Staley later approached Sternaman to increase the team's competitiveness, but he declined as he was close to finishing his mechanical engineering degree at Illinois.

[10] Sternaman found himself unable to pay the mortgage on either his apartment or the gas station he had invested in and in the summer of 1931 he approached Halas to buy out his half of the Bears for $38,000 (the equivalent of approximately $785,000 in 2025).

[10] The request was difficult for Halas to meet, but he set about borrowing funds from friends and family, and was eventually able to raise the necessary sum, cashing out Sternaman.

[10] In 1934, Sternamen purchased and fenced off a lakefront property at Lake Ivanhoe, WI, a small, predominantly black, middle-class vacation community, intending to turn it into a white resort.

He subsequently lost in a civil lawsuit by black neighbors on grounds that the beach and parks around Lake Ivanhoe were a public good.