Description

Hardback Book – 192 Pages

About the Author

Born in April 1908, Robert M. Armstrong was destined to write the history of Sugar Land and the Imperial Sugar Company.  Five hours after his birth in Oklahoma city, his father, O.R. Armstrong went to work for the Meinrath Brokerage Company, selling Cunningham Sugar.  In the same month, Kempner and Eldridge purchase the Sugar Land properties which included the Imperial Sugar Company.

O.R. Armstrong was to spend the remaining 53 years of his life in the marketing of sugar in Texas and the Southwest.  He retired as vice president of sales for Imperial in 1947 and was a director of the company until his death in 1961.

So, following his father, Robert was raised in business. He worked in the summers in the Imperial plant and in the short lived Texas City Sugar Refining Company plant in Texas City.  Graduating from high school in Sugar Land in 1926, and from Texas A&M in 1930, and following an eight year stint as a Westinghouse sales engineer in the East, he returned to Dallas in 1938 as a junior partner in the W.W. Overton Company, a sugar brokerage firm, marketing Imperial Sugar in the north half of Texas.  After service in the Pacific during World War II, he moved to Sugar Land as Assistant Sales Manager of Imperial, progressed to vice president, director, executive vice president, and finally president of the company from 1964 until his retirement in 1973.  He remains a director emeritus of the company now known as the Imperial Holly Corporation.