Lewis met with Tony and Joseph Fugett and several TLC executives regarding Broadview, but what could they possibly do? So Lewis got back on a plane and returned to France. He and his wife held each other tight for a long time in silence, as they realized that their beloved Broadview, the scene of so many happy memories, had been reduced to rubble.
“Reg loved that place,” Everett Grant says. “I think he was happiest when he was out there. That’s why when it burned down it was a great tragedy. You could see the pleasure that he took from the place.”
Suffolk County arson investigators, private investigators hired by Lewis, and agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—sent by President Bush’s White House at Lewis’s request—combed through the wreckage of Broadview, as did mechanical engineers who checked what remained of the heating and electrical systems. Authorities never came up with an official cause for the fire, although an arson investigator Lewis hired determined that it started in the electrical system near the bar that in turn ignited the boiler room in the basement.
But a year would pass before Lewis was made aware of that finding. Around the same time as the Broadview fire, he’d had his Bentley stolen from a garage on 23rd Street in Manhattan, and someone had removed a concrete lion that formerly graced the front of Lewis’s brownstone on 22nd Street. Lewis was positive that the three occurrences involving his property were related.
He hired Ed Gregg, a former captain with the New York City Department of Corrections who ran the protective custody unit, to be his family’s bodyguard and chauffeur whenever they were in New York. Twenty-four-hour-a-day security was instituted at Lewis’s Chelsea townhouse and maintained until the family moved out.
The week of Thanksgiving, Lewis took an ad out in the local East Hampton paper thanking the fire department for its help. He also sent individual turkeys to the local firemen who helped during the fire.
13
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Taming a Business Behemoth
For those who thought Lewis had depleted his bag of tricks when he bought TLC Beatrice, Lewis had another one: He showed them he was one hell of an operator, too. Lewis had done it once with McCall, but that was akin to navigating a yacht, whereas Beatrice was more like the Queen Elizabeth II. This time, Lewis was strutting his stuff on an international stage. From his point of view, though, nothing really had changed. A billion-dollar company could be guided by the same principles that worked with a $51.9-million firm like McCall. You just had to do your homework, work hard, and have good managers working for you.
Lewis’s divestiture sales had transformed TLC Beatrice International Holdings, Inc. into an international food company whose operations are principally in Europe and are divided into two segments: food distribution and grocery products.
TLC Beatrice is the largest wholesale distributor of food and grocery products to supermarkets in the Paris metropolitan area, primarily through 418 stores operating under the Franprix name. TLC Beatrice franchises 383 of the stores and owns 35. The company also distributes food and grocery products in and around Paris through 95 stores operating under the LeaderPrice name. Of these, 49 are owned by TLC Beatrice and 46 are franchises.
TLC Beatrice’s grocery products segment is a major marketer and manufacturer of ice cream in Europe. These products are marketed under well-known local brand names: Premier in Denmark; Artic in France and Belgium; Artigel in Germany; Sanson in Italy; Kalise in the Canary Islands; and La Menorquina in Spain and Portugal. TLC Beatrice is the No. 1 maker of potato chips and snacks in Ireland, under the Tayto and King brand names, among others. Finally, TLC Beatrice’s grocery products segment operates soft drink bottling plants located in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Thailand.
When Lewis began divesting himself of TLC Beatrice’s operating units in Australia, Latin America, and other international locations, many observers viewed him as a shrewd, callous LBO specialist who would break TLC Beatrice into small pieces, sell them, and enrich himself in the process. Sure Lewis had run McCall, the pundits said, but now he was at the helm of a billion-dollar, multinational firm with far-flung operations.
That Lewis knew little about the food distribution and manufacturing business was no handicap from his point of view. Lewis just took a deep breath and immersed himself in the challenge of running his new business. As at McCall, it was important that management share the Chairman’s vision. So Lewis took to the air, visiting his far-flung operating units regularly. Local managers were probably surprised by their omnipresent new boss and his boundless curiosity about their phase of his business.
For one thing, TLC Beatrice would be much more decentralized than McCall had been, giving more autonomy to local managers. The flip side of that was Lewis set higher performance standards than most of his managers were accustomed to.
Lewis taught himself the food business just like he taught himself the home sewing pattern business. The really significant difference this time was that he was spending incredible amounts of time on travel.
It started right after he moved his family to Paris in 1988. On Wednesday, October 12, 1988, Lewis left his apartment at 7:15 A.M. and was on a private jet headed out of Le Bourget Airport by 8 A.M. By 9:30 A.M., Lewis was in Esbjerg, Denmark to meet with a manufacturing manager of one of his operating units, and to take a tour of the plant.
He left Denmark at 11:30 A.M. for a 12:15 ETA in Dortmund, West Germany to meet with some local managers there and to tour another of TLC Beatrice’s plants. At 2:15 P.M., Lewis was back on the jet, where he had lunch as he flew to Paris. This was not an unusual itinerary. In seven hours, Lewis had been to three countries before returning to Paris. Granted, European countries are close to one another, but even continual short-distance commuter hops in the United States take their toll after a while.
On December 6, 1988 at 7 A.M. Paris time, Lewis flew to Zurich to pick up two business associates. After a 10-minute stop in Zurich, Lewis jetted back to France, where he touched down at Strasbourg Airport at 8:30 A.M. in order to tour the headquarters and warehouse of the SES supermarket chain, a TLC Beatrice business in northeastern France that Lewis eventually sold.
At 2:30 P.M., Lewis flew back to Zurich to drop off his passengers, then flew into Paris at 4 P.M. After a half hour layover to refuel, there was a flight back to Strasbourg to pick up TLC Beatrice President Bill Mowry and TLC France executive Daniel Jux. The men flew to Heathrow Airport in London where Lewis attended a business meeting before flying back to Paris at 7:45 P.M.
The return flight marked the end of a grueling 131/2 hour day that saw Lewis make 15 takeoffs and landings in the course of hopscotching between three countries.
The following day, Lewis’s 46th birthday, he departed from Paris at 8:30 A.M. headed toward Brussels Airport, in order to visit a unit of TLC Beatrice’s Artic ice cream division. At 1:15 P.M., the Chairman and CEO of TLC Beatrice was leaving Brussels Airport on the flight path that would take him to Dublin Airport, so he could visit the Tayto potato chip company in Ireland.
Lewis was back in Le Bourget Airport in Paris by 5:15 P.M. Taking it relatively easy on his birthday, Lewis had only worked a 10-hour day.
In spite of the frequent travel and long hours, Lewis loved living in Paris. He felt more comfortable there than in the United States.
In Europe, the major difference is there is less overt hostility that’s purely based on color. As you know, you can be insulted anywhere, but I’ve always been treated very well in Europe. Here in this country, there is a certain conspiratorial desire—regardless of what you do, how much you earn, you’re still black. And that’s meant to demean.
But it only demeans you if you allow it to. You encounter a little bit of racism in individuals from time to time, but you have to be careful because some of that can be self-generated. Sometimes, a guy may just be a jerk. Or maybe he doesn’t like the tie that I have on, or maybe he doesn’t like my suit. Or he may just be jealous that I’m worth a few hundred million dollars. It
could be anything.
Regarding American bigotry, the legacy of slavery would certainly have to be a major factor. And I still get angry about that. It is a fact that a mediocre white kid has a lot better shot than a mediocre black kid. And there’s this hypocrisy within our culture that somehow African-Americans have not achieved as much because somehow it’s our own fault. I mean, it’s such a vicious lie.
In fact, Lewis felt the media regularly gave short shrift to the African-American community, and not just on business issues.
Some writers have tried to put a twist on some of the noteworthy things that African-Americans do, or else they don’t quite want to acknowledge them. They have a limited number of people they have a big vested interest in. Probably even a notion of white superiority. You can chronicle the achievements of African-Americans in so many different areas whenever the barriers have been broken. Look at the arts, certainly in athletics—even in business. And this has happened over significant periods of time.
I remember a few years ago when a kid who was African-American, and part Filipino, won one of the Olympic fencing championships. Well, that couldn’t get any kind of really significant play. At one time here in New York City, the No. 1 chess player, a kid of African ancestry who was 12-years-old, was the national champion and received little if any publicity.
The media are truly not interested in promoting those types of stories.
Lewis once told Beatrice’s public relations person, Butch Meily, “Every African-American male who’s worth anything has a sense of anger built up in him against society.” And Lewis used to chide Meily, who was born in the Philippines, about being far too idealistic regarding the state of race relations in the United States. “He often accused me of not understanding America and how deep the racism is here,” Meily recalls.
Of all the barriers faced by African-Americans, the most insidious are based on perceptions grounded in misinformation and myth, Lewis believed. Basically, he saw society as having pulled the wool over the eyes of African-Americans by creating a mystique about how difficult it is to achieve and attain affluence. Lewis was on a one-man crusade to obliterate that myth and prove it a lie.
After he reached his goals, there was no chance of Lewis being co-opted by his wealth, station in life, or material possessions. Those things never blunted his sharply honed sense of outrage. “For all my money, if my car breaks down in the wrong place, I’d still have a problem on my hands,” Lewis said. He was always more comfortable in France—and Europe in general—than in his native land. But that didn’t mean Lewis didn’t love the United States, warts and all. He used to wave the flag enthusiastically in France and would defend the United States in the face of Gallic criticism. While the United States was unquestionably not inclusive or egalitarian enough for Lewis, it was still home—and he flew back and forth between Paris and New York often.
THE INAUGURATION OF AIR LEWIS
Given the strain that the repeated trips were putting on Lewis’s schedule and his body, Lewis felt it made perfect sense for TLC Beatrice to have a corporate jet. However, he was also aware of the tremendous expense associated with operating a jet, not to mention the danger that Lewis might be perceived as having gone “Hollywood.” That last issue was a serious consideration, because above all else, Reginald Lewis wanted to be known as a dedicated businessman, not a showboater or someone fixated on the trappings of wealth.
Lewis decided the best solution was to lease an airplane from the Canadair aviation company in Canada. Kevin Wright was made Lewis’s liaison for the project, and given responsibility for overseeing it. Lewis entered into a program where he would be able to lease a twin-engine jet for two years, then could walk away from it without any obligation if he so desired. The lease cost more than $100,000 a month.
Under the program, the plane’s interior and its avionics package would be built according to Lewis’s specifications. “As with everything else, Reg did not want to be overcharged,” Wright remembers. So, a consultant was hired to ride herd over the project with Wright. Even with a consultant involved, Lewis was not pleased with the final price of his multimillion dollar aircraft when it was finished. “It was a huge expense—it was clearly something that was going to be his baby,” Wright says.
For several reasons, delivery of the plane had to be taken in Delaware rather than New York or New Jersey. Kevin Wright took care of that duty. Lewis didn’t see his new possession until later. When the two-year lease on the aircraft expired, Lewis exercised his option to buy it.
Lewis absolutely loved his airplane. He viewed it as his reward for his hard work and dedication over the years. Powerful and sleek, Lewis’s corporate jet was unlike the Gulfstreams or Lears or even French Falcons that typically graced the hangars of so many of America’s multinationals. Instead, it was a Challenger, built according to the owner’s specifications at the Canadian Bombardier factory in Montreal. Everything about it was chosen by Lewis with the same painstaking care that he devoted to every other aspect of his life. From the Dallas Cowboy gray with the red and blue stripe that colored its outside to its light blue interior and blond mahogany wood panelling inside. And the plane’s call letters were splashed almost defiantly on its tail—601-RL for the initials of its owner, Reginald Lewis.
Covering the plane’s entire rear wall was an original painting by the noted African-American artist, Ed Clark. This painting had been commissioned by Lewis from Clark, who was his friend, specifically for the plane’s interior. Entitled “Infinity,” it was a kaleidoscope of dark and light blue colors that suggested many things to many people—a towering wave cresting on a beach perhaps, or a dark lunar landscape. The painting was just what Lewis wanted because it conveyed a feeling of airy openness and boundless space. Perfect for the long, lonely, trans-Atlantic flights from New York to Paris and back that Lewis took at least twice a month, commuting from his U.S. corporate headquarters to his vast economic empire spread across western Europe, the 20 or so food companies that made up the heart of TLC Beatrice International.
Butch Meily recalls accompanying Lewis on one of these flights. A tall, svelte African-American stewardess named Pamela Gunter silently served them a rare French red wine, vintage 1972. Puffing on his beloved Monte Cristo No. 3 Cuban cigar, with headphones on as he listened to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” Lewis had a wool blanket with the initials of his company, TLC, draped around him. Sitting in his favorite chair where no one else was allowed to sit, Reginald F. Lewis looked for all the world like the master of everything he surveyed.
“Do you realize how far we’ve come?” he said to Meily as the thick, oddly pleasing aroma of cigar smoke wafted through the cabin. “Oh, you don’t know. You weren’t there during the early days,” he quickly added.
Lewis pulled out a yellow legal pad, a habit from his days as a lawyer, together with his black and gold Mont Blanc pen and his favorite HP calculator and ran through some quick calculations just as he had done a hundred times before. “Ireland, $150 million. France, $600 million. Italy $100 million . . .” On and on he went, tripping lightly from country to country as he totalled up the net worth of each chunk of his Beatrice holdings. His eyes danced with pure delight as he shouted out the total.
“I love this plane.” he then said to no one in particular.
“It’s the ultimate perk.” Meily answered.
“Yes.” Lewis nodded. “That it is.”
“Feel like a movie?” he asked. “Put on ‘American in Paris,’” he instructed Meily without waiting for an answer.
Lewis and his plane had been up and down eight times in the last eight hours, hopskotching from city to city all across Europe. Meily, who was more than ten years younger, was exhausted and nauseous from the many takeoffs and landings, but Lewis seemed to be bursting with energy.
The cabin lights dimmed. Lewis twirled his seat to face the video monitor and on came Gene Kelly dancing through the streets of Paris. Lewis watched silently for a moment, fiddling with his headpho
nes. He was grinning, seemingly transfixed by the images on the screen. Lewis loved movies, especially old movies, and he often mused about someday buying one of the big Hollywood studios.
The stewardess prepared his bed, then cleared out the dishes, and left the cabin. All of a sudden, Lewis burst into song, startling Meily, as Lewis sang along with Gene Kelly.
Lewis loudly warbled the lyrics, glancing gleefully around him.
A few minutes before landing, Lewis headed for the lavatory. He was fastidious about his personal appearance and he never left the plane or appeared anywhere in public unless he was dressed to the T.
He put on a dark suit, brushed his teeth, and splashed himself with cologne from the medicine cabinet. Finally, he put on dark glasses, patted his vest pocket to make sure he had his passport and wallet, and then walked slowly back to his seat, tugging at the window shutters to open them.
“How do I look?” he barked out.
“Good,” Meily said.
“Good? We’re not shooting for good. We’re shooting for great. What’s the matter with you?” he chided Meily in good humor.
Outside, it was dark but in a few minutes, the lights of Paris became visible below them. The sharply etched figure of the Eiffel Tower loomed over everything. The Challenger silently emerged from the night sky and onto the string of lights that marked the runway at Le Bourget Airport. It was a smooth landing, as it almost always was with Lewis’s chief pilot, Captain Brendan Flannery, at the controls. This is where Lindbergh landed on his historic flight so many years ago, Meily thought when they landed at Le Bourget. Then he prayed that he would not have to accompany the indefatigable Lewis to the office that night.
The plane taxied to a stop. A black Mercedes emerged out-of-the-shadows and rolled to a stop on the tarmac at the precise spot where the ramp was being swung into place against the plane’s door. Out jumped Lewis’s French driver, the ever-dependable Patrick Lelong, neatly dressed in a suit and tie.
Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? Page 31
