A Tribute to An American Dream in Idaho

by James Clarke as published in the UV Standard Journal May 30, 2015

As a young boy growing up in Rexburg, I often dreamed of being a Ferguson.  

Our family moved to Idaho the winter of 1978.  My father had been an insurance adjustor when he received a call from his sister—my aunt—offering a job in a start-up diet business.  When we arrived to Rexburg, the snow piles reached the roofs and drifts had made fences invisible between homes.  I thought we had arrived at the North Pole. 

Instead of finding Santa Claus, in my 6-year old mind, I remember meeting my aunt Sybil—a thin—but suitably Christmas-esque alternative character with her kind, happy and giving way.  My family stayed that first night at her white colonial home on Maple Drive, backing up to the new Madison Memorial Hospital.  I had never seen such a beautiful home, let alone stayed in one.  Even as a small boy, I wanted to know more about this woman.     

As I started school that year and made new friends, everyone seemed to know my wonderful Aunt.  I was shocked by this.  We didn’t share the same name, but somehow people always knew her and would bring her up to me in conversation.  As I went through school, it seemed that nearly everyone had a tie to her, either through business, but most oftentimes it was by something generous she had done for them.  

When I started middle school, I, along with what seemed like the half the town that didn’t farm or work at the college, worked for her at the diet company.  My first after-school-job was at her print shop located in her former home on Main Street situated just next to the school.  Later, at Madison Junior High and High School, Aunt Sybil donated sounds systems, lockers and even an entire football stadium to the students.  Her generosity knew no bounds.  Each Christmas she held a company party—the likes of which I have still never seen at any level—with bonuses and over-the-top gifts for every employee and most importantly, every single child.  For me personally, every additional holiday brought with it a crisp $100 bill or exotic gifts from her global travels. 

Never would a high school dance approach that Aunt Sybil wouldn’t call weeks earlier and offer me the chance to drive one of her cars from the stable of German autos so foreign to our farm town.  My summers were often interrupted by impromptu calls asking, “What are you doing this week?”, to which I immediately thought with a grin, ‘I’m doing whatever you tell me I’m doing’.  She would then proceed to give me specific instructions including a place to meet her pilots at a certain hangar that would fly my younger brother and me off to her playground on the lake or her oasis in the Arizona desert.  On one trip she even instructed the pilot to fly the helicopter past my school—while in session—so that my friends and classmates could see for themselves the fun we were having.   

As I grew older and decided on my own career, no other choice but entrepreneurship ever entered my mind.  Aunt Sybil made sure of that.  Not that she insisted on any sort of career or educational path, but her example was enough for this Idaho boy.  It wasn’t about the lifestyle of the career as much as the joy that she created in her giving. It was her generosity that defined her and ultimately led me on my own path. 

That business was Diet Center—the predecessor to Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and Nutrisystem and my dear Aunt was Sybil Ferguson. 

Sybil Ferguson passed away during this Memorial Day weekend.  Surrounded by her family, it was a timely and appropriate exit for someone so extraordinarily memorable.  While she had not been a member of this southeastern Idaho community for some time, she would always call it home. Rexburg has certainly grown in the years since the sale of that company in the late 1980s.  Many wouldn’t even know that their town had once served as the international headquarters to the largest health and diet company in the nation, yet no one who knew Sybil Ferguson will ever forget her. 

Her death marks a sweet reunion between her partner in business and life—her dear Roger and another hero of mine—who had died just two years earlier.  In a world where qualified political candidates and honest Wall Street winners are seemingly vilified for their success, both Roger and Sybil personify the goodness of the main street ‘American Dream’ and what makes our country and this community great. 

To me, they were the most important part of inspiring what I now spend my life doing—building—not just companies, but building people.  Today I embrace my own last name, but it is the example of that beloved ‘Ferguson’ woman to whom I owe the creation of thousands of jobs in my own organizations, a passion for every person and an aspiration of someday becoming as generous to others as she was with me.

James Clarke is a Rexburg native, chairman of international corporations, a university trustee, an alumnus of Ricks College, BYU, Harvard Business School and Oxford University. 

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