People who visit David Farr's office expect to see his "rally monkey," a little stuffed animal he keeps on a perch.

"People get a kick out of him," says Farr. "Sometimes I throw him at people."

Or he'll be swinging one of the two baseball bats he keeps in his office. "I find it very relaxing," says Farr, a baseball fan since boyhood.

People at Emerson, where he is CEO, don't mind. But back in the 1990s, when he ran Emerson's Asian operation, his bat provided a lesson in cultural diversity. In Hong Kong, he used the bat-swinging routine to calm raw nerves until a secretary informed him that "people are afraid to come in here because they think you're going to hit them."

Farr is no stuffed-shirt CEO. Upbeat, talkative, jocular, he will sally forth on his "staunch conservative" political views or the relative merits of manufacturing in the U.S. versus Asia.

Farr commands a company with $21 billion in sales, $2.2 billion in profits last year and plants around the world. He's also the Citizen of the Year for 2010, an honor bestowed by a committee of previous winners.

Farr is president of Civic Progress, and he serves on the executive boards of the Muny and the Boy Scouts' Greater St. Louis Area Council. In 2007, when Farr was fundraising campaign chairman for in the United Way of Greater St. Louis, the charity raised a record $68.8 million.

Under Farr's leadership, Emerson and its charitable trust last year donated about $13.4 million to area civic institutions, including St. John's Mercy Children's Hospital and its Emerson Neonatal Intensive Care Unit; Tower Grove Park; the Center of Creative Arts; the Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club; and the Mathews-Dickey Boys' and Girls' Club. Emerson's $5 million commitment to the St. Louis Zoo's railroad was the single largest contribution in zoo history.

"He's a very intense guy. You'll never leave a meeting without knowing where he stands on something. He not only says what he thinks, he does what he says," says Nicholas Heymann, stock analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach in New York, who has followed the company for years.

That directness causes waves. Two years ago, after complaining that the policies of President Barack Obama's administration threatened business, he said he was "not going to hire anybody in the United States. I'm moving." He now calls that an exaggeration, noting that he's hired Americans since. But he doesn't back off the message.

Investors who held Emerson stock when Farr took over in 2000 have seen a 112 percent total return, versus 18 percent for the S&P 500 Index of large-company stocks.

That's what counts to Wall Street. "He's very good, and well regarded in the investment community," says Rich Kwas, analyst at Wells Fargo Securities in Baltimore.

Kwas credits Farr for deftly managing the company through the Great Recession, in part by "moving head count to low-cost countries," he says.

TEACHER'S SON

Farr, 56, began life in Corning, N.Y., where his father, Roy, taught math and coached soccer, basketball, baseball and football. The elder Farr later got an advanced degree in math, joined Corning Inc., and rose to be a plant manager.

Corning transferred the family to North Carolina, then to England, where Farr attended a British private school. A tall man, he made the all-England high school basketball team and played across Europe.

The foreign experience changed his life. "That gave me the opportunity to develop as a broad-thinking individual. It gave me a much broader perspective on life."

While in England, his mother suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. She spent November through March in a coma and died in 1973 at the age of 41. "We were there every day but one," Roy Farr recalls.

David Farr credits much of his success to his father, with whom he's still close. "My dad was clearly a very disciplinary kind of guy. He was a tremendous athlete. He got me involved in baseball very early in life. He was also very good with people," said the CEO.

His father remembers the time his young son, after playing a Little League game as catcher, turned to him and said: "Dad, it doesn't help me learn to have you back there yelling at me all the time."

But the experience set him up well to deal with a future boss. Chuck Knight headed Emerson from 1973 to 2000 and ultimately chose Farr as his successor. Known for charisma that strayed into anger, Knight had a reputation for chewing out subordinates who came to him unprepared.

To Farr, that approach was old hat. "He's no different than my dad," Farr said. "I had the ability to get along with the guy from day one."

Farr enrolled in Wake Forest University in North Carolina, where he met his wife, Lelia, the daughter of an admiral. They got engaged in his senior year and married after graduation.

With a degree in chemistry and a minor in physics, Farr became a construction worker and a night manager at a fast-food restaurant. The blue-collar start was deliberate. Both Farrs wanted master's degrees in business, but they couldn't afford to go at the same time. So, they staggered attendance, with Farr working while his wife studied, then reversing the process.

JOBLESS IN ST. LOUIS

Farr came to St. Louis jobless, as a trailing spouse with an MBA from Vanderbilt. Lelia Farr had taken a job at the Price Waterhouse accounting firm here. Farr interviewed around town and landed at Emerson in 1981. (He and Lelia now live Ladue; they have two grown children.)

Even today, most consumers know little about Emerson. It makes industrial automation systems, power controls for data centers, compressors, climate control equipment and other things consumers rarely see. Its customers are mainly other businesses.

After steadily climbing the corporate ladder there, through departments ranging from finance to tools, Farr has advice for young people who want to sit where he does:

"Work broadly across multiple disciplines. Take lateral moves - finance, planning, operations. Try to be multicapable," he says. "Don't be in a hurry: What you're trying to do in your whole life is to find that opportunity and make a difference."

Farr found it in Asia in the 1990s, where he persuaded the Chinese to let Emerson invest $100 million in the first completely foreign-owned operation in the country, at a time when China insisted on joint ventures.

Back in the U.S., Knight put him in charge of the company's biggest business, process management, in 1997.

By 2000, Knight was running a competition among several internal executives to see who would succeed him. Farr won. He has since led the company away from a strategy of being the best-cost producer to developing new and innovative products, says analyst Heymann.

Farr has been pushing Emerson out of low-margin businesses and toward businesses where technology adds value. The company says that new products make up 37 percent of sales.

ANTI-BIG GOVERNMENT ANGST

Farr, meanwhile, isn't shy about telling the government what to do - he wants it to shrink and get out the way of business.

At an investor conference in November 2009, he complained that Obama's policies on the environment, health reform and labor could "destroy" U.S. manufacturing.

"What do you think I'm going to do?" Farr asked the audience. "I'm not going to hire anybody in the United States. I'm moving."

Does he believe that today?

"You have to understand my style," says Farr. "I have a tendency to push on the edge."

He added: "I had a very strong message that, if they don't change policy, I will never invest in the United States again. ... Never is a stupid word, because I invest today. I hire people in the U.S. But I still have the same message today."