At first, Margaret Leflore’s parents didn’t quite catch on to the kind of force they were dealing with when they told their 15-year-old daughter she would not be allowed to date any boy more than two years older than she was.

The problem? The only boy she wanted to date was four years older — Fred Carl.

“We all know how creative Freddie is,” said Margaret Carl, 54, who has been married to the Greenwood entrepreneur for nearly 37 years. “There’s no telling him no.”

The man who would eventually form Viking Range Corp., launch a global revolution in residential kitchen design, provide jobs for well over a thousand people and lead the economic and, many say, cultural resuscitation of his Delta hometown would first have to charm a set of concerned and highly protective parents.

Growing up in the same neighborhood, Fred and Margaret were always aware of each other, but it wasn’t until Fred saw Margaret at Leflore Bowling Lanes when they were out with other people that Fred expressed an interest in dating the pretty brunette.

Would she see him? He sent a friend of his to ask a friend of hers. “Well, he does have pretty eyes,” she thought.

But they still had to work around that age problem.

“Freddie would have a friend who was one or two years older than I was pick me up for a date, and we’d meet at Lackey’s or Giardina’s (on West Park Avenue) and make the swap,” she explained. At the end of the evening, they’d switch back, and the boy who had picked her up would deliver her back to her parents’ house.

The nights when the friend didn’t show up to complete his responsibilities were a little more complicated, Margaret said.

“There were a few times Freddie had to take me home, so he would just barely slow the car down enough to let me jump out.”

When she was 16, she told her parents the truth, letting them know the two were serious about each other and wanted to marry, and they relented.

In those uneasy days of the war in Vietnam, when all males age 18 and over had to register for the draft and be assigned a draft number based on their birthday, Fred’s draft number was four. If he was drafted, which was almost a certainty with a number that low, the young couple was sure he’d be sent to Vietnam.

“He joined the Naval Air Reserve in Millington (Tenn.),” Margaret said. “After training, most of the other guys got assigned to ships. Freddie got Iceland! Iceland? Where was that?”

The assignment came with good news, though. Although service wives could not be with their husbands who were assigned to ships, they could often go with those assigned to countries. The couple could be together after they were married.

Fred began serving his time; Margaret graduated from Greenwood High School in May 1970; they were married in July. Margaret joined Fred in Iceland for the final year of his 22-month tour of duty there.

On their return home, college became a priority for both. Margaret enrolled at Mississippi Delta Junior (now Community) College in Moorhead and earned an associate degree in nursing in 1974. While Fred earned his degree in business from Delta State University, Margaret became a doctor’s office nurse.

For the next several years, Margaret worked as a nurse while the couple lived in Starkville, Oxford and Jackson, as Fred studied architecture and city planning and worked in construction. Margaret acquired experience and training as an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse in Starkville, an operating room (OR) nurse at St. Dominic’s in Jackson and an OR, ICU and recovery room nurse at the hospital in Oxford.

In November 1976 in Oxford, while she was expecting their son, she experienced what she thought was labor. It turned out to be a kidney infection, and she was hospitalized.

Once it was determined that the problem was not labor, Fred and other family members who had gathered for the birth left the hospital.

After they were gone, of course, Margaret went into labor.

In that era without cell phones, she had some difficulty reaching Fred, but eventually he was located, and Chris was born shortly after midnight on Nov. 13. In the recovery room after delivery, she found herself, ever the nurse, instructing another new mother on what to do when she thought she was going to be sick.

After about six weeks of maternity leave, Margaret returned to work as an OR nurse. The couple arranged their schedules so that she worked while Fred was not in class, and Fred could keep their new son. “Fred was a great baby-sitter,” Margaret said.

In 1977, the family moved to Jackson, where Margaret was an OR nurse at St. Dominic’s and Fred was building superintendent with developer Fred Craig; the project was the Eastbrooke Condominiums. On his own time, Fred designed homes for individuals.

“He had his drawing table set up in our spare room,” Margaret said.

Back in Greenwood, where the couple’s parents still lived, Dr. Dick Meek had started a construction project, and Fred heard he needed someone to oversee the work. The men talked and agreed Fred was perfect for the job, and the young family was on its way back home.

Together Fred and Dick Meek established the Belmont Construction Co. in Greenwood, named, Margaret said, for Belmont Park in New York, where the Belmont Stakes, the third jewel in horse racing’s annual Triple Crown, is run. The partnership ended in the 1980s.

After a bout with meningitis, when she was unable to work for about two months, nursing at Greenwood Leflore Hospital kept Margaret busy.

“The hospital went from four operating rooms to a large surgical suite while I was there,” Margaret said. “They made tremendous progress.” She left the hospital in 1993 so she could spend more time with Fred. Viking was taking off, and arranging to take time from nursing to travel with her husband was getting increasingly difficult.

“Even now, sometimes I’ll dream I’ve gone back to nursing,” Margaret said, and she’ll wake up in a panic. “No, my license is inactive,” she’ll think — “I’m not supposed to be doing this!”

The Viking legend

By now, practically everyone has heard how Viking Range Corp. got started — that Margaret wanted an “institutional-looking” stove like the ancient Chambers model that her mother had gotten from her grandmother and that was no longer being manufactured. When they couldn’t find anything like it, Fred designed a prototype, and poof! Viking was born.

It wasn’t quite that easy, Margaret said.

As a fourth-generation contractor and designer, Fred wanted to design “something different” for the house they were building in 1980, she said, but his options seemed limited. He asked Margaret what kind of stove she wanted for their new kitchen, and she told him one like the Chambers that had been in her family.

They could find nothing even similar. “I settled for a Jenn-Air,” said Margaret.

It perplexed Fred that no one made the kind of range he and Margaret were looking for. The closest thing was a true commercial appliance. However, Margaret explained, using one of those in a residential kitchen required extra insulation because of the intense heat, reinforced flooring to support the extra weight, a dedicated sprinkler system and standing pilots – and if you could swing all that, your homeowners insurance would be voided because of the increased fire risk.

Fred asked KitchenAid in Oxford if they’d be willing to help. "They thought we were crazy. They said, ’Why would we want to do that? There’s no money in it,"’ Margaret said, referring to the commercial-look trend. "Well, now, of course, every (appliance manufacturer) is doing it."

As Fred worked on his designs and searched for investors, Margaret took on extra hours at Greenwood Leflore Hospital to help with their living expenses.

Fred found a manufacturer in Los Angeles that was willing to build his prototype, and when it was ready, he and Margaret flew out to see it.

"We couldn’t afford my plane ticket," she said. "Mama bought it for me."

The Carls were pleased with the design, but the company said it would not be able to manufacture the product for distribution. Fred got on the phone immediately and found a manufacturer across Los Angeles that could handle the work. Fred and Margaret rented a U-Haul trailer and transported the 845-pound range across town.

The company started manufacturing Viking ranges in December 1986; the first one shipped from Gardena, Calif., in 1987.

"It took some time to catch on," Margaret said. But once it did, the commercial look for residential kitchens exploded, changing forever how kitchens are designed. All the major appliance manufacturers now have followed Viking’s lead.

Setting up corporate headquarters in Greenwood was not a difficult decision for Fred; he’d always loved it here and wanted to do good for his hometown, Margaret said.

Herself a Viking employee, helping with the hospitality division, Margaret said, "We have a great town and a great place to live. I do believe it will continue to get even better."

Her heart is full with respect and love for the people who make Viking successful. "I appreciate all of the wonderful people we have working at Viking." she said. "I know that no matter what Freddie has done or continues to do, it wouldn’t be anything without all of the people who make it what it is."

Did Fred know what Viking would become? Did he actually envision the kind of success Viking has produced?

Margaret laughed. "He had no idea," she said "He never dreamed it would be this big. We even had a real back-up plan. If this didn’t work out, we were going to move to Frisco, Colo., so we could ski and Fred could build houses."

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