Black Of Black & Decker Dies

CECILTON, Md. AP is reporting that Alonzo G. Decker Jr., who turned Black & Decker into an industrial giant by marketing power tools for home use, has died. He was 94.

Decker died Monday of heart failure at his home in Maryland.

Decker, whose father co-founded the company in 1910, helped revolutionize the power tool industry by putting drills, saws, hedge trimmers and DustBusters into the hands of consumers for weekend household chores.

Decker said he saw the future of his business in 1940 when he learned that female World War II defense workers were stealing his industrial power drills. They were using the tools, which were not available at local hardware stores, for home improvements. He decided then that the company should make products for use in the home.

He introduced the first cordless, battery-powered drill for home use in 1961. His innovations spawned legions of magazines and boosted sales at hardware chains.

Astronauts on the Apollo missions used his power drill to take core samples of the moon's surface.

"He was the outstanding chief executive officer in the company's history," said Charles Costa, Black & Decker vice president for administration. "He took sales from $100 million to $650 million and changed the way people do their work around the house."

Nolan D. Archibald, Black & Decker's chairman and chief executive officer, called Decker a great business leader of the 20th century.

"He was a man of high personal morals who had an international vision. We now have 35 percent of sales outside the U.S. He was the driver for our global expansion," Archibald said.

Decker was 14 when he began working for the business founded by his father, Alonzo G. Decker Sr., and S. Duncan Black.

Born in Orangeville, Md., he graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1929.

He began working for company's export department in 1930 and demonstrated a rotary car polisher in the Soviet Union just as the Depression was beginning to have an effect on business. He was the first employee laid off near the end of that year because his father did not want to give the appearance of nepotism.

After selling soap flakes to grocery stores for $8 a week, he was hired back by the company as a floor sweeper for 25 cents an hour. He worked briefly in the sales department before shifting to manufacturing in 1933.

He was promoted to vice president in 1940, the same year he joined the board of directors, and was the chief executive officer from 1964 to 1975, and chairman of the board until 1978.

He left the board in December 2000.