Donald J. Tyson, Food Tycoon, Is Dead at 80
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: January 6, 2011
Donald J. Tyson, an aggressive and visionary entrepreneur who dropped out of college and built his father’s Arkansas chicken business into the behemoth Tyson Foods, one of the world’s largest producers of poultry, beef and pork, died on Thursday. He was 80 and lived in Fayetteville, Ark.
Associated Press
Donald J. Tyson in 2004.
The cause was complications of cancer, Tyson Foods said.
Shrewd, folksy and often likened to fellow Arkansans Sam Walton, the late Wal-Mart tycoon, and former President Bill Clinton, Mr. Tyson was a risk-taking, bare-knuckle businessman who bought out dozens of competitors, skirted the edge of the law and transformed a Depression-era trucking-and-feed venture into a global enterprise with an army of employees and millions of customers in 57 countries.
Tyson Foods became a household name as he popularized the Rock Cornish game hen as a high-profit specialty item; helped develop McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets and KFC’s Rotisserie Gold, and stocked America’s grocery stores with fresh and frozen chickens — killed, cleaned and packaged in his archipelago of processing plants.
“It was pretty much Don’s vision that fueled the company,” Mark A. Plummer, an analyst for Stephens Inc., a Little Rock financial services firm, told The New York Times in 1994, the year before Mr. Tyson stepped down after nearly three decades as chairman. “He saw that if you added more convenience by further processing the chicken, consumers would pay for it.”
Mr. Tyson grew up on a farm with squawking chickens and became one of the world’s richest men, a down-home billionaire who dressed in khaki uniforms like his workers, with “Don” and the Tyson logo stitched over the shirt pockets. He looked like a farmer down at the feed co-op: a short, stocky man with a paunch and a round weather-beaten face, a baldish pate and a gray chin-strap beard.
But he cultivated presidents and members of Congress, threw lavish society parties, took glamorous young women to Wall Street meetings, jetted around the world and spent weeks at a time on his yacht fishing off Brazil or Baja California for the spear-nosed, blue-water trophy marlins that decorated his company headquarters and his homes in Arkansas, England and Mexico.
Critics said his tigerish corporate philosophy — “grow or die” — led to many acquisitions, notably the bitterly contested purchase of Holly Farms for $1.5 billion in 1989, which made Tyson Foods the nation’s No. 1 poultry producer, dwarfing ConAgra and Perdue Farms. But it also led to risky deals, questionable business practices and political ties that produced legal entanglements for him and the company.
Mr. Tyson and his son and future successor, John H. Tyson, were accused of helping to arrange illegal gifts to President Clinton’s first-term secretary of agriculture, Mike Espy, including plane trips, lodging and football tickets, when his agency was considering tougher safety and inspection regulations affecting Tyson Foods.
Mr. Espy resigned in 1994, but four years later was acquitted of accepting illegal gifts. In 1997, Tyson Foods pleaded guilty to making $12,000 in such gifts to Mr. Espy and paid $6 million in fines and costs. Don and John Tyson were named unindicted co-conspirators and testified before a grand jury in exchange for immunity from prosecution. (In an unrelated 2004 case, Don Tyson and Tyson Foods agreed to pay $1.7 million to settle a federal complaint that the company did not fully disclose benefits to Mr. Tyson.)
Mr. Tyson’s legal problems tainted but hardly overshadowed a career widely regarded as a stunning American success story. But his legacy of aggressive management continued to trouble the company when he served as the semiretired “senior chairman” after 1995 and even after he retired in 2001.
Environmentalists accused Tyson of fouling waterways. Animal rights groups said it raised chickens in cruel conditions. Regulators said it discriminated against women and blacks and cheated workers out of wages. Tyson Foods denied wrongdoing, but paid fines, back wages and penalties to settle some cases.
In 2001 the company and three managers were charged with conspiring for years to smuggle illegal immigrants from Mexico and South America to work in its plants, but all were acquitted.
Marvin Schwartz, who wrote a history of Tyson Foods, “Tyson: From Farm to Market,” said its culture reflected its leader. “Don is a gambler, and he’s very comfortable taking risks,” he said. “And in a state like Arkansas, where there are very few regulatory controls, corporations have more flexibility. The state motto was ‘The Land of Opportunity,’ and that’s why entrepreneurs like Sam Walton and Don Tyson have made it here.”
Donald John Tyson was born on April 21, 1930, in Olathe, Kan., to John and Helen Knoll Tyson. They settled in Springdale, Ark., and his father began hauling chickens from farms to markets in the Southeast and Midwest. The boy attended public schools and at 14 started working for his father. After graduating from Kemper Military School in Boonville, Mo., he enrolled at the University of Arkansas, but quit in his senior year in 1952 to join the business, which had added a hatchery and feed mill.
In 1952, he married Twilla Jean Womochil. He is survived by his son, John; three daughters, Carla Tyson, Cheryl Tyson and Joslyn J. Caldwell-Tyson; and two grandchildren.
In 1957, the company built its first poultry-processing plant, and in the 1960s began buying farms and competitors. It went public in 1963. Two years later, it introduced Rock Cornish game hens, which became enormously popular and profitable. Mr. Tyson became president in 1966 and chairman in 1967 after his parents were killed in a car-train wreck.
Over the next three decades, Tyson grew exponentially. It bought beef, pork and seafood companies, built 60 processing plants and diversified into 6,000 products. It supplied fast-food chains and secured markets abroad. When Mr. Tyson surrendered day-to-day control in 1995, the company ranked 110th on the Fortune 500 list, with sales of $5.2 billion.
Mr. Tyson supported Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for president, along with many charitable, educational and development programs. He called himself a moderate Democrat, but went fishing with Republicans too, and made his Baja California home available for legislative junkets.
“My theory about politics is that if they will just leave me alone, we’ll do just fine,” he said in 1993. “We pretty much stay home and run chickens.”
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: January 6, 2011
Donald J. Tyson, an aggressive and visionary entrepreneur who dropped out of college and built his father’s Arkansas chicken business into the behemoth Tyson Foods, one of the world’s largest producers of poultry, beef and pork, died on Thursday. He was 80 and lived in Fayetteville, Ark.
Associated Press
Donald J. Tyson in 2004.
The cause was complications of cancer, Tyson Foods said.
Shrewd, folksy and often likened to fellow Arkansans Sam Walton, the late Wal-Mart tycoon, and former President Bill Clinton, Mr. Tyson was a risk-taking, bare-knuckle businessman who bought out dozens of competitors, skirted the edge of the law and transformed a Depression-era trucking-and-feed venture into a global enterprise with an army of employees and millions of customers in 57 countries.
Tyson Foods became a household name as he popularized the Rock Cornish game hen as a high-profit specialty item; helped develop McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets and KFC’s Rotisserie Gold, and stocked America’s grocery stores with fresh and frozen chickens — killed, cleaned and packaged in his archipelago of processing plants.
“It was pretty much Don’s vision that fueled the company,” Mark A. Plummer, an analyst for Stephens Inc., a Little Rock financial services firm, told The New York Times in 1994, the year before Mr. Tyson stepped down after nearly three decades as chairman. “He saw that if you added more convenience by further processing the chicken, consumers would pay for it.”
Mr. Tyson grew up on a farm with squawking chickens and became one of the world’s richest men, a down-home billionaire who dressed in khaki uniforms like his workers, with “Don” and the Tyson logo stitched over the shirt pockets. He looked like a farmer down at the feed co-op: a short, stocky man with a paunch and a round weather-beaten face, a baldish pate and a gray chin-strap beard.
But he cultivated presidents and members of Congress, threw lavish society parties, took glamorous young women to Wall Street meetings, jetted around the world and spent weeks at a time on his yacht fishing off Brazil or Baja California for the spear-nosed, blue-water trophy marlins that decorated his company headquarters and his homes in Arkansas, England and Mexico.
Critics said his tigerish corporate philosophy — “grow or die” — led to many acquisitions, notably the bitterly contested purchase of Holly Farms for $1.5 billion in 1989, which made Tyson Foods the nation’s No. 1 poultry producer, dwarfing ConAgra and Perdue Farms. But it also led to risky deals, questionable business practices and political ties that produced legal entanglements for him and the company.
Mr. Tyson and his son and future successor, John H. Tyson, were accused of helping to arrange illegal gifts to President Clinton’s first-term secretary of agriculture, Mike Espy, including plane trips, lodging and football tickets, when his agency was considering tougher safety and inspection regulations affecting Tyson Foods.
Mr. Espy resigned in 1994, but four years later was acquitted of accepting illegal gifts. In 1997, Tyson Foods pleaded guilty to making $12,000 in such gifts to Mr. Espy and paid $6 million in fines and costs. Don and John Tyson were named unindicted co-conspirators and testified before a grand jury in exchange for immunity from prosecution. (In an unrelated 2004 case, Don Tyson and Tyson Foods agreed to pay $1.7 million to settle a federal complaint that the company did not fully disclose benefits to Mr. Tyson.)
Mr. Tyson’s legal problems tainted but hardly overshadowed a career widely regarded as a stunning American success story. But his legacy of aggressive management continued to trouble the company when he served as the semiretired “senior chairman” after 1995 and even after he retired in 2001.
Environmentalists accused Tyson of fouling waterways. Animal rights groups said it raised chickens in cruel conditions. Regulators said it discriminated against women and blacks and cheated workers out of wages. Tyson Foods denied wrongdoing, but paid fines, back wages and penalties to settle some cases.
In 2001 the company and three managers were charged with conspiring for years to smuggle illegal immigrants from Mexico and South America to work in its plants, but all were acquitted.
Marvin Schwartz, who wrote a history of Tyson Foods, “Tyson: From Farm to Market,” said its culture reflected its leader. “Don is a gambler, and he’s very comfortable taking risks,” he said. “And in a state like Arkansas, where there are very few regulatory controls, corporations have more flexibility. The state motto was ‘The Land of Opportunity,’ and that’s why entrepreneurs like Sam Walton and Don Tyson have made it here.”
Donald John Tyson was born on April 21, 1930, in Olathe, Kan., to John and Helen Knoll Tyson. They settled in Springdale, Ark., and his father began hauling chickens from farms to markets in the Southeast and Midwest. The boy attended public schools and at 14 started working for his father. After graduating from Kemper Military School in Boonville, Mo., he enrolled at the University of Arkansas, but quit in his senior year in 1952 to join the business, which had added a hatchery and feed mill.
In 1952, he married Twilla Jean Womochil. He is survived by his son, John; three daughters, Carla Tyson, Cheryl Tyson and Joslyn J. Caldwell-Tyson; and two grandchildren.
In 1957, the company built its first poultry-processing plant, and in the 1960s began buying farms and competitors. It went public in 1963. Two years later, it introduced Rock Cornish game hens, which became enormously popular and profitable. Mr. Tyson became president in 1966 and chairman in 1967 after his parents were killed in a car-train wreck.
Over the next three decades, Tyson grew exponentially. It bought beef, pork and seafood companies, built 60 processing plants and diversified into 6,000 products. It supplied fast-food chains and secured markets abroad. When Mr. Tyson surrendered day-to-day control in 1995, the company ranked 110th on the Fortune 500 list, with sales of $5.2 billion.
Mr. Tyson supported Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for president, along with many charitable, educational and development programs. He called himself a moderate Democrat, but went fishing with Republicans too, and made his Baja California home available for legislative junkets.
“My theory about politics is that if they will just leave me alone, we’ll do just fine,” he said in 1993. “We pretty much stay home and run chickens.”
