T. Paul Dean

TRI-LAKES AREA — Principles that T. Paul Dean learned at an early age still guide his career as general manager of Danfoss Scroll Technologies.

Born in Jackson, Ala., Dean grew up on a farm on the outskirts of that city, the only child of a single mother. His grandparents, Hildred and Deloris Dean, helped raise him while his mother, Eleanor, attended Selma University.

“I grew up in a loving environment,” Dean said at Danfoss, which is in the Clark County Industrial Park. “I learned to hunt, fish, farm and build things. Our church was adjacent to my grandparents’ yard, so I spent a lot of time in church.”

He said getting an education was important to his mother.

“It was somewhat hard for her,” he said, “but she was devoted to me, and she spent every free minute with me. She taught me the value of money and people. And she was an entrepreneur. Today she has her own restaurant and bakery and catering service. She is very ambitious, and I think her entrepreneurial side inspired me to be all I can be.”

Dean recalled his childhood in rural Alabama.

“We used to live in a house that only had one air conditioner and one bathroom, so you had to share that with about seven people,” he said, laughing. “At night, I remember, we used to get really hot, and we’d put fans in the windows. It’s very interesting to reflect back and wonder how we made it without air conditioning.

“We didn’t have access to [cable] television. My grandparents had an antenna and kept a pipe wrench on the side of it, so that when the wind blew, my grandfather would go out and turn the antenna to pick up NBC or CBS out of Mobile, Ala. All my friends would talk about these cable shows they were watching, but I had no idea what they were talking about.”

Dean said he learned to appreciate the things he had.

“My mother didn’t make a whole lot of money,” he said. “I knew she couldn’t afford what I asked for. For some reason, as a kid, I always had this sense that she was sacrificing for me. I never asked for a whole lot; I knew Mom was doing more than she needed to be. She always put me first. To this day, I appreciate her and my grandparents.”

He said his mother always made sure he got to take a vacation.

“Even if it was just going to the zoo in Birmingham and spending a night in a hotel,” he said. “Swimming in the pool and watching TV in the bed - that was so incredible. She always tried to find time for that.”

Dean said he enjoyed life in Jackson.

“It was a lot like Arkadelphia - a tight-knit community,” he said. “All the teachers knew your parents. If you got in any kind of trouble, they’d call your parents directly. I still remember getting in trouble from time to time.”

He played for his high school basketball team, the Aggies.

“I was as tall then as I am now,” Dean said. “I had a good inside game and a vertical jump. I could touch the top of the white box on the backboard. We had one of the best ninth grade teams in the state; I remember beating one team 89-19. I was the guy who dunked the ball a lot.”

He said he learned many life lessons on his grandparents’ farm.

“They had vegetables that we would farm, and hogs and chickens that we would process,” he said. “From ninth grade to 12th grade, I raised my own hogs. I made about $1,000 working at TG&Y, and I bought what I needed to start my hog business.

“My granddaddy taught me how to build things. When I was still probably in the eighth grade, I could lay out a house foundation. I could block up and frame a house by myself. In high school, I’d take on small jobs - when my cousins and I were in our teens, we’d build decks and additions to homes, the whole nine yards. I thought I’d go to college to become an architect.”

He got sidetracked into forestry instead.

“In Future Farmers of America, I placed second in the state forestry judging contest, so I was offered a forestry scholarship to Tuskegee University,” he said. “It was a free ride, so I said, ‘No problem.’ Then, in my first semester, I found out how much foresters made.”

He discovered that the university offered a “hybrid” program combining engineering with architecture, and graduated with a degree in construction science.

“It drew me back to my roots, working on homes and buildings on the farm.”

He belonged to ROTC while in college, and when he graduated from Tuskegee in 1990, Dean entered the U.S. Air Force as a second lieutenant.

“I was a civil engineer for four years, and that was how I got the opportunity to go to Haiti and become part of Operation Restore Democracy,” he said.

The operation that began in September 1994 was an intervention by the United States and the United Nations to remove the military regime installed by the 1991 Haitian coup d’état that overthrew the elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. For Dean, it began with what he thought was a one-day trip to New York for a meeting. He ended up spending the next six months engaged in the operation.

He and his team had certain skill sets that were required for building infrastructure in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, during the crisis in 1994.

“My unit - Red Horse - was responsible for making sure the Air Force could fly aircraft in any theater,” Dean said. “We were stationed in Las Vegas, and I was responsible for providing oversight for all Air Force construction projects in the Southern Hemisphere.

“We had dump trucks, front-end loaders, excavators. We could build bridges and high-rises. Because we were also military, we had weaponry and fighting skills.”

An explosives expert, Dean said he and his team were often flown into top-secret areas to destroy runways.

“The military tries to determine how best to fight a war when one is brewing. Sometimes we’d go in at night and blow [runways] up. It was scary,” he said.

Thanks to his unique skill set, Dean, then a first lieutenant, was invited to a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military officials to plan how best to handle the crisis in Haiti, during which thousands of refugees were coming to Florida shores.

“I met with very high-level people. We sat in a conference room going, ‘How do we do this?’ The decision was made that we had to be on the ground. I went to Haiti and sent back for 300 engineers to come and reconstruct roads and infrastructure necessary to bed down our troops.

“It took us about a month,” he said of the reconstruction project. “We had to reconstruct a road that was underwater. While we were doing all that, there was a lot of Haitian-on-Haitian crime. People were running around with machine guns shooting each other.”

He said the overall operation “went very well. We were able to fly in everything we needed to build this infrastructure.”

At the end of the crisis in 1995, Dean chose to leave the Air Force.

“I felt like I was ready to go into the civilian world and make contributions to society. I took a job in Ohio with General Motors as a facilities engineer. That is how I got into manufacturing,” he said.

He accepted the position at Danfoss a little more than a year ago in order to try and turn things around at the plant and restore it to profitability. He has been applying the Japanese concept of “lean manufacturing” to the Arkadelphia facility.

“Companies can either grow organically, or they can grow by buying other companies,” Dean said. “To grow organically, you have to reduce your costs and get more efficient in your operations. At GM, I learned about lean manufacturing. You remove waste from any operation that has a process associated with it.”

One of his goals was to encourage employees to “buy in” to what he wanted to accomplish.

“People have to feel like they are playing a key role in the direction of the company,” Dean said.

He said Arkadelphia is “outstanding for business. The nature of the citizens and the leadership here … is to grow the business environment. They are constantly reaching out to ensure that we have what we need to thrive in Arkadelphia.”

He also praised the work ethic of the local workforce.

“My goal is to take this plant to a profitable status,” he said. “As we ramp up to our new market of manufacturing commercial compressors, I also want to create jobs and more opportunities for people in Arkadelphia.”

The plant currently employs 250 people.

Staff writer Daniel A. Marsh can be reached at (501) 399-3688 or dmarsh@arkansasonline.com.