And he came to Chicago when he was 17 and started working at Field & Leiter, which was the predecessor of Marshall Field Company. He started working in as a stock boy in the linen department making something like $15 or $20 a week. And from that humble position worked his way up to become president and chairman of Marshall Field. So they got talking to Mr. Shedd and someone along the way, ask him, “Don’t you remember Mr. Shedd “when you were a boy back in New Hampshire, “and you were lying on the banks of whatever river it was, “and looking down and seeing those fish down there “you thought someday, “you’d like to have an aquarium, “so the public could see these fish.” Now, I don’t know if the story is apocryphal, but it makes a good story to which he says, “No, The only interest I ever had in fish was eating up.” So later on, when he finally decided to give the money for the aquarium, and of course, the press was hovering around and said, “Mr. Shedd, why did you decide to give money “to build an aquarium?” Well, when I was a boy back in New Hampshire, lying on the banks (laughs) So, I don’t know if, I asked Mr. John Reed, who was Mr. Shedd’s grandson and eventually the President of Shedd Aquarium Society. And he says, “Oh, I don’t know if that’s true or not.” He says, “That’s probably something the press made up, but anyhow, it’s a good story.” So George Morse was involved then in getting the aquarium started, and he was actually the aquarium’s first director, but there was no aquarium built at that time. So, of course, they probably asked George who they could get to design the aquarium and so forth. So he said, “Well, you know, I know a guy back in Boston.” So they brought Walter Chute here, and he worked in the office of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White for a couple of years, working with the architects, designing the aquarium. And which opened then briefly to the public.
