The feuding chairmen of Chicago’s futures markets are beating swords into plowshares, at least long enough to co-host a benefit for the Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, a West Side orphanage that touched the lives of both chief executives during rough-edged boyhoods four decades ago.
Chicago Board of Trade Chairman Patrick H. Arbor and John F. Sandner, his counterpart at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, are sponsoring the charity event Saturday at the Bismarck Hotel. The benefit could add $100,000 to the coffers of the century-old home at 1140 W. Jackson Blvd.
The black-tie event, also chaired by Mayor Richard M. Daley and Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, will include cocktails, dinner, dancing and live and silent auctions.
But the centerpiece of the evening is a six-bout fight card. CBOT and Merc floor traders and clerks will don gloves and head protectors and go at it for three one-minute rounds.
For the last year Arbor and Sandner have engaged in a running battle over issues great and small, from who sits where at the speakers’ table, to which market, the CBOT or the Merc, is the largest or the most vital to international commerce. The feuding has been exacerbated by similar personal temperaments and backgrounds: fiercely competitive individuals who overcame impoverished childhoods to reap wealth trading in the CBOT and Merc markets.
On Saturday night the Arbor vs. Sandner scrapping will be set aside for “Mercy’s sake,” the theme of the third annual CBOT-Merc event to raise money for the orphanage. In the mid-1950s, Arbor, with nowhere else to turn, lived at Mercy for two years while attending Loyola University. Sandner, who dropped out of high school for a time to rack up a 58-2 record as a featherweight Golden Gloves boxer, used Mercy’s basement gym to train.
“It excites me that these two men have joined forces to help give children a port in the storm where they can heal their wounds and get steered toward a meaningful future,” said Rev. James J. Close, who has shepherded Mercy and its charges-now numbering 179 boys and girls of all ethnic backgrounds-for 21 years.
Founded in 1887 at Old St. Patrick’s Church, Mercy Home operates three centers: its home on Jackson; on the Loyola University campus on the North Side; and in the South Side Beverly neighborhood.
More than 90 percent of its operating funds come from private donations. The annual budget of just under $10 million provides for a 60-member staff.
Johnny Bellino, 54, an amateur fight promoter and a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve who regularly parachutes from aircraft in his spare time, promises that Saturday night’s card will be as entertaining as some have found the real-life contests between the CBOT and the Merc.
Two main events follow dinner. Lou Hall, a CBOT associate member, will square off against Tom Martino, an employee of International Futures and Options at the Merc. Later, Glen Leonard, a CBOT index trader, will face Tim Murray, a local Merc trader.
“Leonard-watch out for this kid,” said Bellino in the best fight promoter tradition. “He is an ex-Golden Glover who fought and lost to Leroy Murphy. But remember, Murphy went on to become the International Boxing Federation’s light heavyweight champ of the world.
“Murray is South Side Irish and a former amateur boxer. He has a good short right cut. He put his first sparring partner away.”
