Frank Perdue, 84; Used Down-Home Charm to Pitch His Poultry Product

Frank Perdue, the folksy chief executive who turned his father’s backyard egg business into one of the world’s biggest chicken companies by appearing in TV commercials that featured his remarkably bird-like face, has died. He was 84.

Perdue died Thursday at his home in Salisbury, Md., after a brief illness.

In 1971, he was one of the first chief executives to pitch his own product on television, turning on the down-home charm as he delivered his famous line: “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.”

Perdue remained the company’s public face for the next two decades, helping build an empire that now employs 20,000 associates and partners, with 7,500 independent farm families. The company went from annual sales of $56 million in 1970 to $2.8 billion in 2003.

Until the late 1990s, he was regularly ranked on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. In 1997, it ranked him 214th and estimated his net worth at $825 million.

At the time of his death, Perdue was chairman of the executive committee of the board of directors of Maryland-based Perdue Farms. He had handed over control of the company to his son, Jim, in 1991.

Perdue’s rise was extraordinary, considering the company’s humble beginnings. His father, Arthur W. Perdue, started the family business in 1920, raising chickens for eggs. He and his father switched the business from eggs to chickens in the 1940s, and broke into retail sales in 1968.

Perdue Farms’ expansion in the 1970s was rapid, but it also sowed the seeds of worker discontent. The company opened plants in rural, often-poor areas of the South, where labor was cheap. Inevitably, union activism sprang up, which Frank Perdue sought to suppress.

In 1986, Perdue admitted to a presidential commission that he had twice unsuccessfully sought help from reputed New York crime boss Paul Castellano to put down union activities -- actions he later said he regretted deeply.

Perdue was born in Salisbury, Md., in 1920. His dream was to play professional baseball, but he later said he had “gathered more splinters than hits” on the team at Salisbury State Teachers College, from which he graduated in 1939.

Perdue’s loyalty to his hometown remained throughout his life. He was heavily involved in civic activities and gave an endowment to his alma mater, now Salisbury University, to establish the Perdue School of Business.

Perdue is survived by his third wife, Mitzi Ayala Perdue; four children; two stepchildren; and 12 grandchildren.