By Bob Arnold
After a more than five-decades career encompassing engineering at radio and television stations, service management for a communication technology company, owning and operating his own businesses and an avocation as a musician, you would think Chuck Wallace might be ready for retirement. But the 21-year Bogue Chitto resident, now in his 70s, says “I plan to keep on running as long as I am healthy, just like my father who lived to be 100.”
Wallace grew up in Baton Rouge, where his father was a chemist at Exxon, played horns in bands beginning in junior high school and competed in high school swimming events.
After graduating from Baton Rouge High School in 1968, he went to Louisiana State University (LSU) on a band scholarship but left his music studies when he discovered a new love as a broadcast engineer at a small radio station. In 1969, he started an eight-year stint in the U.S. Army Reserve, serving six months on active duty before heading to Southern Mississippi University at Hattiesburg to study Radio, Television and Film.
As a licensed broadcast engineer, Wallace worked at WDAM-TV at Hattiesburg from 1973 to 1978 and moved on to Motorola Communications at Jackson from 1979-1981 as a service manager focused on the company’s two-way radio systems used by emergency responders, but by the mid 1980s knew he wanted to work for himself.
“I wanted to be my own boss, run my own business and not work for someone,” Wallace recalls. He started the first of what would be a number of entrepreneurial businesses over more than 40 years -- a company that restored damaged properties.
A few years later, Wallace started acquiring Service Master franchises throughout Mississippi and Louisiana that restored properties damaged by water or fire.
Following the acquisition of a Service Master franchise at Brookhaven in 2003, he resettled in Bogue Chitto where he had inherited a non-working farm and, with his wife Susan, whom he married in 1977, has lived for 21 years and raised three sons -- Charley, a 43 year-old Hattiesburg entrepreneur; Andrew, a 40 year old Santa Rosa, California, businessman; and Patrick, a 36-year old Madison, Mississippi, roofer.
In subsequent years, Wallace acquired or started businesses that complemented his Service Master work -- a company that swept up debris on damaged property and another that replaced damaged flooring.
Wallace describes his entrepreneurial focus as “looking for opportunities to help people freshen up their properties in an affordable manner.”
In 2020, he started American Stripes that seal coats old asphalt surfaces -- driveways, parking lots, walkways, etc. -- with liquid tar and affixes stripes to the surfaces to delineate spaces for parking and other uses or for design purposes. Over the years, he had seen the technology employed in commercial and residential applications and was impressed by it.
Today, Wallace operates American Stripes and his wife and lady friends continue to maintain the work of the Service Master franchises.
Wallace’s businesses have taken him a long way from his passion for music and playing horns, but that remain a serious avocation.
He plays the trombone with Ransakk, a McComb-based eight-piece classic rock band that can often be found at the Brookhaven Moose Lodge, restaurants at Natchez and Jackson, private parties and festivals.
If his gigs with a rock band are a bit unconventional for someone his age, he also specializes in providing ceremonial military amenities for veterans funerals that branches of the armed services can no longer adequately supply because of personnel shortages. Wallace will show up in a uniform, help fold the flag with the funeral home director to present to relatives of a deceased veteran and play “Taps” on his trumpet.
He decided to fill the void eight years ago after learning that the military services could not send personnel to do the job -- either they weren’t available or adequately trained. “Since then, I’ve participated in more than 300 funeral services for veterans,” Wallace recounts. “The work became critically important during the COVID 19 pandemic, when the military could not provide anyone for the task. I wear a real uniform of the Mississippi State Guard because former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant commissioned me a First Lieutenant in the State Guard for the special purpose of serving at veterans funerals.” Wallace draws on his experience as a 12 year old Troop Bugler in the Boy Scouts in which he had also earned the Eagle rank.
What are your hobbies?
I used to hunt, fish and play golf -- expensive hobbies on which I am saving money in focusing on my music with my a trombone in a rock band and playing ta “Taps” at veterans funerals.
Do you have a special interest in music outside your hobbies?
Classic rock is my musical genre, and my favorite band, popular in the 1970s and 1980s, but still going strong, is Chicago with its horn section.
How about movies or theater?
I like the classic movies with the unforgettable lines that I love to quote in my everyday conversations with people. My favorite movies are Forest Gump and Dirty Harry, and my favorite actor is Clint Eastwood.
Are you a reader?
I don’t do much reading beyond technical brochures. I married a reading teacher. So I leave literature to my wife.
What would you do with the winnings if you won the lottery?
I would buy lunches for new friends and customers.
How would you change the world?
Smile, and encourage others to do the same in line with the musical advice offered by Chicago in “Make Me Smile.”
Commentaires