Roger Milliken: Businessman, innovator, environmentalist

At the time of his death in 2010 in Spartanburg at age 95, Roger Milliken had left a mark as big as his billion-dollar fortune.

From politics to business, philanthropy and worker safety, industrial innovation and the environment, Milliken blazed trails and was looked up to in most areas – although in the 1950s he attracted national publicity when he closed a Darlington plant rather than let its 500 workers unionize.

The son of a wealthy Maine family, Milliken was heir to a small collection of textile plants. Other young men might have been content to sit on such a nest egg – after all, Milliken at Yale had majored in what might seem a dilettante’s subject – French history.

But Milliken, who read four newspapers a day, had an insatiable curiosity, a workaholic’s drive and a hunger for excellence that led him to move his headquarters to Spartanburg. There, he created a privately held, far-flung textile and chemical empire. Today, it now has nearly 7,000 employees and 39 plants in the U.S., Europe and China.

An activist in conservative politics, Milliken in the 1960s used his money to help start the S.C. Republican Party. Milliken gave so much money to conservative Republicans that Democrats called him “Daddy Warbucks.” The late Jim Edwards, the state’s first Republican governor, credited Milliken with getting him elected. As a business leader, he led the drive to build the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, which is credited with helping land major employers along the I-85 corridor.

An environmentalist, Milliken planted trees with a religious fervor. Each year, he held tree seminars, inviting experts from around the world to talk about conservation. He funded the planting of thousands of trees at colleges, including Wofford and Converse. He even planted trees on interstates.

At Milliken’s funeral service, a longtime friend said of him: “His mission in life was to be at war with one-dimensional thinking.”

This story was originally published December 29, 2015 at 12:06 PM with the headline "Roger Milliken: Businessman, innovator, environmentalist."