Frank Perdue, who plucked around and became a millionaire, is dead:
SALISBURY, Md. (AP) — Frank Perdue, who transformed a backyard egg business into one of the nation’s largest poultry processors using the folksy slogan, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,” has died. He was 84.
Perdue died Thursday after a brief illness, Perdue Farms said Friday.
At the time of his death, Perdue was chairman of the executive committee of the board of directors of Perdue Farms, based in Salisbury, one of the nation’s largest poultry producers.
In 1971, Perdue was credited with being the first to advertise chickens by brand, and he was his company’s television pitchman. His tough, folksy TV persona helped boost sales from $56 million in 1970 to more than $1.2 billion by 1991.
Perdue said a New York ad man persuaded him to run his own television commercials, but also gave Perdue a warning.
“He said, ‘If you do this, you’re going to have some heartaches from it. You’re going to have people yelling at you or maybe screaming at you or criticizing you, but I think it’s the best way to sell a superior chicken, which I think you have,'” Perdue said in a 1991 interview.
“It was quite a shock to my nervous system because I’d never been in a school play or anything and I’m basically reticent about speaking in public,” he said.
Until the late 1990s, Perdue was regularly ranked in Forbes’ list of 400 richest Americans. In 1997, it ranked him 214th and estimated his net worth at $825 million.
But Perdue had to wing it and deal with a peck of trouble over the years as well: worker discontent and union activisim:
In 1986, Perdue told to a presidential commission that he had twice unsuccessfully sought help from a reputed New York crime boss to put down union activities, actions he later said he regretted deeply.
His company was also hit with reports and fines about repetitive motion syndrome injuries. In recent years he was picketed by animal rights activists but those chickens coming home to roost didn’t damage his nestegg.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.