In 1957, Robert V. Guelich walked into the Chicago headquarters of the Montgomery Ward Corp. with orders to set up its first public relations department.
By the time he retired, nearly 25 years and several awards later, Mr. Guelich was a marquee name in Chicago’s public relations business.
Friends and family say his gift for the trade came from his strong people skills. He knew how to work with people, and he never forgot a face.
Mr. Guelich, 89, died Monday, Sept. 10, in his Kenilworth home after a decade of struggling with Alzheimer’s disease.
Mr. Guelich came to public relations from a background in journalism and an education in business. He grew up on a farm during the Depression in Union, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. He attended college at Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in journalism and working summers as a reporter for the Dayton Journal.
“He was always a writer,” daughter Jane Guelich said.
She said her father often joked that he only did well in school because he had access to a typewriter when most other students didn’t, and teachers could read his handwriting.
“He’d be on vacation, and write a letter to my sister about the beauties of nature,” Guelich said.
After graduating in 1938, Mr. Guelich went straight into business school, receiving a master’s in business administration from Harvard University in 1940.
He returned to Ohio to marry his college sweetheart, Jane Schory, on Dec. 6, 1941 — the day before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. By the end of the month, Mr. Guelich was in uniform, assigned to work as a public information officer.
Stationed at Wright Field in Dayton, Guelich did not participate in battles. But he witnessed the circumstances of several battles, his daughter said.
Rising to become an editor for the Air Force’s official magazine, Mr. Guelich traveled the world, touching down in India and Manila, crash-landing in Venezuela and being part of the first group of reporters to witness the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
“I could sit and listen to him for hours,” said granddaughter Kirstie Burke.
Her grandfather was a guiding presence in her life, even though she only lived close to him in Chicago for five years, Burke said.
That didn’t change, she added, even after Alzheimer’s began to affect his powers of recollection.
“My grandfather was always engaged,” she said. “Yes, he’d been very successful, yes, he met a lot of important people. But he was very much a person who was grateful for what he’d been given.”
Mr. Guelich brought this outlook on community to Montgomery Ward in the 1950s. Armed with experience working in the public relations department at Firestone Tire and Rubber in Dayton, he set about fashioning a corporate public relations department that would connect the company to the community in ways yet untested in Chicago.
“PR was starting on its own at that time,” said Kenneth Darre, who was one of Mr. Guelich’s early hires at Montgomery Ward and remained a friend of the Guelich family for several years. “Bob was an expert at solving a problem and getting it solved.”
In his work, Mr. Guelich developed and oversaw volunteer teaching programs in the housing complex at Cabrini-Green, an effort to repave an old corporate parking lot for use as a community basketball court, and took the company into multimedia sponsorships. Montgomery Ward become the first national company to pledge corporate sponsorship of public television’s landmark “This Old House” show.
Mr. Guelich was a sports nut, a result of him being put two years ahead in school “because overcrowding in kindergarten” and too small to play on school teams, his daughter said.
Mr. Guelich became an avid golfer and joined the Chicago Yacht club.
He worked hard to bring sports to children through a series of films. With financial backing from Montgomery Ward, Mr. Guelich and Darre booked major sports figures such as football coach George Allen, golfing great Julius Boros and baseball slugger Stan Musial, to star in informational videos about their sports. The films were made available to schools for free.
“When you boil down the essence of what he did, he had to find ways to connect with all different kinds of people,” Burke said. “He really valued giving back as much as he received.”
Mr. Guelich also is survived by two other children, Susan Mackenzie and Robert Guelich Jr.; five other grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
A memorial service is set for 10:30 a.m. Saturday in Winnetka Bible Church, 555 Birch St., Winnetka.
———-
kdemirjian@tribune.com
