BusinessTN

It all started with a simple observation. In the late 1960s, a young pharmaceutical salesman by the name of Autry O.V. DeBusk—better known as "Pete"—noticed quite a few dirty and deteriorating plaster casts while making sales calls.

This observation led to an equally simple—and, more importantly, sellable—product. With the intuition of an inventor and the energy of an entrepreneur, DeBusk set out to create and sell an orthopedic boot that would protect casts from wear and tear.

"I made the products on the weekend and sold them out of the trunk of my car all through the week," DeBusk says. "I've always known the Appalachian area very well—that's where I'm from—so I'd go into the hills and call on small hospitals, big hospitals, whatever I could find, and peddle my product." Today, the original cast boot, along with the plaque identifying it as U.S. Patent #3,905,135, is on display in the lobby of Powell, Tenn.-based DeRoyal Industries. Since founding the company 35 years ago CEO DeBusk has built DeRoyal into a global manufacturer and supplier of medical services and products, one of which is the number one orthopedic hospital brand.

A multi-million-dollar private company—and "pretty damn close" to being a billion-dollar one, according to DeBusk—DeRoyal manufactures more than 6,000 different medical and surgical supplies and employs more than 2,000 people worldwide.

Now 65, DeBusk's professional success has provided him the means to give back to the impoverished community in which he was raised. His efforts have revolved mostly around his alma mater, Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn. Chair of the LMU board of trustees for eight years and trustee for about 16 years before that, DeBusk has devoted quite a bit of time and money to ensure LMU's existence and fulfill its mission. "I put money into everything that moves at LMU," DeBusk quips.

DeBusk's most recent accomplishment is the $24 million DeBusk School of Osteopathic Medicine, which enrolled its first class in 2007 and is the first of its kind in Tennessee. Also during DeBusk's tenure as chairman, LMU launched a nursing master's degree program in 2007, a nurse anesthesia program that will begin this year and a physician's assistant program planned for 2009—all of which are intended to better serve the region's health care needs.

But his involvement with LMU goes far beyond "putting money into everything that moves" or even his leadership on the board. After all, proud "alumni of means" routinely build buildings, endow chairs, fund programs and otherwise contribute to their alma maters. No, DeBusk has designs for LMU far grander than that of a monument to the someday richly departed. He intends to make the 3,000+-student university into nothing less than an elite institution. In doing so, DeBusk is pursuing his ultimate goal: the elevation of an entire region through the creation of a homegrown educated workforce.

Appalachia's Son

Though it may seem cliché, DeBusk's past successes and present goals, large and small, stem from his childhood. Before the entrepreneur, the CEO or the philanthropist, there was the son of a laborer whose upbringing was significantly different from the life he has since made for himself. Born in Rose Hill, Va., DeBusk grew up in a trailer and, over the course of his childhood, attended 16 different schools in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee. His father traveled throughout the Appalachian region building coal tipples, structures where coal is cleaned and loaded onto railroad cars or trucks.

"We were like gypsies traveling around through the mountains," DeBusk says.

He graduated from Thomas Walker High School, also in Rose Hill, and went to LMU to play baseball and basketball on scholarship. Initially, DeBusk planned to pursue a career in veterinary medicine, but he soon determined that he could not make the kind of living he desired as a veterinarian. After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree, he took a job with a pharmaceutical company, all the while planning to attend medical school and become a doctor. Early success in the pharmaceutical field delayed those plans, and the development of his first product put them to rest for good. Instead of becoming a doctor, DeBusk got to the business of launching a company and inventing more medical supplies.

Today, DeRoyal has four divisions—acute care, patient care, wound care and original equipment manufacturing—and patents on about 60 products. In addition to U.S. locations in California, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, the company also has manufacturing facilities in Ireland, Estonia, Guatemala, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. Like many private company CEOs, DeBusk keeps DeRoyal's annual revenue figures close to his vest, but in addition to revealing that they are "pretty damn close" to the billion dollar mark, he offers another nugget for consideration.

"I have to start every morning off with a million dollars [in orders] just to start the morning," he says. "Does that tell you something?"

Although according to DeBusk "everybody and their brother would love to buy" DeRoyal, he hasn't entertained offers and has no interest in going public.

"Quality of life means a lot. Of all my friends through the years, I've never seen one sell out who was happy," he says. "We've got good people here to run it; let's let good enough be good enough."

The Magnanimous Alumnus

Regardless of whether one accepts DeBusk's premise about "selling out," it's unlikely he would end up with too much time on his hands if he let DeRoyal go. He's a man accustomed to being busy and accustomed to getting what he wants.

When asked if one of his plans for LMU will materialize, DeBusk responds, "You don't know me. I win." His response is accompanied by a laugh that would sound downright sinister if one didn't know the context.

Whether DeBusk wins these days primarily due to persistence or pocketbook—it's safe to assume that it's a healthy dose of both—few would deny that the latter owes its heft to the former. "He is a man of very strong determination and really has a 'get her done' attitude," says Dr. Ray Stowers, dean of LMU's DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine (DCOM). "That's one of the reasons why he has been so successful."

Stowers has seen DeBusk's determination firsthand, and the college he heads is the result. In his quest to fulfill LMU's mission, DeBusk wanted to create something different that would satisfy a need and help the region. Having spent his entire life in the area, he knew all too well that the population is tremendously underserved with respect to health care. He was also familiar with osteopathic medicine—a 130-year-old approach that involves treating the whole person—because he grew up just miles from the birthplace of Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, the father of the field.

This knowledge lay dormant for awhile. Then came a six-year stint on Washington, D.C.'s Medicare Payment Advisory commission (MedPac) alongside Stowers, an osteopathic doctor who, at the time, was the dean for rural health at the Oklahoma State University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Tulsa. Through Stowers, DeBusk learned that osteopathic colleges typically produce a much higher percentage of primary care physicians who practice in rural areas. That clinched it.

In 2004, while at a MedPac meeting, DeBusk leaned over to Stowers just before the doctor was set to speak in front of the group and said, "I want to build an osteopathic medical school at LMU." Both DeBusk and Stowers remember Stowers' response: "Yeah, right."

"He thought I was crazy as hell," DeBusk says.

When Stowers had finished speaking, DeBusk said, "I'm serious. We're going out to dinner tonight." That night, at dinner, DeBusk shared with Stowers his plan to help the people of Appalachia. Though convinced that DeBusk was, in fact, serious, Stowers still wasn't sure that the businessman understood the work and commitment involved in starting such a college. He tried to persuade his fellow committee member that a partnership with the osteopathic college in Pikeville, Ky., might be the best solution. Within weeks, the pair had taken DeBusk's plane to Pikeville to tour the college. "While we were lifting off in Pikeville, he said, 'Ray, we can do it better.' That's when I knew how determined Pete DeBusk was," Stowers says.

Stowers and another consultant agreed to conduct a feasibility study to determine whether LMU had the assets necessary to launch an osteopathic college, and after several months, they determined that LMU did indeed have the proper resources. DeBusk, of course, wasn't surprised; for as he'd already told Stowers, "We're mountain folks, but we're not broke, Ray."

Today, Stowers says there is no doubt that DeBusk helped build one of the most technologically advanced medical schools in the United States with star faculty members from well-respected medical schools across the nation. While the new college's long-term goals involve educating and training physicians who will remain in the Appalachian area after graduation to support a traditionally underserved population, it has already generated $13 million for the local economy, according to a study by the National Center for Rural Health Works. In addition to its economic impact, DCOM is poised to put a dent in the physician shortage in the Appalachian counties, many of which, Stowers says, have 5,000 to 7,000 people per primary care physician. (By comparison, he says officials usually like to see one physician per about 1,100 to 1,300 people.) For the first class and now the second class, the school received more than 2,000 applications for 160 spots, and although they have been criticized for it, both Stowers and DeBusk are adamant about filling the majority of those spots with people from the southern Appalachian region.

"If we would let them, the state of Georgia would fill this thing up over night with fantastic students with unbelievable grades and MCAT scores, but we want people who are going to stay here and serve this region. So are we going to be prejudiced about how we enroll people?" DeBusk asks. "We are, we are, we are."

The Bigger Picture

With DCOM's first class underway, the nurse anesthesia program welcoming its first class this year, and the physician's assistant program set for 2009, DeBusk is already on to his next LMU project—a law school in Knoxville. The plan, DeBusk says, is for the new law school—to be named after a local and as of yet unidentified Congressman—to enroll its first class for the 2009 school year. Even then, though, he won't rest. In addition to the medical and jurisprudence pieces, he wants LMU to have an engineering school.

"We need those three areas in combination with our liberal arts program at LMU because it's our desire to be a little Duke University or a little Vanderbilt," he says.

As his focus on LMU shows, for DeBusk, the key to prosperity for the people of Appalachia is about more than jobs, homes and retail developments—it's about education.

"I take a lot of factories back in those mountains to give people jobs, but nothing helps a people like education. Ultimately, we'll give them a way to make a living, to elevate their quality of life. There's nothing like education—that's the greatest gift you can give them."

That's a philosophy for which DeBusk is known throughout East Tennessee. "He understands the value of an education, that education is necessary to compete in tomorrow's world," says Pilot Corp. founder Jim Haslam, who is friends with DeBusk.

In fact, about a year ago, the two successful East Tennessee entrepreneurs began working on an initiative to improve work-force development and education across the region.

"I said, 'Jim, If you can take a little gas station in Gate City, Va., and build Pilot Oil, and I can take the trunk of a car and build DeRoyal Industries, surely we can be the stimulus for this.' And boy, people are stepping up to run with this ball," DeBusk says.

Their goal is to make Tennesseans aware of the science and technology resources represented at TVA, Oak Ridge, and the University of Tennessee's developing state-of-the-art research site, Cherokee Farm. "We have got the best people in this region involved going forward to inform the people of this valley that it's going to be the next Silicon Valley, but we've got to believe it, and we've got to get people interested in education from kindergarten through college," he says.

And while that project continues to pick up speed, DeBusk won't waste any time adding something else to his philanthropy to-do list. In fact, he says his efforts going forward will be less about making money and more about philanthropy.

"At this age, you want to make the world a better place," he says. "You realize nobody cares how much money you got, and when it's all over with they're going to plant you up on the hill somewhere and let people remember the deeds you done, if they remember anything."

If the way people talk about him today is any indication of how he'll be remembered, it'll probably sound a little something like the words LMU President Nancy Moody used to introduce him at a recent press conference. "When speaking of Pete DeBusk, many words come to mind. Student, athlete, alumnus, friend, generous donor, trustee and chairman are all roles that he has held throughout his lifetime at LMU. Outside of the university, he is often referred to as a philanthropist, businessman and entrepreneur. He is all those things, but above all he is a son of Appalachia."

Nor will Pete DeBusk pretend to be anything else. (You may even catch him showing off a mason jar of moonshine every now and then.) After all, growing up in those mountains left an indelible mark on the man. Now he's just trying to return the favor.