Mark B. Squires' Obituary
Mark B. Squires, a former Sears Roebuck and Co. executive for more than 40 years, died Sept. 20, 2021 at Maria Manor, the long-term care facility of Bon Secours in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was 94 years old and resided until Sept.15, 2021 at his condo in Isla del Sol, also in St. Petersburg.
Born on Oct. 26, 1926 in Chicago, Ill., Squires was the son of Benjamin Mark Squires, a University of Chicago economist, labor arbitrator and former U.S. Department of Labor official and Margaret Regan Squires, who worked for the department store Marshall Field & Company. He attended the Lab School at the University of Chicago. His mother, one of the first amateur women pilots in Illinois, took him often to the airfield where she flew and introduced him to Amelia Earhart. He overcame a childhood illness that shortened one leg to become a member of the track team, where he excelled in running hurdles and in pole vaulting at Evanston High School in Evanston, Ill. He was a gifted pianist with perfect pitch, who was invited to try out for the Julliard School in New York but chose a different path. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Navy where he became an ensign serving on destroyers and submarines during World War II. In his later years, he recalled chasing German submarines and firing torpedoes at them off the coast of South America. When one of the destroyers he served on required repairs, he spent a month in Cuba waiting for the ship to be fixed. That experience gave him a life-long love of Havana and the Cuban people. While in the Navy, he also attended Arkansas A & M University and the University of Louisville and trained for submarine duty in New London, Ct. He completed his college degree at Northwestern University after his honorable discharge. He attended one year of law school at Northwestern before joining Sears as a management trainee in 1949. He met his future wife, Patricia Eileen Coleman, a journalist, and newspaper columnist for the La Porte (Ind.) HeraldArgus, at a dinner party on her birthday on Jan. 28, 1951. It was held at the home of a Sears colleague, Richard Murphy and his wife, Charlotte. They married on June 30, 1951 in a candlelit church in La Porte, beginning a marriage that lasted for 48 years until her death in 1999. Moving up the ranks of management at Sears, then a thriving national retail company, meant making frequent transfers to new locations throughout the country. After honeymooning on Mackinac Island, Mich., the newly married couple moved to Muncie, Ind where their first child, Sally, was born. Then they moved to Jackson, Mich., followed by Muskegon, Mich. where a son, Mark Jr. and another daughter, Susan, were born. Then Squires was transferred to Sears headquarters in Chicago, where the family lived in Park Forest, Ill., followed by another stint in Jackson, Mich. where he managed an aging store then opened a large, new Sears store to replace it. As part of the opening, the actor Vincent Price made an appearance to sign copies of A Treasury of Great Recipes, a gourmet cookbook that he had authored. Squires then was transferred back to Sears headquarters in Chicago.
The family lived for two years in Winnetka, Ill. Next, he became head of advertising and marketing for the New York Group of Sears stores. The family moved to New Canaan, Conn., then to Lake Mohawk in Sparta, NJ, when he took on the role of manager for the Sears store in Rockaway, N.J. before he retired. He and his wife then split their time between their lake-front home in Sparta, N.J. and several waterfront condos at Isla del Sol in St. Petersburg, Florida, before moving full-time to Florida in 1998. An avid sailor, his lifelong love of boats, especially sailboats, began at the Chicago Yacht Club, where he crewed on Star boats in his twenties. He sailed wherever he lived on a variety of vessels in all seasons: racing on Lake Michigan, sailing on Lake Ponchartrain in Louisiana while off duty in the Navy, weeks long cruises with his wife
and family from Connecticut to Nova Scotia in the summer and off the coast of Florida in retirement. Along the way, he captained a beloved pontoon boat on Lake Mohawk in Sparta, NJ, raced frostbite dinghies on Long Island Sound in the winter and in his late retirement years, sailed a catboat in Boca Ciega Bay with his grandson. He served as a flag officer at the Cedar Point Yacht Club in Westport, Conn; he was a founder of the Isla del Sol Yacht Club and was elected Commodore of it twice, and was a long-time member of The Corinthians, a sailing association based in Mystic, Conn.
He played golf several times a week for many years and often teamed with his son, Mark Jr. in matches, including a tournament now held to honor his late wife. He was elected to the Escondida Condo Board at Isla del Sol. He also was a member of the Association of Senior Professionals at Eckerd College, which taps former executives to help teach college students about business. He played the accordion in a neighborhood band and loved building models of sailboats and submarines. His wife, Patricia Coleman Squires, died in 1999. His older brother, Benjamin Mark Squires, of Chicago died on April 25, 2021. His younger sister, Mary Squires Legg, died in 2018. He is survived by his youngest sister, Reverend Bobbie McKay, PhD. of Northbrook, Ill., three children, Sally Squires Wilhelm of Washington, DC; Mark B. Squires, Jr. of St. Petersburg, and Susan B. Squires of Bethesda, Md. as well as five grandsons, Eric Wilhelm of Atlanta, Ga.; Ian Wilhelm of Fairfax, Va.; Colin S. Wilhelm, of Washington, DC; Peter S. King, of Silver Spring, Md., and John S. King, of Brooklyn, NY. In addition, he leaves behind 13 nieces and nephews, six great grandchildren and numerous great nieces and nephews.
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