Robert W Topping - Just Call Me Orville

Just Call Me Orville

The Founders Series

The Story of Orville Redenbacher

by
Robert W. Topping

Purdue University Press, West Lafayette

Copyright 2011 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Topping, Robert W.

Just call me Orville : the story of Orville Redenbacher / by Robert
W. Topping.

p. cm. -- (The founders series)

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-55753-595-5

1. Redenbacher, Orville. 2. Businesspeople--United States--Biography. 3. Popcorn industry--United States--History. I. Title.

HD9049.P65T67 2011

338.7664805667092--dc22

[B]

2011006939

Cover design by Natalie Powell.

Edited by Verna Emery.

For Suzanne, whose help, encouragement,
and love helped make this project a joy.

Just Call Me Orville has an unusual publishing history. When the manuscript came to the Purdue University Press, both the subject of the work and its author were no longer living. Kevin Fish, one of Orville Redenbachers grandsons, read the manuscript prior to its being edited. He offered suggestions, clarifications, and updates to the work. We gratefully acknowledge his contributions to the success of Just Call Me Orville. We also gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the team at Orville Redenbachers Gourmet Popping Corn business for their permission to publish this manuscript, which was originally commissioned by the company.

Sure, Orville Redenbacher was eighty-eight when he died. But I still have trouble believing he is gone, even though the flow of his letters to me almost every day and the three-or-four-times-a-week telephone calls from his California home have ceased. The piles of his scrapbooks and papers and clippings and envelopes and boxes of photographs and letters and other memorabilia he turned over to me still clutter the bedroom-turned-office in our home as I write this, making it easy to momentarily forget that he is gone. Then wishing he were not.

The death of any great and good man is tragic enough. One of the tragedies of Orvilles death is that the book that was to be his joy now becomes his epitaph. He had put so much into it; he had worked relentlessly to provide me with names and telephone numbers and to set up conference calls and interviews. He sat still for hours trying to answer my questions, probably thinking most were kind of silly, probably wishing he were somewhere else. He also virtually demolished his personal files to provide me with a plethora of information that set forth most of the major events of his life. When he visited our home for a couple of days a few months before his death, the book occupied much of his mind; he talked of little else. As we sorted through seemingly bottomless piles of his photos, he mentioned at least twice that he wanted his book published for his ninetieth birthday.

Orville arrived from California slightly travel-weary. Still, a certain fresh eagerness came over him as we talked about the book. My wife, Sue, and I invited a few friends and neighbors to our home to meet him. Almost magically, his weariness seemed quickly replaced by the enthusiastic, engaging, warm and friendly smile that captured Americas heart.

After working closely with Orville Clarence Redenbacher for nearly a year, the only reasonable conclusion I could draw about him was this: Orville Redenbacher was one of the worlds last universally beloved souls. Maybe the last.

Orvilles story is one of simple, humble beginnings as an Indiana farm lad whose persistence, tenacity, intelligence, and penchant for just plain drudgery eventually elevated him to unequaled success as a farmer, county agent, agronomist, businessman, and television personalityaccomplishments far beyond his wildest imaginings.

His successes did not come without risks; he is considered one of Americas most daring entrepreneurs, a man who came out of relative obscurity to conquer the North American popcorn industry by revolutionizing it. In so doing, he managed to do what even the most brilliant Madison Avenue tub-thumper could not or did not: glamorize popcorn.

Not bad for a Clay County kid whose biggest delight was bringing home a string of catfish he snagged in a gravel-pit pond. Success stories are not uncommon in America; the nation has always prided itself on creating an environment where skill, hard work, and the will to control ones own destiny are often richly rewarded. The skill, the will, and the penchant for hard work were all characteristic of Orville Redenbacher.

Still, Orvilles story is uniquely his own for the good and simple reason that his gentlemanly kindness tower far above even his imposing success as a popcorn hybridizer and agribusinessman. He never forgot where he came from, never forgot the aromatic discomforts associated with cleaning hog houses and chicken coops to pay for his college education, and never forgot the sticky heat of Indiana cornfields. His dry wit was as sharp as a finely-honed rapier, but used never maliciously and usually on himself.

Though he became accustomed to, and truly loved, the public spotlight, he always remained the genuine, self-effacing character who bred the best popcorn in the world. If he had a serious fault, it was probably a good one. He would go to great lengths to avoid unpleasantness with others. Even as a businessman, it was usually more important to Orville to be someones friend than someones creditor. Collecting overdue debts was not Orvilles bowl of popping corn.

In a world growing continually more skeptical, where words more often are meant to manipulate than inform, there were always the skeptics who believed Orville Redenbacher was the creation of marketers, conceived in the minds of advertising copywriters. On the contrary, when you saw Orville Redenbacher, whether on a popcorn label, a TV commercialwhereverwhat you saw was what you got. Or, as Orville liked to say, Im no Betty Crocker.

When he died September 19, 1995, at his home at Coronado Shores, Orville was still a farm kid from Clay County, Indiana; tuba player and cross-country runner at Purdue; 4-H leader; farm manager; stalwart Kiwanian; popcorn breeder; millionaire businessman; world-traveler; philanthropist; TV ham; husband; father; grandpa and great-grandpa; and gracious and caring person whose generosity of spirit somehow touched us all for the better.

Is there more we could ask of anyone?

Writers like to think they write alone. They put the words together and get their names, even their pictures sometimes, on the dust jacket. No one says its easy; it isnt. But any author who says he or she writes alone must be doing so inside a vacuum bottle, stopper firmly in place. For it takes many people who spend time and effort to bring a book together and I am indebted to all, particularly to Orville himself. For several months, the U.S. postal routes between his home in California and mine in Palm Coast, Florida, a continents width away, began to fray.

Orville always seemed reticent talking about himself or his accomplishments, preferring to let his friends and colleagues, as well as his scrapbooks and other evidences of his impressive life, speak for him. Special thanks are due to his friend and companion, Patricia Brown, who seemed as enthused about the book as Orville and provided some insights into Reddy. (Reddy was a nickname Orville acquired from his fraternity brothers at Purdue. It became the affectionate name by which only a few old friends and close associates always addressed him.)