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Major James Lide Coker founded Southern Novelty Company in 1899 in a rented warehouse in Hartsville. He manufactured paper cones for the textile industry, starting with 12 employees. From that modest beginning, Sonoco Products Company has evolved, with 150 plants on five continents, and more than 11,000 employees making hundreds of products with a multitude of industrial and consumer applications.
But still there's a warm relationship between the people of Hartsville and Sonoco, and it goes beyond the fact that for more than 80 years Sonoco has been the Darlington County area's major employer. The relationship has even survived Sonoco's transition from a family-owned business to a publicly held Fortune 500 giant.
Charles W. Coker, Sonoco president and chief executive officer since 1970, said in an interview, "Well, I hope we aren't paternalistic anymore. I think a better way of describing it would be that we're genuinely interested in Sonoco people in this community.
"We have many families who have worked here whose grandfathers worked with my grandfather and whose great-grandfathers worked with my great-grandfather. During 86 years, generation after generation of people have been with Sonoco. So there's a lot of continuity. We have over a thousand people here with 25 years of service, members of the Old Timers Club. Some of them are retired, but they're still part of our corporate community. There's a lot of seniority, a lot of loyalty, and a lot of dedication from that employee group," he said.
Coker, who has been with the company himself for 28 years, said, "Hartsville is a wonderful town with a lot of wonderful people, and we've been part of it for many years. What we try to do is run a very sound business, a good place for our employees to work. We try to help out in the community wherever we possibly can without really taking a leadership role in a political sense. We're part of the community, but we don't try to dominate it. We just try to be good industrial neighbors."
For his accomplishments as president of one of South Carolina's major industries, his devotion to his community and his employees, and the high esteem in which he is held by other business leaders in the Palmetto State, the...