Flora Thornton Looks to Tomorrow, Not Yesterday

“Certainly,” Flora Thornton said, “certainly it was wrenching to be alone, but from the beginning I had new responsibility thrust upon me that was stimulating--learning about business affairs and working with people. My husband would be pleased and happy about the way things have been handled.”

Sitting on the red Jofra deer-design linen sofa in the library of her Holmby Hills home, Flora Thornton wanted to talk only about Flora Laney Thornton today and tomorrow, not about her yesterday and her 41-year marriage to Charles B. (Tex) Thornton, described as “one of the most imaginative and intelligent business executives of the last half-century” in his 1981 obituary.

‘The Old School’

“My marriage was one of the old school, and I was proud to augment my husband’s life, and he liked the idea that I was available. . . . My new life is very different . . . to be busy and to have new things to do is rewarding.

“It’s good to feel--I don’t know how to put it--that for the mature woman who is left alone, that there is life, given good health, that there is no reason you cannot have a new life.”

She has embraced life with vigor. “Nothing is status quo. You either are going to go forward or you are going to regress.”

Like her home. “It needed freshening . . . it’s more feminine now. I had a Western sculpture here, which is in the playroom (now). I am free to express my own taste. I always felt it was important to have things we both enjoyed before. I didn’t feel deprived--that was life together. This is the new life--for better or worse--that is my own, and I feel I am expressing myself as a separate individual, which is important for anyone who has to change gears in life.”

Also, she’s redecorated her living room with pretty linen peach pastel stripes, and is about to shuck modern paintings. The bedroom has been “sissified” with flowers and vines abounding in wallpaper and fabrics. And she’s begun to collect Chinese porcelains. “I love this house so, I keep adding to it. My husband didn’t care so much about collecting.”

With a slight grin, she said, “I have a feeling I am feeling my sense of freedom--I think that’s important. It’s good. I don’t think I am going overboard.”

Head Man at Litton

Tex Thornton was the man who bought a small microwave tube company named Litton in 1953 and transformed it into a billion-dollar electronics conglomerate. Before that he was the brilliant young Texan who took Washington, D.C., by storm and charted a plan for keeping track of Air Force planes during World War II. Later he was the leader of the Whiz Kids--including Robert S. McNamara and Arjay Miller--who transformed the struggling Ford Motor Co. into a giant. He went on to become vice president and general manager of Hughes Aircraft, dashingly reorganizing the company before going to Litton.

Today, says her attorney and former Litton executive, Glen McDaniel, “If her life had been different, Flora Thornton would have been a great businesswoman.”

In her red print Valentino dress, and crossing her slim legs shod in fresh Ferragamo pumps, she noted, “I do not think everything today is good. Promiscuity--that is not a good word--the lack of commitment in marriage, I think that is unfortunate. We all come into this world . . . we have some pleasures and some pains. Being married to the kind of person I was, with all his energy, it was strenuous. I don’t know today if I would have made it . . . but I think I grew by commitment.

“There’s usually some pain in growing, but growing is the only thing there is. If you don’t grow, you go backwards . . . gerontologists say that.

“My husband was very creative, but he did not burn the candle at both ends. When he rested, he rested. He had the ability to turn off, and sometimes he would come home, we would have a cocktail and play dominos. Well, there is not a lot of communication in that routine, but it can be pleasurable when one spends a lifetime together.”

‘You Break the Rules’

She noted, too, that he would retire to his room for two days after tremendous negotiations. “He was the first to say I raised the boys.” So, is the idea of being a corporate wife good a good one? “Not always . . . not everybody on the ladder is a genius.” Was her husband? “Not like an Einstein mind. He was creative, and for certain persons, you break the rules . . . but I don’t recommend it for every marriage.

“I have no qualms about saying that I made a vital contribution as his wife. I realize that now more than then, because if he had been faced with divorce . . . he was just a boy when I married him, but I knew he was going to do something. I am glad I did, but marriage is based more on equality today, and I think that is good. I am glad that I was strong enough, that I felt we were a united effort. And I remember my husband warmly, but that is past. If he had not gone through all he went through, I would not be here.”

Then she commented: “I must say, for most women, no man is a hero to his own wife. I don’t think I appreciated my husband as much as I do now, because there is that wear and tear of everyday relationships.”

‘A Good Marriage’

Did she have a happy marriage? “A good marriage. The ‘60s were especially good. The last five years he got sweeter.” It is not a suggestion that Tex Thornton was not sweet the other 36 years, just that he was sweeter the last five, and she liked that.

Recently, Flora Thornton made a multimillion-dollar gift to Pepperdine University, which, with donations from others, is building the $10-million Charles B. Thornton Administrative Center on the Malibu campus.

She also helped finance Foodworks!, the Museum of Science and Industry’s permanent exhibit on nutrition. A nutritionist who believes in moderation, Flora Thorton follows a diet that includes plenty of fresh vegetables, fruits and grains.

When museum director Don Muchmore needed $250,000 for the exhibit, completed just before the Olympics, Flora Thorton was “a pushover,” she said, because of her interest in health and food.

It stems from Texas Tech University in the 1930s, when she majored in nutrition and clothing design. That was while she was alto soloist at the Lutheran Church on Sundays (a trade for singing lessons), and before she left for Washington, D.C., to be supervised by her sister, and try for a musical career on Broadway in New York. She acquired an actor’s equity contract (“a very big thing in those days”), she said, and in 1936 she had a singing part in “May Wine,” Sigmund Romberg’s Broadway musical. The following spring she appeared in the music extravaganza, “White Horse Inn,” while modeling couturier clothes in private showrooms on Madison Avenue.

A Meteoric Rise

Then, she met young “Bates” (that’s what his mother called him) Thornton, who worked at the Interior Department with her sister. Both he and Flora had attended Texas Tech at the same time, but had not met. They were married and later had two sons. In his meteoric fashion, Thorton jumped from lieutenant to colonel in 1 1/2 years. Just before his death he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by President Reagan.

Charles B. Thornton Jr., head of the Thornton Corp., lives in Flintridge with his wife, Nancy, and “three beautiful teen-age daughters.” He serves as an outside director on the Litton board. Laney lives in San Francisco with his wife, Anne, and has two young children with another expected. He is the manufacturer of Eileen West dresses and Queen Anne’s Lace lingerie. “Both have Harvard MBA’s and both are pretty special boys,” their mother said.

“I am so grateful for many factors that have allowed my life to come to fruition,” Flora Thornton said. “I am a very happy woman. Sure, I miss the idea of another person in my life, but I am rich--in friends. . . . I am thankful every day.”

She is a Pepperdine regent and a member of the academic and the building and grounds committees. Last December, Pepperdine awarded her an honorary degree. A major interest is her commitment to the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board; President Reagan appointed her to a seven-year term, one of only two members from the private sector.

Lifetime Honorary Member

She also serves on the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and on the boards of the Kenneth Norris Cancer Hospital at USC Medical School and the St. John’s Hospital Foundation. She is a lifetime honorary member of the Amazing Blue Ribbon of the Music Center.

The Library of Congress, however, is a pet. “I am so struck with the fact that this great national--almost international--treasure we have is so little known. I would love to see a documentary.”

She has been instrumental in booking Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin for the Pepperdine Associates dinner in May. Boorstin also will speak to the World Affairs Council.

Though she recently returned from a trip to India (via London where she detoured to view a painting of St. Catherine by Murillo, a possible acquisition by the County Museum of Art, which boasts the Charles B. and Flora L. Thornton Gallery), she has not chosen to travel extensively since being widowed. She did, last fall, go to Maine Chance in Scottsdale, Ariz., to “pace myself on exercises” and at Christmas she took a cruise alone. “Can you imagine that? I didn’t care for it. I’ll never do it again. I went without a friend.”

Rather, she goes out several times a week (her escorts have included Luis Estevez, Rupert Allen and several others). “I am not a lonely person,” she said. “I have my dinner served here on a TV table and watch the news with dinner. I sleep well.”

A Spur-of-the-Moment Person

She entertains 12 to 14 for dinner once every two months. “You get better conversation with that number. Entertaining, you have to plan, and I prefer to act on the spur of the moment.” But she also hosts 22 occasionally, or three tables on the patio in the summer or a cocktail buffet for 100 at Christmas.

She’s frank about her views of widowhood, “because I think one person’s life experiences can be helpful to another. I’ve had four close friends widowed since I was: Francie Brody, Betts Bloomingdale--and suddenly having to learn about business--and gallant Bunny Wrather and Punky Dart--Jane. It’s the woman who has had no life or interest who is in trouble. . . . If she has not cultivated interests outside life together, then she is apt to be very lonely.

“I still have many of the same friends--the Group--we were all together at the Inauguration four years ago--the Smiths, Jorgensens, Wilsons, Ruth and Tom Jones. At first, I was tempted to say yes to everyone, and I thought if I didn’t accept every invitation, I would be forgotten. Now, after one year of adjustment and two years of being into things, now I need to take stock and concentrate on some of my many interests.”

She plans to continue her daily regimen of 20 minutes of mild yoga (“I swear by it--the energy it gives me”) and 20 minutes of aerobics (indoor bicycling and walking, preferably outdoors, two miles). She stands on her head several minutes a day. Aerobics equipment fills part of an extra bedroom, which doubles as an office for her secretary, Marlene Marsten, a Ph.D. in music. Together they do aerobics to classical music.

And she plans to return to painting. Accomplished with oils and acrylics, her landscapes hang in her hallway and are much in demand by friends and family.

She likes to discuss the effect of the women’s movement on her generation: “Being quite disapproving of the more virulent parts of the women’s movement, I, however, am quite sure women are treated differently than before. It’s been a great benefit. Men--industrialists and educators--have had their attitudes toward women changed whether they realize it or not. They are more respectful of women’s intelligence. . . . My generation has inherited some of the benefits.”