Minutes 09/26/1978 - Laserfiche WebLink

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J..I' TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 1978 ,- J. Frank Wilson, 1883-1978 For more than six decades, J. Frank Wilson worked tirelessly to promote social and economic prosperity in Martinsville and Henry County. He died Sunday at 94. But age was never an obstacle. The day before he died he was at his desk at the First National Bank of Martinsville and Henry County where he served as vice president. That type of energy and commitment characterized his entire life, a life which included productive careers as an industrialist, civic and political leader and banker. ~ Born in 1883 in nearby Madison, N.C., he made his first mark as the original manager of the towel mill opened in 1919 by Marshall Field and Company. But his responsibilities extended beyond production, payrolls and profits. The company gave him the additional job of developing an entire community around the manufacturing facility "both within the economy of the company and within the harmony of the community," as author Dorothy Cleal wrote of his assignment in "Foresight, Founders and Fortitude." - "With the very beginning of this new career, Frank Wilson was confronted with a multiplicity of problems. All of the drawing board planning in the world of experts cannot successfully anticipate all the human needs that may arise when they are exposed to the light of actual day-to-day application. Masonry and machinery and bales of cotton are tangible items. People are not. A drop of oil can remove the squeak from a turning gear-wheel. The handling of many people engaged in common pursuit is much more difficult," Mrs. Cleal wrote of the task facing Mr. Wilson, then 35. The company built homes for its workers, stores for merchants, provided recreation for the children, paved the roads, and even installed the first water and sewer system in the county. In the 1940's through the First National Bank of Fieldale, founded by Wilson, the workers were able to arrange financing to purchase their homes from the company. He left Fieldale in 1940 to supervise the operation of all Fieldcrest Mills plants and retired from the company in 1947. He returned to the area in 1947 and settled in Martinsville where he became the vice president of First National Bank of Martinsville, which added Henry County to its name when it acquired the Bank of Fieldale eight years later.