"Business is the emancipator." - African-American business leader J. Bruce Llewellyn

Nation's Business, Sept, 1990 by Glen Macnow

"Business Is The Emancipator"

It's late on a Friday afternoon, and J. Bruce Llewellyn is barking instructions into the telephone. His colleagues are headed home from midtown Manhattan, but Llewellyn is working at full throttle, trying to scratch a few more items off the agenda he hastily scribbled on an envelope over lunch.

First, there's this deal on the phone, a conference call with bank executives who want to purchase the 17-percent public share of a mutual fund he oversees. Then there's Mahatma Gandhi's great-grandson waiting in the hallway; he's trying to arrange for Llewellyn to meet with Nelson Mandela. There's a cable-television bill he's monitoring as it moves through Congress, and a report due from his bottling plant in Philadelphia - and somehow he's got to get to Denver by Sunday for a meeting of the board of directors of the Adolph Coors Co., the big brewing concern.

Is this a busy day? he is asked. "Not really," he says. "This is pretty much a typical day in my life." Then, quickly turning back to the phone, he growls: "Listen, I"ve got other work to do. Let's get down to the basics and get this thing done."

He is clearly annoyed by the slowness of the conversation. J. Bruce Llewellyn is used to moving fast.

Llewellyn has moved fast his entire life. The son of working-class Jamaican immigrants, he joined the Air Force at 16, during World War II, and emerged a first lieutenant at 21. He has worked successfully in law and municipal government, owned a supermarket chain in the Bronx for 15 years, and served on more than a dozen boards, ranging from Coors to the United Negro College Fund.

These days, Llewellyn is deep into his fourth or fifth career, depending on who's counting. At age 62, he is amassing a business empire that includes:

* The Coca-Cola bottling operations for the Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del., areas. Since Llewellyn took over the Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Co. in 1983, it has grown from the company's 15th-largest bottler to the eighth-largest. The key? Adding new routes and more trucks so that his products get into every mom-and-pop store in the region. Sales in 1989 topped $240 million - up 50 percent from just two years earlier.

* WKBW-TV, the ABC affiliate in Buffalo, N.Y. Llewellyn and partners bought the city's top-ranked station in 1985 for $65 million. Although he agrees with former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow's evaluation of television as "a vast wasteland," Llewellyn goes on to say: "You can't argue with profit margins of 30 percent." He has long-term plans to buy five or six more stations. "I'd like to spread them out so that I don't have to worry about one part of the country slumping," he says.

* South Jersey Cable, a system serving more than 170,000 subscribers in the Cherry Hill, N.J., area. Llewellyn and two partners plunked down $420 million in 1989 to acquire the system, formerly New York Times Cable, which is considered one of the most technically sophisticated in the country and a leader in pay-per-view programming. Lewellyn bought a 20-percent share and serves as chief executive officer of the operation.

Black Enterprise magazine ranks the Philadelphia Coca-Cola franchise as the nation's third-largest black-owned business. Add his other holdings, and Llewellyn probably ranks behind only Reginald Lewis, chairman of TLC Beatrice International Holdings, in terms of black economic power. Still, despite standing 6 feet 5 inches and sporting a distinctive white goatee, Llewellyn can walk anonymously down any street - including Wall Street. ("Actually, that's not true," he laughs. "People keep mistaking me for James Earl Jones.")

Certainly, Llewellyn is less well-known than some of his own relatives, including sister Dorothy Cropper, a New York State Supreme Court justice, and cousin Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

And he is uncelebrated compared with many of his investors, a roster that includes comedian Bill Cosby, retired basketball star Julius Erving, former football great O.J. Simpson, composer Quincy Jones, actor Mr. T, and members of the singing Jackson family (but not brother Michael).

Assessing that all-star lineup, Llewellyn says: "Basically, they're a pain. They don't know business, so every time we do a transaction, there's another lawyer or accountant of theirs calling in. It just chews up time. I've vowed not to use this entourage of famous people in the future." He exempts only Erving, who has been actively involved in the Philadelphia Coke operation, from his blanket criticism.

Fame is not what drives Llewellyn. Achievement is.

Llewellyn was born in East Harlem and grew up in White Plains, N.Y. He remembers his father's warning: "You're going to have to work twice as hard to get half as much." His parents also told him that, although prejudice might never go away, it was no match for education and ambition.

He learned that lesson well. From his military days (when he smoked a cigar to make people believe he was out of his teens) until now (working the phones on a Friday afternoon long after everyone else has gone home), Llewellyn has always made a practice of working harder than the next guy. "In Bruce's mind," says his attorney and friend, J. Burton Rubin, "the biggest sin is being unprepared."