"I think the whole business community is just hungry for leaders. That's what I'm hoping is going to happen with these kids coming out of the CoB," says Zane Showker (right) in front of Sysco new Harrisonburg corporate headquarters. "Zane has never been afraid to invest in people," Chancellor Ronald E. Carrier says of his longtime friend and accomplice.

The lobby of Zane Showker Hall is buzzing. "He's here?" "Which one is he?" "Where?" Necks crane, students veer across the marble foyer for a better view and others roost in the mezzanine to catch a glimpse of their slick, sophisticated College of Business benefactor. In person, rather than reputation, he's shorter than expected. "That's him?" a student looks skeptical. There's no GQ here, just an air of self-sufficiency and a flair for the frugal - pressed khakis and plain business shirt, complete with plastic pocket protector. The spotless windbreaker has 10 years on his admirers. "There's nothing wrong with it, so I still wear it," beams the celebrity, who has driven the same flashy new sports car for 30 years and performed his own housecleaning chores according to a strict schedule. When asked, students gladly dump their backpacks and pile around him for a photo. He reaches out and pulls those closest to him closer still. Twenty minutes later, several students end up late for class. No matter. Their professors won't protest. Holding court is Zane Showker ('79P), outgoing rector of the JMU Board of Visitors, member of the CoB Advisory Council and a founding spirit of the college's collective identity.

"Carrier kept talking about a school of business," Showker says, recalling those eager days in the 1980s when the Harrisonburg businessman and the ambitious JMU president schemed over the future. "We got to talking about putting all the business programs together in one building so that we could accomplish more, be more efficient. That's how the College of Business building was born, right there on the napkin."

"The students just call it Zane Hall," confides CoB Dean Robert Reid, who came to JMU with the establishment of the highly successful hotel-restaurant management program. "That was one of my pet deals," Showker says with pride. "You'd be surprised how many people came out of that program and made manager all over the place."

That program was a natural attraction for the enterprising Showker, who started out hawking lettuce and cantaloupes from a loading dock on Harrisonburg's North Main Street, surreptitiously extracting business insights from his elders over lunch. "I'd cut open a watermelon for dessert and pump them for information," crows the founder of the Harrisonburg Fruit and Produce part of HFP SYSCO. That's how he picked up his education in commerce and how he built his company into part of the SYSCO Corp. - North America's leading marketer and distributor of food and food service products with $21.8 billion in sales last year. Today Showker still lives by the proven moral to his success story: Business, like politics, is local. More than that, he'll say, it's personal.

"People know you and respect you if you're community minded," he advises. "When people respect you, you get all kinds of help."

His father and uncle operated that way when they arrived in the Shenandoah Valley as Lebanese immigrants in the early 1900s. "They were panhandlers, walking the tracks from Staunton to Craigsville," says Gene Showker, Zane's fraternal twin. "They traveled daily. They'd start in the morning and go back in the evening and get more merchandise and peddle house to house. They settled in Craigsville, opened a country store, then split up and each opened a store. … Zane got his knowledge by how Papa operated. He took care of people, and they took care of him," his brother explains.

Zane even emulated their early business model. "Man, you talk about going out and beating the bushes. I worked my tail off night and day. I peddled watermelons and cantaloupes and tomatoes and all kinds of stuff up and down the valley," he says, recalling his daily produce runs to and from Washington or Richmond and the times he was so tired he had to catch a few hours' sleep in his truck. Once he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into Sgt. Slattery's living room. "The front porch roof fell down, and I squeezed out of the car, and I was standing up in his living room. He turned on the light at the top of the steps. I could see him standing there in his bathrobe. He said 'Showker!' He recognized me because I played basketball. Then he called out to his wife, 'Martha, put on some coffee. Showker's gonna be here awhile.'"

It wasn't long before he was able to abandon the loading dock. In 1950, he established himself on Harrisonburg's South Main Street, where he remained until the early '90s, when HFP SYSCO moved to its glamorous new headquarters just a few miles farther south. In between, Showker made some key decisions. One, he went frozen. "He was only in the fresh produce business, and he realized that it was frozen products that big businesses were going to have to use," Carrier says. Two, he merged with SYSCO. "He realized he had to have the capital support of a larger organization."

Also, in between, he learned the value of a business education, something that Showker had had to scratch out alongside his living. He came to Madison College in the 1970s, already a success and hot to promote economic education in public schools. From that association, it was obvious to Carrier that this self-made businessman had some things he needed: capital, an entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of magnitude that matched Carrier's ambition for Madison College. But the real key, Carrier realized, was what Showker didn't have: an alma mater of his own. With just one year at the University of Richmond under his belt before World War II called him away and then his older brothers kept him away for good to run their business, Showker never got to finish college. To make matters worse, his brothers' business "bellied up," as Showker says, leaving him stranded. "So there I was. I was on the end of the diving board and didn't know which way to go. I had forgotten about college, and, man, that was a funny feeling."

That funny feeling, his bold and petrified plunge into the produce business and the years of making-do primed Showker to become JMU's first and most faithful major donor.

"As an outgrowth of economic education, we felt like we needed a program to teach young people about entrepreneurs, people who took risks, people who invested their money, energy and time and sweat into building a business," Carrier says. "Zane then endowed the entrepreneurship program."

"Entrepreneurs," Showker rasps, "that's the guts of the country. … I wanted [students] to be able to understand what they were getting into, because I jumped into it and didn't know what I was doing. I had to struggle," he explains. "They need to understand what they're getting into. They need to know how to talk to banks and obtain financing and that they've got to do a lot of homework before they walk in and talk to that banker. … They are important things, and that's what I was really firm on seeing at the CoB."

Showker then immersed himself in JMU, becoming an active CoB adviser, a devoted Dukes fan, a JMU parent (of Dukes 1976-79 kicker "Joe the Toe"), JMU Foundation board member, and JMU Board of Visitors member and rector, a term he just completed in June.

JMU is just one leg of Showker's Isosceles commitment to community participation. "My three things as far as trying to help are education, health care and the church. That's a triangle that's pretty important. Businesses of any kind, whether they're large or small, if they don't connect, if they don't pay attention to the local health of the community, then they're not doing their part. They're just in business for themselves," says Showker, who has helped several local businessmen start their endeavors, participated in many organizations and donated both muscle and money to community projects, including the local hospital. "The cancer center, that's my pride and joy. Little did I know it was as badly needed as it was or that it would be used as much as it has," he says. Since it opened in 1990, cancer patients no longer have the added burden of traveling for treatment.

"Zane has given so much to countless worthy causes," says JMU President Linwood H. Rose, "and he has been loyal to JMU for 25 years. He is JMU. Of course he has provided financial support, but more importantly he has provided leadership and invaluable moral support. He has given his heart to JMU."

With his latest $1 million gift for JMU's future Athletics Performance Center, Showker has come full circle. "When I started the athletics program, the scholarship program, he was the first person that I went to and asked for a donation," Carrier says. "After we started the program, he went to almost all the basketball games and almost all the football games."
That's an important slice of college life, Showker says. "I feel athletics are an essential part of the university or college. Basically, good athletics programs will attract better students. … You need good quarters for athletes to attract them, to bring them in. And JMU athletes have really good GPAs. That's fantastic for athletes. You've really got something there."

Today, whether cheering on the Dukes or ringed by young entrepreneurial hopefuls, the elder entrepreneur is pleased with his investment in JMU. "I feel like the kids coming out of JMU now in the CoB are really better apprised and better acquainted than they were back when we built the building," he says. As rector, moreover, Showker has good reason to be pleased with himself. Having watched from the commencement dais for two years as successive seas of seniors have graduated, Showker the proud human being counts each of them as individual successes. Showker the businessman counts them no differently.

As Carrier says, "Zane has never been afraid to invest in people."

Story by Pam Brock
Photo by Diane Elliott ('00)