Founder's Profile: Thomas D. Thornton II
Regardless of what you’ve heard or know about Progress Printing’s founder and chairman of the board Thomas Delaware Thornton II, you’ve only grasped a thread of the tapestry. He’s what they call in these parts ‘a piece of work’ due to his legendary exuberance, tenacity and charisma.
Thornton is an enigma, a study of contrasts, He’s a mercurial man guided by a pure entrepreneurial spirit. He can be glib or articulate, earthy or wildly spontaneous, moodily contemplative or off-the-charts buoyant.
Thornton is an engaging crossbreed of poet-preacher-politician, a lively stew of Horatio Alger, Donald Trump and Oral Roberts. He knows how to get things moving and snowballs rolling. He embraces notions with a bulldog grip and the stubborn resilience of a country mule.
He’s also known for his Midas-like business instincts, irrepressible personality, and grand gestures of generosity. He’s addicted to opportunities while dismissing obstacles.
Early Years
Born November 26, 1936, he grew up on a 300-acre tobacco farm in Amherst County, Virginia, where he was strongly influenced by his farmer father and by his grandfather, a self-educated Shakespearean scholar. They taught him the importance of a strong work ethic.
“I was brought up that way and I still think that way,” he said in a Richmond Times-Dispatch profile. “It’s just like running a race. You don’t feel like the race is over or that you’ve won or. You’ve just got to keep doing it.”
He was in his junior year at Virginia Polytechnic Institute as an engineering student when he fell in love and left school to work as a draftsman at Babcock & Wilcox.
Soon he and a friend bought a small press. He began selling statements and envelope orders during nights and weekends. “I got ink in my blood and that’s how I chose the printing business,” he recalls.
At age 24, he and a partner borrowed $5,000, drove to New York City and hauled two rebuilt Chief one-color presses and a Kenro vertical camera back on a trailer to launch a new printing business.
Progress Printing Is Born
On September 1, 1962, Progress Printing was founded with three employees in a renovated chicken house about the size of a grade-school classroom. They used kerosene stoves in the winter and fans in the summer. With local clients such as Sealtest dairy, General Electric, and Chapstick, first-year sales were $87,000.
Progress Printing experienced steady growth over the ensuing years. Time after time, Thornton took bold risks to invest, expand, build and buy. He was profoundly competitive and opportunistic, rarely blinking when it came to sticking his neck out to gamble on growth.
Anyone can buy equipment, Thornton says, but the difference between the companies that succeed and those that fail depends on management’s ability to motivate workers. He instituted annual bonus and profit sharing plans. He strode and thundered through the plant coaxing, cajoling, coaching, and chiding.
“A company must be committed to the delivery of services that satisfy or surpass the wants, needs and expectations of its customers,” he adds. “Its finances must stay healthy and its growth must be tempered by stability.”
By the 80s, Progress Printing was pushing the limits of the local market. With the help of his son, Michael, who ran manufacturing, and his younger brother, Danny, who led sales, the company steadily accelerated to a regional force to become the largest private commercial printer in Virginia.
Public and Community Service
In the mid-80s, after raising five sons and running his cattle farm in Forest, Virginia, Thornton became magnetized by public and community service. He was eager to throw his shoulder to local issues in Bedford County.
“As a businessman and farmer, I have learned a good business person strives to make wise decisions which ensure stability and security…and that responsible long-term planning yields quality results,” he said during a county supervisor campaign. “A good farmer protects and nurtures the flocks, forests, and fields. Farming has schooled me in good stewardship of the land and its resources, to fix what’s broken and let be what’s not.”
In 1985 Thornton was elected to the Bedford County Board Supervisors and served as chairman in 1990 during his second term. He also was deeply involved in economic development while serving as treasurer and board member of the Region 2000, a 2000-square mile area comprised of seven Virginia localities working as a public/private partnership for economic growth.
Thornton had a major role in the revival of the Craddock-Terry shoe company by purchasing its assets after it fell into bankruptcy. At the time, the move helped save hundreds of jobs. His myriad of other former or current activities have also included:
- Progress Printing Company, Chairman of the Board
- The Thornton Family LLC
- Virginia Printing Foundation Board Member
- Printing Industries of Virginia, Former President
- SunTrust Bank Board of Directors
- Crestar Bank Board of Directors & Executive Committee
- Region 2000—Treasurer and Board of Directors
- Lynchburg College Board of Trustees
- Central Virginia Community Service Board member
- Central Virginia Planning Commission
- Craddock-Terry, Inc. Board of Directors
- Forest Lions Club
- Thomas Road Baptist Church
- T. Delaware Properties, LLC, manager
- Waterways Properties, Inc., owner
- Waterways Marina, LLC, owner
- Thomasson-Grant, Inc., Southern Flavorings, Walnut Circle Press, Duro Coat of Virginia, Inc. Whittet & Shepperson, Sterling Printers (ownership shares or board member)
- Governor’s Challenge To Virginia, Central VA
- Leadership Campaign Co-Chairman (Poplar Forest)
Second Generation
Progress Printing moved into the former General Electric factory at 2677 Waterlick Road in the mid-80s. In 1989, the company doubled its footprint with a 93,000 square foot expansion and added a powerful new half-web press. During the roller coaster of the 90s, the company and the print market rampaged through radical change. The economy went through ups and downs, mirrored by a fiercely responsive printer that battled to roll with the punches.
In the late 90s after 35 years at the helm, Thornton began to mull his options. As a leader of a large privately owned printing company, he’d been hard-driving, motivational and fair. He’d loved his employees and easily recalled hundreds of personal details about hundreds of people. As a community leader, he’d logged endless hours wrestling with boards, local issues, and constituents. He had amassed a modest empire of investments, companies and properties. It was time to move ahead by passing on the reins.
In 1998, he named his eldest son, Michael A. Thornton, as president of Progress Printing. He commenced a gradual retirement at arm’s length while consulting on major strategic decisions.
“I see so many companies that are one-generation companies,” he once told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I think the challenge is to see a company go into the second and third generation unscathed and profitable.”
Nearly a decade later, as Progress Printing continued to grow and prosper, Thornton supported an initiative to transform the company into an employee/family-owned enterprise. In July 2006, Progress Printing became one the largest ESOP printers in the nation.
“I feel like I’ve been a very fortunate man in my business life,” he says. “When you’ve had good fortune and good health and reasonable success in this world, you have a tendency to want to give back to the area that has been so good and kind to you. It’s a very Puritan approach, but it’s the truth.”
Thornton has backed those words by generous support to many community needs and organizations, including the YMCA, the D-Day Memorial, Poplar Forest, Forest Recreational Park, and the Academy of Fine Arts, to name a few.
As a friend, he is loyal, compassionate and generous. He doesn’t talk much about the hundreds of people he’s helped—directly or indirectly—but they do.
Passion for Life
These days, T.D. Thornton remains a lively force of nature, dynamically consumed by personal, recreational and business pursuits. Yet he’s mellowed enough to be able to let time go by more gently, less frenetically.
He loves tending to the details of his sprawling farm. He is reputed as a good cook, and likewise a prodigious gardener of hot peppers, green beans, and cucumbers.
He’s now married to Virginia Trost Thornton, a Lynchburg attorney, who won the Mrs. International pageant several years ago. They are the sparkling toast of many a soiree when they are not traveling or looking after multiple projects. He still loves to golf, fish, hunt, and play gin into the wee hours. His coterie of friends runs the gamut from all walks of life. And his family and extended family continues to blossom with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
T.D. Thornton’s passion for life and laughter remains unquenchable. He’s a grand storyteller and raconteur, the brash cheerleader behind a fresh deal, the gleeful life of the party. Now and then—behind the rhetorical flourish or the outrageous glee—shines a man in a full...perseverant, powerful, and kind.”
- Craig Shaffer