Personnel: Du Pont Is His Middle Name

Most executives have a running theme in their public speeches, and Lammot du Pont Copeland’s theme is the necessity for “interested owners” (stockholders) to participate more actively in corporations, rather than leaving it all to hired professional management. He is in a rare position to do just that. Last week serious, reserved “Mots” Copeland, 57, great-great-grandson of Founder E. I. du Pont and one of the company’s largest stockholders, became the eleventh president in the 160-year history of the biggest chemical maker in the world.

As chief executive, Copeland succeeds Crawford Hallock Greenewalt, 60, the son-in-law of onetime President Irénéé du Pont; Greenewalt moves up to chairman of the board after 14 years as president. While Greenewalt will “guide policy decisions,” Du Font’s operations will be run by Copeland, who joined the family firm shortly after graduating from Harvard (B.S. in engineering, ’28) and, save for a four-month layoff during the Depression, has been with it ever since. The change, Du Pont executives say, was long scheduled, but hinged on the retirement of Walter S. Carpenter Jr., 74, who wanted to stay on as chairman until the completion of Du Font’s long and vain battle to avoid selling its General Motors stock under a U.S. antitrust action. With Carpenter’s retirement, the company loses the only man outside the Du Pont family ever to have served as a Du Pont president (1940-48).