Corning Watch: Longtime CFO Flaws made a lasting mark

Corning Inc. is bracing itself for something it spent years and millions of dollars trying to avoid — the retirement of James B. Flaws, its chief financial officer.

The Fortune 500 company announced late last month that Flaws will step down from that role on Aug. 31 and leave the company on Nov. 30.

It will be a major transition both for the 164-year-old company and the 66-year-old executive.

Flaws came to Corning Inc. in his mid-20s and stayed for 42 years.

He was named to the top financial job 17 years ago, just in time to experience the most agonizing collapse in the company’s history. The optical communications business, which the company had spent decades building, nearly evaporated overnight in 2001.

Sales and earnings plunged, most of the value of Corning Inc.’s stock evaporated, and thousands of jobs were eliminated. There were whispers both in Corning and on Wall Street that the company might go bankrupt.

Flaws helped craft the plans that made sure that didn’t happen. Slowly but surely, he and a handful of other company leaders brought the organization back, first to survivability and later to profitability.

Today its sales and earnings are at record levels.

At the same time he threw himself into his work at Corning Inc., Flaws also played a key role in the larger community.

He led the United Way, the Rockwell Museum, the Corning Foundation, and the Corning Museum of Glass. He helped establish the Corning Children’s Center to make day care more accessible. In his role at the foundation, he helped funnel money to the financially strapped Corning public schools.

That’s not a complete list of his contributions, but it hints at the breadth and quality of his impact on the region.

So why isn’t there going to be a monument somewhere in Corning to commemorate all he did for the company and the community?

My guess is that he wouldn’t want one. Flaws endured the public role his job required of him, but he always seemed a bit uncomfortable with the limelight.

The real reason, however, is that he was not a gladhander or a backslapper and that he did not suffer fools gladly.

He had important work do do, and he did it exceptionally well. Trying to get people to like him was not one of his priorities. Monuments tend to be dedicated to those who seek approval and glory and attention. He was not one of them.

It should be enough to say that it’s hard to think of anyone in the past 50 years who has done more to assure the survival and success of Corning Inc. and the vitality of the Corning community than Jim Flaws.

The Corning Watch column offers analysis of news involving Corning Inc. Contact Larry Wilson in care of Star-Gazette, P.O. Box 285, Elmira, NY 14902; or by email at ldwilson2278@gmail.com. Corning Watch appears Sundays.