How a Richmond Businessman Helped Launch UVA Darden — and Why His Grandson Is Honoring Him Now

In the quiet West End of Richmond, Virginia, sunlight falls through tall windows onto a portrait that seems almost alive. The man in the frame has the shoulders of someone used to carrying weight, the easy calm of a natural storyteller and the clean-cut good looks of a midcentury film star.

This is Burtis O. Cone — grandfather, mentor and self-made entrepreneur — and one of the original citizens whose conviction helped bring the University of Virginia Darden School of Business into being.

For decades, Cone’s role in the School’s earliest days lived mostly in memory: a certificate tucked away in an attic, a few stories told around dinner tables and a sense that he was part of something foundational long before Darden became what it is today.

This year, on the occasion of Darden’s 70th anniversary, his story returns to the forefront through the generosity of his grandson, James H. “Jim” Price III — a longtime Richmond attorney who, in honoring Cone, has also reintroduced Darden to one of its earliest champions.

A childhood shaped by strength

Born in 1892 in Spring Hope, North Carolina, Cone came of age in a household held together by his mother’s relentless work after the death of his father. She sewed, laundered and ironed — and through grit alone managed to send her youngest son to college for one year. It was all she could afford.

In 1915, Cone moved to Richmond and bought a small buggy-top business for $600. Almost immediately, he saw what was coming. The horse-drawn era was ending. The automobile was not a novelty but a future. Cone pivoted accordingly.

Under his leadership, Crawford Manufacturing Company began producing automobile seat covers — not accessories, but essential industrial textiles in an era of dirt roads and open cabins. From there, the company expanded into awnings, marine textiles and other durable fabric goods. What began as a single building in Richmond grew into plants in Ontario, Dallas and Kansas, with showrooms on Fifth Avenue and in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart.

Cone did not attend business school. He simply built, observed and built again — the kind of entrepreneurial instinct that becomes its own credential.

“He just worked hard — always honest, always respectful,” Price says. “He grew up poor, but you’d never know it by the way he carried himself. People liked being around him. People trusted him.”

That trust — and the company’s deep expertise in heavy-duty textiles — took on new meaning during World War II.

As the nation mobilized, Crawford Manufacturing shifted its production toward the war effort, supplying materials used in protective gear for American soldiers. Newspaper accounts from the period describe the company receiving repeated Army-Navy “E” Awards for excellence in production, an honor reserved for a small fraction of plants nationwide.

Among the objects Price keeps today are two small metal squares, each about two inches across. One is smooth. The other is bent — visibly deformed by impact. A soldier sent it to Cone with a handwritten note thanking him for saving his life. The metal had been woven into a canvas vest, part of the protective gear Crawford produced, and it absorbed the force of a bullet that might otherwise have been fatal.

It is a quiet artifact. Easy to overlook. Impossible to forget.

Metal inserts produced by Crawford Manufacturing during World War II. One piece was bent by a bullet and sent to Burtis O. Cone with a note thanking him for saving a soldier’s life. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak)

A gentle patriarch

Price’s connection to Cone is not merely genealogical — it is personal, profound and enduring. When Price was young, circumstances at home shifted and a court granted custody of him and his sister to their maternal grandparents, Burtis and Sara Parsons Cone.

Cone taught Price not with severity but with steadiness. There were rules — be honest, work hard, respect everybody — but the lessons went deeper. He guided without fanfare. He corrected without anger. He cared enough to nudge his grandson toward better grades, better habits and a better future.

“If he was disappointed, he’d let you know,” Price says. “And that was enough. I just loved the man.”

A Commonwealth in need of a business school

In the early 1950s, Virginia had many strengths, but it lacked a major graduate business school. The brightest students were leaving for the Ivy League or heading south to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and elsewhere. Business leaders across the state saw both the loss and the opportunity.

Cone was among the small group who stepped forward.

He served on the Sponsoring Committee for UVA’s Graduate School of Business Administration, the independent body charged with raising the School’s initial funding and momentum. Later, he became an original trustee of the Graduate Business School Sponsors, a group fondly remembered as founding Dean Charlie Abbott’s “instant alumni.” These men bolstered early faculty salaries, helped secure endowed chairs and forged ties with the business community that strengthened the School long before Darden was Darden.

“He and these other men were upset that there was no business school in the state,” Price says. “So they decided to do something about it.”

A legacy rediscovered

Price had long known his grandfather played a role in Darden’s founding. But the meaning of that role came into focus only recently, after a conversation with his cousin, Berkley Cone — himself a 1972 graduate of UVA’s McIntire School of Commerce — stirred a deeper sense of connection.

“I hadn’t really thought about doing something like this,” Price says. “But once the idea came up, it felt right.”

Around the same time, while sorting through family belongings in an attic, Price came across a certificate naming Burtis O. Cone a sponsor of the Graduate School of Business Administration. Dated 1956 — Darden’s first full calendar year open — it offered a simple, tangible link to the School’s earliest days.

Price had it framed for safekeeping.

Price himself had once been accepted to Darden early in his career. A promising law-firm opportunity and life circumstances led him in another direction, but the School remained a place he admired from a distance.

Now, years later, that thread reconnects.

A certificate naming Burtis O. Cone a sponsor of the University of Virginia’s Graduate School of Business Administration, dated 1956. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak)

A portrait and its meaning

In Price’s dining room, Cone’s portrait watches over everything. Painted decades ago by a Richmond portrait artist, the image carries a quiet authority — a straight-on gaze, relaxed shoulders, a calm, unshowy confidence that feels earned rather than performed.

“He looked like Gary Cooper,” Price says. “Every time I walk by, I feel like I ought to salute it.”

But the Burtis O. Cone Memorial Scholarship is not about elevating the image. It is about carrying forward the person behind it — a man who rebuilt his life through work, vision and care. A man who gave his grandson the stability and encouragement he needed. A man who believed education could unlock futures he himself never had the chance to pursue.

That is what Price hopes the scholarship will honor: not just a sponsor of the School’s founding but a mentor whose values still resonate.

Price believes his grandfather would approve.

“I think he’d be pleased,” he says. “Maybe still disappointed in my grades,” he adds with a laugh, “but pleased.”

A portrait of Burtis O. Cone, a Richmond entrepreneur and early supporter of the University of Virginia’s Graduate School of Business Administration, now the Darden School of Business. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak)

If this story resonates

For readers moved by Cone’s story, Darden offers two ways to support future students. To explore creating an endowed scholarship in honor of someone who shaped your life, contact Samantha Hartog, senior associate vice president of advancement, at HartogS@darden.virginia.edu or +1-434-981-4025. To make an immediate impact through need-based aid, you may also give to the Darden Annual Fund through the School’s online giving portal.

James H. “Jim” Price III in his Richmond home. (Photo by Sanjay Suchak)