Bennett

Here in the People room today I’m sharing a few thoughts about a man I knew named Wildon Harbin Bennett, but who was known only by his last name. He related this personal information to me during our many visits over coffee at McDonalds.

His crew was putting finishing touches on an installation for one of my projects, this was 1979. I was at the job site making a final inspection before signing off on the work. After I exchanged a few words with the workers, Bennett pulled up in his truck, walked over to me, and asked if everything was satisfactory. I told him it looked fine to me and I would be sending my recommendation for payment to the owner. I had known Bennett as a business contact for several years, but we were never friends. We talked about the project for a few more minutes when suddenly he asked if I was ready for a cup of coffee. He said he would buy me a cup if I was interested, so he met me at the McDonalds across the street from my office. It was the first of many such visits over coffee where I would learn a lot about listening, and learning.

He grew up in the 1920s and ‘30s when times were challenging for many people. But on December 7, 1941, a high school senior, Bennett’s future changed quickly. He was a star football player in high school, and he had an offer in hand of a scholarship to play the game at the University of Alabama. But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor cemented his plans for the immediate future. He was ready to do whatever was necessary to protect our country and punish those foreign attackers, even if it meant giving up his scholarship. But he was able to work out an agreement with the U of A that they would hold his scholarship open until he could finish his stretch in the military.

As he was naturally inclined toward all things mechanical, the aptitude tests given by the Army showed him to be a good candidate for mechanic school. He took that opportunity to learn and work on airplane engines with the Army Air Corps, which required a four-year commitment. He served his entire enlistment working on airplanes at various air fields during the war. He rose to Staff Sergeant before getting his discharge in 1946. Much of what he heard and learned during those war years, besides his knowledge of airplanes, had a formative effect on who, and what, he became during the rest of his life. 

Following his Army service, Alabama honored their promise of a scholarship, and Bennett was able to play football there for four years. He became a gridiron star, earning high esteem from everyone who followed Alabama football. In 1989 a group of sports writers completed the formation of the Athletic Hall of Fame in Huntsville, and Bennett was selected to be the first inductee with the inaugural class. He insisted that Connie and I celebrate with him as his guests to be seated at his special banquet table at the induction ceremony. We were happy for him as we, along with 500 other people, watched him receive his recognition and award.

For twenty years after graduating from Alabama, Bennett worked for companies in the rapidly-growing air conditioning industry. Eventually, he was managing a business for a woman who had lost her husband and business partner. Bennett was running her company with great success as if he were the owner. His loyalty to her, and her employees, drove him to stay with her for another three years after she reneged on her promise to sell out to him. Finally, he opened Bennett Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc. That was the name I saw on the two trucks at the job site in ’79. For several years before he started his company, he would occasionally be the contractor for projects which I had designed. I knew him as a no-nonsense, business-is-business contractor who took great care in doing work the right way. It was that reputation upon which he started his new company.  

That first coffee meeting lasted an hour, at least the talking did. For one thing I asked him about the new company sign I saw on the sides of his trucks. He swore me to confidence and told me some of the story about how he had been lied to, and his loyalty taken advantage of, just to be told a promise was not going to be honored. He told me all this in a very dispassionate voice, like he was talking about someone he didn’t even know. But I came to learn that was his persona, that’s who he was, and it was what made his reputation as a firm, knowledgeable businessman, and, to his employees, a serious, reliable employer. Nothing in his voice was loud or boisterous, just ominously calm. That was his normal voice, and it was very effective in communicating raw information. You knew when he said something he meant it, and he could be a tough customer to deal with.

Bennett had a short temper, and very low tolerance for people’s bad behavior. One day at our coffee meeting, we were sitting a few feet from a man who was having some apparent issues, coughing, and blowing his nose loudly. It was disgusting and Bennett said to me he thought the man should take his problem outside. After the third outburst of such noises, Bennett spoke to me loudly enough for that man to hear, that if he made those disgusting noises again, he was going to grab him by his collar and throw him outside. I was convinced he would, and could do it, and glad for the man that he did not repeat that behavior.

A few days after that first meeting at McDonalds, he walked into my office around mid-morning and wondered if I was ready for another cup of coffee. He asked me to ride with him as he wanted me to meet his daughter who was now working for him. He drove us to his new office several blocks away where I met Dawn and talked with her for a few minutes. She seemed a little tense, but friendly enough. Over the next several years I talked with her many times, and she was always very friendly, but I could never escape the feeling that she often seemed nervous about something. She must have been under a lot of pressure with her job and her failing marriage. Later, after she had quit her job, I learned from an employee that Dawn, just fifty years old, had taken her own life, as did Bennett’s wife about twenty years later.

Early on in our coffee break discussions I learned that Bennett was a proponent of, or at least susceptible to, various conspiracy theories or alternative news stories which always seemed to be floating around. He subscribed to some opinion tabloids which spread mostly false information about a myriad of subjects: aliens from outer space, crooks in government, mind altering chemicals in our water supply, etc., etc. He believed everything he read. Occasionally he would drop me a suggestion, such as I ought to be investing in silver as someday soon the dollar was going to be worthless.

Very often Bennett would use our coffee times to bring up subjects he wanted to discuss with me, or get my opinion about. (At this point, I should say that he would never give me a heads-up as to what subject he wanted to talk about on our next coffee break.) One day he broached the subject of the Trilateral Commission which he had been reading about in one of his tabloids. He wanted my opinion as to when I thought this group of powerful people would take over and rule the world. He was shocked to learn that I knew only the public information that was available concerning the Trilateral Commission. He went on to urge me to get myself informed as to what David Rockefeller, the Emperor of Japan, and the other members of the TC were really planning for our future when they take over.

One morning he called me to see if I was available to have coffee with him, and he wanted me to come by his office to see something ‘special’. I had not been in his office for a few weeks so I was totally unprepared for the new decorations. I did not know he was a hat collector, but here they were—hundreds of them–displayed on the walls of his new offices. He said now that he had his own offices, he could display them all, and when people who had given him a cap visit his office, they can search the walls to find their gift. He would make no attempt to explain to me his fascination with these caps.

One day he called to see if I was ready for coffee break, he said he wanted to show me his ‘home office’ which I had never visited. In the years before he started his own business, he had converted his garage into what he called his personal office. Today, it would be called a ‘man cave’ in which he displayed all his football memorability, trophies, pictures, etc., from high school and college, and souvenirs from his Army days. Here, he was just getting started:

After swearing me to secrecy, he wanted to show me his personal collection of silver. He began at the safe. Inside there were three or four black velvet-covered shelves holding stacks of small silver bars, hundreds of them. On the safe floor were stacks of boxes filled with silver dollars and other silver coins. Around the room were various cabinets from which he would retrieve more boxes of silver coins. Finally, he climbed a small step ladder: Stacked on supporting boards above the suspended ceiling there were many more boxes of silver coins and bars. After he had showed me everything, I remarked the obvious that he had a fortune in silver, most of it not in a safe. He shrugged slightly and said no one knew about it except him, and now me. He said his wife would be a security risk, and he would tell her only when the time came for it to be used. He said he had been saving it and adding to it regularly, but he wanted it ready to use when the dollar becomes worthless, probably sometime soon.

In the late ‘90s Bennett started having some minor physical problems so he began negotiations with a young man who was starting his new business doing the same work. He said he would like to buy Bennett’s company but only if he could retain Bennett’s name on it for the reputation value. The deal was made and Bennett moved over into his retirement years. For four or five years after he sold his business, we occasionally would have our coffee breaks, but they would always be much shorter.

Eventually, we moved our business to Tennessee and the coffee breaks came to an end. I lost touch with Bennett around the year 2000, but I would sometimes hear news about him from one of his long-time employees who lived not far from us.

I never learned whether he ever told his surviving son and daughter about the silver. If he did, they would have had a nice going-away gift from him. If he did not, they would have received a shock when they were clearing out his office and stumbled into a small fortune in silver.  

Bennett spent the last few years of his life in a home for veterans, passing away peacefully in 2018 at age 95. He did not live long enough to see the dollar become worthless.   

He was a unique personality; I think of him often.

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