The Inaugural Banquet Honoring
John A. McConnel, Jr.
President of J.P. Stevens and Co., Inc.
The inaugural FCIF Gala, which started out as a banquet, took place on June 15, 1981 in the grand ballroom of the historic Palmer House Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. This first banquet was not only a fundraiser but also a landmark moment for FCIF, which had just been chartered that same year in response to the President of the Carpet & Rug Institute suffering a stroke.
FCIF was founded by industry leaders including J.B. Maffet from World Carpet, which is now part of Mohawk; Harry I. Saul from Queen Carpet, now part of Shaw Industries; Robert E. Shaw, current owner and CEO of Engineered Floors; Larry Nagle, President of N.L. Nagle, Inc. and still a serving FCIF board member; Walter Guinan of Karastan Rug Mills; and Al Wahnon of Floor Covering Weekly. The Foundation started in Washington, D.C. and has moved to Chicago, Illinois and Anaheim, California before finding its current home in Dalton, Georgia.
The first FCIF banquet honored John A. McConnell, Jr., then president of J. P. Stevens & Co., Inc. Carpet Division. McConnell graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Finance and was a CPA in Pennsylvania with Lybrand, Ross Bros., and Montgomery. He was Controller and CFO of Magee Carpet Company and President and CEO of Roxbury Carpet Company. He joined J. P. Stevens & Co., Inc. in 1972 and had also served as chairman of the Carpet Committee of the American Textile Manufacturers Institute. Parents of six children, he and his wife, Julia, resided in Fairfield, Connecticut.
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