J. Spencer Love

The son of a Harvard math professor, Love earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard. He served in the Army during World War I. Moving to the South, Love founded Burlington Mills (now Burlington Industries) in 1923. He later moved the company's headquarters to Greensboro. Under the hard-driving Love, Burlington became the world's largest textile manufacturer, with 147 plants in 18 states and seven foreign countries.

Ed Zane, one of Love's right-hand men for many years, once said of him, "If he liked you, the sky was the limit. If he disliked you, you knew it in two seconds." Love once bought a swimming pool and gave it to the black community so black children would have a place to swim in segregated Greensboro. He also was determined that Greensboro would not erupt in racial violence like towns and cities in the Deep South. He dispatched Zane to work full time at resolving the sit-in disputes.

Love died in 1962, at age 65, while playing his favorite sport, tennis, at his winter home at Palm Beach, Fla. Married twice, he had six children, including Spencie Love, a historian who wrote a book a few years ago about Dr. Charles Drew, a black man who was one of America's premier medical researchers.

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