Clyde Hooker Jr., for years a top executive of Hooker Furniture Corp. in Martinsville and a celebrated leader of the furniture manufacturing industry, died Monday night at his home in Henry County.

He was 89 years old and had been battling cancer in recent years.

This morning, Paul Toms, a nephew and Hooker Furniture’s current chairman and chief executive officer, remembered Hooker as a visionary leader of the company from 1960 to 2000. Toms said his uncle recognized early that Hooker Furniture needed to adapt quickly to competition from foreign imports by beginning to augment domestic production by importing some furniture accent items and by developing niche products.
And he said Clyde Hooker Jr. was a man who truly cared about his employees and others in the industry.

“He had a genuine interest in all of our employees and customers and sales people,” Toms said. “If you told him something about your child or your family and he saw you again, even years later, he would ask you about it.”

He added, “Clyde had an unbelievable ability to connect with people at every level.”

Hooker Furniture released a statement today that included tributes from a host of people in the furniture industry who described Clyde Hooker as a gentleman and “a legend of heroic proportions in this business.”

He was the son of company founder Clyde Hooker Sr. and Mabel Bassett Hooker, the daughter of a founder of Bassett Furniture. When he was 4 years old, he activated the steam whistle to signal the first day of work in January 1925 at what was then Hooker-Bassett Co.

Toms said it was hard on his uncle when Hooker Furniture decided a few years ago to cease all domestic production of wooden furniture but that he supported and understood the company’s need to do so.

The funeral will be at noon Thursday at the First United Methodist Church in Martinsville.