(From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) - The outlook was bleak nearly 50 years ago when Harry Quadracci wanted to launch his own printing company. He had no funding, printing presses or customers.

But the young entrepreneur did have an optimistic friend named Irwin Purtell, who possessed both fundraising acumen and financial ingenuity and also was a cousin of Quadracci's wife, Betty. With Quadracci, "Win" Purtell co-founded Quad/Graphics Inc., which today is one of the world's biggest operators of printing presses, churning out everything from Time, Rolling Stone and L.L. Bean to untold volumes of paperbound books.

Purtell was also among the original investors in Sussex-based Quad -- one of the biggest employers in Wisconsin, where Quad employs nearly 7,000 -- and he took an active role in strategy as a board member from its 1971 inception until his board retirement in 2005.

Purtell, who would have turned 79 on Thursday, died Thursday at his home in West Bend after a long battle with heart disease, his family said.

"Win had a strong business sense and a strong financial sense, but he had those qualities in a very creative and almost artistic way," said John Fowler, who worked as Quad's chief financial officer for many years, coordinating strategy with Purtell.

Because Harry Quadracci was well known in his lifetime as a flamboyant and charismatic leader, Purtell's role is not always as well known. But Fowler credits Purtell with all the initial fundraising that was instrumental in launching Quad and procuring its first printing press.

And when Quad's current chief executive, Joel Quadracci, holds the company's annual shareholder meeting on Monday, the founder's son will dedicate a portion of his remarks to Purtell, Fowler said.
"Quad was one of his passions," said Irwin Purtell's oldest son, Tony.

Purtell loved financial markets and Quad became "a great adventure," Tony said. "Business is the ultimate competitive sport. It was his hobby. It was his passion."

Irwin Shadbolt Purtell was born in Milwaukee on May 21, 1936, and earned an economics degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His father's business was real estate, but Win's interests were in the stock markets, dogs, the outdoors and he even moonlighted for many years as a weekend farmer in rural Wisconsin.

Purtell had a job as loan officer at Milwaukee's Marshall & Ilsley Corp. bank (today part of Toronto-based BMO Harris Financial Group) when Harry Quadracci paid a call. Quadracci recently had resigned his job at another printing company, W.A. Krueger Co., which had just gone through a disruptive labor strike.

"It was 1970 and it was a matter of knowing where the money is," Purtell said in a 2001 interview with The Wall Street Journal.

The '70s were often rocky and fraught with uncertainty for the new company as it struggled to get clients. But it got its big breakthrough in 1977 when Quadracci landed a contract to print Newsweek.

The 1980s and '90s saw Quad growing sometimes 10% to 40% a year, Fowler said. And Purtell was active in the financial strategy to bankroll the blistering growth, Fowler said.

Printing is a major industry in Wisconsin and the Midwest, a region the continues to produce many of the nation's ink-on-paper publications.

The trade was at its peak when Purtell left the business in 2005. The proliferation of digital technologies such as e-readers and touch screens, which erode demand for ink-on-paper magazines and books, is driving change in the printing industry. Quad's balance sheet, however, has proved to be a strength. It has grown through multiple acquisitions, effectively buying up a bigger slice of a shrinking pie.

Of Purtell's four children, three held jobs at Quad. And his son-in-law, Darren Boyce, still works at Quad. Tony Purtell started in a Quad bindery as a summer job but built an entire career at Quad.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Purtell is survived by his wife, Susan; four children, Anthony, Laura Purtell Leech, Charles, and Lisa Boyce; and 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.