n 1985 Gin was 44, McGowan was 57. By then there was no prospect
of having children, but the couple decided the time had come to
make their relationship legal. They wed in a ceremony so hush-hush
that some friends and associates didn't learn about it until the
following year when they made an official announcement and threw
two back-to-back parties, one each in Washington and Chicago.
Within a year, however, the festivities seemed to belong to another lifetime. McGowan suffered
a massive heart attack that ultimately required him to receive
a heart transplant. The decades-long battle against the industry
goliath had taken its toll. It was many months before McGowan returned
to work as MCI chairman. When he did, he began delegating most
of his day-to-day duties as a hedge against looming mortality.
While McGowan was winding
down his career, his wife was cranking up hers. The Midway Airlines
contract made Flying Food Fare one of Chicago's most visible minority-owned
businesses. What's more, Midwayıs boom in passenger volume meant
rapid growth for Flying Food Fare. That first flush of success
and her marriage to Bill McGowan made Gin the golden girl of the
Chicago business community. Suddenly, her name was eminently droppable.
The happy patter of the long
string of social recognitions began on May 30, 1985 when she was
honorably mentioned at the Second Annual Pacesetter Awards presented
by the Roundtable for Women in Foodservice. It grew louder on August
14, 1987 when she was one of three named to the board of Chicago
Capital Fund, newly created to invest in small businesses looking
to expand.
By then Sue Ling Gin was known to own three restaurants--Cafe Bernard, Halsted
Street Fish Market and Chicago Baking Company--and a real estate
management and development firm called New Management. In addition,
of course, was her prospering FFF which by early 1988 was serving
6,000 meals a day just on Midway Airlines flights.
[CONTINUED BELOW]
That spring Gin's keen political
instincts became a matter of public record. For two years she had
been vying for the food and beverage concession at Midway Airport.
Shrewdly, she forged an alliance with four other local minority
businesses to bid on the contract. Three of the four would each
get 5% of the concession. The fourth, a hastily-formed corporation
owned by several Chicago Housing Authority tenants, would get 15%.
Flying Food Fare, the lead contractor, would get 70%. Awarding
the concession to their group, the bid argued, would encourage
initiative and promote employment among CHA's poor, mostly minority
tenants. No question who had masterminded the bid. It won, giving
Flying Food Fare the lion's share of the five-year $42 million
contract to run the airport's 22 snack concessions.
In late October Sue Ling Gin
was the only woman named among a dozen businesspeople who formed the
Navy Pier Development Authority to create a major commercial and entertainment
complex. Within months Gin was elected to the board of Michigan National
Bank. By August, 1990 Gin's growing visibility inspired a Tribune article
about Flying Food Fare's success in expanding into O'Hare International
in August 1988, then to the airports in Seattle and Minneapolis. It
listed among FFF's clients Air France, Belgium's Sabena, Poland's LOT,
Spain's Iberia and the luxury American-European Express trains running
from Chicago to New York and Washington. Italy's Alitalia, the article
concluded, would be added to FFF's client list by October.
PAGE 9
n 1985 Gin was 44, McGowan was 57. By then there was no prospect
of having children, but the couple decided the time had come to
make their relationship legal. They wed in a ceremony so hush-hush
that some friends and associates didn't learn about it until the
following year when they made an official announcement and threw
two back-to-back parties, one each in Washington and Chicago.
