors for seven months in Russia, mayoral positions there being largely ceremonial. Jack had been warned about one deputy mayor and when he found himself and his translator sitting on one side of an enormous desk with the stern deputy mayor and his bodyguards on the other side, he said to the man, “I understand you do not like Americans.”

The translator paled. “You can’t say that!”

“Please translate,” Jack said, and after translation the deputy mayor replied, “Da.”

“I also understand you do not like consultants.” After translation, “Da.”

“I am an American consultant.” No translation needed. “Da.”

Jack then asked, “Do you know the definition of consultant?” The man replied “Nyet.”

“A consultant is someone who steals your watch and then tells you the time.”

The deputy mayor roared with laughter, pushed his bodyguards aside, came around the table and embraced Jack.

When personal computers became available for consumers in 1987, Jack purchased one, taught his children to use it and, as a member of Amnesty International, churned out letters of support for prisoners of conscience at a pace that occasionally resulted in requests from Amnesty for him to slow down. Jack also sought to develop public speaking skills by hosting a cable show where he interviewed Salvadoran refugees, among others.

As an adult and an opponent of war, Jack became a Quaker and was active in the Evanston Friends Society for many years, including as clerk of the meeting.

In 1981, colleagues at Brunswick Corporation invited Jack to a meeting of the Business Survey Committee of the Purchasing Management Association of Chicago (Now Institute for Supply Management – Chicago). There Jack learned of an ongoing monthly survey of purchasing managers dating back to 1946. Jack mined the data, balanced five of the ten points and created the Chicago Purchasing Management Index, or Chicago PMI, of which the composite number is known as the Chicago Business Barometer.

Jack began publishing the data monthly in 1981 and continued until 2011, when the Frankfort Stock Exchange took it over.

Jack is survived by his wife, Karen; daughters, Elizabeth Bishop, Kathleen (Dean) Slough and Caroline (Neal) Looney; son, Jack Bishop III (Margot Hodgson); three grandsons, Yehia Hafez, Youssef Hafez and Wilson Bishop; and his brother, Robert Bishop. He will be missed by all who knew him.