The Craddock Brothers Build On Their Father’s Foundation

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Speaker 1: This is Lee Habeeb, and this is Our American Stories. And today we hear from Jeff Katz. He’s a radio host in Richmond, Virginia, and he’s also a columnist for the Boston Herald, and here he shares his deeply personal story about his teenage daughter, Julia, who has what doctors call global developmental delays and disabilities. And all of that means is that she functions physically and mentally at the level of a toddler. Here’s Jeff reading a note that he wrote to his daughter. Dear Julia, I’m writing you this note on March seventh, twenty eighteen. Today is the day that you turn fifteen years old. It’s an interesting day for me and for Mom, but it’s another day for you. You’re not like other kids, my sweet You’ve never made a big deal of your birthday. You’ve never asked us for any type of a special gift, not for your birthday, not for Hanakkah, not for Christmas. You’ve treated each and every day in the same way. Mom will wake you up and you’ll have a smile on your face when you see her. She’ll play some of your music and you’ll smile even more. You may laugh or giggle or squeal, but there will not be any words. You won’t complain about having to go to school. You won’t be happy to hear that it is a snow day. You won’t celebrate the fact that today is fifteen years since you were born. Most fifteen year old girls would be thinking about clothing, college, or a car by fifteen. Many dads have already we had to warn their daughters about some dopey boy. But today you’ll watch your favorite episode of Jack’s Big Music Show, enjoy your cereal, and be on the lookout for cookies wherever you could find them. Mom and I know that you will be with us as long as we’re alive, but we worry about what happens after we’re gone. You have two wonderful brothers, and I pray every day that we have raised them well enough to know that they will need to look after you. Someday you may be our middle child, but you’ll always be the baby, even as you get older according to the calendar. As Mom told me yesterday, you are timeless. You’ll always be my Pip squeak, despite the fact that the years are flying by. No, we’re not exploring potential careers or making plans for your wedding. We’re still hoping that we’ll be able to help you move from diapers to the potties someday. You live today the same way you did when you were about eighteen months old. You don’t speak, and you only recognize a few words, But oh the words that you know, kisses and cookies. No matter how filled up you are, there’s always room for a cookie or two. You don’t understand when I ask you how your day was, but you become laser beam focused when you hear the crinkle of the wrapper on a package of something sweet. No matter how sweet that candy, it’s still eclipsed by your genuinely sweet smile. So many people live their lives asking for things, demanding things, accumulating things. Most people never take the time to stop and savor a piece of cake, or breathe deeply to appreciate a gentle breeze like you do. I hear people in this world use horrible, insulting language to describe kids like you, and I want to shake them, yell at them. Some mock disabled kiddos like you, and I feel like crying. You don’t understand their words, but I do. Sometimes I really wish I did not. We never thought you would crawl, let alone walk, but you showed us. Your situation and challenges and disabilities have caused me to question my belief in God on some days and have served to strengthen it on others. You don’t speak, but somehow you are able to brighten my days and ways that I never imagined without a single solitary word. You’ve made me a better man and touched countless people. Hearing you cry ties my stomach into knots. But your giggle is truly the happiest sound that I have ever heard. I know you’ll never read this, nor would you understand this if I were to read it to you, So let me just say kisses and cookies, jewels, boules. I tell you today what I have told you on every March the seventh since two thousand and Daddy loves you more than you will ever know, and thank you for that reading. Jeff, You’ve made me a better man, he wrote, your giggle is the happiest sound I’ve ever heard. On Julia is unexpectedly learning how to walk. Jeff told the Boston Herald that quote. It was one of the proudest days of my life, one of the happiest days of my life. But I also have to tell you it’s a terrifying situation because Julia is like a toddler. She has no real understanding of, oh, the stove is hot, or I could fall here or trip there. We’re a thrilled that she’s trying to explore on her own a little bit, and we’re terrified at the same time. And this is true for all of us parents, but even more so for Jeff and his bride. Jeff has said that it’s tough to realize that he’ll never get to embarrass Julia by dancing with her at her wedding. But quote, she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. End quote. Last, but not least, he said these words. Quote. She’s never spoken a word, she’s never said a word to anybody, but she’s touched more people in her fifteen years on this earth than I ever have. Her joy is pure to me. She’s like the face of God. She’s the essence of good, and she shares her joy with everybody. Jeff Katz’s story his daughter Julius here on our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do. We’re asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to our American Stories dot com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s our American Stories dot Com. And we continue here on our American Stories. And up next we bring you Ben Cradock. He brings us the story of the gas station business. His father, Ron Cradock, started right here in Mississippi. Ron started from pretty close to nothing and he worked his way up from there. Here’s Ben to tell his family’s story. My dad, Ron Cradock, was a He came from nothing, one brother and two sisters, and they had a one bedroom home and so they slept on He slept on the floor his whole life. Always wanted more from himself, and so he always had a drive in him to be better, not let his circumstances define him. He went through college, got his degree, went to Vietnam, did that for four years, came back and was trying to find a job, and so he met my mother. They got married, and my grandfather had a gas station of Phillip’s sixty six, I believe, and so he told my dad, hey, you know, why don’t you try to get into the field business, and you know it’s a good way to know, to make a life. So my dad got on with Eximobile. He started off as a store manager, worked his way up to district manager and then he was over the Southeastern territory. My brother David, who’s seven years older, was born in Birmingham because we moved around a lot. So once I were born in Memphis, my dad and mister Taft Little they had the Southeastern Territory for Eximobile, and so they oversaw all the distributors, which you know run the independent distributors. So they were there go to people. There was two plants that were for sale of Mississippi at the time. This was this was actually forty years ago, forty one years ago, so it’s kind of a cool story. Actually, my dad, I love it when he tells me. So he they’re driving down to McComb Mississippi, and they were discussing the plant that was for sale. There was like two stores in a in a buck plant and then in two plow of Mississippi there was a thing four stores and a bulk plant. And so back then that was a lot, you know, because you can make some money off fuel its. You know, I think you can make thirty cents off a gallon. Now it’s like negative ten, you know. So as they’re driving to McComb, they both wanted that that that that was the best deal was the McComb distributorship. So that said, they kept arguing over who gets this, who gets that? So my Dad’s like, let’s just flip a coin, you know, lands one heads, I get my Colm if at landsoe tails, you know whatever. So they flipped a coin at lands on heads and so Dad got my Comb. So he couldn’t find anyone to back him far as a bank, because you know, my dad didn’t have any they didn’t have anything. I went to every bank in the state of Mississippi, and trust Mark was the only bank that would give my dad a chance. He grew it to about my six seven eight stores when I was in high school. Once I got through with college at Old Miss in two thousand. At the year two thousand, he had eleven stores. He had some restaurants. My dad was one of the first to you know, now it’s it’s common when you see a subway, a crystal or some type of food inside a inside of a gas station. Well my dad did that thirty years ago. He had a dairy queen inside of a gas station. And people thought it was disgusting. They were like, you don’t eat where you get your fuel. And it was the years ago, and it didn’t work because it was way ahead of its time. But they did an arcle my dad a while back, and I forgot a committed store news magazine and they that’s what they discussed. My dad has always been about five years ahead of things. He can just see things. He has a feel for the business, and I think that goes back to he’s he had to scrap for everything. You know, he had to teach himself account him because he didn’t trust an account. So um, he still does our taxes. It’s seventy eight years old. But you know, saying all that, when we decided, my dad told me and my brother. You know, I remember sitting in the Piccadilly of Macomb, Mississippi, nineteen years ago, and my dad wanted to meet with my brother and I and he basically told us, you know, things are changing. You got Kroger, Walmart. You have these big guys coming in. They’re selling fuel now. So for us to make it, we either have to triple in size to have a chance, which means you’re a lot of debt but it can pay off, or we can sell out and y’all can go do your own thing. So brother and I looked at each other and said, we want to take it and grow it. And so we took eleven stores and as I sit here today, we’re at I want to say, sixty eight stores and we run around twenty different restaurants, different type of restaurants. You know, we took an opportunity. We’ve worked our tails off. It’s been neat. With my dad. He’s the group that he came in with. There were probably five or six guys that he had close relationships with because they were distributors when he was just the district supervisor with Ximobile. And so you know, everybody, my dad and his friends, they’re getting older. So they decided, yeah, you know, we’re ready to sell out. What we’re gonna ask Ron first because his boys have taken over and uh said they want to buy us out. So um, I’ll never forget. The first company is High Tower Oil out of Grenada, Mississippi. Mister George High Tower. He had eight stores and so that was our first opportunity. And it was September the eleventh, two thousand and one. So I’ll never forget that day nine to eleven. We were getting into my dad’s car when the when the planes hit the towers and as we drove to Grenada to meet with mister George, that’s all we discussed about. We were I mean, it was kind of we were in shock. But it’s one thing I’ll never forget, is that feeling. But I’ll never forget. I can’t remember the other companies that we bought during that time because you know, it’s it’s been kind of here and there throughout the years. But I’ll never forget that day. And that day actually changed our company also because you know we did, we doubled in size. So we’ve had opportunities because of my dad’s relationships with friends who buy their companies because their kids did not want to you know, want anything to do with it. And then we actually recently bought mister Little Out, which was my dad’s partner and when they were district managers with Exion and UM we bought Tupelou probably I want to say four years ago so and that was around twenty one stores. You know, we we we’ve been blessed. We uh, we had an opportunity from my dad with his work, his hard work, and we truly try to capitalize. We work our tails off, you know, getting up at four o’clock in the morning and we just go until it’s done. That’s kind of how we were raised. My mom, she my mother is the glue to our family. She’s a true I would say, everybody says she’s always put together, you know, true southern belle. She’s never smoked, she’s never drank. I’ve only heard her cuss twice and that was at me. She is the most godly woman I’ve ever been around, ever met. She truly truly is uh, you know, just very special. So she she really Without my mom and her guidance and without the opportunities of guy put in front of us, you know, we would not have the opportunities we have. Now, once I decided, once I got you know, I graduated in December of two thousand, got married in February. Right after we both graduated, we moved to Jackson, Mississippi, because my wife was going to uh dental school. So I knew we would be in Jackson for four years. I didn’t really know what would happen after that. So I don’t know if anybody listening to his work for family. Sometimes working for your family can be good, sometimes it can be destructive. My dad is a He didn’t play around. He ran things with an iron fist. He was always fair. They respect him, but they fear him in a good way. He’s all business and it took me a while to adjust to my dad. But his plan really was awesome. And we’re listening to Ben and Craddock tell the story of his parents, and my goodness, what an influenced his father had. And he’s upbringing too. He’s something at flour WoT much of his young life. We get up at four in the morning and we go until we get it done. When we return more of the Craddock family story, as told by Ben about his parents. Here are an our American story, and we’re back with our American stories in the story of the Craddock family, who operate or service over seventy gas stations and sixteen fast service restaurants in the state of Mississippi. Where are we broadcast from but run? Craddock worked his way up from nearly nothing, and he made his sons Ben and David do the same year’s Ben to tell us more. Once I decided, once I got you know, I graduated in December two thousand, got married in February. Right after we both graduated, we moved to Jackson, Mississippi, because my wife was going to dental school, so I knew we would be in Jackson for four years. I didn’t really know what would happen after that. So I don’t know if anybody listening to work for family. Sometimes working for your family can be good, sometimes it can be destructive. My dad is a He didn’t play around. He ran things with an iron fist. He was always fair. They respect him, but they fear him in a good way. He’s all business and it took me a while to adjust to my dad. But his plan really was awesome because when I look back on it, we have two separate companies. We have Cradical Old Company, and we have a company called What a Combo. Inc. Well, the What a Combo company it runs all our food brands, has nothing to do with cradical old company. So he set those up just in case my brother and I wanted to come back, because he knew that he raised two kids to be CEOs, not vps, and he raised two leaders, two followers. So the first two years of my working career I worked for a guy named Lewis McGee, and mister Lewis ran what a Combo and they were awesome. You know. I start off an employee, a manager, supervisor, and then about year two I was supervising all our subways and then my dad’s all right, time for a change. I want him to work for David, which is my brother, so I transferred. I went to Critic Oal to work over there. So I learned. I start off as employee, worked myself up to a manager. Then Katrina hit As I was managing, well, I was managing guy a store in Jackson that we just bought, which was really an eye opener. My brother put me over all our Jackson stores, which were we had eight stores, and you know, I went from employee to a manager to a supervisor. So as you can see in both patterns, I started from the bottom as I worked way to the top right. And so I learned how it felt to be an employee standing on your feet for eight ten hours a day. I understood what it was to be a manager accountable for those employees. I learned what it was to be a supervisor that’s in charge of every manager plus the employees. I’m blessed to say that having worked for my dad, mister Lewis McGee, my brother so much went into it over about a ten year of span, and about about twelve years ago, I got called into a meeting with my brother my dad, and my dad said, all right, what a combo jeers? And I said, okay, you know, and I said are you sure. He’s like, yeah, man, you got it, sure run it. And my brother is a lot like my dad. My brother said, look, you’ve earned it. You’ve basically cleaned helped me. You’ve cleaned. You know. We were a lot smaller back then, so when things were broken we would have to fix it. We didn’t have the money to hire all these company different companies to fix things for us. And there were things in Jackson that I saw I don’t even want to repeat on air because they were disgusting. But we had to clean things up that no humans should ever see. But our people respected us because my brother and I would be in a restroom with gloves on, cleaning things off a wall. Where you’re going, how did how did somebody write their name with that? You know what I mean? Like people are some people are just nasty. So but the respect you get because that manager was set and tell pen managers, so you know you you don’t get respect. You got to earn respect. That’s how we did it. That’s how my dad would go back to the original beginning. My dad came from nothing and he worked his way to the top. That’s all he That’s the only way he knows how to get it done. You can’t tell anybody how to lay a grill if you never laid a grill before a crystal, you can’t. I mean you just it doesn’t work. So I was luckily brought along. I learned from some really good men, not besides my dad and my brother, that really cared enough about me to share more than just business but life experiences, and so it truly I was blessed. And so when I had my opportunity. My first day I took over to run what a combo was the first day we opened our crystal environment and you’re talking about, you know, getting handed a can of what you know, we did. I think our first day we did like nine thousand dollars in sales, and usually a Crystal does between two to fourth thousand a day. But it taught me so much about being prepared and what we need to do the next day, just from from my past experiences. Um. You know, since then, you know, we’ve opened with Oxford Crystal, uh, Sietello, we have redone other. Uh. But the one thing I’ve learned through all my experiences through working for my dad and these other men and women is compassion. Because if you treat an employee like crap, they’re not gonna work hard for you. But if you treat an employee like they matter, which they do to me, then they’ll do anything for you. So I you know, I teamed up with the Kellum brothers, you know, my friend Chris, and so we I took his plan and he helped me develop this thing and put it into practice, and it is basically, you know, I’m living I’m living my story through my company, and what that means is we’re to serve. We’re to serve God first, We’re to serve others. We’re here to provide for people that don’t have means to eat, or have the money to buy meals, or the money to buy a fuel like things that we might take for granted. We figure out ways to get to those people. And so that has been my focus in the last couple of years is to get everybody that’s you know, on my team to believe in it. First of all, buy into what we’re doing. Because if you’re if you’re not if you don’t have the same compassion that we all have, and luckily my group does. You know, I hire people that are like me with the heart, you know, I hire smarter people. But um, but one thing we do is it’s fun watching somebody get the confidence to go out there and serve or get the confidence to go out there and do things on their own without me having to tell them. Because they’re they’re living out their purpose and their wine on this earth, and they’re doing it while they’re working their job, you know, recognizing them. It’s it’s been really it’s been really fun. It’s just uh, I’ve tried to create a working environment just like my dad, a fine working environment, but one that represents my beliefs in my wars. And you’re listening to Ben Cratick write a love letter in essence to his parents and especially to his dad, who had taught him basically how to put in a day’s work and how to respect work and respect to every facet of a business by doing it. You can’t give advice on laying out a grill at a crystal if you haven’t laid out a grill. I’m living my story through my company, and so many people do that in this kind. They live out their story through their businesses and through their work. I’m here to serve God first and serve our customers next. For so many Americans, their faith animates everything they do, and most particularly and most certainly it does to the Cratic family. The story of run Kradic told by Ben Kradic. Here on our American Story. This is our American stories, and we’d love to tell stories about just about everything, but particularly innovation and invention, and no country in history has done it like we have. Up next, the story of Light and in particular how Thomas Edison got to the point of his first public display of light. Here to help tell the story is our own Monty Montgomery and the folks at the Thomas Edison Center, not far from where I grew up. Take it away. Monty. Thomas Edison’s story began in the Midwest, where astoundingly he only had twelve weeks of formal education. Here’s Kathleen Carlucci and Russ Garrel of the Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park with more. His mother basically taught him and he had a love of reading, and he didn’t I mean, of course science is his favorite subject, but he had a huge interest in literature and just learning about everything. You know, this is the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and so he was seeing so many new things popping up, and he was really encouraged by his parents. I mean, listen, he made a lot of mistakes. He burns down the family barn creating chemical experiments. I don’t know where that reosity came from, but it was almost like a hunger that he had a feed. At the age of twenty one, he would create his first patent for a vote recording machine, and no one wanted to buy it. It worked, but they didn’t want to have quick voting. He was told by the legislature that they didn’t want a machine to make voting go quicker. They needed to fill a buster and discuss issues and try to win, you know, the other side onto their side. So it was a commercial failure. At that time, Edison had put all of his resources into this invention. He had quit his job because he wanted to just be an inventor, and so one of his friends offered him a job with the Golden Stock Indicator Company, a division of Western Union in New York City. So, by the time Edison got the funds together to take a steamship from Boston to New York, the job the position were no longer open, but very shortly thereafter Edison would save the day and a broken stock ticker would be repaired by him, and the president of the company, William Orton, said hire him. William Orton took a special interest in Thomas Edison. He really saw something in him and really developed a strong belief that this gentleman, this young man could really do things and go places. So he had an idea that you know, Edison, how about if you work for me creating improvements on my telegraph systems or my stock ticker systems, and I’ll supply you with the money. The men the space and Edison thought that was a great idea because it’s always been his dream. And so he would partner with his good friend that had invited him to come to New York, Franklin Pope, and together they would create what we know today as the universal stock ticker, and Edison would be offered quite a bit of money for that patent. He and Pope and Edison decided to venture out on his own, and that’s basically how he came to New Jersey where he would found one of his major bases of operation, Menlo Park. Menlo Park was actually a failed housing development. He’ll be his most prolific at Menlo Park, creating over four hundred original patents with a team of workers, and he would dub this site the Invention Factory, and so Menlo Park would be known as the birthplace of R and D and Edison would become known as the Wizard of Menlo Park. What he creates here is a team approach to research. He is a very gifted chemist, but he can’t do everything, so he hires chemist. He hires engineers, blacksmiths, physicists, and they worked together. Edison would say, this is what I want to do. They would meet as a team in the laboratory and then they would break out to the respective buildings of what they had to do. They would come back together. They didn’t just think of ideas. They created ideas, put them into motion, and then improved on them. So more or less, Edison has the original innovation campus, the likes of which you see at Google today. And one of their biggest tasks was working with incandescent light, which was in its infancy and dominated by the arclighting. Meta arclighting was so bright it was put in I had read that it was put in the louver in Paris, and the artists were appalled because it washed the color away from their paintings, and they weren’t as nicest they should have been. They weren’t what they are in daylight. And Edison sees that and it’s like, you know, silly to say, but it’s like a lightbulb goes off in his head. He says, I think I can figure out what the problem is with this in three days. Well, he comes back to his laboratory and of course It doesn’t take him three days or three months. It takes him between like eighteen and twenty one months to work on it. Edison would test over six thousand different filaments until finding the best working one, and on January twenty seven, eighteen eighty, Edison patent his light bulb, which fundamentally changed things for the world. You know, you got to think about when he grew up, you had candles and kerosene lanterns, and life basically shut down when the sun went down, and he opens up this whole world for people. It wasn’t as polluting. Don’t forget the big cities where there was a lot of industry and things. There was a lot of smog and this was caused by the boilers and the coal burning steam engines. But Edison saw it past that and he saw that electric trains would be the future. He just saw that electricity could improve everyone’s lot. It was also pleasing to look at It’s like candle power, and that’s actually how they measured it’s a glow. At that time. It was measured in candle power, just like people measure cars and horsepower still today. And it was really quite beautiful, you know, we tell you know, a lot of our visitors here think about a candle. Like if you turn all the electric lighting off and you have a candle burning on your table, it lights the vicinity like a round circle. You can’t see under the table very well with that. You can’t see behind furniture with that. Yet, if you have one light bulb in a room and turn it on, it’s like the light is everywhere. That’s a beautiful glow. But before Edison Patton today in eighteen eighty, he needed investors to make sure it was commercially viable. So Edison would have to put it on display for the world to see in on December thirty first, eighteen seventy nine, he would do just that at Menlo Park. Well, he needed investors, you know. He wanted to light like a square mile of Manhattan, you know, right around the Wall Street area, so he could get investors to build this system the Edison Electric Company. He wanted to show that this was the future. He put out invitations through the newspapers, sent out letters, and people came here from all over the world. For even a few years after the first demonstration. His backers, financial backers, they didn’t actually want him to do that demonstration on New Year’s z eighteen seventy nine. Because sometimes it wasn’t working, you know, all the time, and they didn’t want to show something and then it didn’t work. I mean, that’s always an inventor their worst nightmare. But Edison had faith in his system and he didn’t just light, you know, like one building. He lit many buildings and an entire street, Christie Street, and it really captures the imagination. It was beautiful. It was like Edison turned night into day, and it created such a fever of people wanting to see it that the Pennsylvania Railroad had to add on extra runs so people could drive by or come and see Menlo Park lit. It was such an anomaly and it was spectacular. Today, light is something we often don’t think much about. It’s just there, and today it might seem strange to us that for two years people would take a train out to Menlo Park just to see the lights. But you have to remember Edison truly lived in an age of invention, and the change that happened in his life was astounding to everybody. One of my dosins, actually, russ Here has mentioned many times that when Edison was a young boy, in Port Yuron, Michigan. He was watching the Conestoga wagons moving out to open up the West. And then later on he’ll be very good friends with the right brothers he sees man fly. I mean, the breath of innovation and invention during that time period is unbelievable and great work as always by Monty Montgomery and especial thanks to Kathleen Carlucci and Russ Garum. The Story of Thomas Edison, the story of the first public display of light ear on our American story.