Randalls'(Robert) Onstead dies of heart failure

Houston Chronicle ^ | 8/4/04 | RACHEL GRAVES

[Diddle E. Squat]

Robert Onstead, founder and longtime chairman of Randalls Food Markets, died early Wednesday while on a family vacation in Italy.

Onstead was in an airport in Sicily awaiting a flight to Rome when he suffered a heart attack. He was 73.

Onstead's death shocked his family and Houston civic leaders, many of whom had considered him a personal friend for decades.

"There are very few people who have ever worked as hard to promote, develop and to build Houston as Bob did," Drayton McLane, owner of the Houston Astros, said Wednesday.

Onstead's son, Randall, had encouraged his father to run for mayor of Houston, an idea that did not appeal to the elder Onstead.

"He loves Houston," Randall Onstead said. "When he loves something, he fixes it if it's broken, and it gets better under his leadership."

Personal dedication But Randall Onstead added that though his father was best known for the success of his grocery stores and his civic leadership, he considered his father's greatest accomplishment his devotion to his family and Christianity.

Onstead grew up in Ennis, then a small farming community, south of Dallas. When he was 13, he started working during the summers in his uncle's corner grocery store. Onstead attended the University of North Texas in Denton, married his wife, Kay, and joined the Air Force before moving to Houston and returning to the grocery business.

"I had applied for med school, and I didn't get in," Onstead said of his career choice in a 1998 interview. "I had one child and another on the way. I decided I'd better go to work."

Onstead worked for his father-in-law, Block Martin, at Randalls Super Valu Stores, a three-store chain owned by Martin. When Martin died in 1962, Onstead and the other owners sold the chain to Hubbard Co.

Onstead bristled under the new regime, which ran the stores from a distance. He decided he could do better and joined partners Randall C. Barclay and Norman Frewin in 1966 to start a new grocery company.

They named the company Randalls Food Markets for Martin's old company, not for Onstead's son.

"He had an addiction to succeed no matter how hard he had to work, and he chose a field that is one of the most demanding," legendary Texas banker Ben Love said of his longtime friend.

Loving the business Those who knew Onstead agree he had a great instinct for the grocery business.

"It's a penny business. It takes a lot of fanatical attention to detail," said Greg Hassell, a former Houston Chronicle reporter who covered Randalls for 12 years. "You have to love to talk about a can of beans and a loaf of bread, and he had that."

Onstead refused to sell beer and wine in his grocery stores until 1994, when he conceded that times had changed.

"I considered the destruction alcohol had brought to so many families, including my own," he said in 1998. Onstead's late father-in-law was an alcoholic. But Onstead relented when people wrote to him to complain about the policy. "People felt like we were judging them if they wanted to buy beer and wine in our stores."

Onstead's grocery business grew from the original two stores to 114 by the late 1990s.

During that period, he helped raise five children, Randall, Charles, Mary, Fran Washburn and Ann Hill.

Washburn died in 1974, at 19, of bone cancer.

Onstead later became chairman of the University Cancer Foundation Board of Visitors, essentially the board of directors at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Civic pride, vision Randall Onstead described his parents' 52-year marriage as a model relationship.

"She really knows how to handle my father," he said of his mother. "My father has a strong personality ... Nobody can get Bob Onstead to change his mind like Kay Onstead, and quickly."

Onstead is also survived by his brother, Dr. Charles Onstead, eight grandchildren and a 2-year-old great-granddaughter.

Onstead retired from Randalls in 1998, passing the top job to Randall. The next year, Robert Onstead sold the business to Safeway. Randall Onstead now manages Safeway's Chicago division.

As he built his business, Robert Onstead also poured his energy into helping Houston diversify economically to survive the oil bust of the 1980s. He started the Houston Economic Council, which later merged with two other organizations to form the Greater Houston Partnership, an organization of local business leaders that promotes Houston. Onstead also served as chairman of the group.

"Bob Onstead was a pillar of the Houston business and civic community," said Jim Kollaer, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership. "His service to the region as partnership chairman in 1990 was marked by vision, optimism and an unshakable faith in Houston and Houstonians."

When Onstead and Love wanted the Astros to be acquired by local owners, they asked McLane to join them in buying the team.

"I was shocked," said McLane, who had never thought about getting into the sports business. After the original deal fell through, McLane decided to buy the team on his own.

A man to be missed McLane credits Onstead, a huge Astros and Texans fan, with urging him to get into baseball and supporting his desire to build the new baseball stadium downtown instead of near the Astrodome.

Friends and family describe Onstead as a soft-spoken man who led by carrot rather than stick.

"He was real," Chronicle Chairman Emeritus Richard J.V. Johnson said. "He was absolutely what you saw was what you had. There was no guile to him."

"I'm not sure I've known a more decent, more giving or more effective individual than Bob Onstead," said former Enron Chairman Ken Lay, who worked with him on numerous civic projects.

Onstead's death stunned his family. Though he had a stent put in one of his arteries six years ago, Onstead was considered healthy by his doctors, and longevity is common in the family.

He was traveling with his wife, daughter and granddaughter when he died. Funeral arrangements will be announced by Geo. H. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home.