A natural disaster knocked Cooper Farms out of the further-processing business, but the turkey firm has come back swinging.
If a storm cloud can have a silver lining, why not a funnel cloud? Mark Hellinger, president of CME Corp., a general contractor in Fort Wayne, Ind., remembers the phone call he received on Veterans Day 2002 to investigate "wind damage" at the Cooper Farms cooked meats plant in nearby Van Wert, OH. What he found was a scene of near-total destruction: a tornado rated at F4, with wind speeds exceeding 200 mph, had carved a path across the farmfields the day before.