Gin had begun looking to become
more actively involved in the federal government. Some of the issues
in which she expressed interest were "education, health care, small
business, economic development, trade issues."
Gin was already beginning to become
involved in the good works of the McGowan Foundation which was funded
by a good part of the estate of her late husband. Its main directors
are Gin and McGowan's brother Father Joseph McGowan, a hospital administrator
in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Gin has appointed her niece Sheralyn, Richard's
daughter, to the foundation's board.
Many in Chicago have come to see
Gin as the city's most prominent self-made businesswoman. That assessment
seemed borne out when President Clinton named her and two other Illinois
businesspeople to be delegates to June's White House Conference on Small
Business. With 200 employees and 1994 revenues of $20 million, Gin's
Flying Food Fare--placed by Crain's Chicago Business at 20th place among
top women-owned firms in the Chicago area--might be considered on the
upper edge of the "small business" category. Add to that Gin's $40 million
in real estate holdings, not to mention a considerable inheritance from
her late husband, and Gin might well be in a league of her own.
Some successful people take pride in maintaining close ties with their roots. Gin does seem
to maintain a warm relationship with older brother Richard and his family,
but hasn't kept up any ties with friends from her Aurora days.
"She has some girlfriends here,"
says Richard who still lives in his home town, "but she doesn't keep
real good touch with them." It's more than simply being busy, his tone
suggests. One gets the impression that Sue Ling Gin feels few relationships
in Aurora are worth keeping alive, outside of those with her brother
and his family. Once every few months she visits Richard, his kids and
grandchildren. She speaks with him on the phone once or twice a week,
often from places like Shanghai or Paris, two cities she is visiting
frequently these days to help form a Flying Food Fare joint venture
with Air France for a concession in Shanghai.
The people who know Gin in Chicago
agree that she has mellowed with age. Her early business successes seem
to have cost her the goodwill of those who felt it was at their expense.
[CONTINUED BELOW]
"I like Sue now, and I didn't
before," said Hedy Ratner, a well-connected Chicago businesswoman. "She's
excellent at being one of the key players and pulling others together
to make things happen. But she had a reputation for stepping on or over
other people to make things happen. I think marriage and her husband's
illness and death made a difference."
"I hope I've changed," Gin told
the Sun Times in late 1993. "Everyone should, and hopefully for
the good. I do a lot of things, so I've made a lot of mistakes. Sometimes
I've been known to expect too much from people working for me. I've
made bad decisions and misjudged situations."
The one person who hasn't changed his assessment
of Sue Ling Gin since her teenage years is Richard. As far as he's concerned,
she's the same active, ambitious girl she was 40 years ago.
"Sue doesn't sit still," he says, chuckling, his voice thick with affection.
"When [others] are relaxing at the beach, she's out in her garden fooling
around with her plants. She's out there early in the morning, she's
always working, doing something. She's not one who lays around."
Golf is another favorite pasttime for Sue Ling Gin, one she sometimes shares with Richard. The lack of
children isn't a source of regret for her, in Richard's opinion.
"She made that choice early on,"
he says. Her heart, he thinks, is still very much in what Richard calls
"the thrill of accomplishment, the thrill of cutting another deal."
That, combined with her conviction that Flying Food Fare must become
an international company to prosper, are what keeps Sue Ling Gin flying
these days.
