Meat-industry maven and show-biz superstar Jimmy Dean spent 30 years selling sausage, but a lifetime being a ham

[NOTE: This article was originally published in Meat Marketing & Technology magazine in 2002]

RICHMOND, Va. – To walk through the Virginia homestead of Jimmy Dean and his wife Donna Meade Dean, a country vocalist and songwriter herself whom Dean met on the set of a country music TV show in 1989, is to stroll past the memories of a man who made it big in the business.

Which business? Take your pick: Meat processing, country music, network television and big-screen movies.

He made his mark in all of them.

The mementos marking the milestones of Dean’s lengthy entertainment career line the walls of his modest but sumptuously furnished compound, situated plantation-like on 180 acres known as Chaffin’s Bluff, along the banks of the historic James River.