Catherine Blair

She and her husband first met in the Fifties at the Chicago home of Eunice and Sargent Shriver, when William Blair was working as a lawyer in Adlai Stevenson’s firm after moving into the governor’s mansion, where he managed Stevenson’s two unsuccessful presidential bids against Dwight D. Eisenhower. At the time, Deeda was battling through a scandalous divorce from Charles Jelke, heir to an oleomargarine fortune, who was drinking his way through his family inheritance. Born Catherine Gerlach (“Deeda” is a childhood nickname), Blair was 25 when she obtained an injunction tying up a million dollars in four trusts and restraining her 30-year-old husband from proceeding with his own divorce suit filed in Florida. She had moved back home with her parents, where the Shrivers were neighbors. Throughout her courtship with William Blair, Eunice Shriver was assigned as official chaperone. Blair has gone on to earn fees or stock from at least a half-dozen drug and biotech companies, from Novartis (where she still consults) to smaller firms like Advancer. In 2021 she founded Deeda Blair Research Initiative for Disorders of the Brain in memory of her son, who committed suicide.