PEOPLE.

• Position: Three executive profiles

Putting peddle to metal, he's still in driver's seat

Melvin Gordon has been through a heart attack, stroke, colon cancer, knee replacement and cataract surgery. "He wears two hearing aids, and he can't hear worth a damn," his brother Saul says.

Maybe not, but those ears get the job done. As CEO of Statesville-based Gordon Industries Inc., Gordon, 77, is still very much in charge of the family business he joined almost 60 years ago. The company's strong suit is scrap-metal recycling, which accounts for more than 80% of its revenues, and it counts Tampa, Fla.-based rebar maker AmeriSteel Inc. and Charlotte-based steelmaker Nucor Corp. among its customers. Its other division sells and delivers household furniture. Each division is led by one of Gordon's brothers. Saul, 72, heads the scrap division; Alfred, 70, the furniture division. A fourth brother, Calman, 63, sells steel and buys equipment.

Not one of the Gordon brothers has worked anywhere else. Six months before the United States entered World War II, family patriarch and company founder Louis suffered a heart attack. Gordon was to attend Carolina that fall but stayed in Statesville. "I got so attached to our business and what we were doing, that's all I ever really thought of."

That's all the Gordon boys were allowed to think of. After he earned his bachelor's in business from Carolina in 1950, Saul was told by his father-in-law that he could run his wife's family's jewelry store some day. "Boy, my dad hit the ceiling," Saul says. "He said, 'The very idea! No way! I raised ya. I educated ya. I want you in business with me.'"

Gordon is not as iron-willed as his dad, who died in 1964, leaving his eldest son in charge. Two nephews have worked elsewhere. His primary role is to worry. "I keep hollering constantly, 'Watch our overhead. Do we need all these people? Do we need to buy that?'"

He treats family peers as equals and uses his imperfect ears to get input on big decisions. The brothers get paid the same, split a controlling stake in the company equally and comprise the board. They need all the harmony they can get. Cheap metal from South Korea is driving down prices.

Even when things get tough, there's only one way to run a family business, Gordon says. "You've got to stay calm at all times. You've got to be able to make a decision that will suit everybody."

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