WOODS E. EASTLAND

LIKE AVEN WHITTINGTON, the Staplcotn chairman who succeeded him in 1986, Woods E. Eastland divided his early days between the Mississippi Delta and Washington, DC, where his father James 0. Eastland represented Mississippi in the Senate beginning in 1941 until his retirement in 1978.

Except for two years as a naval officer from 1970 until 1972 and another two year stint from 1972 to 1974 as a Jackson attorney and law school professor, the job Woods Eastland took running Staplcotn was his first ever off the 5,000 acre family farm west of Doddsville, MS.

As president and CEO of Staplcotn he manages 160 full- time and 250 seasonal employees and guided Staplcotn to become the second largest privately held business in Mississippi with annual revenues in excess of $700 million. In 1995, Staplcotn marketed 1,756,000 bales, or about 1l percent of all the cotton grown in the United States.

But Woods Eastland really wouldn't mind being back on the farm. For the son of a longtime U. S. Senator, this job was an opportunity to see what he could do, to step out of the long shadow cast by his powerful father.

"I think farming life is unsurpassed," he said. "It's in harmony with nature. Your fate is controlled by nature. I enjoyed every day of it."

Although he grew up close to power, Eastland never considered a career in politics. "I think that's the worst life in the world. My father was gone at least every other weekend. I really never knew him until I grew up," he said.

Eastland was born January 7,1945 in Doddsville, MS. He graduated from Vanderbilt University with a BA in 1967 and from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1970.

In the early 1880s, Scott County drug store proprietor Oliver Eastland was the first of his family to purchase farmland in the Delta. His son, Woods Caperton Eastland, operated that farm and also traveled back and forth to Scott County to practice law.

Woods Eastland is on the board of managers of the Memphis Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vice president of National Cotton Council and of AMCOT, a director of Mississippi Chemical Corporation and of Delta Council and past president and past chairman of Cotton Council international.

He and his wife, the former Lynn Wood of Hollandale, live in Indianola, MS, and are the parents of a daughter, Lane, and a son, Brad.