The City Wire Person of the Month: Doug Williams

Editor’s note: The City Wire highlights each month a person in the Fort Smith region. Special recognitions, accomplishments, philanthropic support and input from The City Wire readers are considered when selecting a person to profile.

story and photos by Roy Hill

On Doug Williams’ first day in his new job at Baldor Electric Co. in Fort Smith, Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the United States, and a young Frank Broyles was about to start only his second year as the head coach of the Arkansas Razorback football team.

Fifty years, 10 U.S. Presidents and eight Razorback head coaches later, Doug Williams still works for Baldor as an engineer.

Baldor, a maker, designer and marketer of electric motors, motor drives, power transmissions and generators, posted record sales in 2008 of $1.95 billion. The company employs between 7,500 and 8,000 in 28 plants in five countries and sales offices serving more than 80 countries. About 2,000 are employed by Baldor in the Fort Smith area.

The Baldor building where Williams spent his first day on the job was located near where the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Zero Street now stands.

“It was a very small place then,” Williams said. “There were three people in the engineering department and only about 50 people in the plant. Now we’ve got about 100 people in the engineering department alone.”

Originally from a small community just south of Clarksville, Williams graduated with a engineering degree from Arkansas Tech University, and spent time in the Army and with the Corps of Engineers on various jobs and projects.

“I got tired of traveling around all the time, and I was ready to settle down,” Williams said. “ Baldor had an ad in the paper for a job opening, and I applied for it.”

Within a year after taking the job in Fort Smith, Williams met and married his wife Barbara.

“She was an RN at St. Edwards back when St. Edwards still had their own nursing school,” Williams explained. “She was from up just east of Rogers.”

Doug and Barbara have two children, Mike Williams of Fort Smith and Dr. Karen Williams who is a professor at East Central University in Ada, Okla.

Williams says the secret to staying with one job so long is taking pleasure in the work itself.

“You have to like the work, which I do,” said Williams said. “Some people get in a job and are miserable every day, and look for something else.”

Williams also cites good leadership at Baldor as another reason for him staying with the company so long. Williams is in a unique position to judge the management of Baldor, as he has personally known all four of the Baldor CEOs in the company’s 89-year history.

“I’ve known all of them. I was very close to the last three.”

Edwin Ballman started the company, which originally had its central operation in St. Louis, Mo. Fred Ballman, Edwin’s son, was the chief engineer when Williams was hired. Fred opened the Fort Smith operation and later became the CEO. The third CEO was Rollie Boreham who made Doug Williams the focus of page seven in his book about Baldor titled “The Road Less Traveled.” Williams keeps a copy of the book in his office, autographed by Boreham in 2005.

“I’m really proud of the fact that Rollie gave me a full page in that book,” Williams said.

Current CEO John McFarland counts both Doug Williams and his son, Mike Williams as employees. Doug’s son Mike works in the sales department and is himself a 20-year veteran of the company.

Williams sees Baldor as not just his job, but his community.

“Ninety-five percent of the people I know, I see out here at Baldor every day. They all know me and we work together pretty well,” Williams said.

Williams recalls many changes that have come to Fort Smith since his first day on the job in 1959.

“There have been lots of new companies start up in Fort Smith since I started at Baldor,” Williams reminisced. “The Whirlpool factory was just being built then, but it was still called Norge then, and they were making refrigerators. There was no Central Mall and no Wal-Mart. In fact my father-in-law knew Sam Walton back when he started his five and dime in Bentonville that later became Wal-Mart.”

Continuing, Williams noted: “We’ve had some big milestones here. I remember it was
a big deal for us to get to $50 million in sales for a year. Today, we’ll sell that much in a few days. We had just under $2 billion in sales last year.”

Another huge change Williams saw in Baldor and many other facets of life was the massive computerization over the last few decades.

“We just started getting computers in the accounting department in the late 1970s. We’ve been through a few computers since then. By the late 1980s it was the equipment for computerized drafting that really went a long way in speeding up the whole process,” he explained.

Despite all the changes, Williams has remained a constant, showing up at his office every day for the same company for 50 years. And he sees the future as very bright for Baldor.

“We used to have to look up to a number of companies,” Williams said. “But we’ve grown to the point where we don’t have to look up to anyone. We make the best motors and take care of our customers.”