"Henry G.Parks Jr"

The Parks Sausage Company, was founded in 1951 in Baltimore by Henry G. Parks Jr., a marketing graduate of Ohio State University,who had a varied background. Henry work experience had included stints as a salesman for a beer maker, an owner of a drugstore, and a manfacturer of cinder blocks.He was general manager of his new sausage company,where the sausage was made in the morning and sold in the afternoon. The sausage maker was also the production manager and the entire sales force. One of the two production workers doubled as clerk and demonstrated the sausages in supermarkets on weekends.The Parks Sausage Company expanded rapidly,and in 1952 Henry hired a new general manager,Raymond V.Haysbert.New products and sales areas were added, and in 1969 Parks Sausage became the first black-owned company to be publicly owned and traded on the stock market.In 1990 the company moved into a new 113,500 square-foot headquarters and meat-processing facility.The business started going downhill, and by 1996, facing bankruptcy, the company was bought by former football stars Franco Harris, of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Lydell Mitchell, of the Baltimore Colts. The two were unable to pull the company out of debt, and in 1999 they sold the facility to the Philadelphia-based meat processor Dietz&Watson, which preserved the Parks Sausage name.