Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 42

Section 4 Monday, April 22, 1985 1 i it. if m. fa aft I They call him LJ Si 'the architect' Telling redesigns Sears By Janet Key "e's called the architect of the new Sears, Roebuck and the one whose aggressive foray into financial services may yet rekindle its old "Sears and Sawbuck" nickname. 1 But it's a title that 66-year-old Edward R. Telling, who drastically remodeled one of the world's largest companies in his seven-year tenure as chairman and chief executive officer, detests.

"I know why you want me to wear that hard hat and hold that blueprint, and I'm not going to do it," Telling snapped at a Tribune photographer taking his picture amid construction at the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago's Loop. No one in the "Hard Hats Only" area by the new Wacker Drive atrium entrance corrected him. The Sears that has emerged since Telling initiated the company's first formalized strategic planning in 1978 is a vastly different animal from the identity crisis-plagued retailer and insurer he inherited that year from Arthur M. Wood. The linchpin of that remodeling the link that finally cements the ties between Sears' merchan- Continued on page 5 1 .1.

WW Edward R. Telling right, Sears, Roebuck and Co. chairman, in the atrium under construction at the Sears Tower. Tribune photo by Ernie Cox Jr. 1 a.

1 Greyhound puts fmrichic'no cn tho road i Livl -an fo-sr- xtH 'frfs.