End of an Era: After 68 years and two owners, Kaufman Seeds is closing its doors

Photos by Eric Nicholson. Kaufman Seeds owner John Hearn, left, and James “Son” Walton, who has worked at the company for 60 years, chat about the company’s impending closure Wednesday.

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and writeforarkansas.org on Aug. 29, 2011.
 
ASHDOWN, Ark.—At first glance the sign, stenciled onto whitewashed brick, seems a relic

from a bygone era, like faded advertisements offering soft drinks or Moon Pies for a nickel. 

The difference is that Kaufman Seeds, whose name is written in plain black type on a handful of buildings downtown, still exists—at least it does until Wednesday afternoon, when it goes the way of the 5-cent soda pop.

The company, a longtime downtown Ashdown business, will close this week after 68 years.
John Hearn, who has run the business since 1990, said the decision was prompted by his diagnosis in March with ureter cancer.



“When the kids went off to college, I just didn’t see them much,” Hearn said. “When I was diagnosed with cancer, it threw things into a new light. … It changed my thinking: If I could beat that, I would retire.”

Hearn underwent surgery in mid-July at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and, earlier this month, doctors told him they thought they had gotten everything.

He announced recently that Kaufman Seeds would permanently close. He plans to use the free time to travel to visit his three grown children and two grandchildren.

Diligence in a free country 
Kaufman Seeds’ existence and its persistence into the 21st century is the result of a series of improbable occurrences.

Henry Kaufman, a German Jew working as a cotton broker in Italy, fled the country was already – lishing himself as a pillar of the community, something he would continue during 19 years on the just days been deported back to Nazi Germany.

Work as a cotton buyer led him to Dallas, then Ashdown, where he settled just as production of the once-dominant crop was collapsing in Southwest Arkansas. As work as a cotton broker evaporated, he turned to seeds.

In early 1943, he bought a $3,500 carload of cotton seed, which he promptly sold and soon began dabbling in garden seeds and other field crops, according to a 1952 article from Southern Seedman magazine.

During his first year, he turned a $700 profit, which doubled the second year and continued to expand. By the end of the decade, Kaufman Seeds had offices and two warehouses in downtown Ashdown with several major pieces of cleaning and sorting equipment.

The magazine article concluded that Kaufman was “a modern-day example of diligence at work in a free country.”

By the time the article appeared, Kaufman was already establishing himself as a pillar of the community, something he would continue during 19 years on the City Council and a long stint on the board of directors of State First National Bank.

He also possessed a cosmopolitan air uncommon in Southwest Arkansas, speaking six languages and regularly reading the Wall Street Journal and The Economist.

A four-page biography of Kaufman, written in the slightly reverent tones reserved for local legends and kept at the Two Rivers Museum, further details his business operations and community involvement.

“He was a unique man, a man of integrity, a man who not only made his mark in Ashdown, but also around the world,” the biography states.

Lawson Calloway tops off a sack of cleaned wheat seat Thursday.

Apprenticeship
Hearn’s entry into the Ashdown seed trade was as improbable as Kaufman’s.

He grew up in Jackson, Tenn., a city of about 50,000 that offered little by way of an agricultural education when he began working as a cotton buyer in Memphis. After he married in 1970, his brother-in-law introduced him to Kaufman.

Kaufman’s two daughters weren’t interested in carrying on his work in the seed business, and he was looking for an apprentice of sorts to learn and eventually take over the business.

Hearn eventually agreed and moved to Ashdown, where he had a lot to learn.

“I didn’t know a wheat seed from a rice seed when I started,” he said.

It was 20 years before Kaufman stepped down and Hearn had the opportunity to purchase the business.

“If his health had stayed, he probably would have stayed on ‘til he was 110,” Hearn said.

Since then, the company has doubled its sales, said Phyllis Hearn, John’s wife. Last year, it shipped seeds to 29 states as well as China, Japan and Europe, but most of its business is done as a seed wholesaler for the Four State Area.

The company has found a niche in pasture grasses. Brochures on the counter of the company’s Main Street office advertises products like Big Boss tetraploid annual rye grass and RegalGraze Lodino Clover.

Hearn likens seed sales to the fashion business. A dealer needs to know what will sell in the spring when he buys in the fall and vice versa.

Kaufman Seeds’ three warehouses in downtown Ashdown were mostly empty last Thursday as the company wound down operations.

‘Time to go home’
Operations at Kaufman Seeds has been winding down recently in preparation for closure Wednesday. 

“I’ve never closed something down,” Hearn said. “Last night as I was going to sleep, I probably thought of 100 details that need to be done by (Wednesday).”

A handful of employees cleaned wheat and cleared bags of seed in mostly empty warehouses last Thursday.

Some members of the office staff were dusting off antique seed-processing contraptions and digging through old photographs in preparation for an open house the next day.

Retired state Sen. Barbara Horn stopped by to inquire after Hearn’s health. Phyllis took her through the miniature museum that was being set up on one side of the office.

“Whenever anybody had a baby, they would come weigh them on the scale here,” Phyllis said, pointing to an enormous mechanical scale.

In Warehouse No. 1, James “Son” Walton was helping clean the wheat. He joined his father at Kaufman Seeds when he was 14, working nights and weekends.

That was 60 years ago. He said Kaufman and his wife were good people. He remembers going with his boss to Texarkana to plant grass in the Jewish portion of State Line Cemetery.

“I’d like to see it reopen, because it’s part of Ashdown,” he said. “It’s more part of Ashdown than any other business I know.”

A rebirth, however, is unlikely. Kaufman Seeds is profitable and does a respectable amount of business, but, given its modest size and the down economy, Hearn said it would be difficult to sell.

He expects to have a few bags of leftover seed that he will keep in storage to sell in the spring, but regular business operations will end Wednesday, when its 11 employees are let go.

“It’s sad in a way, but I’m ready,” said bookkeeper Dorothy Johnson, who has been with the company for 34 years. “I’m 75, and it’s time to go home.”