became the chairman of the board of directors while keeping Arthur Brentano on as president. For his part in the bankruptcy sale, Kroch received the Chicago branch store and the exclusive right to use and control the Brentano's name within the states of Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Kroch kept his Brentano's store in Chicago as a separate subsidiary of his existing Kroch's bookstore until 1954 when the stores were combined to form Kroch's and Brentano's. Kroch succeeded in preventing MacMillan, Waldenbooks, and Borders from using the Brentano's name within the Chicago area market. In 1944, Arthur Brentano died and was replaced as president by his son, Arthur Brentano Jr. Five years later, Arthur Brentano, Jr. was replaced as president by Nixon Griffis, the son of Stanton Griffis. The publishing company Crowell Collier acquired Brentano's in 1962. At the time of the acquisition, Brentano's had 16 stores located in 5 states plus the District of Columbia. First store in the rapid expanding and lucrative Southern California market was opened in the affluent suburb of Beverly Hills in 1972. Two decades later, the corporate parent Macmillan, which had acquired Brentano's upon merger with Crowell Collier in 1961, decided to divest itself of Brentano's by selling the retail chain to Brentano's management in 1981. At the time of the sale, Brentano's had 28 stores with locations that had included Boston, Washington, Atlanta, Toronto, Dallas, San Francisco and San Diego. Unfortunately, the new management was forced to file for bankruptcy less than a year later in 1982 and finally liquidated in 1984. As part of the liquidation sale, the Waldenbooks subsidiary of Kmart acquired three stores that were located in Beverly Hills, Costa Mesa, and St. Louis with the original intention of converting the stores to the Waldenbooks brand. After remodeling, while keeping the Brentano's name, Waldenbooks discovered that the stores were bringing in more money than equivalent Waldenbooks of the same age so they decided to keep the Brentano's brand and expand the brand to other upscale neighborhoods as the upscale bookstore brand for the Walden Book division. In 1992, Kmart acquired Borders. At that time, it kept Brentano's in the separate Waldenbooks division until the formation of the Borders-Walden Group that was done just prior to the Borders Group being spun off as an independent company in 1994. Under Borders, the Brentano's stores were still managed by Waldenbooks. With increased competition