For years, Ron Shellady divided his time between his work as a commodities trader and broker in Chicago and staying on top of a farm he owned and operated just outside Galena.
Both worlds appealed to the Iowa native, who, although he didn’t grow up on a farm, loved animals and nature just as much as the frenetic pace of the trading pit at the Chicago Board of Trade.
“He was simple yet complicated, if that’s even possible,” said his wife of 51 years, Sue. “He was a man of contradictions who craved the peace and quiet of the outdoors but was drawn to a job that had him working in a confined space and spending most of his day shouting and waving hand signals.”
Mr. Shellady, 73, formerly of Naperville and the founder of Shellady Commodities in Chicago, died Wednesday, Oct. 29, in a nursing facility in Aurora. He had Alzheimer’s disease.
Mr. Shellady’s black-and-white Holstein-print “Cow Jacket” became his trademark look at the CBOT and served as a reminder to him and other floor traders that they were part of a process involving a user, producer and middleman.
“It’s kind of like a game-used jersey; I wear it now,” Mr. Shellady’s son, Scott, a trader at the CBOT and a TV business news contributor known as “The Cow Guy,” told the business website Country Guide in April. “There’s a guy that’s got cattle and there’s a guy that’s got grain, and we’ve got to put the two together somehow and sell his milk and sell his corn.”
Jim Berry, a retired trader who met Mr. Shellady about 25 years ago and later purchased a cattle farm next door, said what made his friend “so good in the pit is what made him so good in the field.”
“Ron liked the physical demands and mental stamina that both jobs require. If things didn’t go right, well, he’d just tackle a problem from another direction. He worked hard for results, whether it was with numbers on paper or what he looked out on over his fields,” Berry said.
Born and raised in Muscatine, Iowa, Mr. Shellady was awarded a football scholarship to Drake University in Des Moines, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business in 1962. He was later given the “Double D Award” presented annually to Drake graduates for achievements in their chosen fields.
After college, he moved to Chicago and worked for Cargill Inc., initially as a cash grain trader, and later in helping establish Cargill Investor Services.
He and his wife moved to Naperville in 1972. That same year, he purchased a dairy farm in Scales Mound, near Galena, where he spent his free time and weekends with his family.
“He was someone that would rather visit a local farm than sightsee on vacation,” said his son, Mark. “He’d rather visit a local pub than a four-star restaurant.”
In 1976, Mr. Shellady founded Shellady Commodities in Chicago and became a self-employed commodities trader, and later a broker at the CBOT.
In 1999, Mr. Shellady moved from his home in Naperville to live full-time on his farm in Scales Mound. He retired a couple of years later, and around the same time was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
He became the first volunteer for the Experimental Brain Gene Transfer at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and underwent a nine-hour brain surgery as part of the study.
“What mattered to him most was finding a cure,” said his daughter, Laura Phillips.
Other survivors include a brother, LaVerne; and five grandchildren.
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Services were private.