It is with regret that we report the death of Roger W Stone on 12th September.
Stone was born February 16, 1935 to the late Anita and Marvin Stone in Chicago, Illinois. In 1955, he married his college sweetheart, Susan Kesert, and together they raised their three daughters in the Chicago area. He attended the University of Chicago Lab School, Lake Forest Academy, and earned a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in 1957.
While in college, Stone’s entrepreneurial spirit took root. He managed the concessions at his fraternity and created an innovative business by converting stamp machines into ballpoint pen vending machines. Building businesses became his avocation, and throughout his life he enjoyed nurturing others by providing professional advice and investing in small companies in need of growth capital.
Stone began his career as a box salesman at Stone Container Corporation, a company founded by his grandfather, father, and uncles, and worked his way up to Chief Executive Officer to become an international leader in the paper industry. As CEO, he transformed Stone Container into a company with over 30,000 employees and $6bn in revenue.
He retired from Stone Container in 1999 following the merger of the company and Jefferson Smurfit in 1998. At an age when most business leaders would have retired, Stone went on to build two additional paper and packaging companies, BoxUSA and KapStone Paper and Packaging Corporation with his son-in-law and business partner of 40 years, Matthew Kaplan. Together, they built KapStone into the fifth largest producer of containerboard and the largest producer of kraft paper in North America over the next decade.
