Boy Scouts name Ashley Furniture founder their Distinguished Citizen of the Year

Yahoo

19-03-2025

TUPELO – A man who took his Minnesota farm boy's work ethic and built it into furniture manufacturing and retail leader was recognized Tuesday night as the local Boy Scouts chapter's Distinguished Citizen of the Year.
The Natchez Trace Council of the Boy Scouts of America bestowed its top honor on Ron Wanek, the founder and chairman of Ashley Furniture Industries, the world's largest furniture manufacturer and the largest retail furniture store brand in North America.
'We didn't have a Boy Scout group in the area where I grew up,' Wanek said during the ceremony at the Cadence Bank Conference Center in Tupelo, 'but my son and grandsons were in the Scouts. One grandson made it all the way to Eagle Scout. We have supported it ever since Todd was a little kid.'
Besides being involved with Scouting as a parent and grandparent, as he succeeded in business, Wanek also supported the Boys Scouts financially.
'Scouting does do much. It is a great mentoring program,' Wanek said. 'It teaches kids how to be good citizens.'
Wanek was instilled with a strong work ethic and ambition to succeed while growing up on a sharecropper's farm in Utica, Minnesota. He entered the furniture business in 1961 working for a newly formed enterprise. Less than a decade later, he took the knowledge he had gained in the furniture industry and formed Arcadia Furniture. He and his 35 employees began making occasional tables in 1970 in Arcadia, Wisconsin.
To ensure he could get his product to the retailers and get raw materials delivered to factories, Wanek started his own transportation division in 1974. That has since grown into the largest private freight carrier of all manufacturing companies and the largest importer of furniture in North America. As part of a restructuring, Arcadia merged with Ashley Furniture in 1982.
He and his wife started the Ronald & Joyce Wanek Foundation in 1998, donating more than $10 million over the years to a multitude of their favorite causes, including the furniture industry, helping children in need, medical research, education and the arts, and honoring the armed forces.
The foundation has developed a number of partnerships with K-12 schools, as well as post-secondary schools over the past five years, investing in STEM-based learning opportunities and scholarships, to provide students with exposure to technical trades and career opportunities, instructor training, and robotics programs.
Wanek has also taken a hands-on approach with the Soldiers Walk at Memorial Park in Arcadia, Wisconsin. Not only did he establish the half-kilometer walk saluting veterans from all U.S. wars in 1990, Wanek personally designed and sculpted more than 20 monuments that stand along the way.
Since 2000, the Natchez Trace Council of the Boy Scouts of America has given the Distinguished Citizen Award to Mississippians from various walks of life for their contributions to the communities in which they live.
Award recipients are selected annually by past recipients and board members of the Natchez Trace Council. Past awards have recognized past governors and U.S. Senators, entertainers like Marty Stuart, Mac McAnally and Morgan Freeman.
The dinner and awards program is the culmination of the council's largest fundraiser, the Friends of Scouting campaign, which provides more than 44% of its funding for the year. More than 80% of the council's income goes toward program activities.
Natchez Trace Council was formed in the spring of 2023l when the Pushmataha Area Council 691 and Yocona Area Council 748 merged. The council serves about 1,500 scouts in 22 counties.