Frank Perdue, Chicken Merchant, Dies
NY Times
Frank Perdue, a Maryland farm boy who became a household word, face and voice in folksy ads for his brand of fresh chickens, died on Thursday at his home in Salisbury, Md. He was 84.
He died after a brief illness, his company said, but it did not announce a cause.
At his death, Mr. Perdue was chairman of the executive committee of Perdue Farms, the company he transformed from a family farm into the country’s third-largest chicken processor. Last year, Perdue Farms had sales of $2.8 billion and employed 19,000 people.
Frank Perdue was born to Arthur W. and Pearl Perdue in 1920, the same year Arthur Perdue started the family chicken business. An only child, Frank Perdue was involved in the chicken business from an early age, helping his parents feed the chickens and clean the coops.
After attending Salisbury State College in Maryland for two years, Mr. Perdue returned to the farm to work with his father. When he became president of Perdue Farms in 1952, it was still a small operation, with revenue of $6 million a year.
In the 1970’s, Mr. Perdue started the ad campaigns that would make him famous. He appeared in 200 different ads from 1971 to 1994.
It helped that he looked like a chicken. And Ross Perot. And Edward I. Koch, the mayor of New York. His bald head, droopy-eyed expression and prominent nose made people smile and feel comfortable with him. They tended to trust him more than they did slick-looking announcers.
It helped, too, that he had a nasal twang that contrasted with the unctuous tones of the usual pitchmen.
“It takes a tough man to raise a tender chicken,” he said in his most familiar line. It made him believable - a hard-nosed yet likable American businessman who knew what he was talking about, who knew how to be tender and how to be tough.
