Tabasco sauce CEO, innovator
AVERY ISLAND, La. - Paul C.P. McIlhenny, chief executive and chairman of the board of the McIlhenny Co., which makes the trademarked line of Tabasco hot-pepper sauces sold the world over, has died.
He was 68.
The company, based on south Louisiana’s Avery Island, said in a statement that McIlhenny died Saturday.
The statement, released Sunday, credited McIlhenny’s leadership with introducing several new varieties of hot sauces sold under the Tabasco brand and with greatly expanding its global reach.
McIlhenny was a member of a storied clan whose 145-year-old company has been producing the original, worldfamous Tabasco sauce for several generations, since shortly after the Civil War.
The statement said McIlhenny joined the company in 1967 and directly oversaw production and quality of allproducts sold under the brand for 13 years.
The Times-Picayune said he had taken up the post of company president starting in 1998 before adding the title of CEO two years later. It added that his cousin, Tony Simmons, took over as president last year.
“All of McIlhenny Company and the McIlhenny and Avery families are deeply saddened by this news,” Simmons said in the company’s statement.
Born on March 19, 1944, Mc-Ilhenny grew up in New Orleans and spent much of his childhood moving between New Orleans and the family compound on Avery Island, according to The Times-Picayune.
Reports noted he also had been an impassioned board member of America’s Wetland Foundation because of his longtime interest in preserving south Louisiana coastlines crumbling under the onslaught of decades of erosion.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 8 on 02/25/2013