Edmund Janes Doering II, born to a prominent family that established itself in Chicago following the Great Fire of 1871, was an executive with Marshall Field & Co. for nearly 40 years and helped open its Water Tower Place store.
Mr. Doering, 90, died of complications from cancer Wednesday, Dec. 17, in his Lake Forest home, said his son Alfred.
Mr. Doering joined Field's around 1940, working in merchandise management in women's fashion -- he made regular trips to Paris, Milan, and other capitals of high couture -- and overseeing parts of the State Street store.
In the mid-1970s, toward the end of his career, he was put in charge of Field's store in the new Water Tower Place mall on North Michigan Avenue. The location was considered quite a gamble at the time, with how shoppers would take to a vertical mall an unknown, his son said.
"They let him have any employee and any merchandise he wanted," his son said.
The store proved a quick success and Water Tower helped establish North Michigan Avenue's dominance over State Street as a retail destination.
Mr. Doering grew up in a house off Washington Square Park, near the Newberry Library, on the Near North Side. One grandfather was a doctor and early member of the Chicago Medical Society while the other was involved with the 1893 Columbian Exposition.
He attended Latin School of Chicago and graduated from The Choate School in Connecticut before receiving a bachelor's degree from Harvard.
During World War II, he was an officer in the Navy and served in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.
Mr. Doering's first wife, the former Caroline Castle, died in 1983. She was the granddaughter of the founder of A.M. Castle & Co. in Franklin Park, a metals company. Mr. Doering was on the company's board for many years.
In 1996, he married Sally Crowder Wakeman, who died in 2004.
Survivors include a son Edmund J. III; a sister, Nancy Doering; five grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
Services will be held 11 a.m. Jan. 17 in Church of the Holy Spirit, 400 E. Westminster Rd., Lake Forest.