OJ - Did you have a mentor as a younger man?

Ron - I did not, but when I went to work in my mid-twenties for Freeport-McMoRan, I had a couple of men who were in New York that helped me. One was the president of the company and the other was kind of the number two operating guy. They were wonderful to me, and who knows why. It's a chemistry thing. Both guys were from New Orleans and were working in New York.

OJ - Who were they?

Ron - Both went to Tulane. Robert Hills was president of Freeport for many years and he was a very fine guy. The other was Maurice Dufour who you know very well. Maurice's sister, Helen Morrison, was married to your father and became Helen Reiss. Maurice was first married to Lydia and they had one daughter. It was an unfortunate marriage. Lydia lived in New Orleans and Maurice commuted back and forth from New York. That was in the 1940's to the 1960's and it wasn't an easy thing to do. But under the circumstances, it worked better. They were ultimately divorced. Maurice was sort of like my godfather.

OJ - Tell me about your mother and father.

Ron - I had great loving and caring parents and I'll give you a little irony. The Cambres came from Alsace-Lorraine to New Orleans at the founding of New Orleans in the 1720's and 1730's. You have to assume that my ancestors were poor French farmers. We were probably as much German as we were French. But we had a French name that may have also been German. I can trace my ancestry back to Alsace-Lorraine. My father, Lionel J. Cambre came from an old-line French family and you can go up the Mississippi River to the St. Peter's Cemetery in Reserve, LA and you can probably find five of the seven generations there, including my father and grandfather. Dad lived in the little community of St. Rose up the river in St. Charles Parish. It's near where the airport is now. My grandfather had a massive business operation. He was a farmer and owned LaBranche Plantation, thousands of acres. Dad grew up in a sort of well-to-do family and they were well-to-do until the depression, when they lost it all. In 1930 my father, a 30-year old man, married an Italian girl who was 10 years younger than he was. My mother was Alice Catherine Garaci, daughter of Antonio Garaci and Coletti Lanza Maria Santa Garaci, both from Chuisa Sciafani, Sicily. (Ron's mother passed away on May 23, 2013 at age 102.) In the 1960's my father would tell me that when he married my mother, it was a very socially unacceptable marriage. That was the difference in the social standing. She was a Sicilian and from the other side of the tracks.

My grandfather came from Sicily to work and to make his fortune. His wife came over a year or so later from Italy and they carried their house key with them; I still have that house key. Carrying that key meant that they were planning to go back.

Gail - We are sorry we never took Ron's mother back when she was able to travel. We haven't been back either and still want to go back ourselves.

Ron - But my grandfather, my maternal grandfather Antonio Garaci, upon coming to the United States went to work for the Burguières Company in Louisa. At that same time, Gail's maternal grandfather, Elodie's father, was an overseer for the Burguières Company.

Gail - That's how my mother met and married my father.

OJ - So the years we are talking about are the 1930's?

Ron - My mother was born in December of 1910 in Franklin and Gail's mother, Elodie Bergeron, was born in January of 1911. They made their First Communions together. We have pictures of them at that First Communion in Franklin. My grandmother died in Franklin, apparently of cancer when my mother was 12. Shortly after, my grandfather left the plantation followed by Gail's grandparents who left shortly after.

OJ - Getting back to your father. Did he remain strong and healthy as he got older?

Ron - He really did. My father died at 88 and if you would have seen him 10 years earlier, I am today a spitting image of him, but he was thinner. You would never meet a finer gentleman. He went to high school in the country and then came to New Orleans to go to Soule Business College. The contrast was interesting. The Burguières had enough money to send their children to Spring Hill college in Mobile, Alabama and my family was sent to New Orleans to live with a relative while attending Soule or a technical college.

OJ - Do you have any siblings?

Ron - I had one brother who was four years older. He passed away at 68. We were a relatively small immediate family, but my father had five brothers and sisters basically living in New Orleans. So even though we lived 20 miles outside of New Orleans, we came to town every weekend for various activities and stayed with relatives. We came in on Friday night and went home on Sunday night. We were a fun family.

OJ - Where did you and Gail meet?

Ron - We went to the same high school, Destrehan High School. Gail and I lived three or four miles apart on River Road.

Gail - Each of our parents came over to St. Charles Parish to work and they were not friends at the time. As close as my mother, Elodie, and Ron's mother were later, they had lived just a few miles away from each other and we didn't know it.

OJ - Gail, how many sisters did you have?

Gail - Six sisters. I was one of seven children. My father, Jules Burguières, was a real tiger. He would say he wanted a boy in the worse way. They tried and tried but they only got girls.

Ron - Gail's father was a real character. He was the third person in the family to be named Jules. His father was Denis P.J. Burguières, Sr. He was the most handsome Burguières. He was a big man, full of life and full of foolishness. He had very little time for those Burguières that did not work. Gail's father refused to ever go to a JMB meeting and that's how I ultimately got involved with JMB.

OJ - Who did he pick on in particular? Or who was he most critical of?

Gail - It wasn't that he was picking on anybody.

Ron - He was too nice a person to pick on anyone. He was just indifferent.

Gail - He could care less with what they did.

Ron - Gail and her family grew up that way. They were sort of indifferent to JMB. The Company had never done anything good for them and all they saw was fighting.

Ron - Gail's father had health issues and he died when he was 57 years old in 1965. When I was 27 years old and just married to Gail, he called me in one day and said that he was writing his will and that he wanted me to be the executor of his estate. He also wanted me to take care of his wife if something happened. Within a year, Gail's father died. Looking back at him I can truly say that he was a big, vibrant man.

OJ - What did Gail's father die of?

Gail - He had carotic surgery for a blocked artery. He came through the surgery well but three weeks later he died in his sleep. It was a blood clot and it went to his brain. Today, that surgery is so simple. He would not have died.

Ron - And therefore I was left with a mother-in-law whose major asset was her home and a 3.8 percent interest in JMB. Prior to Gail's father's death I had started going to the JMB meetings. As a matter of fact, he had urged me to go to the meetings with his proxy. And of course, I knew Ed Burguières because Ed would come by to see Gail's father when I was there. They were brothers and were very much alike.

Gail - They were the closest ones.

Ron - They were two rascals.

Gail - They were rascals but Ed was more of a rascal than my dad. And my dad was a rascal.

OJ - Tell me about Ed and T. (Sam Trufant Burguières) and how they got on the Board of JMB.

Ron - I wasn't there at the time, but if you looked back a little, you would see the period between 1902 and 1935 as a period of decline for the Company. That was during the Denis Burguières regime. During the last portion of those years, the Company was hit by the depression, as everybody else was, and that really led to tough times. The Board of Directors then brought in Uncle Jules to take over when Denis died. In many ways Uncle Jules has become the whipping boy, but in my personal opinion, I think he saved the Company. He was wealthy; he had leadership skills; he was educated in the business world and he was dedicated to JMB. And, he put his personal wealth into the Company. Uncle Jules kept the Company going, no doubt about it. The Company would have sunk without him. Then Uncle Jules died in 1960. He had a heart attack in Franklin. I think he was in a parish council meeting and he died in the court house. His death left a huge void. The Burguières Company was indebted to him; he had run it as his personal company. But a couple of good things had happened along the way. Uncle Jules had money and had put it into the Company which kept it going. He had never married and had no children. So, he left everything he had to his 26 nieces and nephews. You couldn't have dreamed of a better outcome for the family.

OJ - And that led to the Ed Burguières and Sam "T." Burguières regime?

Ron - That's right. Ed came in as President and T. came as Treasurer. That was 1960. The Company was in terrible shape. The financial sponsor, Uncle Jules, had died and no one else had the financial ability to keep the business going. It was forced into receivership. It was on the verge of collapse; money was owed to the Whitney Bank and the Company owed a lot of money to the Uncle Jules Trust. He had selected the Whitney Bank to appoint his executor. That was a huge move because the bank brought in Abner Hughes as executor, with Henry Pierson as his attorney. And in essence, the Whitney Bank was controlled by the Milling family from Franklin, LA. They started in Franklin. They were old friends of the Burguières from the late 1800's and knew Jules and Denis. When the Milling firm moved to New Orleans, it became the largest law firm in New Orleans. Of course they represented the Burguières and treated the Company very kindly because of old friendships.

OJ - During those lean and tough years, did the Whitney Bank of New Orleans ever call a loan that had been made to JMB?

Ron - No, absolutely not. You just didn't do that back in those days. These people were friends and gentlemen. The Whitney Bank didn't call a loan for 10 or 20 years, even during the Depression. The Milling Firm didn't bill the Company during the Depression because they knew JMB couldn't afford to pay it. Had the Whitney Bank and the Milling Firm pulled the plug, it would have been the end of the Company. So, when Ed and T. came on the Board, the stage was set for a "holy alliance." Ed had been working on the plantation for Uncle Jules. Uncle Jules dies, and Ed, his nephew, ends up running the business. At that time JMB was still farming and running the sugar mill and was losing money. Within a couple of years, the Board did the smart thing and shut the mill down. Later they sold it to M.A. Patout and contracted the land to various farmers. That move eliminated employees and really cut expenses.

OJ - That brings us to the point where you get involved.

Ron - It's interesting how it happened. Ed was running the business and was president from 1962. Gail's father, who was Ed's brother, died in 1965. Ed Burguières was an interesting guy. He was a slicker and he wanted to sell the Company. In the early days, I couldn't propose anything in opposition to Ed, but I could oppose what he wanted to do.

OJ - You just said that Ed wanted to sell the Company.

Ron - Oh yes. Let's be fair. There was a point when everybody wanted to sell the Company because they had gone through terrible times. No dividends with the Company going deeper and deeper into debt. T. and Ed came onto the Board with Ernest Jr., Uncle Patout and other people. You just don't want to record how ugly it was. It was ugly, ugly. It was very hard to get anything done until ultimately Ed led the charge saying, "We're not getting anything done; all we do is fight, so why don't we sell the Company?" At that point everyone sort of fell in line with selling if they could get a fair price.

OJ - How was the relationship between Ed and T. Burguières? Ed was president and T. was treasurer.

Ron - OK, I'm going to be appropriately nice but truthful. Ed treated everyone the same. Ed was arrogant and he treated T. like that. However, at that time the only people who counted in the company were Ed and T., who usually were on opposite sides, but knew they had to get together on issues. However, Abner Hughes, as executor of the Uncle Jules estate, and Henry Pierson, his attorney, could control anything they wanted because they held the purse strings.

OJ - Who was Henry Pierson and where did he come from?

Ron - Henry Pierson was from the Milling firm. He was the lawyer for Abner Hughes, lawyer for the Company, lawyer for the Jules Trust and lawyer for the Whitney Bank. So when you went to a meeting, there was Henry Pierson, Abner Hughes, Ed Burguières, T. Burguières, Uncle Patout, Ernest Burguières and others. It was a situation where you could hardly conduct business because of disagreements. Now back to your question about how I originally got involved. Ed started bringing me to every board meeting. Henry Pierson was a fine gentleman and he would say to me, "Boy, I don't know why you want to get involved in this. You've got a career and a family. Do you really want to get involved?"

I nodded my head. I knew that the Board met once a month and we had a fight once a month. Nothing was accomplished and there was no money to do anything with. The mentality was, "Let's sell the Company. Why continue to go through this." Ed finally agreed that a sale was the correct thing to do. T. was against the proposed sale and so were the Patouts. At that time there was supposed to be a deal on the table for $6 million from a guy by the name of Wiley. It was obviously never a deal, but there was even a board meeting where everyone waited for a check to clear, which never cleared. This was in the early 1970's. Whether there was an actual potential sale or whether there was a potential so-called transfer of funds is not clear. At any rate there was no deal and no sale. And everyone found themselves right back where they were before. Ground zero, no sale.

Gertrude - Let's move forward to 1972.

Ron - This is where I start to get closer to T. At the time, Ed decided to sell the Company to the Patouts. Ed encouraged everyone to sell their stock. Within two- or three-years M.A. Patout owned 20 percent of the Company. We had 6,000 shares outstanding; they bought 1,200 shares including most of Ed's stock. M.A. Patout was paying $1,200 a share and the value of the Company was $7.2 million. Ed was really hustling everyone to sell. T. was opposed to selling and I was opposed. T.'s wife Gertrude played a key role in meetings among Ed, T., and myself. When Gertrude was in the room with us, she was the brightest of all of us. She was the brains behind what was going on and she controlled things and recorded the minutes. She was a brilliant lady. As time moved on, Gertrude, T. and I decided that the sale of stock had to stop because in a year or two, at the rate that the Patouts were buying JMB stock, they would own 30 to 40 percent of the Company. So, T. brought in a lawyer, Donald Doyle, who he said was a friend. He proposed that we try to pass through the shareholders a Right of First Refusal on any transfers of stock. This precipitated a huge fight. That's when Philip Burguières first got involved.

OJ - Before we bring Philip into the picture, at what point was your career at that time?

Ron - I was still at Freeport in New Orleans and I went to JMB meetings once a month. I saw Ed regularly and he wanted Gail and me to come and visit every Sunday. He wanted someone to talk to.

Gail - That's when Ed had moved from Louisa to a dairy farm in Franklinton, LA.

OJ - I would assume that you were really dialed into what was going on in the Company at that time.

Ron - Yes, I was close to Ed and I was close to T. and Gertrude. Then we launched the concept of Right of First Refusal. Ed was against it. By charter, it would require a two thirds approval. We ended up having a shareholders meeting. Philip came in from Houston and I came.

OJ - Was that the first time that Philip had come to a meeting?

Ron - They were two totally different people. Totally different. And there was no way that they were ever going to see eye-to-eye on anything. And remember this: they were the two guys running the Company. Philip and I talked about that and decided that if we were going to run JMB, then we needed to be completely aligned on everything. If we had differences, we discussed it separately and when we went back to the Company, we were totally aligned. We had seen the damage that had been done before. Philip, in particular, had seen the family controversy up close through his father. We have to understand that Philip's father, Denis P.J., Jr., was terribly disappointed when Jules was brought in to run the Company upon the death of his father. Philip's father was the oldest son of the next generation and he was to be the head guy, the next person to run JMB. I don't know which person or what group made the decision to pass over Philip's father, but it was done, and Uncle Jules was brought in to run the Company. Philip's father didn't take it lightly and it devastated his life. He suffered from depression and being passed over certainly had a big effect on him. Philip will tell you that when he was younger, he grew up around the dining room table hearing all the bad stuff about Uncle Jules, the family, and the Company. It wasn't pleasant.

Gail - I want to get back to my Uncle Ed. He had three sons, Albert, Robert and William. Ed was a good man. He would take me and some of my siblings to his place, even when he was between marriages. He was really a fun-loving uncle; he took us to a number of different places. We really had some fun times.

Ron - Everybody you would meet outside of the Company would tell you what a great guy Ed was. Gail's father looked like Ed, but was a taller, more handsome version of his brother. Ed loved Gail's father and really idolized him.

Gail - You know, Ed wanted to marry my mother. That's the truth, but my mother only had eyes for my father. I don't think many people know that.

Ron - But your grandmother, Alice, didn't want her to marry either one of them.

Gail - That's right. And it was because she felt that they would be marrying the hired help. My family was dirt poor. We had a little house on the plantation. From the pictures we have it looks just like a little chicken house. It was a little old wooden house with a screen door and that's where my mother had two children. My two oldest sisters, Barbara and Dolores, were born on the plantation.

OJ - Ron, I don't want to lose our train of thought about your involvement with Philip as both of you took over the management of the Company. When was the shareholders meeting when you and Philip were first introduced?

Ron - The late 1970's.

OJ - You and Philip had apparently gotten together and figured out how you were going to manage the Company. How were you presented to the Company at that meeting? Did the stockholders have to vote?

Ron - You have to understand that shareholders had been following the drama and I had been on the scene for 14 years. By then, Philip and I knew everyone and everyone was ready for a change. When the whole thing on the Right of First Refusal happened and Ed knew his time was done, T. also said he would step down. The Company Board had decided to put in a new Board of Directors. I can't even remember who was with Philip and I on that Board, but Ed would not get off unless T. also got off the Board, and T. would not get off unless Ed got off. It was simply time to let the younger generation take over. Both went their own way and offered their help if we needed it. They took the position that it was our company and they would be supportive. They supported us at the next meeting and we just took over.

OJ - Where were the offices located? In Franklin?

Ron - During the time that Uncle Jules was running the Company, Ed and Elsie lived in the older Cypremort house, the home the Company just renovated. Ed was living there working the land with the farmers and the office was run by Jules out of the "Big" house, the one with the swinging bridge in front. When Uncle Jules died, the Company was in somewhat of a turmoil. That's when Ed decided to tear down the "Big" family home that Uncle Jules had lived in until 1960. The older Cypremort family home is where Jules, Sr. the founder of the Company had lived. At the turn of the century Denis, the founder's son took over the Company. He and his family lived in that home until he built the newer "Big" house. That newer home is where Gail's father was raised and where Uncle Jules lived from 1936 to 1960.

Gail - Tearing that home down was really a terrible thing to do. There were so many memories attached to that home.

Ron - Denis took over at the turn of the century. He lived in his dad's house. The Company was doing well so he built the "Big" house. That's where Gail's father and Ed were reared.

Gail - They had a lot of kids and they had such a lovely lifestyle.

Ron - But when they died and Uncle Jules came in, things were very different. Uncle Jules was a bachelor. He had lived alone there for 24 years when he died. The house was empty. I don't know whether Ed wanted to live in it or not; I just don't know what the dynamics were. Anyhow, Ed continued to live in the Cypremort house until he ultimately moved to the dairy farm. Somewhere in that time frame he had the "Big" home torn down. I'm sure that maintenance issues led to that decision and he was probably right in what he did. It was very sad that it was torn down, but it ought to be noted that Ed ended up with all the furniture and silver from the house. If you had dinner at Ed's in Franklin, you were served on JMB silver and sat on furniture from the home that was torn down. Ed and Elsie had everything. When Ed passed and Elsie died, JMB bought it back. We had everything redone and some of it is now in the Cypremort house and the silver, I think, is in the safety deposit box.

OJ - Let's move forward to the point of the first vote when you and Philip attempted to change the Company from a corporation to an S Corp.

Ron - When Philip and I came in, the business began to make a little money in sugar and salt. However, the family was still in disarray. We had the Uncle Jules Trust that was still hanging over our head; Abner Hughes was still there; and various people had loans due the Company and the Company owed different people money. Also, we had people who had part ownership of land that JMB had part ownership of. We had to address those issues. We did a lot of things: the loans, the land, the Trust and the S Corp. The last thing we did was clean up Southern States. And that turned out to be the bonanza of the whole deal. When Ed and T. were here, they would have thought of Southern States as being a total waste. Boy, were they wrong! At that time, there was very little trust within the family. The Board had very little support. That's exactly why the S Corp. vote didn't pass the first time. We spent 10 or 15 years just doing clean-up work. We bought some people out and we bought some land and took care of other things that had to be addressed. It was a big effort. Remember we were all volunteers and had other careers of our own.

OJ - How much time were you spending working on JMB issues?

Ron - At that time I was local and Philip lived in Houston. I was primarily running the Company because I was local. I spent 10 to 15 percent of my time on JMB business. We hired a manager, Cliff LeBlanc. He did some good work for us, really good work. He would still be here if he had been a little smarter. I want to get back to the S Corp. vote for a moment. It was a no-brainer. We spent a great deal of time and money putting it together. It should have passed and been complete in three months and we would have been done. But there was opposition to it from the Patout family and we were dead in the water.

OJ - I remember Philip at the shareholders meeting telling everyone that we were only going to vote on the S Corp. once and that was it. It would be a dead issue after that. Why didn't both of you try harder getting it passed?

Ron - Philip and I at that point were running big companies. We only had a certain amount of time to devote to the dissidence of JMB. But we made the effort. Unfortunately, the S Corp. concept was opposed by one of the directors on the Board. We knew at the time that his opposition reflected a basic lack of trust to anything that the Board wanted to do even if it was going to be beneficial to everyone. We later tried a second time to pass the S Corp. amendment. It required 100 percent approval to pass. We got everyone's support except one person. He proposed that he would only support the vote if he was put on the Board of Directors. We agreed and the vote passed.

Gertrude - Both of you went through some interesting times. What kept you motivated to help JMB throughout the various family issues that you and Philip faced?

Ron - I'll go back and say, and it's a good question, that I made a commitment to Gail's father to take care of Gail's mother for the rest of her life. She lived in a lovely little home, but her only income came from JMB dividends. It was a great satisfaction to know that she could live comfortably and with dignity. It was 40 plus years that she was supported by JMB dividends, making $20,000 to $40,000 in dividends each year. That's a real satisfaction to me. She thought I was the best son-in-law that she ever had. It was a very dignified way for her to live and a way that she didn't have to count on her children to support her. So, that was sort of a driving force for me. And, you sort of get addicted to the business. The Board members got addicted to serving the Company, but they had to be financially independent because everyone was a volunteer. Philip and I were fortunate enough that we didn't need a salary. You can do good things when you're not on the payroll. When you're on the payroll in a family company, everybody thinks you're in it for the money. Philip and I even bought shares in the Company. Gail originally inherited 40 shares of stock from her father. Gail, our children and our grandchildren now own 600 shares of stock. So I bought 560 shares of stock from M.A. Patout and from anyone who wanted to sell. Philip did the same. M.A. Patout stock was bought for $1,200-$1,300 per share. When the Wiley deal was going on, the stock was selling at $600 per share. Wiley was the guy who was going to buy the Company. His offer turned out to be a bogus deal. The stock traded a long time after that at $600 per share, but when the Patouts came in, it jumped to $1,200 and $1,300 per share. When anybody wanted to sell, Philip and I were buying. Philip and I talked about whether it was healthy to have one or two substantial shareholders in a family company and we concluded that, in the long term, it was.

OJ - As you look back, were there things that could have been done better?

Ron - Sure. Had we been able to eliminate the discord and mistrust that existed among some members of the family, we could have accelerated the process and brought the family together. It just didn't happen. Everything we did from the mid 1970's to the mid 1990's was essentially wasted time. That was 20 years. Had we compressed that to five years instead of 20, think of the results and how different things would be today.

Dale - Looking at things today, I find it interesting that over half of the revenue comes from a very small percent of the land in the form of the salt mine. And if you look at the holdings in terms of return on investment, the picture is not one of a high rate of return. Tell me about what business the Company is really in.

Ron - When we took over, everyone would have said that we were a sugar company. Well, we're not. Currently, we're a landholding, minerals company. It just happens to be that a big portion of the land is in sugarcane. We're hoping for a much bigger result from sugarcane lands in years to come, but sugarcane is not going to give us the kind of return we want right now. OJ asked what we could have done better. I think one of the things we could have done better, had we brought a quicker resolution to the family issues, was to buy the Caffreys' out of the rest of the salt mine. It was the biggest opportunity we missed. By the time we went to the Caffreys' with the ability to buy them out, the royalty payments had gone up and they were not willing to sell.

Dale - Based on return on investment, and operating with family discord, was selling the company a viable option?

Ron - We had convinced ourselves, the family, the Board, and the shareholders that we were in it for the long haul and if we made 3, 4, or 5 percent, that was OK. Our objective was to turn this Company over to the next generation and the next, and so forth. The truth of the matter was that in those years there was dissention among the shareholders. We had no discussion of strategy. We were just putting out fires. The Company, in my view, will not become functional until all of us in my generation are off the Board. We still represent the generation that fought the battles.

Dale - The expertise of the board began to demonstrate itself in the 1990 's, didn't it?

Ron - I remember battles that we fought in the 1990's and even the 2000's. There was still disenchantment with things that were going on. They were fighting battles of the past.

Dale - Do you have a feeling that oil and gas will play a future role in the growth of the Company?

Ron - Without question, we have oil and gas consultants coming in every year or so showing us the development that has taken place. To date, the Burguières have been relatively unlucky as it applies to oil and gas. It seems that Mother Nature just didn't put it there.

OJ - You presented the purchase of the first ranch in Texas as being a future "water play" for Midland Texas. From an oil perspective our property had been drilled out, you said, but we bought the land and we're going to let it appreciate. That's not the case anymore is it, or isn't it?

Ron - I think it is. There's shale gas under the Texas property. I think we're going to look back one day and say we shouldn't have sold the Cane ranch. But that's kind of wishful thinking. Maybe in 10 or 20 years we are going to see shale gas production from all of those Texas properties. But water is going to be a more difficult battle. Just remember, none of this could have happened without Southern States. In many ways Southern States was the key. It brought all this money in and allowed us to pay dividends; build the office in Franklin and buy all the Texas lands. We paid $400,000 for Southern States and within five years we made $23,000,000.

Dale - As I understand it, Southern States required heavy housecleaning from an equity structure viewpoint. That needed to take place if anything good was going to come of JMB 's ownership.

Ron - Just to clarify, if you go back 10 or 15 years, JMB didn't own any of Southern States. Ownership was through Uncle Jules and it was held by the Jules Trust, but it only represented a 45 percent ownership position. So, we didn't control the company. The first thing we did was to consolidate the 45 percent. We offered an exchange of JMB for Southern States stock. Once we completed that, we went back and bought controlling interest, another 6 percent. Then we had 51 percent. That was an aggressive move.

Dale - Why would you go through that?

Ron - At that time we knew we could run it more efficiently. We looked at the people who were running it in New Orleans and we knew we could do a better job. And we could consolidate it into the Franklin office. We looked at the cash flow and we had Arthur Anderson, an appraisal company, do an evaluation. Then we went to all the other owners and suggested that they either buy us out or we would buy them out and we set a price of twice the value. We also told them we were indifferent. We would have sold to them. We knew they would not have gotten the kind of condemnation agreement we got because they were not aggressive. Getting that agreement was really tough going. But once we started it and saw what we could achieve, it would be there forever.

Dale - I've heard people speculate that there was previous knowledge of the condemnation coming down.

Ron - Absolutely not. We had no previous knowledge, and if anyone should have had knowledge, it would have been the old management. And, under the old management, if the condemnation would have happened, they would have taken whatever the agent in Florida offered. Whereas Philip and I said, "No agent negotiation; we're going to Florida to deal with this."

Dale - What was the lag time between the reorganization to gain full ownership of Southern States and the initial condemnation?

Ron - Two years, and this made it awkward in that a minority shareholder could say that we were aware of this at the time and therefore have a claim against us. No claims were ever made against us. At that time we knew we could run it.

OJ - At what point did you realize that if you worked the condemnation angle it might pay off? How did all that come about and when did that happen? Certainly, the previous owners wouldn't have worked it.

Ron - No they would not have. As I remember it, Philip and I decided to go to Florida and see what we could work out. We had success in our own right and we had good business credentials. We went to Florida and we sat down with those folks. They were running a large mining company. They knew they were in for a tough negotiation and we weren't going to settle for $200,000 when we thought we could get $8 million dollars.

Dale - Is eminent domain easy to exert against land or mineral rights holders in some states, such as Florida?

Ron - Eminent domain for public utilities is easy. Florida Power and Light who we have dealt with would say, "The hell with you .... " This was a reservoir service. The two big ones were reservoirs but the first one was being done privately. It was being done to sell to the state. They had come to us because they were usurping our minerals. It was clear. And, this was a big company and we really didn't know what we were going to get. Once we tasted success, we raised the bar. Florida was on a roll and within two or three years we got several of those wins and then we had a basis for a comparable pricing.

Dale - There were two years between the first deals and then another four or five years to see it all through.

Ron - Yes, and that takes us into the mid 2000's. The Company was flush with cash and we made $23 million. We paid big dividends; we spent a million dollars on the house in Franklin and caught a lot of hell because of that. We decided we were going to do it right, and we did. What better legacy could you leave for the family for the next 100 years than that office?

Dale - I know that Philip doesn't like to hear Florida being characterized as a lucky set of circumstances, and I understand why that's true. But was it, in part at least, a fortunate set of events?

Ron - Without question.

Dale - So you look at that and the total market capitalization of the Company is what? $30, 40, 50 million?

Ron - Yes, in that range.

Dale - At $20 million that puts salt as a big part of the value equation.

Ron - That's true but I might take you back and say that without Southern States, we would only have Louisiana land holdings. We wouldn't have Texas and we'd still be a little Louisiana land company with probably $20 million of land value. So, Southern States really allowed us to stretch out to Texas, but you always step back and say, what is our break-up value? If we put a for-sale sign on the Company, what would it bring? $50 million is probably reasonable.

Dale - From a strategic point of view, there is a saying that, if you hold enough land, there will eventually be value. However, in the case of salt, it's different.

Ron - Yes. The salt lease was originally signed by Uncle Jules. It was a terrible lease. It's a volume deal. We have got a good salt mine there. The reserve there is great. It would cost another $100 million to put another salt mine there. In addition to that investment you've got to transport the salt and you have to have an infrastructure to sell the salt. We cannot think to duplicate that.

Dale - Isn't there a sense that the salt asset is under used?

Ron - The optimum way, in my judgment, on Cote Blanche is to have the current miner come in and say that they are going to double their capacity and they want to extend our lease another fifty years and they are going to increase royalties to JMB. That would be a win-win.

Dale - Is that a possibility?

Ron - I don't think so. It's unbelievable to me that we're missing something that is there for the taking and they refuse to take it. The lease we have with them has many years left.

OJ - As the economy turns around, what will that do to Southern States? It seems to me we have a good and promising future.

Ron - Southern States will blossom again. Southern States is a great asset for a family company to hold. There is very little maintenance, and it costs us little to administer. Our future is in the development of raw land. When the real estate market was healthy, our big income prior to the condemnation was surface re-leases to contractors who wanted to buy 1,000 acres and build 2,000 homes. That's when we enjoyed the upside. And we are still poised to do that. It's an annuity and it will not go away. Let's say a contractor wants to come in and wants to buy 1,000 acres to build homes on. That's a 1,000 acres times, let's say $1,000 an acre. Just write the check.

Dale - On a per person basis, even as the stock is diluted in the future, that's a huge amount of land per person that the Company owns, isn't it?

Ron - It is. Forget about Florida. Just in Texas and Louisiana, we have close to 60,000 acres. That's 10 acres a share.

Denis Branch Editors' Notes

A lot of years are covered in the discussions with Bill Burguières and Ron Cambre. And Ed Burguières unites these two men. Ed is Bill's father and Ed is the brother of Gail's father. Ed played a major role in The J.M. Burguières Co., Limited from the 1950's to the 1980's, first working for Uncle Jules and then after Uncle Jules suddenly died in 1960, serving as president. In 1981, Ed passed the torch to Ron Cambre and to Philip Burguières.

Prior to Ed's time as president of JMB, Uncle Jules ruled. In 1936, Jules’s older brother Denis suddenly died, and Jules returned from Florida where he had amassed some wealth. For the next 24 years no dividends were paid, no board meetings were held, and no communication was forthcoming to the 20 or so shareholders. The sugar mill was grinding sugarcane and the company employed many workers and managers to keep the mill operating. Uncle Jules kept things running with his own personal wealth and his own style.

Ed inherited the lead and the many pent-up family feuds were unleashed. He formed a Board with representatives of each surviving family branch. He started to pay relatively large dividends, but the debts were too large and the operating costs were too large. The sugar mill was closed and dividends slowed. Ed tried to sell the Company and when that failed, he sold stock. The years under management of Generation five, that is under Ron and Philip, started with about eighty shareholders and that number grew to I07 by 2011. There was open communication from the Board of Directors and the feuds became more personal. Interestingly, management of the Company has been under the Denis Branch of the family for over one hundred years.