(FORTUNE Magazine) – THEY DRAW to inside straights. They carry coals to Newcastle. And when they are in Rome, they don't even do as Romans do. Yet they prosper. They are the men and women of the National Business Hall of Fame, and it is a mark of their greatness that they know when to defy common wisdom. At some critical moment, faced with a great crisis or rare opportunity, they do the opposite of what custom, logic, and experience dictate. When instinct stirs deep inside and leads in unexpected directions, they have the vision and courage to follow. Some of this year's laureates, like Chrysler's Lee Iacocca, the Washington Post Co.'s Katharine Graham, and Capital Cities' Thomas Murphy, took big chances and won. With the odds against him, Iacocca executed a dramatic corporate turnaround. Tom Murphy transformed a bankrupt radio station in upstate New York into a media giant. Rather than sell an inherited business she knew little about, Graham took control of the Washington Post Co. and led it to greatness. Others like Sam Johnson of Johnson Wax, Amory Houghton of Corning Glass Works, and L. L. Bean of mail-order fame were men ahead of their time. When he could have clung to a highly profitable but polluting technology, Johnson abandoned it before the law required and still grew his company rapidly. A pioneer in the art of joint ventures, Houghton created one of the nation's most innovative corporations. Bean, who began his career by offering a water- tight guarantee for his hunting boots, built an empire by focusing on the customer -- long before it became a trend. / The Hall of Fame is sponsored by Junior Achievement, a nonprofit group that educates young people about business. A gallery of laureates, with educational displays, can be found in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. FORTUNE'S board of editors elects members from two groups: those who have retired or moved on from the positions in which they made their mark, and those who are dead. This year's laureates will be inducted into the Business Hall of Fame at a banquet on April 22 in Nashville. -- Peter Nulty

Born 1924 Lee Anthony Iacocca CHRYSLER CORP. After persuading Washington to grant loan guarantees, Iacocca returned to Detroit and used them to execute one of the biggest turnarounds in corporate history.

Can any salesman confront a greater challenge than trying to sell damaged goods to a hostile customer? That's what Lee Iacocca, the chairman of Chrysler Corp., faced when he went to Congress and the White House in 1979 with a plan to get federal aid for his company. At the time, Chrysler was skidding straight toward bankruptcy. The Iranian revolution had driven gasoline prices to record highs, and customers were walking away in droves from Chrysler's stodgy line of gas-guzzling cars. Iacocca held urgent talks with more than 100 banks in search of loans to keep the company afloat until the storm passed, but without success. He was in a fix. As president of Ford Motor Co. in the 1970s, he was a harsh critic of federal auto regulations, constantly demanding that government, in his words, ''get off our backs.'' After that, his appeal for federal aid certainly looked futile. Or did it? Iacocca never lost sight of the most basic principle of selling: A good deal benefits both parties. So he went to Washington, hammering on the point that if Chrysler failed it would cost taxpayers $2.7 billion in unemployment compensation and related payments. But $1.5 billion in loan guarantees would cost taxpayers nothing because Chrysler would come back -- he gave his word on that. Under his coaxing, the federal government turned from angry to skeptical and finally to supportive of the plan. Iacocca returned to Detroit with his loan guarantees and used them to bring Chrysler back to life. He learned salesmanship from his father. Lee was born Lido (he later changed his name) and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the son of Italian immigrants Antoinette and Nicola Iacocca. In the 1920s, Nicola became a successful local entrepreneur, owner of a hot dog stand, a couple of movie theaters, and one of the nation's first car rental agencies. The senior Iacocca was known for such promotional stunts as giving free movie tickets to the ten kids with the dirtiest faces. Lee's greatest hero was Joe DiMaggio, because, Iacocca recalls, ''I was a skinny little Italian kid out in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and I liked sports.'' After graduating from Lehigh University and then Princeton, where he earned a master's in mechanical engineering, Iacocca joined Ford in 1946 as an engineer. Before long he switched to sales, which he thought would be more exciting. After presiding over the launch of the popular Mustang in 1964, he rose quickly and became president in 1970. In 1978, Henry Ford II, chairman of the company, fired Iacocca, a rival whose power was growing. Chrysler snatched up Iacocca, who soon found himself working hard to keep his promise to Congress. The company paid off all federally backed loans by 1983, seven years ahead of deadline. From 1979 to 1982, Iacocca closed 20 of the company's 60 plants, reduced the payroll from 130,000 to 74,000, and persuaded the union workers to take pay cuts. For himself he took as little as $1 in annual salary but what turned out to be millions in stock options. Iacocca's remarkable powers of persuasion made him an effective spokesman for Chrysler -- and for the entire auto industry. In one of a long series of advertisements that ran throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, he stated, ''We in the car industry must make 'Made in America' mean something again. We owe it to you.'' He was more than just a pitchman. Iacocca fostered some memorable products as well. He and his team put the convertible back on the road with the LeBaron in 1982 and created the minivan of the 1980s, the vehicle that helped transport millions of baby-boomer families and save Chrysler. As he retired in 1992, the company was just introducing a popular line of full-size LH cars. Said Joltin' Joe's former biggest fan in one of his last ads: ''When it's your last turn at bat, it sure is nice to hit a home run.''

Born 1917 Katharine Meyer Graham WASHINGTON POST CO. While other news organizations slept, Graham blessed the Post's pursuit of the Watergate story.

When Katharine Graham's husband committed suicide in 1963, no one seriously thought she might step into his role as publisher of the Washington Post. Although she inherited a controlling interest in the company, Graham, a 46- year-old society wife and mother of four, had no business experience. But instead of letting others run the company for her, the heiress daringly took control and led the then parochial Post to national glory. Working to Graham's advantage was her intimate knowledge of life at the top. She was the daughter of Eugene Meyer, a New York financier who became the first president of the World Bank. In 1933 her father bought the bankrupt Washington Post at auction, and Kay, only 16, immediately began preparing for a career in journalism. After graduating from the University of Chicago she became a cub reporter for the San Francisco News, where she covered a grisly death by immolation and a Golden Gate Bridge suicide. She joined the Washington Post in 1939 and soon afterward married Philip Graham, a brilliant young lawyer whom her father later hired as his heir apparent at the Post. After Philip's death, the widow moved with caution, relying on the more experienced journalists and executives at the company while she educated herself in what she calls the Montessori school of business: learning by doing. ''I didn't understand the enormity of what I had to learn,'' she says, ''and it was very painful for the people around me.'' Before long the world learned that Montessori had a star student. In 1971, Graham ordered the Post to publish the Pentagon papers, secret government reports that revealed the Vietnam war wasn't going as well as officials claimed. A year later, while other news organizations slept, Graham blessed the Post's pursuit of the Watergate story. That investigation produced an unparalleled array of intimidations from personal threats to challenges to the company's television licenses, which cost over $1 million to defend. It also produced the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Says Graham: ''I have never killed a story in my life.'' The board named Graham CEO in 1973. As a manager she liked to surround herself with lots of talented men. Sometimes it worked brilliantly, as with Warren Buffett, a close adviser and former board member, and Ben Bradlee, for many years the Post's crusty executive editor. But many of her choices weren't so successful, and Graham was hardly loath to dismiss those who disappointed her. During her tenure as CEO, Graham grew the company -- which also publishes Newsweek -- with acquisitions, including cable television and cellular % telephone companies. Graham also knew how to show her steel. In 1975 she managed to get the paper out during a bitter labor strike that began with arson in the pressroom and lasted many months.

Kay Graham's father once said of her, ''Kate's got a hard mind. She'd make a great businessman.'' If her dad were around in these more politically correct times, he might phrase that differently, but he sure knew his daughter. A share purchased at the company's first offering in 1971 for $6.50 is worth about $230 today.

Born 1928 Samuel Curtis Johnson S.C. JOHNSON & SON His success is resounding proof that environmentalism and good management can work together.

How did Sam Johnson become corporate America's leading environmentalist? Flash back to the mid-1970s, when scientific reports first warned that the chemicals in aerosol sprays (chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs) might harm the earth's ozone layer. To many that sounded like Chicken Little Redux: How could the little pffut of hair spray or air freshener harm a globe-girdling belt of gas nine miles above the earth? ''Nobody that I knew believed it,'' recalls Johnson, who was chief executive of S.C. Johnson, the maker of Johnson wax. ''But we did a survey and found that housewives, our customers, were concerned. So I asked our chemists to look into the report, and they told me it might be true.'' Here was Johnson's conundrum: His company was one of the world's largest sellers of products in aerosol cans -- Raid bug spray and Glade air freshener, for example -- and the chemicals inside seemed to be bad for the environment. ''There was no pressure on us, and we couldn't prove that CFCs were hurting the ozone layer, but based on the concern of our customers, I banned CFCs from all our products worldwide.'' Johnson acted long before other corporations took up the banner of world environmentalism and well before governments moved on the issue -- three years before the U.S. banned CFCs from all aerosols. Johnson's decision cost his private company several million dollars. For some, that might have been a setback. But S.C. Johnson & Son lost none of its luster as Sam Johnson expanded the company into new products and markets. One example: He increased S.C. Johnson's presence in Japan, which today is the company's largest foreign market. His success proves that environmentalism and sound management can work together. Sam was the fourth-generation Johnson to run the company, which was founded in 1886. The young heir studied chemistry at Cornell and attended Harvard business school ''just so that no smart-aleck business school grads could say that any promotions I might receive later were to a candidate without qualifications.'' After a stint in Air Force intelligence, he joined the Racine, Wisconsin, company as an aide to his father in 1954 and then became director of new product development. His assignment: to diversify the company out of waxes. His first effort was an insect spray, but his father chided him for coming up with a product that was no better than others on the market. So Sam and his chemists developed a water-based aerosol that didn't smell or kill house plants, resulting in the first indoor insecticide for consumers: Raid. He followed with a stunning list of market successes, including OFF! insect repellent and Edge shaving gel. In Johnson's 23 years at the helm, (1965 to 1988), sales grew from $171 million to $2 billion, and operating profits rose from $30 million to $250 million. He continued to set tough environmental standards for his company with ambitious targets for reducing the use of toxic chemicals, for shrinking the size of packaging, and for using recycled materials. Johnson, who is on the board of governors of the Nature Conservancy, is an avid nature photographer who recently got a shot of an extremely rare Javanese rhinoceros while on vacation. ''Just lucky,'' he says. Not likely.

Born 1925 Thomas Sawyer Murphy CAPITAL CITIES/ABC Murphy gave up the fast track in New York to manage a tiny, bankrupt television station near Albany.

What makes a businessman great? Tom Murphy will tell you it's the willingness to risk all. In the mid-Eighties, when his Capital Cities Corp. acquired ABC for $3.5 billion, he met a barrage of criticism. ''I was told it would never work because ABC was three times bigger than Cap Cities,'' says Murphy, ''but it worked: The minnow swallowed the whale.'' Indeed. Murphy created one of the most successful media empires in the world. That's pretty good fishing, but somehow it's what one might expect from a risk taker with the name Tom Sawyer. A Navy veteran and graduate of Harvard business school, class of 1949, Murphy worked at Lever Bros. in New York City and soon became a hot young product manager for two sizzling brands: Chlorodent toothpaste and Dove soap. On weekends Murphy played golf with broadcast legend Edward R. Murrow and dined with explorer and journalist Lowell Thomas, a friend of his father, a state supreme court justice. Murphy was only 29, but already success seemed certain: All he had to do was stay on track. But he didn't. One of his father's friends, Frank Smith, made him an offer in 1954. Would young Tom give up the fast track in Manhattan to manage a tiny, bankrupt television station near Albany, New York? Murphy recalls Smith saying: ''If it succeeds, you might make $250,000 in three years, and if it fails, you can come back to New York with a lot of experience. It's a crapshoot.'' Murphy picked up the dice and rolled. ''It was a chance to run my own show,'' he says. And Hudson Valley Broadcasting, as the company was called, sorely needed running. When Murphy arrived to become general manager, it had about 35 employees and was housed in a ramshackle wooden structure that had been a retirement home for nuns. Turning the company toward profitability took Murphy three years and $1 million. In the meantime he married Suzanne Crosby, and they started a family of four children. As soon as Murphy turned the station around, he began building by acquisition. His first prize, acquired in 1957, was a station in Raleigh- Durham, North Carolina, which combined with Albany to give the company a new name: Capital Cities Communications. In 1970 he moved closer to the big time when he purchased Triangle Broadcasting for $100 million from Walter Annenberg, who was then U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. Annenberg had many suitors, but he told Murphy that he chose Capital Cities because Murphy flew to England to make the offer. In all, Murphy has made almost 100 successful offers for newspapers, radio stations, and cable television programming companies, among others. One share of Capital Cities was worth 72 cents when the company went public in 1957. Today it is worth over $500. But Murphy's management style was forever colored by those years of adversity. He became a strict controller of costs and a devoted delegator of authority. Sometimes the two are linked. Says he: ''If you hire the best people and leave them alone, you don't need to hire very many.''

Born 1872, died 1967 Leon Leonwood Bean L.L. BEAN INC. Bean proved he could spot and bag a commercial opportunity as easily as he could a deer.

The first product Leon Bean ever sold was a disaster. It was 1912, and Bean, a 40-year-old hunter and fisherman, had concocted for his own use a hybrid hunting boot with a leather top and a rubber bottom. He liked his invention so much he started selling the boots through the mail to fellow sportsmen, promising refunds if customers weren't satisfied. They weren't -- 90 of his first 100 pairs fell apart and were returned. What did Leon do? Yes, he kept his word and refunded the full price, but then what? Did he stop promising refunds? No. Bean went in the other direction: He borrowed $400 -- a lot of money for a partner in a small-town clothing store in Maine -- and used it to perfect the boot. Then he perfected the guarantee. His credo: ''No sale is really complete until the product is worn out, and the customer is satisfied.'' That kind of service set the tone for one of retailing's most unique enterprises, L.L. Bean. Today the mail-order company continues to replace or repair faulty goods, sometimes years after they were sold. In 1992 this private corporation had $743 million in sales, up 18% over 1991. Bean didn't seem like a retailer at all, more like a professional hunter and guide recommending his favorite gear. One rather optimistic ad for fishing flies read: ''It is no longer necessary for you to experiment with dozens of flies to determine the few that will catch fish. We have done that experiment for you.'' His love for the outdoors started at an early age. After his parents died within four days of each other when he was 12, the young down-easter supported himself by working on farms, hunting, and trapping. He shot and sold his first deer when he was 13. With his own savings, he paid his way through private high school. He then joined his older brother, Otho, who ran a clothing store near Freeport, Maine, the current home of L.L. Bean. When he struck out on his own, Bean proved he could spot and bag a commercial opportunity as easily as a deer. He started selling his boots the same year the U.S. Post Office began parcel post service. To tap the big out- of-state market, he acquired the names and addresses of sportsmen who weren't residents but who held Maine hunting licenses, and mailed his catalogue to them. When his brother, Guy, became postmaster, Leon set up his factory on the second floor over the post office and connected the two with a series of chutes and elevators. He never lost his touch. Knowing that hunters from out of state often drove through Freeport in the middle of the night on their way to some hunting camp in the far wilds, Bean opened for business 24 hours a day. Night customers found a doorbell and a sign that read: ''Push once a minute until clerk appears.'' Leon Bean ran the company until his death in 1967. He was 94.

Born 1899, died 1981 Amory Houghton CORNING INC. Instead of reducing spending, Houghton increased the R&D budget every year throughout the 1930s.

Amory Houghton became president of Corning Glass Works when he was only 30, but it was no time for celebration. The year was 1930, the Great Depression was beginning, and fewer people would be buying Corning's light bulbs. The sensible thing, then, would be to cut spending, hunker down, and wait for better times. Fortunately for Corning, Houghton was not a sensible man. He saw boundless promise in material science and believed that glass would play a part. So instead of reducing expenditures on research and development, Houghton increased the R&D budget every year throughout the decade. ''He really poured on the coals for research. If it hurt quarterly earnings, he just said too bad. He was looking at the long term,'' says Amory's son James, now the company's chairman. Pretty soon new inventions were tumbling out of Corning's labs faster than the company could prudently develop them. To capitalize on these innovations, Amory turned to joint ventures and soon became a pioneer in that field. In 1937 he created Pittsburgh Corning to manufacture and market glass building blocks. After that came Owens Corning, formed in 1938 to make fiberglass, and Dow Corning, formed in 1943 to make silicones. In 1945, when he took the company public, sales were $48 million and income was $2.4 million. By the time he retired in 1964, those numbers had risen to $328 million and $35 million, respectively. Continuing a Houghton tradition, Amory saw Corning, New York, as a benevolent company town and treated workers almost like family. Rather than fire people as sales dipped in the Depression, he cut everyone's workweek -- and therefore wages -- by a day. The company was unionized in 1943 by the Flint Glass Workers, but it has never suffered a strike. In fact his portrait hangs in the local union hall. Amory's passion for R&D is a legacy that will reach far into the 21st century. In 1952, Corning's laboratory came up with a technique for evaporating molten glass and then condensing it into a highly purified form. The process is similar to the way cognac is made. The discovery sat on the shelf until the 1960s, when it was adapted to making fiber-optic cable, a crucial element in the communications revolution. Houghton's vision of innovation, like his cable, was clear as crystal.