Mr. Spud, Billionaire, Soon to Retire

Jack Simplot is an old man and feels it.

The potato farmer who built an agricultural colossus in one generation and bankrolled Micron Technology in the next turned 90 on Jan. 4.

He has hung up his skis, talks of moving out of the corner office at J.R. Simplot Co. headquarters to make room for the president, and has told Micron he will soon retire from the board.

“You look around and see how many 90-year-olds are sittin’ up here back of a desk,” says Simplot, a bit perturbed to be pressed about his retreat. “I’m feeling it. Hell, I’m not as spry as I was. I’m not dumb, you know.”

Not dumb, indeed.

Simplot, who plays gin rummy at the private Arid Club most every day, did not become Idaho’s richest man or one of the nation’s biggest landowners on a gambler’s luck alone.

Forbes magazine last year estimated his wealth at $2.5 billion, which tied Simplot for 130th richest person in America. Simplot says his personal stock portfolio alone is worth nearly $2 billion.

He turned ownership of the J.R. Simplot Co. over to his children in 1994, the same year two sons, his daughter and a grandson began sharing the “office of chairman.” (“They’ve not done as good as I’d hoped,” offers the crusty Simplot, who still considers the company his own.)

The company makes most of its $3 billion in annual sales through processing potatoes and other vegetables, agricultural fertilizer and beef cattle. Among its holdings is the Paisley Ranch in south-central Oregon, the nation’s largest at 136 miles long and 65 miles wide.

“I’m a lucky guy that was born in a lucky country,” Simplot says. “I’m no Houdini. I like to bet my own judgment and I’ve been successful at it.”

Idaho, says former Gov. Phil Batt, has swept up the winnings.

“There’s a great percentage of our jobs that are due to his efforts one way or another,” Batt says.

Computer chip maker Micron is Idaho’s biggest employer with 11,000 of its 15,000 employees in the state. Some 5,200 of J.R. Simplot Co.’s 12,000 employees work in Idaho.

Simplot always had plenty of pluck.

Born John Richard Simplot in Dubuque, Iowa, and raised with five siblings on a homestead in Declo in south-central Idaho, Simplot left home at 14 after his taskmaster father refused to let him attend a basketball game.

His mother gave him four $20 gold coins, and he paid $1 a day for room and board at the town’s only hotel. Teachers also boarding there were paid in interest-bearing scrip, and Simplot bought it for 50 cents on the dollar, using it for collateral on a bank loan to buy 600 hogs at $1 each.

He spent the winter shooting wild horses (and some branded ones he had to pay for), selling the hides and boiling the meat with potato scraps to feed the hogs.

When prices jumped the next year, he marched some rare, fat hogs to market for a whopping $7,500.

That was Simplot’s stake for the potato business. He leased land and from an early partner learned to plant certified seed, not cull potatoes as was then common. Idaho’s dominance in potatoes grew with the innovation.

Simplot bought an early electric potato sorter and by 1940 had bought or built 33 potato warehouses along the rich Snake River plains from Idaho Falls to Vale, Ore.

A chance encounter with a Chicago businessman led Simplot into the onion-drying business at Caldwell in 1941. He made $500,000 the first year and soon was supplying much of the dried potatoes and vegetables consumed by U.S. troops during World War II.

After the war, his food production business expanded into freezing and canning, developing the product that would become the company’s mainstay: the frozen French fry, patented in the 1950s.

Simplot struck a deal with McDonald’s Corp. founder Ray Kroc, and his fry business grew with Americans’ love for fast food.

A former McDonald’s board member, Simplot still drives his white Lincoln Town Car with “Mr. Spud” vanity plates to the fast food chain for hash browns or French fries several times a week.

Not everything he touched turned to gold. There was the coconut farm and an emerald mine in Colombia and a gold mine in the Dominican Republic. And he was one of the investors who tried unsuccessfully to rescue northern Idaho’s Bunker Hill silver mining operation after silver prices plummeted in the early 1980s.

Like many captains of industry, Simplot has had scrapes with the law.

The IRS pinched him after he funded what were supposed to be partnerships to build the food business in the postwar years.

“Got my skirts cleaned, I guess. It was all me, no question about it,” says Simplot, his turquoise eyes smiling.

In the mid-70s, Simplot was charged with trying to manipulate Maine potato futures, was barred from commodities trading for six years and paid $50,000 in fines and an undisclosed amount to settle a lawsuit.

In 1977, he and the J.R. Simplot Co. each paid $40,000 in penalties for failing to report income and claiming false deductions.

In 1980, the 71-year-old took a gamble on the next generation of businessmen, giving twins Ward and Joe Parkinson $1 million for 40%of what would become Micron Technology.

Simplot, who doesn’t type or use a computer, pumped in $20 million more to help Micron build its first fabrication plant.

He and a handful of other Boise investors met for weekly breakfasts at Elmer’s Pancake House to talk strategy for Micron, which by the 1990s was one of the most active issues on the New York Stock Exchange.

Micron has since added electronics experts to its board and the Simplot stake in Micron (both the company and the man) has declined from more than 20% in 1995 to less than 12%.

Simplot says he wants to retire just as soon as he visits chip plants in Italy and Singapore that Micron bought from Texas Instruments last fall.

This time, he may really mean it.

A skier for 50 years even after two hip replacement surgeries, Simplot gave up Dec. 31 after climbing the lodge stairs at Brundage Mountain Resort near his vacation home in McCall. He owns half the resort.

His legs were shaky and he decided his wife, Esther, whom he married in the 1960s after a failed first marriage, should hit the slopes without him. She is now in her 60s.

“I know I get going 50 mph down those damn hills,” Simplot said. “I said, ‘Why should I take these chances?’ I’m an old man and I feel it. I just haven’t got the muscle left in those damn legs.”

He still has plenty on his plate. He and his wife walk daily, he plays golf and passes out silver dollars to trick-or-treaters who venture to his 100-acre home site on a hillside overlooking Boise. It’s part of the 2,200 acres he bought there for $5 an acre in 1941.

Today, Simplot is crafting plans for a museum. He has spent 59 years and untold millions from his chair on the board of Albertson’s College of Idaho.

He gets a kick out of the 220-acre soccer and baseball park his money just built, the minor league Idaho Steelheads hockey team he owns 40% of, and the fact his wife built a home for Boise’s arts groups, the Esther Simplot Performing Arts Academy.

Simplot credits his longevity to disdain for tobacco and alcohol. He used to reward workers who quit smoking with $200 and paid a couple to travel to Idaho schools exhibiting black lungs in bottles.

Religion? “I’m a fact man and if it don’t add up, I don’t buy it. I don’t believe in hocus pocus.”

He’s just bent on lasting as long as he can.

That, and still dreaming about buying a 3-million-acre ranch in Australia and the 80-acre Declo homestead his father slaved to clear and irrigate.

“The fella my dad sold it to, his son’s got it. He wants more than I want to pay, but I imagine he’ll come around,” says Simplot.

“I’ll get it one of these days, I’m pretty sure.”