Richardson, Henry Smith, 1885-1972

H. Smith Richardson (Henry Smith Richardson) was born in Greensboro, N.C. In 1907, he became sales manager for the Vick Company (later Richardson-Vicks, Inc.), which his father founded in 1905 to market Vicks Family Remedies. Richardson was also an early leader in management development, including the Vick School of Applied Merchandising, a college recruiting program in the 1930s, and special reports to shareholders on the importance of management development. He was also a pioneer in corporate governance, initiating practices in the 1940s that spread to other companies in later years.

From the description of Henry Smith Richardson papers, 1811-1999 [manuscript]. WorldCat record id: 32246364

Jacob Henry Smith Richardson was born on 19 July 1885 in Greensboro, N.C., the first son of Lunsford and Mary Lynn Smith Richardson. He attended public schools in Greensboro and, upon graduation, matriculated to Davidson College, from which his father and several of his maternal uncles had graduated. He remained but one school year (1902 1903) before entering the United States Naval Academy. Part of the wholesale expulsion of midshipmen that occurred in 1906, when fully one third of the student body was dismissed, H. Smith Richardson, as he was known for most of his life, then journeyed to New York. After some hardship, he established himself as a salesman. Soon thereafter, his father, a manufacturing chemist who had founded the Vick Chemical Company in Greensboro in 1905, asked his son to join him as a salesman in this enterprise.

During the early years of the business, Smith Richardson's marketing ability was a primary reason for the company's success in the United States and expansion abroad beginning in the 1920s. He traversed the countryside, a gruelling chore given the state of rural roads at that time, introducing his products to remote retailers. His imaginative advertising campaigns were revolutionary; Vick's effective newspaper advertising, roadside signs, point-of-sale displays, and aggressive utilization of free samples hastened its impressive sales expansion. Perhaps most importantly, Richardson recognized early the company's one truly unique product, Vick's Magic Croup Salve, an effective reliever of common cold symptoms developed by Lunsford Richardson, using menthol from Japan. He pressured his reluctant father to drop the company's assortment of other remedies in order to concentrate sales efforts on this, their most successful item, which they renamed Vick's VapoRub.

With the death of Lunsford Richardson in 1919, Smith Richardson was named president of the firm, a position he held until 1929 when he became chairman of the board. In addition to pioneering in advertising and international expansion, Richardson was far ahead of his time in both management development and corporate governance. From the earliest years, he attracted able young people who played an important part in the company's future success. In a 1926 memorandum, he wrote, The future of the business is going to depend upon the human material we put into it, and the most important work facing the company is to build an organization that will live. In 1930, during the Great Depression, he set for the company the objective of being an Enduring Enterprise. He realized that, to accomplish this goal, management development would have to be the company's #1 job. He discussed the reasons companies fail and the importance of management development in several reports to shareholders, starting in 1933.

By the mid-1930s, Vick was one of the largest United States college recruiters, using the novel approach of a post-graduate 15-month course in marketing, known as the Vicks School of Applied Merchandising. The program was so highly regarded that Vick could attract many top college graduates each year. On completion of each year's program, Vick kept the best students and helped the others secure good jobs.

In corporate governance, Vick initiated a number of practices that were adopted by other companies in later years. These include establishing a committee selected annually by shareholders to nominate directors; establishing an audit committee independent of management; forming an executive personnel committee from members of the board of directors that was concerned with management development; using an outside professional director; and, in order to strengthen the board in its role of independent review of operating management, having as chairman of the board someone other than the chief executive officer.

In addition to holding executive positions at Vick and in a number of financial, insurance, and real estate companies, Richardson was a member of the United States Chamber of Commerce and active in the National Association of Manufacturers, especially during the early years of World War II when the Association was particularly vocal. Richardson also participated in numerous civic and philanthropic activities benefitting both North and South Carolina and the nation, as did his brother Lunsford Richardson, Jr., who worked alongside Smith in the family business. Smith Richardson was an isolationist on the eve of World War II and actively supported the America First Committee, a strong voice against American entry into the war.

In 1935, Richardson established the Richardson Foundation (later Smith Richardson Foundation), which came to be the focus of his later life. One of the Foundation's first projects was to encourage judicial reform in North Carolina. After World War II, the Foundation concentrated on Cold War education and encouraged the work of anti-Communist organizations. Throughout his life, Richardson was strongly anti-Communist and was concerned about communism's possible negative influences on the country, especially its young people. The Foundation later turned to developing leadership and management skills among young North Carolinians with a Richardson (later North Carolina) Fellows program at leading colleges and universities. Through the Foundation, Richardson supported institutions of higher education, such as the University of North Carolina, the University of South Carolina, Presbyterian College, and Davidson College. In 1970, the Foundation established the Center for Creative Leadership to study and to teach creativity and leadership. The Center has since become an outstanding institution in its field with thousands of people participating in its programs in the United States and abroad.

Richardson was proud of his Scotch-Irish heritage and considered the South more American than other regions whose populations included more immigrants. He named North Carolina's racial heritage as one of its assets in an article about how the state could survive the Depression and improve its economy. His correspondence and writings contain numerous references to his racial attitudes, including a letter to the South African Information Service comparing apartheid to segregation in the American South.

Richardson actively guided his family's interests, both financial and otherwise. He guided the investment of the family's substantial resources and held executive positions in a number of family-owned financial, insurance, and real estate companies, notably the Reinsurance Corporation of New York. His personal holdings included real estate in Connecticut and North Carolina and Mount Holly Plantation outside Charleston, S.C. Another facet of Richardson's vision for his family's future was his insistence that all members remain informed of and active in family affairs. To promote family solidarity and to insure that members would not sell their interests in the Richardson holdings, he initiated biannual family meetings and trained younger generations to appreciate the family's history and what he saw as its duty to society. Such duties included responsible, community-oriented, patriotic philanthropy.

The family's reputation came under fire in the 1940s when officials of the First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro challenged the Richardson's father's will. Richardson hotly refuted the claims made in the lawsuit, and, when the suit was resolved, insured that the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States adopt a resolution clearing the Richardson name.

An avid outdoorsman, Richardson was influential in the passage of legislation creating the North Carolina Wildlife Commission. He was also a life member of the National Council Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America (one of less than a dozen so honored) and was very active in this capacity until his death.

Richardson spent the last 40 years of his life at Green Farms, Fairfield County, Conn., and was active in area affairs, officially through the Foundation and privately as a member of various clubs and associations. Richardson was also a lifelong member and financial supporter of the Presbyterian Church.

Richardson died at Green Farms on 11 February 1972.

(Parts of this biographical note were supplied by H. Smith Richardson, Jr., in 1995.)

From the guide to the Henry Smith Richardson Papers, 1811-1999, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)