A company, even a large one, is a lot like a family. Over a lifetime it sees births, deaths, growing pains, successes, failures, marriages, divorces, good health and bouts of illness, all adding up to a shared history.
National Picture & Frame Co., once one of Greenwood’s most thriving and well-loved families of employers and employees, will hold a reunion on June 11 from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. at Serio’s restaurant.
Tickets, which are $10 a person, must be purchased in advance, and the deadline is Friday. All former employees, spouses and friends of National are welcome.
To hear former company executives tell it, this is indeed a family reunion.
“We’re having the reunion because we have an unusual management team that were very close and went to the heights and through some low points together,” said Richard Beattie, former vice president for sales and marketing at National. “We had (a reunion) in 2004 and found that people who worked in the factory as well have strong relationships that continue today.”
Beattie emphasized that this is a reunion not just of management but also of office workers and people who worked on the factory floor — all levels of personnel.
“That’s the way the company was,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of separation between management and personnel.”
Beattie remained in Greenwood after leaving National and went to work for Viking Range. But many of the company’s employees had to leave town to seek employment elsewhere.
Wisconsin-based Uniek Inc. acquired National out of bankruptcy in 2000. Uniek closed one of National’s two Greenwood plants a few months later and closed the other in 2002. National was one of a string of manufacturers to leave Greenwood during that period.
Those gathered for the reunion, however, will be remembering National’s halcyon days when sales topped $73 million and the company employed some 700 people in Greenwood.
Leading the company at that time, the early ’90s, were CEO and president Jesse Luxton, now of Texas; Beattie; chief financial officer Bob Littlejohn; and executive vice president Billy Moore, who is deceased.
“Billy was the heart of the company,” said Luxton, who will be attending the reunion.
Luxton remembers the ’90s at National as a time of creative leaps, team building and just plain fun.
“I’ve never been one to tell employees they need to work to meet the shareholders’ needs,” Luxton said in a recent phone interview. “I told them, ‘Make your customers happy by delivering a good product on time at a good price; build a strong bottom line that will keep (you) secure, happy and productive. Then the shareholders will be satisfied.’”
Luxton also lauded the company’s ability to come up with a product idea, build a prototype and present it to potential customers within a week.
“Sometimes we fell flat on our faces, and sometimes it flew,” he said. “But it sure was a lot of fun.”
National Picture & Frame manufactured picture frames, framed art and mirrors for the discount department store market including Wal-Mart, Dollar General, Kmart and others.
The company, founded in 1964, was owned by DWG Corporation in the 1980s and under control of Victor Posner, a known corporate raider who was eventually barred, along with his son, by a federal court from ever acting as directors of any public company.
National’s management team orchestrated a leveraged buyout to secure the company from DWG in 1992 and then went public in 1994. From then until the late ’90s, said Beattie, “was the last and best part of the company’s history.”
The upcoming reunion, like all good family reunions, will offer plenty of food and drink.
To purchase tickets, call Beattie at 392-4100 or email rbeattie@hotmail.com, or contact any of the following:
Barbara Young-Hunter, 385-0293, byhunter@suddenlink.net;
Alane Denton, 385-3893, alane_denton@hotmail.com;
Kim Harris, 385-0727, uawildcat1992@yahoo.com;
Veranda Barnes, 453-6023, verandabarnes@yahoo.com.
• Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
