My Father's Business by Cal Turner

Author:Cal Turner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Center Street
Published: 2018-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

11

Expansion: Breaking the Commandments

I became company president in 1977, and the conversation that kicked off the process, like the one that followed that card game blowup years earlier, took place through a closed door as my dad sat on the john. Sometimes it was easier for us to reveal what we were really thinking when we couldn’t see each other.

“Son,” he said, “I have decided it’s time for you to become president so I can be chairman for a long time!”

I knew he was referring to his age. His attitude was that although I could run the company forever as executive vice president, maybe it was time to change titles and let him wear “chairman,” a new position for us, from here on out. He was making it sound as if he were doing it for himself, when we both knew he was doing it for me.

“So, I want you and Rod Wenz [who was still running our public relations from Louisville] to decide the right time to do it,” he said.

“Okay.”

The idea just sat there until three months later, when an editor for Fortune named Eleanor Tracy came to Scottsville with an assistant and a photographer to do a story for the magazine. My dad and I, along with Steve and a couple of other senior managers, took her outside of town to Ethel Foster’s Home Cooking, where you sit at a table with a red and white checkerboard tablecloth and pass homemade vegetables, ham, fried chicken, and corn bread. Afterward, we pushed back from the table and Eleanor turned to my dad and said, “So, Mr. Turner, when is Cal Jr. becoming president?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “Cal Jr., when do you want to be president?”

Eleanor got the most perplexed expression on her face. I said, “Eleanor, is that what this article is about?”

“Well,” she said, “I heard from Rod Wenz that you were becoming president.”

“Do you have a deadline for the article?” I asked her.

She told us the date when it was due to hit the stands.

“Okay, I’ll be president by then,” I told her, and I was.

Once the announcement was made, someone from People magazine called and said, “We’ll do a story on Mr. Turner if you’ll tell us how much he was worth before becoming president and how much he’s worth now that he is.” We declined.

I went from executive vice president to president and my dad went from president to chairman. Not long afterward, a reporter for the Louisville Times asked who was now CEO. I said, “I am, until my dad decides he wants to be for a while, and then he is, until he gets tired of it. Then I pick it back up again.” It was just the kind of truth a newspaper doesn’t know what to do with, so it didn’t make the story.

At first, the word president kind of caught in my throat. It scared me. I had moved from boss’s son to the leader officially responsible for the future of a company.

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