One day in the 1940s, when defense contractors ordered still more Black & Decker Corp. drills, Alonzo G. Decker Jr. was perplexed.
"Are they breaking down?" asked Decker, then the company's vice president of manufacturing and engineering.
"No, they're disappearing," someone replied. "Women are taking them home in their lunch baskets."
Decker voiced his reaction to the company's board: "When females are taking drills home we ought to be making something just for the home."
Black & Decker, of course, did.
About 50 years later, Decker, the son of the Towson company's co-founder, can claim more than fatherhood of the do-it-yourself movement -- a movement that has spawned racks of magazines, huge hardware store chains and even a top-rated television comedy.
At a time when few companies founded in Baltimore remain linked to their founders -- if alive at all -- Decker and the company his father founded stand out.
Last year alone, Parks Sausage Co., founded in Baltimore by Henry Parks in 1951, almost disappeared before it was bought by former football star Franco Harris. In nearby Sparks, Charles P. "Buzz" McCormick Jr., the grandnephew of McCormick & Co. Inc.'s founder, relinquished his CEO title. And PHH Corp., the Hunt Valley company founded in Baltimore, will soon be bought by a New Jersey company.
But to the surprise of many -- including the company's new hires -- Black & Decker still has a Decker.
Two weeks shy of his 89th birthday, Alonzo G. "Al" Decker Jr., likely holds more than one record for corporate longevity.
Early start
As a toddler, Al Decker napped weekends on his father's desk at the company's Calvert Street factory in Baltimore. He began working for the company as a high school kid, after it had moved to Towson. During the Great Depression, he was the first employee let go by his father and, later, the first hired back. He joined the company's board in 1940 and served as its CEO from 1964 to 1975. Still a member of the company's board, Al Decker is the final link to the company's founding families, or as he says, "the last of the tribe." Decker long ago departed from the day-to-day operations of Black & Decker. He now lives full time at the Money Point Farm near Cecilton, 400 acres where two converted farm cottages constitute a friendly yellow lodge that overlooks the Sassafras River.
