Our high school burned to the ground in December 1947, and that suddenly changed the course of my life. I missed most of my senior year since all of our books and school records were destroyed by the fire. [Four friends] and I had tried unsuccessfully to save those records, but we did rescue the sports trophies and some science equipment. We went up the senior steps and broke into the trophy cases. There was a biology lab in the basement, so we kicked out the windows and saved the equipment. However, our high school was totally destroyed by the fire, and this disaster would change the course of many careers.

The school officials decided that seniors would go to the junior high school from seven to eleven o’clock in the morning, but we had no textbooks. With the afternoons off, we had the opportunity to go out and find a job. I went to work with my classmates for a couple of days. [A business group] was going to convert an old barn into a used bookstore, so we put the footings in and started to lay the foundation to extend the barn. After one week, we learned that they could not pay for laborers. I decided that was not the best job for me, and I sought other employment.

The Jefferis Brothers did general contracting and restoration in the area with two divisions. I went to the back door of Mr. Jefferis’s home on Price Street and asked if I could get a job. He said yes and told me to mow one acre in his back lot with a hand scythe, so he could see how I worked.

He gave me two dollars and said, “Good job, Charlie. Be here Monday morning after school, and I’ll give you work.”

I did odd jobs at Mr. Jefferis’s home, and then I worked with four men to put a water line into his house. We dug the trenches to run a hundred-yard water line from the street to a huge dog kennel on the edge of town. There were stone masons, carpenters, and our group—the pick and shovel crew. They had me working jobs like cleaning up, carrying bricks and stones, and general maintenance, but I made good money. This was a great job to keep me in shape for football as well.

One day Mr. Jefferis brought me uptown to Market Street and said, “We want you to help the stone masons.” They were constructing an addition to First National Bank.

I worked with three laborers, carrying bricks and climbing ladders at the back of the bank building. I carried the bricks from Market Street to the top of the building for the masons, not knowing that in 1972 I would become the president of this bank, the youngest in its history. Today some of my employees think that I started in the posh black chair as president. They don’t know that I made one dollar an hour and saved for college.

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