For Ed Few ’62, it’s all about family, hard work, good business sense and community. Since well before the Civil War, the Few family has been an integral part of life in Jasper.
Prior to the war, his great-grandfather, Capt. E.I. Kellie, owned a 400-acre cotton plantation in Jasper County named Glorianna Farm. After the war, Kellie moved into town and established the Jasper Newsboy, by most accounts the oldest continuously published weekly newspaper in Texas. Glorianna Farm was reestablished in 1985 when Few bought and cleared 100 acres of the dense and bramble-strewn property and built a new home there. The property has been in the Few family since 1859.
Before graduating from Lamar with a business degree, Few worked for his father at Few Ready Mix concrete plant in Jasper. He went to work for Jasper Oil Co. in 1964 and bought the company in 1973. This would be the first of many businesses he would buy and sell throughout a long career as a Jasper businessman and community leader that career continues today. Jasper Oil Co. had more than 20 gas stations located in Jasper and from Houston to Louisiana. He developed the company into a successful chain of convenience stores called J.O.C. STOPS. He sold all but one of the convenience stores in 2001.
“I like to set the standard in the smaller communities by building bigger and better stores, which translates into increased grocery and gasoline sales. Add good customer service and profits increase,” Few said of the five stores he currently owns and one under construction. “This plan allows me to give the stores the attention they need in order to be successful.”
After his father’s death, Ed and his sister purchased the Jasper concrete plant. Eventually, Few sold his interest in the company to his sister and brother-in-law, who now have a successful concrete business with several plants across Texas. In the true tradition of the Fews for staying close to family, they purchased several acres neighboring Glorianna Farm and built Kellie Creek Farms, where they live today.
Few’s parents were huge advocates of education. His father was an engineer, and his mother attended the University of Texas. Faced with indecision about his future direction after high school, he decided to follow a buddy to Lamar where they roomed together throughout his college career. While attending Lamar, he became a golf devotee. Caddying for the outstanding LU golf teams of the day reignited a passion for golf that began in Jasper. His introduction to golf resulted from his father’s participation in building the Jasper Country Club in 1933 when labor was made available through the Works Progress Administration. For sentimental reasons, he eventually bought and renovated the country club and golf course.
“We played a lot of golf at Lamar and some tennis. There wasn’t much more to do back then,” he reminisced. “Lamar was growing so fast back in President McDonald’s day that during one stretch they had the electricity shut off at pretty much the whole campus for several months. They put huge generators right outside the men’s dorms, which wasn’t so bad until they finally shut them off, then nobody could sleep.”
A love of education influenced Few to accept a position on the board of directors at Lon Morris College in Jacksonville. The late Clifford Lee was president of the institution and Few’s former pastor and friend. Lee asked for his friend’s assistance in weathering some financially turbulent times. Few was inspired again some years later to form a group of influential businessmen from Jasper and the surrounding communities to work toward establishing a higher education facility in Jasper associated with Angelina College, a Lufkin community college. With the donation of seven acres from the Jasper school board, a building was constructed at Jasper High School, which allows more than 400 students each semester to gain valuable college experience before transferring to larger schools to complete their degrees.
“Kids from this area seem to get swallowed up when they leave home to attend a large college like Lamar,” Few said. “Staying in Jasper allows the student the affordability to obtain higher education, learn good study habits and an opportunity to prepare for attendance in a larger college environment.”
The venture has been so successful and the demand is so great, construction of a second building will soon begin. For this, and many other acts of civic-mindedness and community loyalty, the Jasper/Lake Sam Rayburn Chamber of Commerce honored him as Citizen of the Year in January 2008.
They no longer raise cotton at Glorianna Farm, but they do raise horses. Few has been breeding thoroughbreds for more than a decade in Texas and Kentucky. Many of his yearlings have become champion thoroughbreds through the years. The Texas Thoroughbred Association has recognized him as a Top Breeder of the Year. Of the several horses at Glorianna, none has his eye and his heart more than Front Nine, a nine-year-old gelding who has won nearly $400,000 throughout his career. Front Nine is now retired, and Few is having him broken so the grandkids can ride him when they visit. He was the small horse nobody wanted at auction, and, like many things in Few’s life, keeping the small horse was a sentimental decision that eventually turned to gold.
Few and his wife, Lyn, who is a nurse practitioner, have six children between them and four grandchildren. His children include Steve, who lives in Omaha, Neb.; Kendall, who has one daughter and lives in Granbury with husband, Darrell; and Nicole, who has two sons and resides in Jasper with her husband, Wade. Wade, formerly a Texas A&M University professor, helps take care of Few’s business interests. Lyn has three children, daughter Kimberley, who lives in Tulsa with her son Alex; daughter Chelsea who studied Arabic this summer in Amman, Jordan, and is a senior at Stanford University; and son Tyler who is attending the University of Texas.
When they’re not at Glorianna Farm, the semiretired Jasper couple spends much of their time attending horse auctions and going to the racetrack. He keeps horses in Dallas and Kentucky, which keeps the couple busy during racing season. Ed also enjoys traveling to California to play golf with old friends from his Lamar days. For Ed Few, it’s all about family, hard work, good business sense and community. As it has been since antebellum days, the Few family will always be inextricably interwoven into the fabric of Jasper.
