SCMA's Roger Milliken Defender of Manufacturing Award
Templeton: 'Thanks for allowing me to brag about you'
Catherine Templeton
Director of South Carolina’s Dept. of Health & Environmental Control (DHEC)
Remarks to the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, in accepting the Roger Milliken Defender of Manufacturing Award
December 11, 2014
I’m honored to be here. I was fortunate when I graduated from Wofford College to be able to go work for Milliken & Co. I was probably the only Bachelor of Arts graduate that Milliken hired that year. I was such an outlier in that entire class of about 120 hired that year. When we got to Milliken, everybody went around and gave their background: “I’m a chemical engineer.” “I’m an electrical engineer.” “I’m a civil engineer.” When it was my turn, I shortened my major and said, “I’m a poli-sci major.” Politics, economics and philosophy probably didn’t make a lot of sense, so I just said, “poli-sci.”
As you know Mr. Milliken was very dedicated to making sure we were well rounded. So when we went to Milliken University, he wanted to make sure that the chemical engineer from Pickens, S.C., knew table manners and could sit across from the premier of China when he created this new patent and sell it to the Chinese. So he made sure we had etiquette classes. And about four weeks into our training – and we’re all about 24ish – it’s a Friday afternoon at 4 o’clock and the premiere intellect on all etiquette comes to the Milliken guest house and throws about 50 sets of silverware on the table. And she said, “When you can set this table properly, you may leave.”
Well, the chemical engineers and the electrical engineers and everybody else looked at each other. Some of them didn’t bother to take their baseball caps off. And I sort of parted the waves – and I will thank my mother for what’s about to come – I set the table in about two minutes. It’s like the kid at the basketball practice that gets that shot so everybody can go home and not run any more suicides. And they all looked at me and said, “you are a polymer science major AND you know how to set the table?” And I said, “yes.”
I was fortunate enough to live in a one-room duplex about a block from Mr. Milliken’s house. And I worked in Union (S.C.) at the Cedar Hill facility in the Inspection Department. It’s a 24-hour-a-day job and I worried about it 24 hours a day. I thought it was that important. And so I’d wake up at 4 or 5 and get in the car and go to Union. And I started noticing this tall, dark figure walking around the neighborhood at that hour. It was a little bit startling at first. And it was Mr. Milliken. So I decided one day that I would walk with him. He would walk around the neighborhood every once in awhile with his Dictaphone and he would just talk. I don’t know who ended up with those tapes. He never really talked to me – he just let me walk. And so I got to listen to the way his mind worked for probably six months, if you put it all together, before he put me into a better place in a smaller town in Georgia.
But he taught me to be timely. He taught me to be accountable. He taught me to measure. He taught me to be precise. He taught me to care about the people I worked with. That was the philosophy at Milliken. And it wasn’t just because we didn’t want unions. It was because that was the right thing to do. And it has served me in every job that I’ve ever had. I’m an accidental tourist as a regulator. To call me the “regulatory tsar” is pretty tongue in cheek. The governor was accused of putting me in regulation to blow it up. When she was accused of that, she said, “I am guilty as charged. I want her to blow it up.” So we have done an incredible job as a state of marrying environment and manufacturing. I often say that the manufacturers in this state are the most responsible conservationists in this state. It’s good business. It’s good for sales. It’s good for the environment. And they all live here.
So thank you for allowing us to create consensus. Thank you for allowing me to brag about you. And thank you for bringing jobs to South Carolina.