Banker, literary society founder Ray Marchman, dies at 87. ‘A marketing genius.’
Ray Marchman, then a vice president of Northern Trust bank on Brickell Avenue, once joked that he “should have been sitting in the phone booth” rather than shoulder-to-shoulder with the heads of Exxon and Dow Chemical who were at a Park Avenue literary event listening to author Tom Wolfe speak in the late 1980s.
Outclassed? Surely, Marchman was just being his good-natured self.
Marchman died Sunday, June 6, in Fort Lauderdale at 87, according to his husband Joe Siolek and friends.
“He was an unsung hero in Miami, not only in intellectual areas but in banking areas,” said Miami Today editor and publisher Michael Lewis.
As Marchman listened to Wolfe speak at that New York literary event in 1988, he just knew that Miami was ready for that kind of culture.
So he convinced a skeptical Lewis to join with him as a sponsor and former Florida International University President Gregory Wolfe to chair the bank’s exclusive, members-only, nonprofit Brickell Avenue Literary Society.
The goal was to advance Northern Trust’s sponsored forums that had already brought big names like Ted Turner and David Brinkley to Miami.
You didn’t just join this book club. You were invited. And you read the featured book.
“He came up with the idea and I said, ‘Ray, it’s not going to work.’ And he said, ‘Yes, it is.’ So I said, ‘OK, I’ll join you if you think it’ll work.’ We had a three-year year waiting list on the literary society for years trying to get in because it had a cap limit. It was big from day one,” Lewis said.
Literary lineup
What a lineup Marchman managed to bring to town.
Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh. Ben-Hur and Moses, also known as actor Charlton Heston. Celia Sandys, granddaughter of Winston Churchill. Kitty Carlisle, the New York cultural leader and former actress. Advice columnist Ann Landers. Cabaret singer Bobby Short.
Few could resist Marchman’s charms when he got excited about something. And this man who knew the best food to serve, the best wines to pair, who was hailed as the best party host, was often excited.
One of the literary society’s members, Coral Gables attorney Jose Valdes-Fauli, remained one of Marchman’s best friends since meeting in the mid-1980s, bonding over a common love of boating and banking careers.
“He was an an incredibly witty, smart man and loved by all. We spent a great deal of our lives on our respective boats, not far from different ports of call and a glass of wine,” Valdes-Fauli said.
The audiences at the Brickell Literary Society events numbered between 1,200 to 1,500 per presentation.
“He was a marketing genius,” Lewis said. “He was a witty speaker. He frequently introduced the celebrities he brought and, in his speeches, he sometimes outshone his highly-paid speakers.”
What do you do when your star dies?
Marchman’s ability to respond to any situation was put to the test in April 1992. Grand Duke Vladimir Romanov of Russia suddenly died at 74 from a rupture of an artery in his abdomen as he spoke at a press conference at Northern Trust the day before his scheduled Brickell Literary Society presentation.
For years after, Marchman shared that story.
Lewis picks up the tale.
“Ray pivoted immediately and found a substitute speaker. The show went on as normal and the Russian prince became big news for Miami. You got both at the same time. He was quick to take advantage of circumstances and to limit damage. His job was officially marketing but I think it went way beyond that positioning of a company.”
According to the Miami Herald’s account, the Grand Duke’s widow, Grand Duchess Leonida, requested that Marchman’s breakfast series the next morning continue as planned.
Born in Miami
Marchman was born an only child in a considerably different Miami in October 1933. He graduated from Miami Senior High School, Emory University and the University of Miami School of Law.
“Miami was a segregated city when Ray was growing up. He often spoke in later years of his awakening sense of racial injustice when his high school football team got new uniforms and the old ones were passed on to Booker T. Washington High School,” according to a prepared biography Marchman’s husband shared with the Miami Herald.
One of his classmates was Sylvia Minchew who became his wife. The two remained close friends for the rest of his life after their marriage ended.
Finlay Matheson, a member of the pioneering Miami family, remembers how wonderfully his bon vivant buddy put his mind at ease a couple years back, he said, when Matheson and his wife were planning a party and addressing the invitations.
“We didn’t know if Joe and he were officially married. He was married to Sylvia. I called Ray and said, ‘I don’t know what the proper etiquette is. How do I address the invitation to all three of you?’ He laughed and said, ‘I’m probably the only polygamist you know!’ He said it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference and all three came and had a great time.”
Marchman served in the United States Air Force as a jet fighter pilot, retiring from the Reserve as a lieutenant colonel.
Marchman’s career
Among his professional careers, Marchman was legal assistant to Florida Gov. Cecil Farris Bryant in 1961. He spent a year as an attorney with Shutts & Bowen before joining Northern Trust in Chicago as vice president in charge of trust marketing.
He would spend 34 years with Northern Trust — the first 15 in Chicago, and 19 primarily in Florida since returning to Miami in 1982. He retired in 2001 as senior vice president and director of marketing and continued to consult for another five years.
Banks in Florida, Marchman once said, were “more plentiful than fast food outlets.” So he differentiated Northern Trust as a “private bank” modeled after the private banks that for centuries had served the titled families and affluent of Europe.
In 1988, Marchman told the Herald that to become a customer at Northern Trust, one generally needed an after-tax annual income of $50,000 and liquid assets of $500,000. “Roughly 114,000 people in Dade County meet those qualifications,” he said at the time.
In addition to shepherding Northern Trust’s popular forums and the general literature Brickell Avenue Literary Society, Marchman added the Prologue Society, which was specific to focusing on historical literature.
“I give him credit for putting Northern Trust, a Chicago bank, on the map here in South Florida, maybe in Chicago, too, for his ability to brand. He was super about that,” said Finlay Matheson.
‘A quite remarkable man’
“Ray loved people and books and Miami, and loved to bring people together — and did that with warmth and love,” said David Lawrence Jr., retired Miami Herald publisher and chair of The Children’s Movement of Florida. “A quite remarkable man.”
Marchman served on the University of Miami Board of Trustees, the Board of Directors of the Vizcayan Foundation, the Mercy Hospital Foundation and the Concert Association of Florida. He was president of the advisory board of the The Wolfsonian-FIU museum.
In addition to his husband Joe Siolek and his former wife, Sylvia Minchew, Marchman’s survivors include many friends. Information on services was not yet available.
This story was originally published June 6, 2021 at 10:34 AM.
