I decided that I would give up the CEO position when I turned 50, in 1976. So I completely reorganized the company. I put in people smarter than I was, meaner than I was, and they took it over. Our president was a real son of a bitch. I never liked him. But like has nothing to do with business. He did a beautiful job.
I let my nephew and this president take over. I was chairman of the board and the second-biggest stockholder. In 1993, they sold the business to Leggett & Platt (NYSE:LEG), a maker of furniture and carpet cushioning products, for $65 million.
The same year I went to work for the company, Winston-Salem was starting an arts council, and it needed men on the board, especially businessmen. I was asked to join. My family had always done civic work. If the hospital had asked me to come work for it, I would have said yes. What did I know about cancer and tuberculosis? I knew more about the arts.
I took art appreciation at Yale. It was one of the hardest courses I ever took. But I learned a lot, and I fell in love with American art. The first painting I bought was a Gilbert Stuart double portrait. I paid $5,000 for it in 1950. I was fresh out of college. The latest value on it is over $1 million.
It took guts to be involved in the arts. One day, the president of the chamber of commerce said, "When are you going to get tired of playing with all those sissy boys and garden-club ladies and come up here and play with us he-men?" That irritated the hell out of me. I said before I die the arts council will be more powerful than the chamber of commerce.
I found out that all national arts organizations want to have a Southerner on the board, but nobody in the South ever thought about going beyond his or her city or state. And so I just held up my hand.
In 1965, President Johnson appointed me to the National Council on the Arts. We were sworn in at the White House. I was the only Southerner and the only businessman. Later, at council meetings, sitting around the table were John Steinbeck, Helen Hayes, Duke Ellington, Leonard Bernstein, Harper Lee, every major artist.
We're in an age of design and creativity. Creative thought is incredibly important in building a company today. The arts are the purest source of creativity. That's why if you want to meet the power structure of the world, go into the arts. When people get power and money, the first thing they gravitate to is the arts.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the Beat Generation poet, is a great friend of mine. In 1963, I was visiting him in San Francisco, and he told me to go up to Haight and Ashbury streets. He said, "You will see something that's going to change the face of society." So I went up there. I had a crewcut. This black man walked up to me and said, "Say, man, where'd you get that way-out hairdo?" I said, "Stud, don't you recognize an antique Afro when you see one?" He said, "Man, you come on in here; I'm going to buy you a soda pop."
In Haight-Ashbury, I saw that what makes a city is a wide diversity of people. I remembered that when I decided that I was going to work on revitalizing downtown Winston-Salem. When I became the commissioner of cultural affairs, in 2000, the first thing I said was, "I'm sure we've got some hippies in our downtown." The first place I went was a nightclub in a dingy old cinder-block welding garage. A self-respecting person would not go in there. But inside it was vibrant. A great mix of people. We got low-interest loan money to help fix it up. Now it's beautiful. Everybody will tell you it's the place to be.
The downtown is the heart of the city. It symbolizes whether the city is worth a damn or not. If a city doesn't have fun and games and arts downtown, a show place, it's not a success.
I love my city. I think we now have done a good job, but we're not by any means through.
My wife and I were picnicking up on top of a mountain waterfall in the late 1950s, and this couple who'd built a shanty up there dumped two garbage cans full of trash in it. I said they shouldn't do that. They said, "You're on our cousin's land. You don't like it, get off." So I found out who their cousin was, and I bought the waterfall and the mountain -- 80 acres. I paid about the same price you'd pay for a Cadillac; I think it was $10,000.
I bought 1,100 acres of land around that mountain over about 10 years. I gave it to the state of North Carolina in 1976. It is the largest park in the state. I saved 9,000 acres around Mount Mitchell, the tallest peak east of the Mississippi. And my wife and I saved over 10 miles and 30,000 acres along the New River.
I have a 98th percentile energy level. I have to be doing something. I'm 82, and the idea of retiring is beyond belief. I think every day's more exciting. I wouldn't go back a year.
The way that I have achieved what I have achieved is through people. I just love people. The old saying is "It's who you know, not what you know," and I believe that to be so. I have about 5,000 names in my PalmPilot, and I can connect people all over the world. And through those contacts I've been able to do amazing things.
