Midland, MI - May 17, 2006
Herbert D. (Ted) Doan, businessman and philanthropist and the last Dow family member to serve as chief executive officer of Dow Chemical, the company founded by his grandfather in 1897, died May 16, 2006 in Ann Arbor. He was 83. He was born in Midland and spent his entire life working on behalf of the company and the town he loved.
“Ted Doan was not only a man of bold action, but also keen intellect and quiet reflection,” said Andrew Liveris, current chairman and CEO of the $46 billion Dow Chemical. “But most of all, he was a man who understood that the gifts of wealth, position and intellect carried with them responsibilities to others, particularly to his beloved company and its hometown of Midland, Michigan,” Liveris said. “I can think of no one who better exemplified the bedrock small-town Midwestern values of hard work, generosity, humility and genuine concern for others that Ted demonstrated every day of his wonderful life,” Liveris said. “His was indeed a life well lived. His spirit lives on in our company and its people.”
Mr. Doan, who was president and CEO from 1962 to 1971, is credited, according to the book, Growth Company, a history of Dow Chemical by E.N. “Ned” Brandt, with “transforming Dow from an obscure firm that made chemicals for other companies into one of the most widely known U.S. companies and one of the world’s half-dozen largest chemical companies.” Upon assuming Dow’s top job, Mr. Doan immediately brought together what were then disparate parts of the company into a more efficient and growth-oriented organization, including rapid expansion outside the United States. Early in his tenure, he set the ambitious goal of growing earnings by 10% per year. By the time of his retirement, the company had met that goal, the best record of any major chemical company at the time.
Herbert Dow Doan was born in 1922, the youngest of the three children of Leland I. and Ruth Dow Doan. From an early age he was known as Ted – in part, it was thought, because bearing the name of his revered grandfather was “too much to hang on a kid,” he later recalled. He was eight when his grandfather died. Like him, he had a strong interest in mechanics, and as a boy tinkered with cars and motors – and sometimes with chemistry. Having heard, for example, that magnesium burns, he once placed a chunk of it on the kitchen stove until it caught fire. “Once it was on fire,” he later recounted, “nobody could put it out, and it damned near burned the whole place down.”
After attending local Midland elementary schools, Mr. Doan enrolled at Cranbrook, a private boarding school in Bloomfield Hills, where he did well both as a student and as a member of the wrestling team. He went on to Cornell University, where he majored in chemical engineering. He left Cornell in 1943 to join the Air Force as an enlisted man, hoping to become a pilot. But unable to pass the vision test, he spent most of the war in the Pacific Theater as a meteorologist. While in the Air Force he took up boxing, and when he returned to Cornell after the war, he joined the university’s boxing team.
Upon graduation from Cornell, he joined Dow Chemical just a few weeks before his uncle, Willard Dow, then head of the company, was killed in a plane crash, and Mr. Doan's father unexpectedly succeeded to the presidency.
During his nine years as CEO, Mr. Doan initiated practices that are still a strong part of the Dow culture: an open-door policy with employees, an emphasis on research, an attitude that people were the company’s most enduring strength and a commitment to the communities where Dow had people and facilities.
He was also known for having a keen eye for talented people and for being both hands-on and collegial in his management style. During his time as CEO, he formed what became known as the troika (the Russian word for a vehicle drawn by three horses). As CEO, Mr. Doan was, of course, the first among equals, but he placed Carl Gerstacker, who later became chairman, in charge of marketing and finance and gave Ben Branch responsibility for manufacturing and international.
The three met Monday mornings twice a month, and each year would spend a week together at a retreat where they would hammer out the company’s strategy for the coming year, and where they also evaluated, one by one, each of the company’s 300 top managers. When they returned, they presented the strategy and made key personnel changes and promotions.
Having become CEO at the unusually young age of 40, Mr. Doan stepped down as CEO at the equally unusual age of 48, in the belief that the company needed to constantly place younger people in senior positions because they had the energy, drive and new ideas to move the company forward. When he retired from Dow, Mr. Doan later recalled, both the company and he “were as healthy as horses.”
His retirement in no way signaled a hiatus in either his ambition or legendary work ethic. He immediately founded Doan Associates, a venture capital firm, and later Doan Resources Corporation, a small business investment company.
Among his many public service and philanthropic activities, Mr. Doan served as chairman of The Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation, was chairman of the Michigan Molecular Institute, co-chairman of then Gov. John Engler’s Venture Capital Task Force and president of the Michigan High Technology Task Force. He also served on the National Science Board and on the Board of the Office of Technology Assessment in Washington. He was active in academia, serving on the advisory board of the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering and on the University of Chicago’s Board of Governors for the Argonne National Laboratories and was a founding member of the ARCH Development Corp., which oversaw issues pertaining to the university's intellectual property and technology commercialization. Mr. Doan had a particular interest in science education, both on the university and K-12 levels, and devoted a good deal of his time and philanthropy to improving science education.
“Ted Doan was probably the most open, generous and unpretentious person I have ever known,” said former chairman and CEO Bill Stavropoulos. “Almost every positive thing that has happened in Midland over the past 40 years had his imprint on it, but you would never know it. So much of what he did was low-key and often anonymous. It was difficult even to get him to agree to having the Midland County Historical Society Building named in his honor, when in fact his name and (his wife) Junia’s should be on nearly every civic improvement project in this town,” he said, “which is not to mention the many other good works they did in the state, in the country and across the world,” he said.
In a Dec. 17, 2004 article covering the dedication of the historical society building in Mr. Doan’s name, the Midland Daily News reported that his wife, Junia, a speaker at the ceremony, had asked him beforehand what Mr. Doan would like to hear her say about him. “He told me, ‘Say I’m a man of few words and sit down,’” she said.
Surviving Mr. Doan are his wife, Anna Junia Doan; their daughter, Alexandra Anne Alden Doan; and Mr. Doan's children from a previous marriage, Jeffrey Doan, Christine Doan, Michael Doan and Ruth Doan France.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
For Editorial Information:
Terri McNeill
The Dow Chemical Company
(989) 636-0626
