CULVERHOUSE COLLEGE OF COMMERCE 
AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
The University of Alabama

ALABAMA BUSINESS HALL OF FAME

William L. Halsey, Jr. Inducted: 2004

William L. Halsey, Jr. is chairman and treasurer of W.L. Halsey Grocery Company, Inc. He was born and raised in Huntsville and attended the Gulf Coast Military Academy, after which he attended The University of Alabama. When Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, he entered the Army and served in the Engineer Amphibian Command until his discharge in 1946. He returned to Huntsville to the family firm and in 1950 the company embarked on a path of expanding and modernizing as an institutional food service. In 1955 he became president and treasurer.

In 1972 the Halsey Grocery Company moved to a new Madison. In 2000 this facility was expanded to 130,000 square feet, which included a meat processing plant and a produce department. Today, Halsey Grocery Company serves more than 1,800 customers in five states with a full line of items. Halsey has been active in a number of national and local industry associations, serving as president of the Institutional Food Distributors of America, president of the Alabama Wholesale Grocer’s Association, and a member of the board of governors of the National American Wholesale Grocers Association. He is a past vice president of the Continental Organization of Distributor Enterprises as well as the United States Wholesale Grocers Association. Halsey Grocery Company was one of the five founders of the Continental Organization of Distributor Enterprises, a food service distributor marketing organization known today as EMCO. Halsey is a past director of First Alabama Bank, Huntsville, and First Alabama Bancshares; a former director of SCI Systems Inc.; and a director of the University of Alabama in Huntsville Foundation. His civic honors include his selection as Outstanding Young Man of the Year in Huntsville in 1955, and being chosen to receive the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal from the Redstone Arsenal on three separate occasions. He received the Chamber of Commerce Distinguished Award in 1989, the same year he received the American Defense Preparedness Association Distinguished Service Award.