Daniel J. Terra, chairman of First Illinois Corp., is about to cash out of the banking business with $86 million worth of Banc One stock. But the 79- year-old Terra will never be known primarily as a banker.
Terra is better known as an art collector and Republican fundraiser, or inventor of the pioneering color-printing technique used by Life Magazine or as founder of Lawter Chemicals. Before that, he was a singer and tap dancer.
Patron of the $35 million Terra Museum of American Art, he could have accepted any of several diplomatic posts after Ronald Reagan was elected president. He chose to be an ambassador-at-large for American art.
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A product of rural Pennsylvania, son of a lithographer who emigrated from Italy, Terra has amassed not only wealth but an important collection of American art. All 800 paintings have been willed to the museum.
”Money is fleeting, art is forever,” Terra likes to say, though his 1972 purchase of a substantial amount of First Illinois stock showed his flair for both.
After graduating from Penn State University in 1931 with a chemical engineering degree, he could not find a job in his profession. So he spent two years dancing in what he calls ”the better speakeasies” and singing on a weekly radio program.
His first job as a chemical engineer put him in the research department of a Philadelphia company, where he developed an idea for a faster printing process. The discovery allowed mass-circulation magazines to be printed in 24 hours rather than nearly a month.
By 1940, Terra had borrowed $2,500 to start Lawter Chemicals. The firm has grown to $150 million in sales, mainly by producing raw materials for inks used in high-quality reproductions.