Beaty Living by the Auburn Creed

By: Jamie Creamer

Tom Beaty has never required employees at Universal Blanchers to bleed orange and blue; heck, they don't even have to like Auburn. But they all had better know the Auburn Creed.

And if the words slip their minds, they can find a framed copy of the document posted on site.

Within that 180-word creed, Beaty says, lie the keys to a successful life.

"It talks about working hard, and being honest and truthful, and helping your fellow man," Beaty says.

"If you believe and follow that creed, you'll go far."

He does, and he has.

From a child growing up in a Coosa County family hard hit by the Depression to the founder and builder of the largest independent peanut blanching and processing company in the world, the die-hard CoAg supporter has, as he says, "done quite well."

Beaty credits a lot of what he has become to his vocational agriculture teacher five decades ago at Goodwater High School. That teacher, Lewis Buttram, saw Beaty's potential even then.

"Mr. Buttram knew we didn't have the money for me to go to college, so he encouraged me to go into the military for two years and then let the GI Bill pay for my schooling," Beaty says.

So that's what Beaty did, joining the U.S. Army in 1954 and spending his two enlisted years stationed in Germany. When that stint was up, he returned home and married his childhood sweetheart from just down the road, Kay Reynolds.

"Both of our families lost everything in the Depression and just barely managed to scratch a living off the land," Beaty says. "Growing up, neither of us had anything much but love, but we both had an abundance of that."

In 1958, the young couple headed to Auburn, where Beaty enrolled in agricultural education, once again heeding Buttram's advice.

"I majored in ag education, not because I thought I'd ever want to teach-I knew I didn't want to do that-but because Mr. Buttram told me that was a way to make sure I learned a little bit of everything about agriculture, and that's what I wanted to do," Beaty says.

He earned that degree in March of 1962 and landed a job with an agribusiness firm in Georgia, where he eventually got heavily involved in the company's peanut operation.

It was in that latter capacity that, around 1976, Beaty became aware that there was only one company in the country that blanched, or removed the red skins from, peanuts, and he decided that company needed some competition.

"Peanuts expand when they're heated and contract as they cool, so this other blancher would basically roast the raw peanuts and then cool them down and remove the skins," Beaty says. "But we decided we could do it a better way: We'd figure out a way to leave the peanuts raw and still get those skins off."

He started working on the project at night, at home, using two vital pieces of equipment: Kay's oven and an old wringer washing machine.

"I found out I could heat the peanuts real slow in the oven and then put them in the freezer to cool them quick," Beaty says. "Then the kernel would contract and I'd put them through the wringer on the washing machine and the skin would come right off."

Through much trial and error over a year or two's time, Beaty perfected his blanching process, such that, in 1978, he left his job of 16 years and, using a sophisticated version of his home blanching system, launched Universal Blanchers in Blakely, Ga.

In those early years, it wasn't all exactly smooth sailing at Universal. But over the next few years, Universal Blanchers grew impressively, opening a second facility in 1990, in Dublin, Tex., to service the Southwest. Also at the Dublin location is a roasting plant, where Universal roasts nuts exclusively for Hershey's.

Seven years ago, Beaty sold Universal Blanchers to Horizon Partners Limited, a corporation of which he now serves as vice chairman.

"I'm not involved in the day-to-day operations (at Universal), but I'm still highly involved," Beaty says. "Emails and phone calls keep me up on what's going on."

Since the sale, Universal has acquired a bulk peanut butter manufacturing and roasting facility in Edenton, N.C. All total, Universal Blanchers has about 125 employees at all locations.

"They're all good people, too," Beaty says. "Some of them have been with me since the beginning. They're just like family."

As for real family, the Beatys have two daughters, Susan Cherry of Valdosta, Ga., and Stacey Boyd of Alpharetta, Ga. (although she's currently in nursing school at AU). They also have five granddaughters.

Come February, the couple will celebrate 50 years together. Says Beaty of the missus, "She's my bestest buddy."

She's always been a part of my decisions, and she's always said, 'Whatever you want to do, I'm with you,'" Beaty says. "If you're going to succeed, you've got to have a good soulmate, and I've got one."

Mrs. Beaty is also an accomplished musician who holds a degree in music from AU. In her honor, Beaty last year established a full scholarship in music through the AU College of Liberal Arts.

"She's phenomenal-on the keyboards, or guitar, or just about anything you put in front of her-and she plays by ear," Beaty says. "She's world-class."

A couple of years ago the couple decided it was time to pull up roots in Blakely and move. But where?

"We didn't want a big city, but we wanted to be near an airport," Beaty says. "I was on a couple of committees in Auburn with the college (of Agriculture) and was coming over here seemed like all the time, so Kay said, 'Why not Auburn?' And I said, 'Why not Auburn?'"

They've been here since then, and that's been most convenient for Beaty, who is, according to CoAg development officer Mark Wilton, "without a doubt our most involved supporter."

You may note that Wilton said "supporter," not "alumnus." Technically, with his degree in ag education, Beaty is an alum of AU's College of Education. But that's a burr that sticks in the saddle for Beaty, a strong advocate of moving the ag education major from the College of Education to CoAg.

"If it's agriculture, it needs to be here," he says. "As far as I'm concerned, I made what I made by way of the College of Agriculture, and that's where my loyalty is."

That loyalty is both financial and personal.

On the financial side, he has made a planned gift in the form of a $1 million life insurance policy, the funds from which will be unrestricted and for the dean's discretionary use, for anything from scholarships to new faculty positions. He also has contributed significantly to special events in the College of Ag, including the annual Ag Classic, which he helped establish eight years ago as a member of the CoAg Advisory Council.

On the involvement front, his most recent time-and-energy commitment to the College, and to Auburn, is with the record fundraising campaign that AU launched in February. He's on the national steering committee for the university's $500-million comprehensive campaign and, along with CoAg alumnus Jim Brady of Perry County, is co-chairing the fundraising effort for the College of Agriculture.

Though the campaign is scheduled to continue through 2007, Beaty says he is confident the College of Ag will reach its $27.7-million fundraising campaign goal by December.

Chalk that success up to Beaty and Brady's strong dedication to the drive-and, for Beaty, that all goes back to that Auburn Creed again, the last line:

"I believe in Auburn and love it."

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