Francorp Client Jimmy John's Honors Disciplinarian

Troublesome Student Makes Good, and Honors Disciplinarian

Peter Wynn Thompson for The New York Times
James J. Liautaud, right, founder of Jimmy John’s sandwich shops, with James Lyons, who was the dean of discipline at his high school, Elgin Academy in Illinois.
By DIRK JOHNSON

Published: December 30, 2008
ELGIN, Ill. — In the early 1980s, James J. Liautaud was a trouble-making student at Elgin Academy who ranked near the bottom of his high school class. He drank beer. He smoked cigarettes. He skipped class.

Alex Romanovsky/DLA Architects
Mr. Liautaud donated $1 million to his alma mater and insisted that the Liautaud-Lyons Upper School bear Mr. Lyons’s name.
Teachers at the academy, a private prep school, grew so exasperated with his antics that they finally voted to expel him. But the mischievous student had an unlikely defender: the dean of discipline.
The dean, James Lyons, recognized the rebellion as insecurity, and saw what others did not — a student from a financially struggling family, trying to fit in at a prestigious school among wealthier, more polished peers. The dean, who had a working-class upbringing himself, put his job on the line. “If he goes,” he told the faculty, “I go.”
Mr. Liautaud — better known as Jimmy John, the founder of a sandwich shop empire with some 800 restaurants — came back to the Academy this semester for the opening of a building that bears his name. He gave the school $1 million, with one condition: the building also had to bear the name of Mr. Lyons.
“It’s a real simple deal,” said Mr. Liautaud, 44, explaining the motive for his generosity. “Jim Lyons believed in me.”
On a bluff in this old city on the Fox River, the new building houses 12 classrooms, a theater and a library. The high school is now known as the Liautaud-Lyons Upper School.
John Cooper, the head of the school, said educators everywhere could tell stories of dismal students who turned out to be successful in business or the arts. But not many send such a gift.
“He called me up out of the blue and said, ‘Hey I’ve decided to give you guys a million bucks,’ ” Dr. Cooper said of Mr. Liautaud.
At first, Mr. Liautaud wanted only Mr. Lyons’s name on the building. But the school told the sandwich king that it wanted to use his name, too, since his story would inspire many students. There are still a few teachers around who remember Mr. Liautaud and his wild ways.
“It’s all in the permanent record,” Dr. Cooper said, smiling.
A big man with a streetwise charm, Mr. Liautaud delivered the commencement address last year, wearing a T-shirt, blue jeans and cowboy boots. He implored the students not to emulate his own academic and behavioral missteps.
Among students at Elgin Academy, Mr. Liautaud is regarded as something of a hero. One of them, Christopher Theodorou, 18, said he ordered food from a local Jimmy John’s restaurant for seven straight days after learning about the donation, a gesture of pride and gratitude.
“And besides,” Mr. Theodorou said, “it’s delicious.”
Mr. Lyons, 74, now retired, said he had spent many hours in the company of young Mr. Liautaud, often because he had violated some rule.
In those days, a disciplinary dean had a little more leeway, and Mr. Lyons was not afraid to capture a boy’s attention by giving his arm a bit of a squeeze. “You wouldn’t get away with any of that stuff today,” he said.
But he also had a gentleness that won over the troubled boy.
“I would just listen,” said Mr. Lyons, who learned that Mr. Liautaud’s parents were going through hard financial times while their son was in school. “He was able to confide in me. He was a pretty good kid. He was just struggling to find out who he was.”
The two men have stayed in touch. They got together for dinner just before Christmas. “You have a lot of students who become successful,” Mr. Lyons said. “But this is one who said thank you.”
Mr. Liautaud said he had “acted like a jerk” at Elgin Academy.
“I was at this fancy school and I felt out of place, so I rebelled,” he said. “But Jim Lyons put his arm around me. He cared about me. He’d say, ‘Jimmy, don’t say that; it’s not classy.’ And he’d tell me I could do whatever I wanted in life. He told me that a lot. And by the time I was a senior, I started to believe him.”
He made it through high school, but Mr. Liautaud said he was not exactly college material. “I didn’t have the grades, and my dad didn’t have the money for tuition,” he said.
He had always wanted to start his own food business. The financial picture at home improved enough that his father offered him a deal. He would lend the young man $25,000 to start a restaurant business. If he failed, he would have to join the Army.
Mr. Liautaud’s business model was to go to college towns and deliver inexpensive food to dormitories. Most restaurants in those days refused to deliver to dorms. He started his first restaurant in Charleston, Ill., near Eastern Illinois University. He now has stores throughout the country, but mostly in the Midwest and Southeast.
With his success, Mr. Liautaud could live in any fancy neighborhood he chose. But he and his wife and two small children live in the central Illinois university town of Champaign.
“You can’t forget where you came from,” he said.
The officials at Elgin Academy are thankful for that. Mr. Lyons, who said he was humbled by the gift, initially felt uncomfortable about having his name on the school building. But he liked the notion of linking a student’s name with an educator’s.
“We believed in each other from the start,” Mr. Lyon said. “And we never gave up on each other.”