Jeff Linville
SALT LAKE CITY — Bill Child, chairman of retailer R.C. Willey Home Furnishings, is taking a two-year leave for a missionary tour for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.


Child, 74, led R.C. Willey for 47 years, turning the management reins over to his nephews four years ago. He said he stayed on as chairman because of his love of the industry and his association with Warren Buffett, head of the retailer’s parent company, Berkshire Hathaway. 

He and his wife, Patricia, will work with three other couples and 34 sister missionaries at the LDS Visitors Center in Washington, D.C., which receives some 80,000 guests a year. They will give tours and explain the church’s doctrine. The center has a 540-seat theater that hosts a number of cultural events, and it stages an impressive lighting festival at Christmas time.

“We feel it’s important to give back,” said Child.

He also said he and his wife also have placed their stock in Berkshire Hathaway in a charitable trust to benefit the arts, hospitals, universities and various associations.

Child had just graduated from college when his father-in-law fell ill and asked him to take over a 600-square-foot appliance store. Child added furniture, and two years later his younger brother, Sheldon, joined the business.

The company grew to seven locations and annual sales of $259 million by 1995, when it was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway, which also owns retailers Nebraska Furniture Market in Omaha, Neb., Jordan’s in Avon, Mass., and Star in Houston. R.C. Willey now has 13 stores with sales “approaching $800 million,” Child said.

Running the company hasn’t allowed him the time to pursue a missionary trip, but now the day-to-day operations have been turned over to the third generation, with Scott Hymas as CEO and Jeff Child as president.

Sheldon Child, 68, recently returned home from a four-year mission in Ghana. Sheldon has been out of the furniture industry for several years as he has taken on many duties in the church. He has been an LDS area authority, spent three years in the Philippines and another three in New York, and in 1998 was named a member of the First Quorum of Seventy, a position of honor within the LDS structure.

Sheldon attended the Las Vegas Market in July, but said it was to renew some old friendships and that he doesn’t intend to rejoin R.C. Willey.

Bill Child said his relationships with customers, suppliers and coworkers are what has kept him in the industry so long. He said the ability to work with Buffett in particular “has been an absolute pleasure.”

After his mission, he’d like to return to R.C. Willey. He said he has a deep love for the company and its 3,000 associates.

He said that not only will he miss the industry while in D.C., but he and Pat will miss seeing their children and 25 grandchildren.

“That’ll be hard.”