Peter Churm missed 2012 by a day and his 86th birthday by a month, dying New Year’s Eve from complications of a stroke. Family and friends were remembering him today at Newport Harbor Yacht Club. He was a factor in Orange County’s emergence as an industrial center. A Marine from suburban Chicago, Churm in 1958 went to work for a Teflon manufacturer in Fullerton, Fluorocarbon. It had about 20 employees and $600,000 in annual sales. When he retired as chairman and CEO in 1991, the company, renamed Furon and relocated to Laguna Niguel, was making a wide range of plastic components and had grown to nearly 3,000 employees and more than $300 million in revenue. “He was a great guy… definitely the driving force,” says Mike Hagan, who took over from there and more than doubled the size of the company again, selling it in 1999 to Norton Co., a subsidiary of French giant Saint-Gobain, for $472 million. Saint-Gobain has operations in Anaheim, Fullerton and Garden Grove. The Furon name remains on some of its products. Churm was old school. He used to say experience beat an MBA and claimed he never had a secretary; Hagan, retired in Monarch Bay, tempers that a bit: “We never had our own secretary. Heck, we didn’t have computers, we needed somebody.” Another Churm legacy: His son Steve’s Churm Media (OC Metro), of which he had been the main investor …
They were instrumental in electing Ronald Reagan (governor and president) and in recalling Gray Davis. Richard Nixon and John Wayne were members. They’ve proposed a guest worker/legal residency program to woo more Hispanics into the Republican Party. And on and on. OC’s Lincoln Club turns 50 this year and plans to celebrate with a black-tie gala in April, place and keynoter TBA …
The club hosts Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon Sunday at the Pacific Club …
CFOs can be funny: “I know what you’re thinking—I’m not that young”—Patrick McCullough of Seal Beach-based solar company Amonix, receiving the Rising Star Award at the OCBJ’s CFO of the Year Awards dinner. One-liners abounded at the event, which drew a record 800 (see coverage, page 1, 4, 6, 7, 8). McCullough was poignant, too, dedicating his award to Brian Robertson, the Amonix CEO who was killed in a plane crash last month …
Voice of OC’s rising-star journalist Nick Gerda has turned 21 …
Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian discusses the global economy in the inaugural Social Sciences Dean’s Distinguished Lecture at UCI Wednesday at 6 p.m. …
Thomas Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, keynotes the OC Biz Council’s annual dinner Feb. 9 at the Hyatt Regency Irvine …
That’s a wrap: PBS SoCal’s “Inside OC with RR” has won a Golden Mike as the L.A. market’s Best News Public Affairs Program in the small staff category. The program re-launched this month as “SoCal Insider with RR.”
