After attending a Chicago Cubs World Series game in 1945, Ben Raskin met Daniel Rice at a party.
Rice, a prominent commodities trader, liked Mr. Raskin and offered him a job, launching a nearly 60-year trading career.
Mr. Raskin, 85, a former director of the Chicago Board of Trade, died Monday, Feb. 23, of cardiac disease in his home on Chicago’s Near North Side.
“He traded until the end,” his son Richard said. “We had to close out his positions when we took him to the hospital last month.”
The third of four children of parents who came to the United States from a tiny village in what is now Belarus, Mr. Raskin grew up in Erie, Pa. In 1938 he earned a degree in economics from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa., which he attended on a scholarship.
At Allegheny, he developed a lifelong friendship with Raymond P. Shafer, a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brother who from 1967 to 1971 was governor of Pennsylvania.
“He was one of my best friends,” Shafer said. “He was one of the brightest men I ever knew. He was a patriot.”
While working two jobs, Mr. Raskin attended the University of Illinois, where in 1939 he earned a master’s degree in economics in a year. From 1940 to 1945, he was pilot of a Navy plane that could land on water and was used to drop depth charges on German submarines and rescue seamen.
“We had very few of them,” said Sam Sax, a retired Navy captain and longtime friend of Mr. Raskin’s. “Their great contribution was they greatly obstructed the Germans in the early part of the North Africa campaign by making them think that we had huge anti-submarine capabilities.”
During the war, Mr. Raskin married Pearl Jean Cohen in 1942. They had met in college.
In 1945 the Raskins were living in Springfield. After the Cubs game, Mr. Raskin met Rice at a party and started working for him the next week. The Raskins moved to Chicago.
Mr. Raskin held a seat on the Board of Trade from 1954 to 1982. For seven of those years, he was on the Board of Directors. During his time there, he drafted the first soybean meal contract.
“He was very highly thought of, very highly regarded,” said trader and friend Lee Stern. “There probably weren’t too many members who had the knowledge he had and understood the markets the way he did.”
In the early 1960s, Mr. Raskin moved to Champaign and Danville to work as vice president of marketing and hedging for a soybean and corn-processing firm. After a few years, he returned to Chicago and started his own trading firm. During the Vietnam War, he was a paid State Department adviser to Thai agriculture officials.
While he wasn’t working, Mr. Raskin spent time reading and playing bridge and golf. About 30 years ago, he was on the board at south suburban Temple Anshe Sholom. He also was a president of Ravisloe Country Club in Homewood.
Mr. Raskin quietly helped many people find jobs and, more than 30 years ago helped an Iraqi Jew escape that country with his family and savings intact, Mr. Raskin’s son said.
In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Raskin is survived by another son, Alan; a brother, Jay; and two grandchildren.
Services will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday in the Weinstein Family Services Wilmette Chapel, 111 Skokie Blvd., Wilmette. Shiva will follow in the Raskin home.
