I met Larry Johnson in the mid-70's. He was recruited by a small, family owned company as part of a transition to a professional management team. I worked in inside sales at the time. I was part of the home grown talent, which meant I had very little exposure to the tools and ways of a professional manager.
Larry was with Honeywell prior to joining our firm. He was part of their avionics group at the time, yet came to our low tech, high energy firm. Some years later, I asked him why he joined a relatively small company in Milwaukee when he could have gone almost anywhere in the corporate world. He said it felt better to be a "bigger fish in a smaller pond." And, it worked.
Larry and the others he recruited to join the company helped turn a nice little, profitable company into a very attractive, highly profitable company. The company was eventually acquired by Reliance Electric. Reliance was a $1.5 billion publicly traded company headquartered in Cleveland. We had become a really professionally managed organization by then.
After the the Reliance deal, Larry became president of our still relatively small company. I left in 1980 to join a firm involved in mergers and acquisitions. Larry left a few years later to head up another nice little, privately owned firm in Watertown. He helped that firm grow, as well. The firm was eventually sold, at a handsome multiple of EBITDA, I suspect.
Larry then became president of the Kelly Company in Milwaukee. After a period of time, he bought the company, bringing several of his senior managers along for the ride. He sold the company in 1999.
Just before the deal closed, Larry was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. A while later, he came up with prostate cancer. My friend, who had made a lot of money for other people, finally had some real money of his own. He knew the quality of his life would never be the same.
I became Larry's brother-in-law when I married Larry's wife's sister. We all travelled together. Played golf. Ate really well. Went fishing. We talked about business. We talked about life.
Larry died on Saturday, October 22nd.
I have been using Larry's "professional management training" throughout my career and, perhaps most importantly, for the past 16 years of my TEC life. My members have heard Larry Johnson speaking to them along the way. His legacy will live well beyond what he might have imagined when he came to Milwaukee from Minneapolis 35 years ago. It lives on in all of us.
RSS Feed