Resnik, Frank Edward
(Vice Pres., then Pres. and Chairman of Bd, Philip Morris) TI Executive Committee. Prot駩 of Clifford Goldsmith. Vice President Philip Morris, Inc. from 1979 to 1984. President in 1984 and served on the Board of Directors from 1985 to 1989.Biographical Information:
Frank Resnik's ascendance to the presidency of Philip Morris in 1984 capped an impressive success story for the son of an immigrant coal miner. It was also a telling indication that scientific expertise had come to be central to the fortunes of the giant tobacco firm.
Frank Edward Resnik was born on October 14, 1928, in Unity Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. His father, Vincent, was a coal miner who had followed an older brother in immigrating to the United States in 1912. All sources agree that Slovenian was Vincent Resnik's native tongue, but there is contradictory evidence about his place of birth. On the 1920 census and on his World War I registration card, Vincent Resnik gave Austria as his place of birth. Austria was also listed as his brother's birthplace. But Vincent Resnik later listed Yugoslavia as his birthplace and biographical sketches of Frank Resnik described his father as a Yugoslavian immigrant.
His mother was born Augusta C. Mauser, on April 3, 1905, in Cleveland, Ohio, and was the third of ten children of Anton Mauser and the former Gertrude Sigmund. Her parents were immigrants but the information on their birthplaces is even more contradictory, Germany on the 1910 census, Austria in 1920, and Augusta Resnik later listed Czechoslovakia as their place of birth. No doubt part of the confusion stems from the constantly changing European borders, augmented by American unfamiliarity. While Augusta was born in Cleveland, her stay there was extremely brief. All of her siblings were born in Pennsylvania, and the family was living near that of her future husband on both the 1910 and 1920 censuses, with her father working as a coal miner.
Frank was the second of Vincent and Augusta's three children and, as with so many Depression-era childhoods, money was in short supply. Resnik would later recall the pride and accomplishment he felt when he was finally able to save three dollars to buy his first sled. There is some reason to suspect that the more picturesque elements of his childhood were exaggerated. For example, it was said little English was spoken in his home while growing up. While certainly possible, given that his mother was born in the United States, that his father had lived in the county for sixteen years before his birth, and that it is not even clear that they shared a common tongue, this seems unlikely. Biographies also noted that he began working at the age of 13, doing farm chores after school and worked in the mills, where he performed such tasks as "handling hot steel rods in the rolling mill and carrying jackhammers up the rock face of a stone quarry to drill holes for dynamite." No doubt this is true, but these were summer and after-school jobs and he graduated from high school, making him little different from most American teenagers.
But by any standards, Frank Resnik's life story was a remarkable one. He studied to be an electrician, but was unable to find a job in the field, so he joined the Army in 1946 in order to qualify for the GI Bill. During his two-year stint, Resnik served as an instructor and a field sergeant for a company of 250 men. He then used the GI Bill and a partial football scholarship to enroll at St. Vincent's College in Latrobe. His studies were interrupted when he was called back to active duty at the outset of the Korean War. After a nine-month reenlistment, he returned to school and carried twenty-two credit hours per semester in order to graduate with his class. He graduated with a degree in chemistry in 1952 and immediately accepted a job as a research chemist with Philip Morris, U.S.A., in Richmond, Virginia. It would be his last employer.
Resnik steadily made his way up the corporate ladder, beginning by holding several supervisory positions at the Philip Morris research center in Richmond. He was transferred to New York in 1967 to become Director of Commercial Tobacco Development, but he returned to Richmond four years later as Director of Development. In 1972, he became Director of Research Center Operations. His rise was paralleled by that of his company; Resnik would later recall, "When I joined Philip Morris in 1952, we were sixth of America's largest cigarette manufacturers, the runt of the litter. Then in 1954, a group of aggressive, creative young guys gave a sleepy old brand called Marlboro a new formulation, a new package and a new image."
While earning these promotions, Resnik also earned a Master's Degree in Chemistry from the University of Richmond. He became a regular presenter at the annual Tobacco Chemists' Research Conference and published more than thirty articles in scientific journals, bearing such titles as "Gas Chromatography in Tobacco Research," "A New Technique for the Mass Spectrometric Identification of Compounds Separated by Paper Chromatography," "Lyophilization and Micro Techniques in Infrared Spectroscopy," "A Differential Flow Smoking Machine," and "Nicotine Alkaloids in Tobacco Leaf, Cigarette Filler, and Particulate Matter of Smoke by Acid-Methanol Extraction." He also received seven patents, including U. S. Patent #3,082,125 (March 19, 1963) for a Process for Improving Flavor and Aroma of Tobacco and Product (Cyclic Ketones), U. S. Patent #3,109,436 (November 5, 1963) for Tobacco Products (Addition of Nicotine to Tobacco-Smoke), and U. S. Patent #3,111,951 (November 26, 1963) for Tobacco Products (Dimers Additives).
In 1976, Resnik returned to New York to accept the position of Vice President of Operations and Administration at Philip Morris USA. Two years later, he was named a vice president of Philip Morris Cos. Inc. In 1980, he became the Executive Vice President of the company's newly formed Tobacco Technology Group, which was responsible for developing manufacturing facilities all around the world. He was promoted to President of the group in 1982. Finally, in June 1984 new Philip Morris International chairman Hamish Maxwell named Resnik President and CEO of Philip Morris USA. From the start, Resnik made clear that his more than three decades at Philip Morris would inform his tenure as president. "Some say we are a marketing company," he told an interviewer, "I say we are a cigarette company. I will put as much emphasis on, manufacturing as marketing. You can have the best advertising and marketing campaigns, but if manufacturing can not give you a good product; it will not work." He also stressed that, while greater speed was always a desirable goal, ensuring a high quality product was even more essential. To underscore this philosophy, Resnik continued to dedicate two days per month to research and manufacturing, one in Richmond at the research center that he knew so well and the other touring manufacturing facilities. Richard Kluger goes further, characterizing Resnik as "a beloved company man" who was "devoid of marketing skills" and malleable, taking and carrying out the chairman's instructions and not resenting the oversight of battle-tested Maxwell loyalists from the company's international operation who were now handed key posts of power."
But Resnik's strength was in developing connections and building strong relationships, and his willingness to make concessions in Washington proved valuable at a time when the industry was coming under fire from many quarters. Believing strongly that Philip Morris needed to position itself in the public's eyes as a "responsible corporate citizen," Resnik agreed to a permanent doubling of the federal excise tax. He also sought to reassure American farmers by announcing increases in domestic tobacco leaf purchases. In response to the growing criticism of the tobacco industry, Resnik commented: "I have to say that what I'm trying to do is work with the Tobacco Institute to unite the industry. That's the flip side to all these problems. Unite the pro-tobacco factions: the retailers, the farmers, the wholesalers and the customers. Say that we have the right to smoke. I think that if we can unite the tobacco industry, we can inject some common sense into all this."
He went further in a speech to African-American newspaper publishers on November 15, 1985. Resnik depicted his company as a longtime crusader for civil rights and described how its support for the National Urban League had prompted a boycott from the White Citizens Council. "The boycott hurt," he commented, "but we stood by what we believed in and continued to openly and enthusiastically support the civil rights movement." Resnik then drew the following parallel: "Thirty years later, the racially motivated threats and epithets against our company have gone away. But other threats have taken their place and once again we have to take a public stand. Philip Morris, along with the rest of the tobacco industry, is under economic, legislative and social attack by the same kinds of people who boycotted us in the fifties. Instead of the White Citizens Council, we have organizations like ASH and GASP. Regressive taxes, discriminatory regulations and flagrant lies substitute for signs that say "No Negroes Allowed" or "White Only." I am not asking you to equate smoking restrictions with the indignities of racism. But I am saying that intolerance is still the name of the game. The anti-smokers, like the White Citizens Councils, are saying, Do it my way, or don't do it at all. We need to stand up to this bigotry the way we stood up to the bigots of thirty years ago."
Resnik's tenure as president also saw Philip Morris take two major steps toward diversifying into the food and beverage industries, the 1985 acquisition of General Foods Corporation and the 1988 purchase of Kraft. In the latter year he received an Horatio Alger Award in recognition of his ascent from modest background to corporate success. Other honorees that year included Carol Burnett, Bob Dole, and Waylon Jennings.
Frank Resnik stepped down as president of Philip Morris USA in 1989 and was succeeded by Ehud Houminer. Resnik remained as chairman for two years before retiring and moving from Greenwich, Connecticut, to Jupiter, Florida. His health appears to have failed soon afterward, as he was living in the Hospice of Palm Beach County when he died of pancreatic cancer on April 17, 1995, at the age of 66. He was survived by his wife Betty, three children, three grandchildren, both of his siblings, and his aged mother.
Sources:
American Men & Women of Science: A Biographical Directory of Today's Leaders on Physical, Biological, and Related Sciences. 13th edition (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1976).
Lisa Twyman Bessone, "Frank Resnik: Turning Over a New Domestic Leaf," IGA Grocergram, January 1988.
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
"Ex-Philip Morris Executive Dies: Frank Resnik Served as Corporate Leader," Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 18, 1995.
"Frank Edward Resnik," Palm Beach Post, April 18, 1995.
Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
Frank E. Resnik, "Philip Morris Replies to Smoking Criticism," New York Amsterdam News, November 23, 1985, 15.
Donna Rizio, "Frank Resnik Looks to 1985 with Optimism," Tabak Journal International, February 1985, 98-101.
"Ten Honored with Horatio Alger Awards," USA Today, May 23, 1988, 2B.