Person:James Whitaker (11)

OBITUARY http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-08-18/news/9308180177_1_brunswick-corp-mr-whitaker-punta-gorda

James E. Whitaker, 82, Retired President Of Export Company August 18, 1993|By Kenan Heise, Tribune Staff Writer.

James E. Whitaker, 82, retired president of the export firm of C.S. Greene and Co. and former export sales manager for Brunswick Corp., served from 1953 to 1954 as president of the Export Managers Club of Chicago and was a former director of the International Trade Club of Chicago.

He is credited with selling the first bowling alleys to postwar Germany and Japan.

A resident of Punta Gorda, Fla., he died Friday in Fawcett Hospital in Port Charlotte, Fla.

Mr. Whitaker, who was born in Chicago, served as a major attached to the 8th Air Force in Europe during World War II. While on duty on a British destroyer, the ship was torpedoed and sank off the coast of Belgium.

After the war, he joined the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co., later Brunswick Corp., becoming export sales manager in 1946.

He purchased C.S. Greene and Co., a Chicago export forwarder, in 1956. He expanded the company, opening offices in U.S. ports and establishing worldwide affiliations until his retirement in 1977.

Survivors include his [second] wife, Mary Helen, and three grandchildren.

His daughter, Janice Brownfield, died Tuesday in an airline terminal in Atlanta en route to her father's funeral.

Services for Mr. Whitaker will be held Wednesday in Punta Gorda.

James Edwin as a baby

Jim and his daughter, Janice, in 1991 or so