After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in
aeronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Langdon S. Flowers went to California in 1946 to make his mark in the
post-World War II flight industry.
Langdon S. Flowers
But Flowers didn’t become another Howard Hughes. He became a bread
salesman.
Family, home and a $40 weekly salary drew him back to Thomasville, Ga.
He left a rented room in California and $285 a month that he was paid to
do early analysis work on the four-engine DC-8 being developed by
Douglas Aircraft.
The bread business, founded by his father and grandfather in the 1920s
and being operated after the war by his older brother, William “Bill”
Flowers, became an uninterrupted and enormously successful career.
Langdon Flowers is the retired chairman and chief executive officer of
Flowers Industries, Inc., a food company whose sales exceeded $4.2
billion in 2000. Final arrangements are under way for the sale of
Flowers Industries’ largest division, Keebler, to Kellogg, but even
after that transaction is settled, the corporation will employ more than
10,000 people.
Flowers is a soft-spoken Southern gentleman with a deep faith in Christ
and an unwavering commitment to evangelical renewal in the Presbyterian
Church (USA). He has been a director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee
since 1985. The Presbyterian Lay Committee’s job, he says bluntly,
is to work itself out of business. By that, he means the organization
will no longer have a reason to exist if true evangelical renewal occurs
throughout the denomination.
Flowers takes his faith to work. He often tells employees that
his – and their – priorities are 1) Christ, 2) family and 3)
work. He speaks similarly at First Presbyterian Church, where he has
been teaching Sunday school classes for more than 50 years.
Flowers says he has no regrets about abandoning a career in
aeronautical engineering. Since entering the bread business, the closest
connection Flowers has had to his academic preparation were the
occasions he sat in the co-pilot’s seat and steered one of the
corporation’s two twin-engine Mitsubishi jets. But he never got a
pilot’s license.
Except for his brief touchdown in the aircraft industry in California
and a temporary assignment on the West Coast while he served in the Navy
during World War II, Flowers has lived all of his life in Thomasville.
Thomasville is where he sank his roots and his heart in his church,
family, civic clubs and work. It is where he met “Bobbie” –
née Margaret Powell – in kindergarten, and it was where they
were married with Flowers, in his Navy whites, about to go off to war.
It was Bobbie, the mother of their five children, who coaxed him back
to Thomasville from California and, again, Bobbie who stayed with him
every night during a three-month near-death hospital experience in
Atlanta. He says the prayers of his friends enabled him to survive a
major infection following heart bypass surgery. After a long therapy,
Flowers is ready to play golf again.
Flowers was in his sophomore year at MIT when Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor. By February 1942, he was a low-ranking seaman in the U.S. Navy.
He was first assigned to Naval training at MIT, which enabled him to
continue his education. After marriage, he became the engineering
officer on the
USS Belleau Wood, a small aircraft carrier in
Adm. William F. “Bull” Halsey’s 3rd Fleet.
Toward the end of World War II, the
Belleau Wood was stationed
for three months off Toyko Bay and sent its planes to attack Japanese
cities. Flowers says Japanese planes attacked the carrier several times,
but it never took a serious hit.
The war ended after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Kamikaze attacks continued for days. Flowers belongs to the
school that believes the use of the atomic bomb saved millions of Allied
and Japanese lives.
After the war, Flowers returned to MIT to complete his master’s
degree. He took the job with Douglas Aircraft and planned to move Bobbie
to the West Coast when he could find suitable housing. But California
was experiencing a population boom without a corresponding increase in
housing, and his rented room wasn’t satisfactory for a young couple
with a baby on the way.
When it was time for the birth of their first daughter, Flowers took a
roundabout series of flights to get to Atlanta. From there, he
hitchhiked to Thomasville, arriving just in time to meet Bobbie walking
out the front door on her way to the hospital. After the birth of
daughter Margaret, Flowers returned to California somewhat less enthused
about the aircraft industry.
His brother Bill, eight years older, had been running the family bakery
since the death of their father and wanted Langdon to help. But Langdon
had a hard time saying yes. Then, Bobbie’s letter arrived. She
wrote, somewhat flippantly, “It sure would be great if you could
make up your mind [about where to live] before we move.” He called
Bill that night and was soon back in Thomasville.
Flowers began work in sales and advertising. While he was paid $40 a
week, the company’s principal salesman made $100. Flowers had to
work his way up the ladder in what was a $3 million business in 1947. He
had to grow the business.
Flowers instinctively took to marketing, sales and advertising. The
company won a Sunbeam contract. It advertised aggressively in newspapers
and on radio, as well as television a few years later. It began
expanding.
Then, in 1968, almost overnight, the business doubled. Flowers
Industries acquired five bakeries at one time. It was a strange time to
be expanding. President Richard Nixon had instituted price controls, so
the company could not charge more for bread. Yet, price controls did not
affect farm products — so Flowers Industries had to pay more for
its ingredients.
But the acquisition increased shelf space, made sales routes more
efficient and gave the corporation the opportunity to increase sales. “Our
goals back then were 20 percent return on equity, 10 percent on sales
and 5 percent increase in profits. We exceeded all those figures. We
made two plus two equal five.”
In 21 years, Flowers Industries, now a public corporation on the New
York Stock Exchange, went from $3 million in sales to more than $40
million. There was no slowing down.
The success of the business did not change Langdon Flowers. He had
taught Sunday school since he was a college student, and he continues to
do so. He has served as a deacon and elder at First Presbyterian. He has
been a commissioner to General Assembly.
A former president of the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce,
Flowers was named Thomas County’s “Man of the Year” in
1975. He has served as a member of the board of trustees of the
denomination’s Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., and
as a member of the board of Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C. The
list of charitable and professional affiliations runs several pages.
But his deepest affiliation is with Christ. “Christ is my Lord and
Savior, my mentor, my brother and my guide to a way of life,”
Flowers wrote in a statement of faith for the Presbyterian Lay
Committee. “As long as I live, I will continue to grow in my love
and knowledge of Christ’s teachings.”
Flowers has been named director emeritus of the Presbyterian Lay
Committee.