With a resigned smile, Grenada resident John Lake admits he's no spring chicken. He has finally stopped playing golf, but he still walks two miles each day. And he still drives.
His driver's license was recently renewed for another four years, but Lake isn't sure he'll need it. And he admits that he misses his golf game, but he came to a defining moment when he knew it was time to call it quits.
"When I played golf, as long as I could shoot my age, I was okay," he quipped. "But, when I started shooting my weight, I decided it was time to quit."
After all, he is 98 years old.
Lake lives with his oldest daughter, Julie, in Grenada. The only living sibling left, he is the middle of five children, one being his twin sister. He also has 13 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren.
Lake is one of the state's quiet giants. He has accomplished many significant things in his 98 years, and women around the world should be quite grateful to him. During his years as an employee of DuPont Chemical Corp., he helped the company devise a way to make pantyhose out of nylon.
Born in Wake Forest, N.C., Lake also grew up there. He attended Wake Forest College and graduated from Clemson University in South Carolina. In college, Lake studied textiles, and he spent his entire life focusing on improving manufacturing, not just in Mississippi, but across the country.
After graduating from Clemson, Lake had a job offer from Sayles Finishing Plant in Providence, R.I., a company that specialized in bleaching and dyeing textiles. He spent three years there.
After his stint with Sayles, Lake took a job with DuPont Chemical in New York. He remembers his years in New York were hard.
"I was living there during the Depression, and at one point, DuPont had to let me go because they couldn't afford to pay me. I watched people starve to death on the streets of New York, " Lake said. "You know, at that time, New York didn't have a tunnel or a bridge, so there was no way out unless you wanted to swim the Hudson River. The only way to get out of New York was to take the ferry, and it cost a nickel, which was way more than most folks had back then. Times were sure tough."
During his unemployment, Lake sent out letters to different companies trying to find a job. He had three offers: traveling on a ship going back and forth to England, flying whisky into the U.S. from South America, and working at a ribbon plant in Catasauqua, Penn., where they made girls' hair ribbons as well ribbons for the Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewing Company.
Lake took the job as plant manager of the ribbon company and spent three years there. DuPont then called and wanted Lake to come back to work.
"They said they'd pay me what I was making when I was there before, and I told them no. I did tell them what I would come back for, and they finally agreed," Lake said.
While at DuPont, he spent 13 years in the sales and service department of the rayon and nylon division. It was during this time that Lake got in on the ground floor of a revolutionary new product developed by DuPont.
"DuPont was always developing a new product for this or that," Lake said. "They came up with a synthetic wool, and they asked me to see what we could do with that, but it was a disaster.
"Years later, they developed a new yarn made from coal tar products, but they didn't know what to call it," Lake said. "They had a contest and offered prizes for the person who could come up with a name. Someone had the idea of 'nylon,' and so that's what they called it."
DuPont gave the newly-developed product to Lake and sent him on his way, hoping he could make a go of it somehow.
Lake traveled to Tonawanda, N.Y., to visit a company that made women's undergarments, and he pushed the new product but was faced with one major problem - the nylon wouldn't absorb perspiration. So, it was back to the drawing board.
"They then sent me to Paterson, N.J., to a company that made women's stockings," Lake said. "I took 100 pounds of yarn, and we made a nylon stocking out of it. At that time, women's stockings were only made of cotton or silk. The nylon looked good, but we did have some problems with it."
While pushing the nylon product in the northeast, Lake was required to put a Pennsylvania license plate on his car for not-so-obvious reasons. Lake said the company wanted everyone to think the product was local, because they didn't want the Germans to find out about nylon and get a jump on the Americans.
He went to a hosiery mill in Pennsylvania and spent two years working with the company making nylon stockings. At the time, women's stockings were made of what's known as 40 danier, which is the size of the thread. The smaller the danier, the more sheer the stocking.
Lake and his constituents spent time perfecting the nylon into a sheer stocking that women could wear four to five times longer than the average stocking being made at that time.
Before the nylon was put on sale, Lake spent time traveling to 13 mills around the United States and testing the product.
When nylon was finally opened up and sold on the market, mills began to make products for such large stores as Marshall Field's and Lord and Taylor. The nylon hosiery market seemed well on its way to success when it suddenly met a brick wall.
"We were just getting started good when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor," Lake remembered. "This completely cut off the silk supply to the U.S., and the government then tied up every bit of nylon to make parachutes and tow lines for gliders to be used in the war effort."
Living in Chicago at the time, Lake was then sent to Greensboro, N.C., to work with cotton weavers such as Burlington and J.P. Stevens. He took the nylon and let Burlington work with it; then he took it to Cannon Mills and other companies.
"Within six to eight months, we had developed a nylon parachute that was far superior to silk," Lake said. "It was lighter and stronger and when it opened up, it was much larger."
After the war, around the mid-1940s, Lake and DuPont were back on track for producing nylon stockings, and he went to the officials at the company with an ultimatum.
"I said to them, 'Okay, I helped with the post-war plans for nylon, now what are your post-war plans for John Lake?'" he said. "They asked me if I was satisfied, and I told them no. I wanted more money. They asked me to trust them, and I said 'to hell with that.'"
Lake was being offered jobs with several mills that wanted to pay him twice as much as he was making at DuPont. So, taking a chance, he accepted a job with a mill in Indianapolis that had a plant in Grenada.
When he told DuPont of his plans to move to Mississippi, he was met with much criticism.
"They told me that everyone in Mississippi was barefoot and could not read," Lake said.
Lake came to Mississippi at the end of World War II to take over the plant, which was then known as Grenada Industries. At the time, there was 115 people working there. In the 22 years he spent at Grenada Industries, he built up the workforce to 1,300 people and opened a subsidiary plant in Batesville as well.
The Batesville plant has since closed, and the Grenada plant has diminished from the small empire that Lake built. But, during its heyday, the Grenada plant was a milestone for the community.
"I ran a tight ship, " Lake said. "I believed, and still do, in discipline. Everybody needs it. You need it, I need it. I commanded respect and I got it."
When Lake first came to Grenada, the plant offered its employees no vacations. Lake changed all that, giving employees a much-needed break.
"I told the owners in Indiana that these folks in Mississippi liked to watch football as much as they did, and they needed holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas," Lake said.
At the time, employees were also being paid by the hour. Realizing the need for some incentives, Lake changed all that as well.
"I decided we needed to pay people for what they do," Lake said. "The people who made the best product and the most of it needed to be rewarded." Lake then implemented the production pay scale at the plant.
During his years at Grenada Industries, Lake recognized the need for an organization to help manufacturers in the state.
In 1952, he sent 50 letters to different manufacturers around the state and offered them a free dinner in Columbus. Thirteen members signed up, and Lake formed the Mississippi Manufacturers Association. He was the organization's founder and first president. The organization now has more than 2,000 industrial members.
"During the time that Hugh White was governor, I went back and forth to Jackson and fought with the tax department about taxing requirements on industries in the state. They would allow outside industries to come in and set up in Mississippi for five years tax-free, and then they would be hit with enormous taxes after the five years," Lake said. "I told them, 'There is only one way Mississippi is ever going to prosper, and that is to get industry here, but not to tax them to death.'"
Lake got the tax assessments on the Grenada plant cut in half and set a precedent for assisting industries with tax credits. He worked with several governors in getting incentives for industries. It was during this time that he decided to form the MMA.
"My main goal in forming this organization was cooperation," Lake said. "Cooperation in working with manufacturers to improve our state was the only way for our state to prosper."
On his 90th birthday, 75 of his former employees at the Grenada plant threw him a party, and he enjoyed it immensely.
"As you get older, you get sentimental," Lake said. "And I sure did."
Lake retired in 1968 and moved to Indianola, where his second wife, Nell Gardner Allen, was originally from. He bought a house in Sarasota, Fla., as well. He married Allen after his first wife, Julia Louckes of New York, died.
At the age of 70, Lake was approached by his second wife for another business venture. Her son, son-in-law and some other young farmers had a cotton gin, warehouse and delinting plant. They were in some financial trouble, and his wife implored him to help them out.
"I told them I didn't know nothing about running a cotton gin," Lake said. "But after returning from a trip overseas, I decided to give it a go." Lake stayed with the gin until he was 80.
While at the gin, Lake, with his usual flair for business, discovered in his travels about how to creatively use cottonseed.
"In Florida, they were using cottonseed grain to feed dairy cows, and I found out that if you feed the cow the whole cottonseed, it makes their milk richer," Lake explained.
So, instead of selling the seed to farmers, Lake decided to load the seed onto barges in Greenville and ship it up the Mississippi River to the dairy farmers in Wisconsin. He doubled his money. And he helped the farmers get out of debt with the gin, paid off the mortgage and gave it back to them scot-free.
Attributing his toughness for business to his attitude, he mentioned that in college at Wake Forest, he was the smallest and youngest member of the basketball team.
"I was the smallest, and I am still a small man, but you've got to be tough. If you are, and you believe in yourself, then people will respect you and back off," Lake said. "If you believe in something and try to live what you believe, then you're OK."
Lake believes there are four essential things most important in life - who you marry, management, discipline and integrity.
"That's what I've strived for," Lake said. "I think God's still working on me, but he should be about done."
