David H. Murdock swooped down from far away and shook up one of the biggest mill towns in the South. He spent millions on new looms while selling off the houses that the hands at Cannon Mills had rented for generations.

His workers never knew quite what to expect.

Today — 15 years after the Los Angeles billionaire vanished with the same boom that hit Kannapolis when he arrived — retired Cannon Mills employees still wonder where he went.

Truth is, Murdock, who turns 77 next month, still has a lot of clout here as CEO of Atlantic American Properties, the city’s largest landowner and Cabarrus County’s second largest taxpayer. But these days, he has a lot more to tend than Kannapolis.

“I think there’s still some misunderstanding about Mr. Murdock’s role here,” said Lynn Scott Safrit, the second in command at Atlantic American, who works in downtown Kannapolis.

“He hasn’t been here in 1 1/2 years,” said Safrit, who flies to cities such as Phoenix, Baltimore and Los Angeles to meet Murdock.

When he’s not tending one of at least 10 companies he controls, Murdock and his new wife tend horses at a mansion they just built on thousands of acres of countryside north of Los Angeles.

Murdock’s biggest job is heading Dole Food Co., the world’s largest fruit and vegetable producer with $3.8 billion in sales annually. He became CEO of the company about the time he sold Cannon Mills, converting the island of Lana’i in Hawaii from pineapple plantations to tourism.

Dole was separated from Castle & Cooke, another company Murdock heads, in 1995. With $308 million in sales last year, Castle & Cooke owns golf courses, country clubs and other resorts in California, Hawaii and Florida. It also just built the 166,000-square-foot Landmark Plaza, an office building in Raleigh.

Murdock also is CEO of a host of other companies: Huntington Tile; Yankie Hill Brick; Murdock Development Corp., another real-estate company; Goettel, an air conditioning manufacturer; Wiscassett Mills, a yarn spinner; Flexi-Van Leasing, a truck-chassis lessor; Stair Co., Murdock’s antiques auction house; and Ventura Farms, where Murdock breeds Arabian horses.

Murdock just built a new house near Los Angeles on the farms where he tends his horses and roses and orchids. After two divorces and the death of a third wife, he married Tracy Vakzad, an interior decorator. He also has two sons, David and Justin, who are involved in his businesses.

An active Republican, Murdock held a fund-raiser for presidential candidate George Bush in November at his farm.

“He’s extremely well educated, and about things you wouldn’t ordinarily expect,” Safrit said.

All pretty incredible for the son of a traveling salesman who dropped out of school in ninth grade.

Murdock began his career by building houses and offices in Phoenix after World War II. He founded a bank and lost nearly $100 million in the bear market of 1964.

Undaunted, he moved to Los Angeles and founded a tile-making company there. He bought more real estate and took over a company called Pacific Holdings Corp.

When news hit in 1982 that Pacific Holdings bid highest in a $413 million tender offer for Cannon Mills, residents here were stunned. It marked the end of an era, when patriarchal boss James W. Cannon reigned.

Back then, wages and pensions didn’t amount to much and the tiny, clapboard mill houses were often rickety. But retired workers recall stable jobs and secure lives. Cannon provided many services — police, trash collection, fire protection, recreation and even polio vaccines. It’s why the city, with a population now of about 38,000 — more than Salisbury — didn’t incorporate until 1984.

Residents were suspicious of Murdock from the start. To them, he was a stranger from far away with no background in textiles.

But Murdock appealed to the workers’ strong anti-union sentiment, pledging cooperation and repeatedly denying rumors he might sell the mills. Then, after just three years — and months after workers had voted overwhelmingly against allowing a union to represent them — he sold them.

Only after he returned west did workers learn Murdock had used assets from the their pension fund to finance a bid to take over Occidental Petroleum. When the company bought its stock back from him at a $60-million premium, Murdock kept the profits.

Meanwhile, Murdock had stopped the pension fund and bought annuities to finance future obligations to retirees. The California firm handling the annuities later collapsed. In Kannapolis — where pensions had never been big to begin with — checks simply stopped coming. After the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union filed suit on behalf of the retirees, Murdock settled for an undisclosed sum.

Folks here still remember that.

It could even be part of the reason why a majority of the mill workers voted in September to allow the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees to represent them under new Dallas-based owner, Pillowtex.

“He pulled one on the folks on that one,” said Coy Privette, a Kannapolis minister and Cabarrus County commissioner. “And to me that had a lot of effect on the union vote. It made people say, ‘You can no longer trust the leadership.’ ”

But Murdock also made the mills profitable, initially spending $200 million to replace outdated equipment and restructure the business. He spun off the 2,200 mill houses and other land in Kannapolis and other cities the company had mills in as Atlantic American Properties, forcing families to become less reliant on the company for housing. And, he spent $20 million to build Cannon Village.

Bill Nesbitt retired as a card-room manager in 1988.

“I know a lot of people that didn’t like David, but the truth is, these plants probably would have closed if he hadn’t bought them,” Nesbitt said.

“I think that was the end of an era of the patriarch,” Safrit said. “I think they were mad about something he really didn’t have anything to do with.”

Atlantic American still owns 275 houses, and is slowly selling them or holding them for future development.

“We’re disposing of the mill houses little by little as retirees move out,” she said.

The company markets Cannon Village as a “home furnishings market” on the Web and on billboards scattered along Interstate 85. With its cobble sidewalks and resemblance to Colonial Williamsburg, its piped-in music and barrage of furniture outlets, many residents wonder whether targeting tourists is a good business decision.

“You have to wonder if today it has the vibrancy he intended it to have,” said Karen Cobb, communications manager for Pillowtex, the newest owner of the mills.

Atlantic American is now dabbing its toes in the water with another idea: apartments over shops. It is about to rent five upper-floor units in downtown buildings, and may add more if they rent quickly.

“We’re hoping these apartment really take off, because we have a lot of second-floor space,” Safrit said.

Safrit can’t say what might happen to Atlantic American or all of the property it owns in Kannapolis when Murdock passes away. As for who might succeed him? “We don’t talk about that,” she said. “He’s still very much active.”

No matter what becomes of Atlantic American, residents won’t forget Murdock’s legacy — the good and the bad.

Former mayor Richard Anderson is a retired production planner at Plant 1. Voters replaced him to the city council in November.

Anderson doubts Kannapolis benefited in any way from Murdock. Even the chunk of land he donated for Loop Road — now a source of pride in the city — was a tax write-off, Anderson said.

“People say, ‘Oh, he renovated downtown and added to the mills,’ ” Anderson said. “I see absolutely nothing that he’s done in terms of giving Kannapolis something.”