Chuck Ebeling worked as a public relations executive for major Chicago-area companies, including McDonald’s, and later spearheaded a successful effort to save the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, after the longtime owner moved to sell the property.
“I am not sure that any of this (saving the Yerkes Observatory) would have happened if it had not been for him initiating this entire movement,” said Dianna Colman, chair of the nonprofit Yerkes Future Foundation, which acquired the observatory from the University of Chicago in 2020.
Ebeling, 81, died of heart failure July 9 at his home in Fontana, Wisconsin, said his niece, Margaret Ebeling.
Born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Ebeling was the grandson of Green Bay pharmacist Ed Schweger, who teamed up with local businessmen to support the struggling Green Bay Packers football team through a local stock offering. The stock sale was a success, and the Packers became the nonprofit, community-owned pro sports team that it remains to this day.
After graduating from Bradley University in Peoria with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, Ebeling served in Vietnam, rising to the level of first lieutenant and training as a tank unit commander and nuclear emergency team public affairs officer. Ebeling also graduated from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Information School and briefly served as an armed security guard at the U.S. gold vault in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Ebeling left active military service in 1969 and took a job with insurer Allstate in its corporate public relations department, then was hired by Toyota to manage public relations and advertising in the Midwest.
Ebeling joined Burson-Marsteller public relations as an account executive covering Sears then was hired by Golin Harris as an account executive for McDonald’s account. He was promoted in 1980 to a senior vice president and co-account director. After a stint with Baxter Travenol Laboratories, he was hired to oversee corporate communications for McDonald’s.
“I almost always sought his advice and counsel, even if I didn’t always agree,” said the company’s vice president of communications at the time, Dick Starmann. “He was not only a talented writer but the consummate editor. Anything important that I wrote, I passed by him to make it better, clearer.”
Ebeling later was named an officer and chief spokesperson for the McDonald’s brand and company. Bridget Coffing, a former senior vice president and chief communications officer at McDonald’s, said he was known to all around the office as “Ebs” and that he had “a keen ability to understand different points of view, understand international nuances and find common ground.”
“He was a staunch advocate of the brand and loved nothing more than a good debate — and a good laugh, “Coffing said. “It always struck me how consistent Ebs was, treating everyone with respect and assuming the same demeanor, be it with fellow employees, the executive suite, subordinates, the media, everyone.”
In 2000, Ebeling retired from McDonald’s to focus on nonprofit board and public relations work in several fields, including hunger relief, medical center foundations and conservation and the environment. Ebeling was active in institutions related to Geneva Lake, including as chair and board member of the Geneva Lake Museum and as president and board member of the Geneva Lake Conservancy.
Ebeling’s advocacy helped preserve the historic Yerkes Observatory, which is located on prime land on the northern shore of Geneva Lake in Williams Bay. In the early 2000s, when the University of Chicago announced plans to sell the observatory. Ebeling was one of the first leaders in what wound up being a campaign waged over several years to stop the sale of the observatory to New York developer Mirbeau Companies.
Mirbeau had planned to save the observatory but also construct a large resort and more than 70 homes on its property, thus marring 500 feet of unspoiled shoreline. And how the observatory would have continued to operate and be funded was an open question, particularly as the university’s agreement was made without community input.
“It is ironic that even a great repository of learning and insight like the University of Chicago seems so ready to discard this global icon of astronomy and history, a child of its own dreams of the heavens, and a site with so much seeming potential for the future,” Ebeling wrote in a Tribune op-ed in 2005.
Ebeling was one of the local leaders who ultimately formed the nonprofit Yerkes Future Foundation and came up with a proposal to retain public access to the site, preserve the observatory and continue educational programs there. The university formally donated the observatory and 49 acres to the foundation in 2020 and Ebeling remained a director on the foundation’s board until his death.
“The reality is that Chuck had a sensitivity toward not only the people who were involved but the issues that were involved, so he saw the observatory as iconic and historic but he also saw the potential of what it could be,” Colman said.
Ebeling was an active member of the Chicago Literary Club and over the years presented 18 essays to the club on a variety of topics. He compiled his essays in a 274-page book, “Apple Pressings: Squeezing Potent Truths from Sweet Bits of Knowledge,” which was published in 2019.
Both at Bradley and at Loyola University Chicago, Ebeling founded a prize that he dubbed the “Ebeling PR-ize,” that was awarded to top public relations students at the schools for their work in cause-related communications.
Around 1990, Ebeling and his wife bought a home in the woods about a half-mile south of Geneva Lake, and on the property nurtured some 200 apple trees.
Ebeling’s wife of 44 years, Vicki, died in 2022. He also is survived by a fiancee, Ann Baum; and a sister, Susan.
A celebration of life service will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. on Oct. 12 at the Yerkes Observatory, 373 W. Geneva St., Williams Bay.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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