FOR AON`S RYAN, SETBACK WAS RARE, BUT NOT HIS FIRST

He came to Chicago with an athletic scholarship in his pocket, an altar boy`s soul and a surpassing desire to achieve some notable success.

Things did not proceed entirely as planned for the starry-eyed Patrick G. Ryan. His football career at Northwestern University fell stillborn at the line of scrimmage when he quit the team in recognition of his own inadequate skills. Earlier, his first job-as a summertime sewer crewman at the age of 16- had lasted only hours; he was fired for spilling wood shoring on the shoulders of more senior and sensitive laborers. And his professional ambition of operating a distinguished law practice was abruptly abandoned when he read a newspaper account of young insurance agents who claimed to be earning six-figure annual salaries in the waning days of the Eisenhower administration.

But in the more than three decades since then, life has been astonishingly good to Ryan, who at age 53 is wealthy beyond his giddiest imaginings, widely admired for his business acumen and philanthropy and well- positioned to reign as a Camelot-style kingpin in Chicago`s corporate community.

”I knew I`d work very hard, but I can`t say I expected this success,”

said the squarely built, silver-haired Ryan, who is chairman and chief executive of Aon Corp., an insurance holding company with more than $9 billion in assets. ”I certainly didn`t think I`d end up where I am, and I haven`t ended anywhere yet.”

His appetite for still more business holdings was underscored most recently with his planned purchase of a minority stake in the Chicago Bears, an acquisition that is expected to be ratified at a Chicago meeting of National Football League team owners next month, and with his $840 million bid for Corroon & Black Corp., the New York-based insurance brokerage, a rebuffed offer that was withdrawn Friday.

The two bids, though vastly different in economic scale, combined to place a spotlight on the style and strategy of the quiet-spoken Ryan, who has largely shunned publicity while building an insurance empire through acquisitions and a delicately negotiated merger eight years ago with W. Clement Stone`s Combined Insurance Co. of America.

The investment in the Bears-a 20 percent share that Ryan is acquiring in partnership with longtime friend and well-connected businessman Andrew J. McKenna-is believed by sports industry observers to represent an outlay of $20 million to $30 million, an infusion of cash needed to relieve a substantial debt burden for the controlling McCaskey family.

Ryan, who refused to discuss the terms of the transaction, acknowledged that his investment was solicited by Bears President Michael McCaskey, and that his financial involvement will ”help stabilize the situation and give people comfort that the Bears will stay in Chicago. The Bears have a tremendous and profound meaning to the people of this city. It`s really an ownership situation with the fans. They own the Bears.”

But even as he pledges a hands-off approach to the management of the professional football team, many analysts who monitor his movements in the insurance industry believe that Ryan has embarked on an aggressive course to become a far more important player in his field.

”He`s a fantastic entrepreneur,” one insurance brokerage executive said of Ryan, before pointedly adding: ”All I want is for him to leave me the hell alone.”

One analyst, who asked that his remarks not be attributed, asserted that Ryan may be driven to stand atop a successful multinational insurance conglomerate out of an intense need to shed the lingering vestiges of his more humble beginnings in the business, when he placed agents in car dealerships to sell warranty and credit insurance to auto buyers.

Ryan ”is halfway between non-respect and respect,” said the analyst.

”He`s emerging as a respected leader in the industry, which is a club, but he`s not totally arrived. (Had he acquired Corroon), he`d be one step higher on the ladder.”

William Bitterli, analyst at Northington Partners in Avon, Conn., noted that Ryan has built a reputation as an executive with common sense and uncommon determination.

”What Pat Ryan wants, Pat Ryan gets,” Bitterli said. ”He`s basically an aggressive person. And he`s been especially adept at acquiring companies in the past.”

However, Ryan looked anything but adept to some risk arbitragers, or traders who speculate in takeover stocks, in his bid for Corroon.

Nearly two weeks ago, Ryan made a surprise, last-minute proposal to acquire the insurance brokerage firm, which was close to completing a stock-swap merger with Willis Faber PLC of London. Ryan repeatedly sought a chance to pitch his $40-a-share cash offer to Corroon`s directors, a bid then almost $10 higher than Willis Faber`s offer.

Corroon`s directors showed no interest in meeting with Ryan, citing strategic advantages in a deal with the British firm.

Although Ryan repeatedly said he wanted a friendly deal, his remarks last week gave some traders the opposite impression, forcing him to clarify his statements before withdrawing the offer Friday.

Before it was withdrawn, Ryan`s proposal gave speculators hope for the first big bidding contest in months. Their gamble on Ryan cost them heavily in trading losses.

”I don`t think Ryan handled it like the street fighter he`s reputed to be,” said one arbitrager. ”In the future, any time Patrick Ryan comes up with an offer, people will treat it with a healthy degree of skepticism or not take it seriously. People will remember he bagged them.”

Added another arbitrager: ”His comments on Corroon were so inconsistent. He`s lost credibility; he`s a buffoon.”

But some traders believe Aon could come back into the picture if Corroon shareholders reject the Willis Faber deal at a meeting Friday. For his part, Ryan declined to directly respond to the speculators` comments, beyond declaring that he regretted hearing such ”ugly” remarks.

Ryan, the son of a suburban Milwaukee Ford dealer, oversees the dealings of his publicly held insurance empire from a spacious and tastefully appointed corner office on the 30th floor of a Loop tower, from which, through the 16-foot-high windows, he is afforded a magnificent view of the lakefront skyline of his adopted home.

”This city has been really great to me,” he said. ”Chicago accepts people for the kind of person they are, not where they come from.”

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Ryan maintains his principal residence in the small and affluent suburb of Kenilworth, along with a vacation home in Lake Geneva, although he is planning to build a new residence next year in Winnetka. He purchased, for $2.3 million, a David Adler-designed estate in that North Shore suburb, but has arranged, amid community controversy, to donate the mansion to the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois in the hope of moving the edifice off the property.

Ryan and his wife, the former Shirley Welch, have three sons, the youngest of whom, 11-year-old Corbett, has cerebral palsy. They plan to erect a home designed to be accessible and barrier-free for the child.

Ryan and his wife, who holds an MBA from Northwestern and conducts frequent seminars for spouses of executives, have become leading figures and benefactors in Chicago civic and cultural affairs. Aon has distributed grants to inner city schools, the Lyric Opera, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Field Museum of Natural History and endowed a chair in risk management at Northwestern`s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

He recently sponsored, on short notice, a charity golf tournament that raised nearly $100,000 to benefit Maryville City of Youth, taking to the links in a group that included Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and former Boston Celtics` star John Havlicek.

The Ryans` personal philanthrophy includes a Glenview school called the Pathways Center for Children, which they established in 1985 to provide therapy for children with birth-related disorders, along with religious causes and their beloved alma mater in Evanston, where Ryan has been a trustee since 1978 and led a national campaign to raise $25 million for the improvement of Northwestern`s athletic facilities.

The couple`s largess is usually not so easily traced to them, according to the Ryans` pastor, Rev. Thomas Ventura of Faith, Hope and Charity Catholic Church in Winnetka.

”Pat is not a person who blows his own horn,” said Father Ventura. ”He takes seriously Jesus` warning that when you give alms, don`t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. He`s just a well-balanced human being. When he says something, you can believe it. He`s a person who is successful because of his values, not in spite of his values.”

According to Aon`s proxy statement, Ryan received an annual salary and bonuses totaling $789,292 last year, along with dividend income of nearly $12 million on the 8.7 million shares of stock he controls.

It is a considerable remuneration for any person, of course, although a former executive of Combined Insurance said it was a just reward for someone who led a revival of a company out of what was frequently called the ”Stone Age.”

”Ryan was extremely effective in dealing with (W. Clement) Stone,” the executive said of the relationship between the two men. ”He could deal with his eccentricity. Here was an 80-year-old chairman who had started a company and felt only he could run it. He felt he could train Pat Ryan, and Pat Ryan didn`t need training.

”But Pat Ryan is very good with people,” he added. ”His attitude is, why do it with vinegar if you can do it with honey?”

That prudent charm, noted Ryan`s football partner McKenna, is not merely a business tool, but a genuine part of the insurance magnate`s character.

”With Pat, you get what you see,” said McKenna, president of Schwarz Paper Co. in Morton Grove. ”He`s in the assurance business as well as the insurance business.”