Porter Henderson a fixture for 70 years

SAN ANGELO, Texas - "There's been a change in ownership ... but you'll always find the same friendly service here that you've been appreciating for almost 15 years."

The announcement is from a 1944 advertisement in the San Angelo Standard-Times letting readers know that the H.G. Whitaker Implement & Seed Store had now split into two separate companies, the H.G. Whitaker Field & Garden Seed, and Porter Henderson Implement Company.

It was the first mention of a company that would become a landmark for decades in San Angelo and the surrounding communities. In the cotton fields around Wall, Miles, Eola and beyond, if there was a green John Deere tractor plowing the rows, it was bought at Porter Henderson.

But now in 2012 there's been another change in ownership. South Plains Implement, based in Seminole, acquired Porter Henderson in September.

The acquisition is a sign of the times, said Jeb Henderson, who will stay on as general manager of the San Angelo location.

"John Deere is really promoting consolidation with dealerships throughout the industry," he explained. "It's the economy of scale. With larger organizations, there are more resources to better serve customers. You can draw from larger inventories and be more competitive in the marketplace."

In addition to the Porter Henderson locations in San Angelo, Ballinger and Big Spring, South Plains Implement has dealerships in Seminole, Denver City, Tornillo, Mesquite, N.M., and Deming, N.M. All the dealerships combined have 160 employees.

Jeb, his brother Joey Henderson and their father, Joe Henderson Sr., could see the writing on the wall and how things were shaping up in the industry. They've known South Plains owners Brian Snodgrass and Scotty Johnson for a long time and felt comfortable selling to them now, instead of being forced to sell to someone else later.

"About a year and a half ago we started talking about the possibility of merging," said Joey, who handles outside sales. "We had others interested in us, but we went with South Plains. They're a good fit. We're confident they'll maintain what we have."

"Brian and Scotty are friends of ours," Jeb said. "They run their business a lot like we do. We're very similar in philosophy and taking care of the customer."

Jeb and Joey are the third generation of Hendersons involved with the company. Their grandfather and founder, Porter Henderson Sr., was born in 1901 in Burkett, in rural Coleman County. He quit school when he was 11 years old after the death of his father to work on the farm and help support the large family.

Porter Henderson later worked for Lutz Mill Company in Brownwood, and it was during a sales call on H.G. Whitaker that he was offered a job as manager of the company's Ballinger store. He transferred to the San Angelo store in 1936, which was located at 450 S. Oakes St.

"Back in the 1930s and '40s, dad was sometimes trading tractors for horses and livestock," Joe Henderson Sr. recalled. "Whitaker Brothers had a feed lot, and they'd put the livestock there. They also traded crops for tractors to feed the livestock."

Whitaker sold more than just implements then. A picture Jeb's aunt found shows his grandfather standing in the store among horse collars, fishing rods, ammunition, guns, stoves, coffee pots and house and kitchenware.

In December 1943, Porter Henderson joined C.Q. Davis Sr. and Lee Watson and purchased the implement part of Whitaker. In 1946 they moved the company to 702 South Oakes St., where part of the Fort Concho parade grounds are now. Henderson later bought out his two partners to own the company outright.

"Dad bought out the other two in the 1950s in the middle of a drought," Joe said. "That took a little courage."

Porter Henderson enjoyed the great relationships he had with farmers and he had a love for people, Joe said.

"In those days farmers had large gardens and they would have gatherings," he said. "They called them watermelon parties. Dad knew a lot of people. He had a memory for names and faces. All of the folks that worked with him, the farmers and customers ... he loved being around people. And he was really good at knowing how a machine worked. He could make any plow, plow. He could diagnose a problem and solve it."

His father believed that if you owned a business, it was important to give back to the community, Joe said. Throughout his career, Porter Henderson was a member, a chairman, a trustee, a director or the president of various groups such as the Rotary Club, city boards and agriculture and implement organizations. He was chairman of the World War II-era Tom Green County Ration Board and chairman of the Tom Green County Fall Fair and Race Meet. He also held various positions in his church, the First Christian Church.

The Fort Worth Press Soil Conservation Program honored him twice with an award, and in a news clipping from 1951, said of him, "he is known to practically every farmer in this area as a veritable library of data on how to conserve soil, water and the prime ingredients of farming. To some people soil is just dirt. To Henderson, it is, 'our basic and most valuable natural resource,' " he was quoted as saying.

Porter Henderson's volunteerism also extended to schools. A Standard-Times photo from 1953 shows him holding a cake he would later auction off at the Senior High School Parent Teacher Association variety show and cake auction, held to raise funds to redecorate the teacher's lounge.

He had a special relationship with the then-2-year San Angelo College. Porter Henderson was a longtime chairman of the board of trustees and later its president. He was instrumental in getting the junior college elevated to four-year state supported status.

"He was very interested in education and encouraged kids to get an education," Joe said. "He left school to support his family in the eighth grade, and he always felt like it was crucial for kids to get an education. That's why he was so involved with SAC."

One of the family's proudest moments came three years after Porter Henderson's death in 1964, when the now four-year Angelo State College named its new library after him.

"You can't feel any prouder than how my brother and I felt, and our families," Joe said. "He was president of the college board for 20 years and he loved every minute of it, and he had some great board members."

Porter Henderson suffered a stroke in 1957 and his health eventually began to fail. Joe always had worked at the dealership after school and during the summer, and after graduating from Texas Tech University in 1960, he decided that's where he wanted to be.

After his father's death, Joe became president of the company. His brother, Porter Henderson Jr., was an accounting professor at North Texas State University, but he also kept books for the company.

"He grew up in the business during the drought and decided he wanted a job that didn't depend on rain," Joe said. "He was an exceptional person and a big help to the dealership."

Porter Henderson Jr. died in a two-vehicle crash in Farmers Branch in 1973.

With Joe at the helm, the dealership began to outgrow its location, and with farm equipment getting bigger and bigger, bringing it into San Angelo was a challenge and a safety issue. In May 1982, the implement company relocated to its current spot on the east side of San Angelo on U.S. 67.

Nothing is ever certain in farming and there were numerous challenges along the way, Joe said.

"The last drought was always the worse one," he said. "Until the next one came along. There were always weather conditions, fluctuating commodity prices, the farm program. They have a large effect on how farmers do and our success depended totally on how the farmers did. It they did well, we did well. If they didn't, we didn't."

During the 1986 drought, the implement company had 26 tractors on the lot and no one was buying anything.

"The mechanics were sitting around in the back building model airplanes," Joe said. "Farmers were taking jobs in town to exist. We never thought about closing up, but we had to scale down. The late '80s looked really bleak, and then it rained and there were good years. But that's the nature of the business. The lawn mowers and gators (utility vehicles) coming in later smoothed out the valleys and helped make it easier to get through the hard parts."

Like his father before him, the best part of the job was meeting the people, Joe said.

"There's not a lot of turnover in farming," he explained. "Over the years, the people you work with and the people you deal with as customers, they become more than customers. They became friends and like family. It's a unique business."

Joe followed his father in community involvement as well and served on numerous boards, including the Chamber of Commerce and Shannon Memorial Hospital. He was president of the Southwest Hardware and Implement Association, and in 1985 John Deere honored him for outstanding achievement in sales.

His sons came into the business in the 1980s, and Joe retired in the late 1990s, although he still maintained an office at the dealership.

Farmers still make up the largest volume of sales, but the implement company has a more diverse clientele now, Jeb said.

"We sell to the oil industry and ranchers," he explained. "You have hunters needing utility vehicles. And the Internet has opened the world up now. We do a lot of overseas business like in Australia, China, Greece and the Bahamas."

The brothers learned a lot from their father over the years.

"What I'll always remember about Dad is how fairly he treated people, whether they were employees or customers," Joey said. "If somebody was upset or dissatisfied, he had a way of dealing with it. The vast majority of times you're able to work through it and the person leaves as a friend. He got that from his father, and I got that from him. He operated the business in a fair and ethical manner."

Their father also let them make their own mistakes.

"Back in the 1990s we made some mistakes," Joey said. "At one time we had 60 to 70 cotton strippers on the lot, and I'm sure he had some sleepless nights. But he never overruled us. We made our own way, and I respect and appreciate what he did for us."

And it was to their father that they first went when the idea of selling the dealership came up.

"We talked to Dad first," Joey said. "Without him we wouldn't have had any of this."

With such strong ties to the company, there were a lot of thoughts and emotions about this, Joe said. But in the end it's still a business decision.

"Like anything else in business there are challenges and opportunities," Joe said. "The boys had a decision to make, and I felt like they had good judgment in making the decision."

Though the sign outside the implement company has changed, the Porter Henderson legacy will live on.

"From the time my grandfather bought the business, our primary goal was not to see how much money we could make," Joey said "But taking care of our customers and employees and providing customers with what they needed to be successful. More important to us was to sell a farmer the equipment they needed and still be able to go to a festival on a weekend and be friends with these people. We're all in this together. We all help each other out. I can walk into a coffee shop in the morning and see a big group of farmers and sit down with them as friends. I'm proud of that."

Jeb and Joey's mother, Su, is sentimental about the change because the dealership has been in the family so long, Jeb said. So before any changes were made, she took pictures of the three locations and is compiling a history so people will always remember the Porter Henderson name and what it stood for.

The Hendersons have no doubt that South Plains Implement will carry on the volunteerism and philanthropy that Porter Henderson Sr. started, and will have the same care and concern for its employees and customers.

Perhaps South Plains could borrow from the 1944 advertisement.

"There's been a change in ownership ... but you'll always find the same friendly service here that you've been appreciating for almost 70 years."

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