Financial History Issue 126 (Summer 2018) | Page 33
Profile of Cal Turner, Sr., driving a 1955 Pontiac.
Cal enrolled at Vanderbilt University in
Nashville in the fall of 1933 to study engi-
neering. The only admission requirement
was Luther’s ability to pay the tuition.
Given their humble beginnings, Luther
and Josie were thrilled that their son was
earning a college degree, and they bought
a house on Villa Place, just a few blocks
from the school. My dad played on the
freshman basketball team, but he quickly
discovered engineering wasn’t for him.
School in general didn’t interest him any-
more. Business did. After his freshman
year, he took what his parents thought was
a summer job at Neely Harwell. Then, as
fall approached, he broke it to them that
he wasn’t going back to school.
On the side, my dad opened a store
of his own in Dupontonia, a DuPont
company town on the Cumberland River
north of Nashville. Since he was a good
fellow and his prices were right, he felt
he deserved people’s business. The locals
didn’t see it that way, and it went under.
Luther, who was not averse to letting Cal
learn some of his lessons the hard way,
simply watched from the sidelines. Then,
the two of them went back to the business
of buying and liquidating the inventories
of troubled stores.
My dad was dating Laura Katherine
Goad, who was a year behind him in high
school. She came from a family of lawyers
and politicians on one side and business-
people on the other. In a social sense, the
Goads were above the station of the Turn-
ers, no matter how far they had come from
that Tennessee farm. The Goads would
produce judges and politicians, while the
Kemps—her mother’s side—owned a
store. But Cal—good-looking, dapper and
filled with self-confidence—thought he
could accomplish pretty much anything,
including winning Laura.
He still carried some of the earthiness
that went with the family’s rural back-
ground, and that wasn’t always an endear-
ing trait. Once, when he and Laura broke
up for a short time, my dad got a date
with her rival, Lattie Miller Graves, the
doctor’s daughter. The two of them drove
by Laura’s house in his new convertible
with the top down and the radio blaring.
Fortunately, my mother later decided to
take him back, but I’m convinced that if
her father hadn’t died when he did—in an
automobile accident at the age of 42, when
my mother was 18—she would never have
married him.
The Turners were uneducated farm
people who had moved into town, and my
guess is that Luther Turner’s young son,
Cal, would not have been good enough for
Frank Goad’s only daughter. As it was, her
joyfulness and free spirit and his charm
and confidence made for a great match.
One of their favorite pastimes was to drive
out to the bridge on Gallatin Road south
of town, park the car, turn up the radio
and dance, high above the creek below.
They married on October 24, 1936.
Daddy was as proud of their first child,
Laura Josephine, born December 26, 1937,
as of anything he’d ever done, and one day
he took her into the store and set her lov-
ingly atop a display pile of fabric. As the
customers gathered around, she wet her-
self, soaking both her diaper and the cloth.
The Depression hadn’t lifted, but the
newlyweds entered a world in which the
economic landscape had at least stabi-
lized. Unemployment had dropped from
nearly 25% in 1933 to 17% in 1939. It
was possible to see who had outlasted
the storm. Those retailers who remained
needed goods, and it was my dad who had
the idea of going into wholesaling. At 24,
he had learned his father’s lessons well and
had saved $5,000—equivalent to nearly
$90,000 today. He knew he needed more,
so he asked Luther for $5,000 as well. The
building that had been offered for sale in
Scottsville would be a great location, the
price was right and Luther said yes. With
that, they were in the wholesale business.
J.L. Turner and Son began selling to
independent retailers in Kentucky and
Tennessee. Cal ordered and brought in
stock, and he hit the road with his samples
on selling trips. By the end of the first year,
he had sold $65,000 worth of goods, and
they were off and running.
Cal Turner, Jr. grew up in a Scottsville,
Kentucky, household where business
and family were one. After graduating
Vanderbilt University, he served for
three years as an officer in the United
States Navy before beginning his career at
Dollar General. He served as CEO for 37
years, and during his tenure, the number
of DG stores rose from 150, with sales of
$40 million, to more than 6,000, with
sales in excess of $6 billion.
This article was excerpted from My
Father’s Business: The Small-Town Val-
ues That Built Dollar General into a Bil-
lion-Dollar Company by Cal Turner, Jr.
(Copyright 2018). Used with permission
from Center Street, a division of
Hachette Book Group, Inc.
www.MoAF.org | Summer 2018 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 31