Gerald Fitzgerald, chairman emeritus of Harris Bancorp, whose interests in exploration, travel, and scientific discovery informed his collections of books, maps, and paintings, died on October 30, 2010. He earned his B.S. from Northwestern University in 1949, having served in the U.S. Army in the European theatre during World War II. After acquiring two suburban banks in Illinois, he founded and became chairman of eleven more, ultimately selling Suburban Bancorp to the Bank of Montreal in 1994, merging with the bank’s American affiliate, Harris Bank & Trust Company in Chicago. Gerald Fitzgerald’s collections reflected his lifelong curiosity, from Americana to voyages and travel narratives, military history, banking and economics, Africa, wildlife, maps, and atlases, He donated his collection on Arctic and Antarctic exploration to the Newberry Library, where he served as a trustee from 1994 until his death. An avid traveler, his own travel narrative Africa by Air (published privately in 1992) recounts his 1973 circumnavigation of Africa with a close friend, a pilot, in a private plane. A quote from Dr. Samuel Johnson begins the book: “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality; and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.”
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