John E. Robson’s smile was a familiar one in the corridors of Washington, where he worked for many years in the Johnson, Ford and both Bush administrations. But he always called himself a Chicagoan.
“He was a lot like the city of Chicago in that he was hard-working, a bit understated and tenacious,” his son, Douglas, said.
Mr. Robson, 71, president and chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, died of cancer Wednesday, March 20, in his Washington, D.C., home.
He was born in New York City, but as an infant moved with his family to Chicago, where he grew up following the Bears and Cubs.
Mr. Robson went to Yale where he earned a bachelor’s degree and to Harvard for his law degree.
But Chicago’s lure was strong. So he returned to practice law, specializing in mergers and acquisitions.
And the proud Republican hesitated only briefly when President Lyndon Johnson’s administration asked him to work in the Department of Transportation, said Margaret Robson, his wife of 41 years.
At the time, it was a new department and Mr. Robson approached it with the fervor of a lawyer opening a new practice.
“It was very much my father. He liked to take on things that were new and challenging,” his son said. “It was the driving force in his life.”
This would be the first of four stints in the nation’s capital. Mr. Robson served under President Gerald Ford as the chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, where he is credited with initiating airline deregulation.
“He was there six months and came home one day and said, I think they should deregulate,” his wife said. Along with helping write the bill, she said, he saw to it that it made its way through Congress and into law.
Under the senior Bush, Mr. Robson worked in the Treasury Department, and in the current Bush administration he headed the Export-Import Bank, an independent federal agency that helps finance the export of American goods and services to developing countries.
At a nomination hearing for the job, Mr. Robson said, “Some might say it’s about time this old warrior hung ’em up, but I relish this new challenge because I have never found a canvas as big to paint.”
In between government positions, Mr. Robson was dean and professor of management of the business school at Emory University in Atlanta. And he was president and CEO of G.D. Searle pharmaceutical company in Skokie.
It was in those two positions that he came to know Jim Denny, who compared his friend to Mark Twain for offering colleagues a welcoming smile and common-sense witticisms.
“He had a way of characterizing things that goes to the heart of the matter and always with a sense of humor,” Denny said.
In each of his career moves, Mr. Robson was known to dedicate countless hours studying the new field.
“You could hear his brain ticking,” said Ned Jannotta, a longtime friend from New Trier High School in Winnetka. “It enabled him to do anything. He could adjust to any new environment.”
Mr. Robson applied the same passion and dedication to his personal life.
He was an avid fly-fisherman who could spend 14 hours at a time casting. A patriot who served stateside in the U.S. Army, he was known to call his son and wife to breakfast each 4th of July to read the Declaration of Independence.
To commemorate his 70th birthday and the millennium, he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
“It was a Robsons-never-quit kind of activity,” said his son, who also made the climb. “It was his typical challenge.”
Mr. Robson also is survived by his mother, Elizabeth, and a brother, Ken.
Services will be held at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Chicago Historical Society, Clark Street and North Avenue.
