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In Memoriam: John Logue
On Wednesday December 9 John Logue, the OEOC’s Founder and Director for 23 years passed away, about a week after being diagnosed with cancer.
We counted him rich for his intellect, honesty, persistence, justice, generosity, and an absolute inability to be mean. Of most of these gifts, he was aware, but never boasted of them. Not a month before he died, before he knew of his mortal illness, he counted himself fortunate to have “a good wife, good children, good colleagues and a good job.”
He was not born a wealthy man, nor did he die as one, contented instead with the modest security of a professor’s life as he sought to help others create a similar security for themselves.
To staunch Ohio’s job losses from deindustrialization, in 1987 he founded the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, which helped tens of thousands to share in the ownership of the companies where they worked. A great egalitarian, he was no admirer of state socialism, but advocated bringing willing sellers, mostly retiring owners of small businesses, together with willing buyers, their employees, in a market approach that kept those viable companies in business. With zest, he took on every obstacle that might stand in the way of the ownership transfers that were threatening Ohio. If owners and employees didn’t understand the complex legal arrangements of Employee Stock Ownership Plans, he explained it so they could understand. If companies were in trouble, even at the brink of closing, he would set aside other work to investigate the feasibility of a buyout. If employees lacked the funds needed to see if it made sense to buy their companies, he worked with Ohio’s Department of Development to help them. If financing couldn’t be found to close the deal, he cultivated friendly bankers and investors. If the company was too small to afford to establish an ESOP, he found a way to create employee cooperatives that could buy from owners.
If some research or scholarship was needed to make the case for employee ownership, he did it, or found someone else who had. A quick and fluent writer whose gifts were developed under a devoted father’s tutelage, he willingly shared his access to publishers and journals in coauthored articles, lending not just his name, but his considerable scholarly powers to every endeavor. Through his research, he helped scholars writing about different kinds of broad-based ownership in several countries to find what they had in common and what they could learn from each other.
No one was too great or too small to be asked for help, nor to be thanked for it publicly.
He was usually at his cluttered table in the hall at home by 8 a.m., and he was often at the Center until 7 p.m. Six or seven days a week. His office was the same size as everyone else’s, but had at least twice as much paper in it, because he had an interest in every project the Center undertook, and maintained at least a little involvement in even the most smoothly running aspects of its work.
To honor him for the rich gifts he bestowed on us, we pledge to continue the Center and its work as long as we are needed. There is still much to be done.
The Political Science Department at Kent State University has established a “John Logue Memorial Employee Ownership Scholarship Fund." To contribute to the scholarship fund, please make your tax-deductible checks to “KSU Foundation” and write “Logue Memorial Employee Ownership Scholarship Fund” on the memo line. Checks should be sent to: Department of Political Science, 302 Bowman Hall, P.O. Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242-0001.
Obituary: John Logue
John Logue, Professor of Political Science at Kent State University and Director of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center passed away on December 9, 2009, at the Cleveland Clinic after a month’s illness. Born and raised in Texas, he received a B.A., University of Texas, 1970; an M.A., Princeton University, 1973; and a Ph.D., Princeton in 1976.
He leaves behind family members including his wife, Olga Klepikova of Kent, and daughters, Karen Logue of Mountain View CA, AnneMarie Logue of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Katherine Helen Logue, of Kent.
Logue joined the Kent State faculty in 1977, was a scholar of Scandinavian studies and employee ownership, and had a strong sense of economic justice and American cultural values expressed in the writings of Thomas Jefferson. He was fond of quoting his father: “No better fertilizer can be found than the footsteps of the owner on his land.”
A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Logue held a Danforth Fellowship for graduate study from 1970-1975, a Research Fellowship from the Danish Social Science Research Council in 1978-79; a Swedish Bicentennial Fellowship in 1980; a Fulbright Professorship at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark in 1992; a KSU Distinguished Scholar Award in 2002; the Ford Foundation’s “Leadership for a Changing World” Award in 2003; the Ohio Council of Cooperatives' "Ohio Cooperative Educator of the Year" award in 2003; and a Doctor of Humane Letters from Alvernia College in 2005 for his work with employee ownership. He wrote widely on employee ownership and workplace democracy.
Logue became involved in the effort to avert the Youngstown steel mill shutdowns and then began research on employee ownership as a job-saving strategy in 1984. He founded the Ohio Employee Ownership Center in 1987 and since has worked with over 500 firms and employee groups employing 95,458 workers of which 74 firms employing 14,066 workers have implemented partial or complete employee ownership and created more than $300 million in equity for their employee owners. Ohio’s Employee-Owned Network provides education for 80 employee-owned companies which employ more than 15,000 Ohioans and generate more than $2.4 billion in sales.
Most recently, Logue was working with the Cleveland Foundation and other nonprofits to create a network of employee-owned cooperatives in the Greater University Circle area of Cleveland to employ residents and provide goods and services to the area’s universities and hospitals as an economic revitalization strategy. Evergreen Cooperative Laundry and Ohio Cooperative Solar, were launched in October.
Logue had served on the boards of directors of Reuther Mold and Manufacturing, Cuyahoga Falls, OH and Sharpsville Quality Products, Sharpsville, PA; and, on the board of trustees of Common Wealth Inc; the Jim Smith Memorial Educational Fund, sponsored by the United Steelworkers of America; the advisory board of the Northeast Ohio Workforce Training Initiative; the advisory board of the Center for Social and Economic Justice; the executive board of the Workplace Education Institute; and the board of Common Wealth Property Management.
Calling hours were held on Sunday December 13, 12:00 Noon – 4:00 P.M. at the Redmon Funeral Home, 3633 Darrow Road, Stow, OH. A memorial service was held on Monday December 14, at 3:30 P.M. in the Kiva, Kent State University Student Center , Kent, OH.
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