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Jim Chapman grew up in Decatur, Georgia, where his dad worked for the YMCA after World War II. They later moved to a farm where they had various animals. Jim's older brother was an electrical engineer but switched to architecture, which inspired Jim's interest in the field. Jim's dad was a respected sports leader in the community. Jim had a passion for drawing and sketching from an early age. Their family was resourceful and raised their own animals for food. They were a close-knit family and had many YMCA activities. Jim and his brother both attended Georgia Tech. Jim never considered going elsewhere for college due to financial reasons. So, I'm here with Jim Chapman. Jim, I've known you for probably eight years, but just recently started speaking with you on a regular basis at Capital City Brookhaven Club. I love your commitment to your morning exercise routine. I'm very structured myself when it comes to that. It means a lot for you to be able to sit down with me. Why don't we start with your childhood and where you grew up. I know a little bit about it, but tell me a little bit more. Well, I was part of a family, my mom and dad moved to Decatur, Georgia for dad to be with the YMCA following World War II, which right off the bat dates me as being 1946, a six-year-old. Dad came to open the first branch of the YMCA outside Metro Atlanta at that time. Prior to that time, an interesting thing, the YMCA provided all the USO staff during World War II, so dad was with the USO in World War II for his service, and he moved my brother and I and mom to Decatur to open that branch, first branch. So we lived in Decatur for a year, and then we moved out to a 100-acre farm. He loved farming, and he had a place there where he could have groups of kids out, boys and girls, mostly boys at that point, because the YWCA handled the girls' activities. So we had campouts at the farm, moved out there one year after Decatur. So childhood was really great, growing up in the country, all kind of animals, from chickens, goats, we had 28 goats at one point. Raised our own eggs and rabbits and pigeons and cows, nothing of any numbers, just one or two of everything, except we wound up with about 28 goats. Wow. So, goat's milk, great, he started me out on a health kick way back a long time ago. That's great. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, you know, kids need to play with dirt, right? And I met my wife in New York City, and we did not want to raise a family in New York, so we moved to Atlanta because we wanted to give our kids an opportunity to be outside and play with dirt. Oh, what a great move of impetus for that, good to see you. So you have a brother, is he older or younger? I have a deceased brother, we've actually practiced together for a while, from about 1975 to 85, for about 10 years. He went to tech, as I did, Georgia Tech here in Atlanta. He was an electrical engineer, and he got into that and decided that was not his chosen profession that he liked, so he moved into architecture, and I said, ouch, that's where I'm going. Really? Yeah. He was three years older, so it was kind of like, okay, that sounds fine. I worked on his projects, and they had a very derogatory term that they applied to that, which, when I worked on his projects, I was helping out, mostly drawing trees and landscaping stuff around it, not the buildings, and it was a great uptick for me because it gave me a leg up on when I had the same professors three years later. Right. That was a real advantage. Right. Why aren't you as good as your brother was, Jim? Oh, yeah, that's, yeah, I have an older brother, too, I can't stand that question. It's hard, isn't it? Because you follow a star. Yeah, that's right, that's right. In some sport, or in work, or some field. So tell me a little bit about your childhood memories, and sort of what your family was like. Oh, interesting. Well, Mom worked, she didn't have a particularly athletic bone in her body like Dad did, but my memories growing up were my Dad was the idol of every kid in Decatur, Georgia, because he was the sports leader. He was the ultimate coach, and it's like, when I see kids now who are the son of a basketball player who's playing on the team, but he's not the very best, so he doesn't get in until the last minute of the game, but he's the son of the coach, that's kind of like my brother and I were. We didn't have an inclination to be able to bounce the ball, to dribble, or to see the ball well, because we were both eyesight handicapped back at a really early age, so we had to wear glasses. But I remember just having the feelings of having a wonderful Dad, and he was great with us, no kidding. Tried to teach us to swim, but he was a lifeguard on the beach growing up. He grew up in Key West, Florida, which was an unusual place to be, but he could swim like crazy, and he tried to teach Byron and I, my brother, the breaststroke, and we just could not learn to do it. And now, as you know, to watch him swimming, that's one of my major activities. He would be proud of me today, I can guarantee that. I think you mentioned to me once before that you used to go into Atlanta with your Dad and go to a library next to, and read about architecture and magazines, and when did that start for you? Well, Dad had the YMCA offices in the second oldest house in Decatur, Georgia, which was the home of the Agnes Scott president, so it was the old Scott house, and I guess that he was somehow part founder of the college, being president of the old Scott home. So, that home, by the way, was demolished, and it sat to build the Decatur Recreation Center, the Y located down on Claremont. Well, next door to that beautiful old Victorian mansion, which was an inspiration in itself architecturally, but was the Decatur Public Library, the Burris Public Library, Mall at Burris, wow. And inside there was just a plethora of wonderful things to look at, to read, books to check out, get a library card, and take them home, or sit and look at all the magazines. The magazines didn't come home to us, magazines were something that kids and folks sold subscriptions way back in the 50s and 60s, and it was a great fundraising project for organizations. Well, the library had all these home magazines, and articles in there had things on Frank Lloyd Wright, oh man, and so he was a childhood personality that I picked up early on. What year, how old were you, would you say? I would say, I graduated from Tech in 56, so back that up to 52, 53. So you're teenage years? Just a teenager, so high school years, you're 16 and 17. Sure. And so at that point, that's when I was thinking about architecture and looking at home magazines, and it was pretty basic at that point in looking at ideas for homes, and that drives you into a lot of other areas once you realize you're interested in that sort of thing. So was this an earlier passion for you, earlier than your teenage years? I love to draw, I love to sketch, I draw all kinds of stuff, you know, the typical airplanes, and cars, buses, trains, and horses, and the animals around the farm, and mom and dad provided a lot of pencil paper and all that kind of good stuff for crafts, and we would do things around the house that did involve crafts. At that point, when you're doing YMCA work, as far as having things that support your art interests, like colored markers and paper and materials of that type, you don't really have the extra money to spend on the kinds of things that today are just commonplace to have, hobby kinds of things all around you, and not in our particular family. I mean, it's still, when you think about the times, it's still right after food stamps, and wartime economy, tires, and supplies, and getting all of the things that were used to sugar. I mean, it's really amazing, because the plentiful nature today of stuff, and overproduction, and things that get thrown away, is just not what was going on at that point. I agree, and it sounds like you guys were also very resourceful with food sources, or milk sources, and that's great. My mom provided a lot of that for us. For sure. The food, and mom canned, and just did everything. When we would slaughter a cow, I mean a beef, not a heifer, but a beef, we would raise an animal, and with the idea that you raise a pig, and you go through those experiences of killing a pig, and dunking it in the water, hot scalding water, and taking it down to the meat locker in Decatur, where it's carved up into the various cuts of pork, or beef. So, we actually had that hands-on growing up. That's so cool. Oh, my gosh. That's so cool. Were you guys a tight family? Spend a lot of time together? Yeah, we did, and we had cousins around Atlanta, which were over at the airport. We had Presbyterian ministers who were in the family, and one was here at College Park, so we had a lot of great memories about that. And we had great YMCA activities that were group kinds of things. We had campouts at the farm when you'd have 60 to 200 kids slipping over. Yeah, it sounds like everybody would want to come and hang out with you guys. Oh, yeah. We did. Dad had a board of directors who were the interesting businessmen, and no ladies at that point, but this has been around the city of Decatur, and some of whom rose up later to be, one, the first chairman of MARTA. When the subway, the MARTA system came to Decatur much, much later, and others who were big presidents, and so we had a wide variety of folks that Dad had, and many of all those interesting kids would hang out, not at the Y itself, because there was no real building. It was just an office, so it was like where we are today, except in a house, and being a very interesting house, but not a facility for sports. Sure. But that, having a dad that's so involved in sports activities, lived to try to figure out ways to be healthy, and hence our coming across each other. You know, I also think it's, I think sons need fathers around. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They need to see their participation, and I know we're going to get to that as it relates to your kids, but tell me, sort of, obviously you were a great student to be able to matriculate at Georgia Tech. Obviously your brother was a great student as well. What was the process like back then for you? Were you thinking that you needed to stick around Atlanta? Did you want to stick around Atlanta? Did you look elsewhere? You know, interesting, it never occurred to me to go elsewhere. Financially, Georgia Tech was the only option. Dad sold about 20 acres of pine trees in order to finance my brother's $350 to go to Tech the first year that he went. At that time, Georgia Tech was $75 a quarter. Can you imagine going to college for less than $500 a year? Let's get back to those times. Not including books and food, but just tuition. My God, what a difference. And the professors were great. I mean, you were not suffering from the lack of good education. So it was Georgia Tech all the way for you. Yeah. I never even thought about another place. I knew that Auburn was starting one. Well, my dream would have been Illinois Institute up in Champaign-Urbana. It was the top architectural school. And I had read enough at that high school senior point to know that that would have been a dream. But to go out of state, it didn't even occur to me to wish for, because it was not an option to start with. Sure. So no need to waste your time thinking about that. And Tech was right here. So it was the first choice, and it was a great choice. Great education there. And it was a lot of fun, actually. Well, tell me, I want to get back to Tech, but tell me, what was Atlanta like? I guess that would be 1958 when you started at Tech, right? Right. I graduated from high school in 56, so 57. I actually started that fall, so I graduated that 56. So I was the class of 60 to graduate. 56 to 60. What was Atlanta like? Atlanta had no liquor by the drink at that point. The only place that had alcohol where you could go and have a drink was a club. And there were clubs in Decatur and clubs in Atlanta. I knew nothing about any clubs in Atlanta or much about Druid Hills, which was the club toward Decatur, and on Constellation between Decatur and big-time Atlanta. Atlanta to the high schools in Decatur was the varsity. The varsity was the magnet. Big Riches was the big with the metallics around it was Riches. At the time, Lenox Square did not exist, which is hard to imagine Lenox not being there. Restaurants in Atlanta were Heron's, Chip Ahoy, Lebs, and Aunt Fanny's Cabin out, and one more that was very southern that was way up in someplace way out like Perimeter, which is no 285. So you had the main streets, 41 came right down through town, which was Cobb and Northside Parkway. And on up to Marietta. So all the traffic coming north to south went right through 14th Street, right through Northside Drive. So Atlanta had less than 600, around 475 to 600,000 people. And when you would go from Georgia Tech, say, out toward the north up Peachtree Street, you would pass a set of apartments called the Darlington. And out front was a sign that kept the number of residents on an hour-by-hour basis. And I can just remember the sign hitting 600,000. Wow. Big. The streetcar ran from Decatur to Atlanta. And for a nickel, you could ride the streetcar to town, which we did a lot of times. And you would ride downtown and, of course, at that point, with the family. And you'd be going downtown to eat at the S&W Cafeteria right across from Davison's or down to go to Mitch's downtown before the store for homes was built that was across the road with the bridge connecting the two where Christmas productions took place annually. Big tree. Right. So Atlanta was really just the same as Birmingham or Charlotte or other smaller southern cities. Yeah, it was also a very interesting time in history, too. Yeah. Civil rights and... store sit-ins. One of the early sit-ins for racial integration was there at Rich's in the T-Room in the Magnolia. I think it was the Magnolia T-Room. And that was basically like not a white tablecloth dining room but just a store dining room. You ordered and you'd have table service. And that was an early spot where integration was pushed. And at Rich's, what will Rich's do was a big issue at that point. Sure. How did Rich's handle it? And I can't honestly say I remember about it, but my future wife had a housekeeper who was just part of the family. She was there every day and took care of my wife when she was a young child by babysitting. Right. So Mary, we would talk with Mary. I knew Mary later once I met Mary Ann, but before I did, they would discuss with Mary, what do you think about this and what's going on? And the typical response from a black at that point was, well, they just don't know where their place is. That kind of conversation. Yeah. Wow. What a difference and what a shock. The first integration of high schools came along right when I was graduating from high school. Okay. Atlanta at that time was totally not an integrated place. There were white drinking fountains and black drinking fountains. Right. Same everywhere. Right. Entrances and all that. In the waiting rooms, another downtown Atlanta at that point, the Greyhound bus station was the major transportation. Atlanta had two train stations, Terminal and Union, and both of which were very busy. Terminal was the bigger one. It's the site of underground Atlanta. Now, I think that the Federal Building downtown, the Richard Russell Building, sits on the old terminal station site above the Gulch. Yeah. That is maybe ever going to be developed. That's about to be transformed with the World Cup in Atlanta. Yeah. I think they're doing a lot of stuff down there. All of that stuff. I haven't seen personally any of that progress. But even as a young architect, the firm I first worked for did scheme after scheme, this is 1961, 62, to put stuff there. That's 60 years ago. That's crazy. And nothing ever happened. That's crazy. Except Phillips Arena. Sure. And some of the World Congress Center and the dome. Yeah. I think they need it just because, in my experience, I've only lived here for eight years or so, eight and a half years. And there's so many people still moving here. I mean, it's growing incredibly still. And they have the space. Yeah. Wow. Right. Yeah. So when you were at Georgia Tech, I think you mentioned to me that Frank Lloyd Wright was a visiting professor of yours? Frank Lloyd Wright was a visiting lecturer. Okay. He came and he was wearing his black cape. Of course. And a walking stick. Yeah. And a hat. And a broad-brimmed, not a broad-brimmed, a cowboy-brimmed black hat. Right. What a character. He cut a swath. I mean, and he was flamboyant. Sure. He was not gay. Right. But he, as many architects in the art field are. Is that right? Turned that cape around and swished his way up to the stage in the Georgia Tech auditorium to do his lecture. And while I can't remember a lot about exactly what he says, his persona just overwhelmed the room. Captivating. Yeah. Captivated all of it. The attention was just like, how did Tech get him there? He was on a lecture tour and he would have been, gosh, I hadn't thought about his age at that point, but he could have been in his 80s. He could be my age now. Maybe a little younger or a little bit more agile, but the cane probably helped him a lot. Yes. And, you know, there really haven't been that many architects. John Portman, at least from a local standpoint, was very notable here in Atlanta. Nobody when I graduated from high school, I mean from college, but became somebody. But other architects like Philip Johnson, who was out of New York with a wonderful practice, and others who I hadn't thought about in a long, long time. But Louis Kahn, who headed up Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania, and did other, like the Jonas Salk Institute out west. But anyway, good stuff. Pretty cool. Pretty cool to be able to see what, I mean, was, as you said, one of the people who you idolized. Oh, absolutely. He was somebody I read about in the Home Beautiful, House Beautiful, living kind of magazines back in the Decatur Library. He was written about in the late, practiced in the 30s and 40s and even in the 20s. But he was a personality to be highlighted in magazine articles way back in my high school time. And then in college, he was already mature and had such an established practice with Johnson's Wax and other notable buildings. He had so many different phases of his practice that he moved through that were so well documented, from his Wisconsin, spring break Wisconsin, to the Taliesin West in Arizona. Right. It's amazing. I kind of put him on a parallel with Frederick Law Olmsted, just in a separate way, obviously. Absolutely. And he had a good practice here in town. Oh, he did? Olmsted. Oh, wow. The park, when you mentioned, when I mentioned Druid Hills High School, I mean, Druid Hills, God bless. Druid Hills, with Ponce de Leon Road, Ponce de Leon Drive, from Decatur to Atlanta, was all laid out by Olmsted. That entire parkway was his concept. And the property where Emory University, everything, Druid Hills Golf Club, all that neighborhood that runs from Briarcliffs east to Decatur, toward Decatur, not all the way, but much of that was designed and laid out by Candler as the client. And Olmsted worked for that, and the Inmans, Inman Park, and that entire area was all studied and designed. And, of course, Olmsted did Central Park, and I'm sure many other famous in New York. Yeah, a lot in Boston, too, from where I'm from. Gosh, I can't speak for Boston, but I mean, he was... World's Fair, right, he did World's Fair in Chicago. Exactly, yeah. Great stuff. Yeah, absolutely. And they had, absolutely, two famous people working at the, say, in the 20s, because that's, you know, 19, 2019, 20, I think that's when Ponce de Leon car was designed. Wow. So, did you, so you graduated tech and you went right into working for an architectural firm. Right. Did you meet your wife before or after college? I met Mary Ann at age 13. Okay, tell me about Mary Ann. Mary Ann and I met in biology class. She was sitting across from me in the lab, at your lab table, and each of us had a frog that we had picked out of a tank of formaldehyde-reeking frogs. And our chore for that class was to dissect the frog. Right. Oh, my gosh. And it, for Mary Ann, it was difficult to be able to do the job. She sat there, and I... I don't blame her. She just looked at it, the poor thing. And the professor was making his way in our direction, slowly talking to each student, and he was a bear of a teacher. And I said, would you like me to help you dissect your frog? Okay. I can remember the day, the first things I ever said to my future wife. That's amazing. That's a great opening line. Oh, man, never heard that one before. And she said, yes, please, help me quick. So I did. And she knew who I was because everybody in Decatur knew the kids that... The Chapmans. A.B. Chapmans. The kids. And so, that's how we met. And we, occasionally, at the time, Decatur had two high schools, a boys' high school and a girls' high school. And we were in the eighth grade at that point. So I think that might be 13. I'm not sure. Sure. I already had my full height of six feet at that point. Whoa. Awkward as a spindle, and still very awkward at this point. Oh, come on. And so, we periodically would get together. Afterward, we had art class together. The only thing I had in high school that resembled any artistic training, we didn't have shop at Decatur. A lot of schools did. But, I mean, we had shop, which was great, enjoyed that. But we didn't have mechanical drawing, which a lot of schools did. Atlanta boys' high, our comparable high in Atlanta, had a mechanical drawing. So, periodically, we'd get together. And the art department had dances that they put on called the Beaux Arts Ball. And Beaux Arts is the same name as a notable French college of architecture, which was a code of Beaux Arts in Paris. Well, that led us to creating costumes together to do a fun get-together. Oh, cool. As a date, a date. Yeah. We didn't really have dates, but we had somebody we went with to the dance. That was great stuff. Yeah. A lot of popular things to do in high school. What was the most popular song? Who was the most popular band back then, and what was the most popular song? And do you remember dancing with Marianne in a specific song? Yes. And I don't remember the names of the songs, but they were all the early... I've always been a music fan, but I've never remembered the words or the tops probably were at that time. Way back would have been the Andrews sisters, who were World War II. I couldn't remember them so clearly because dad, in running the USO, had the 78 records, plastic records, and put on dances for the folks who were working in a munitions plant there in Alabama where we were living. But golly, they were great. They had famous songs back then that were meant to entertain the soldiers. Sure. You've probably never heard of the Andrews sisters. I have not. I don't look them up. It really dates me. But they were like the Supremes of the 60s. Sure. And that was at the time we got out. But at the time when I was in high school, they were all the Bobby Sox. This was the Bobby Sox years when you're wearing white socks, and you're rolling up your shirt sleeves, and you're sticking a carton, a carton? A pack of cigarettes. A pack of cigarettes. Yeah. Interesting, colorful stereotypes of that, but great. It was the Tams. Of course, the star of the era was the pre-Nashville, but the Memphis music that was coming out at that time. Was this something that you would get dressed up and go pick her up and take her to the dance? At the time, going to the Beaux Arts Ball, one particular occasion, we had a large costume that we had put together, which was somehow, it was like when you put two people in a horse outfit. She had the front, and of course I had the back end. Well, we put together this fish, and it was large, and it wouldn't fit in Dad's car. Dad would drive us. In high school, we're not driving. You couldn't drive early like you can now with a 15-learner's permit. Sure. And you get your permit at 16. The particular party we were going to go to, because of our costume, needed something bigger. Dad had bought two Army vehicles that were war surplus, an Army command car that we used as a jeep, which was a large jeep basically. It was an oversized jeep for senior personnel in the Army. It functioned for us as a road builder through the woods. We'd just knock down trees with this thing and bowl them right over. They would be like three or four-inch trees, saplings. He also used it because it had a three-point hitch as a plow, as a tractor. Sure. He used all the farm influence. Well, the other vehicle was an ambulance, and it was red, and it was ugly. It was big and bulbous and looked like the ugliest thing that GM had ever created. A sore thumb. We had to use that to go to the dance. Okay, so let me get this straight. You took Marianne to a dance with a fish costume in an ambulance? In an ambulance. And Marianne says, we are not getting out at school of this car. Isn't that great? From what I've heard so far, you asked her if you could help dissect her frog. And then you take her to a dance dressed as a fish in an ambulance. This got off to a really heat-producing romance. Yeah. So were you guys thick as thieves just from the get-go? Were we what now? Thick as thieves? I mean, you guys were just thugs. Neither of us was extremely popular. If you had nerds in high school, we were on the borderline of cool and nerds. We were like art students. Neither of us was athletic, as I told you before. And so we did a lot of things that were just very normal, plain, high school things you do. Just very average in the middle of the road. But not like things that we did later, which were really cool, like drag racing. When Marianne got her first car, it was a Plymouth Fury. And it had fins like crazy. And it took the town of Decatur by storm. That's great. Dust storm. But yeah, we went to that dance, but we got out a block ahead and walked in. Did you marry after college? The day after college, practically. I graduated twice from Tech. Once at the end of four years, and once at the end. They needed a fifth year extra year in architecture. To get an architecture degree. You get a B.A. and a B. Arch. Now you go six years and get a master's. And at that time you had to go five. Marianne went to four years and graduated Georgia State. She had gone to Wesley in a year out of the city down in Macon. And then graduated. And then she went a year in addition to Emory to get a master's in her case of Christian education. She was very involved, and we were very involved, in the Methodist Church. And Candler was her choice for that. So we got engaged the year I graduated. When we graduated together from schools here in Atlanta. And then the year after we were to get married in September of 61. So that was the plan that we had at that point. To graduate and get married. We dated all the way through high school and college. You wouldn't necessarily call that dating in high school. But boy we had all the events that you have in high school in church were at her home. And her mom cooked the best brownies you could imagine. And after church, after MYF on Sunday nights, the big social activity all centered around the church. I'm sorry. I'll move over this way. And I've got a little cramp here in my leg. But yeah, she had... Stand up just for a second. Her home was the center of all the social activity in Decatur in that high school time. And so MYF broke up and then everybody went to her basement where we had the 45 records. And had dancing after church. Which at that early time was really like, oh my gosh, we're dancing and playing cards. We're sinning like crazy. Which is actually in the Baptist and the Christian faith at that time was true. Our church, my Baptist heritage was fire and brimstone. Her Methodist heritage was much more liberal and even keel. And so we had raucous parties in her basement that were loud and fun. And unfortunately the Decatur police didn't have to call on us. We didn't get that bad. And so that was 1961 you got married? Yeah. And then how many children do you have? We have two. And we're actually speaking from my son's office today. In his firm Chapman Communities. And we have a daughter, Emily, who teaches school. And long from her birth she loved to read, loved to study. Was a bookworm, good athlete herself. But wanted to teach and just was always, her nickname was school girl. And she has continued to be a great fourth grade teacher over where she graduated at Westminster. Oh great. Here in town. Great. So she's a total success and happy as a clam. Has given us three great grandchildren and now one great grandchild. Oh fantastic. She had two boys and a girl. Taylor is someone you'll run into where we go to exercise for the fitness. And Chapman is, first name, is very successful. Both are both successfully employed. One in the medical field and one in the insurance field with Lloyds in London. Over in London. And our son has married much later, Jimbo. And he has two children, a boy and a girl. And they're doing both really good. And Mimi, his daughter, is at Westminster now as a junior. And she's tearing it up and just doing great there. Just got her fifth letter in high school. And she has some in running and she's a cheerleader there. Oh great. And our grandson's up at Macaulay in Chattanooga. Yeah. Excuse me. It's a great school. And they're both doing great, real good. And do you see them often? I do. Everybody here in Atlanta, except a grandchild in London, he and his wife, and young JB up in Chattanooga, everybody's right here. And we get together a lot, close family. So it's really wonderful that everybody is convivial and enjoys each other. And we have a lot of good laughs. We travel not as a big family together, but we do have some great trip experiences from local as well as out of the country type stuff. But I'm very, very fortunate to have that, to keep a strong connection in social. Sure. Non-family members as well as the great family to enjoy. That's great. Right. That's great. I know both. Yeah. Just around the corner. That's right. Well, going back to your profession for a second, sort of, what was a memorable project from your early years and what did you learn from that? Early on was thinking about the growth of Atlanta. The firm I was with was a firm right down on Lucky Street, Stevens & Wilkinson. Stevens & Wilkinson had done the original building in Brookhaven for Capital City Club, Country Club. And the main architect for that was Preston Stevens. He was, at that point that I went to work, he was retired because that building was built in 26 and you could see it on a plaque at the front door that it was, that was the architect. Well, he had, he was not in the building much, but Jimmy Wilkinson was. And he had great connections through the city and through the history of that firm. I was really lucky to get a job because in 61, when I went to work, they were, it was a recessionary time. As you're familiar, probably, the architecture and construction and real estate business goes in these cycles, up and down and up and down. It was a down cycle at the time, so there was no job available. But I was lucky when I went to interview, I had a lot of my artwork on your portfolio and my drawing skills had improved and I had successfully graduated on time. And out of our initial class of 250 kids, only five of us graduated on time. Others dropped out or graduated a year later or two years later. Some of the courses were really killer. Rigorous. Pardon? Very rigorous. Rigorous, oh yeah. And either you got it or you didn't. And some of the professors were there with their personal mission to try to weed students out who really didn't know what they were getting into. And because that happens so much, you pick your idea of a profession that's so different from what it really does or what you really do. Early memories of that, of what was going on. That firm was hired to do a lot of retail stores, the big box stores at the time. We weren't calling them big box, but they were the large stores that were expanding out to the new concept of a shopping center. Shopping center. And that concept had started up in the north and had made its way down here. And Linux was being designed. And we did a store for riches that was at the front of the mall. And my job was to design the facade so that what its appearance would look like. It was three stories or two stories. And we did it as a two story building with a third floor wall. So it appeared as a three story building, but they only had enough merchandise to sell for two floors. Wow. So it was designed to grow to a third level. And later on it did. I'd forgotten about that, but it was designed that way. And so the difficult part was to figure out how to lay bricks in interesting patterns. So they created shadows and it created panels of bays. And so the column spacing of the interior was literally reflected on the exterior. As form follows function, which was the mantra of the era. And so the columns were not exposed, but the pattern of bricks were like a running bond for the length of the width of the bay. And then for a column to be, you decorated the bricks in some unusual way to create those patterns. So it sort of just being one long wall of brick painted white or white brick with white mortar. It had a rhythm to it. Some texture. A scale, a human scale. It still wasn't very human looking because there were no windows, just a big solid block. And then at some point we turned the corner. At the time, Lenox was a outdoor mall. It did not have the enclosure that it has now. In fact, it had a closure that was added later, which was demolished. And it was a god awful looking arched, sort of glumpy looking lumpy thing. And it became, after many, many remodelings, what exists out there today with a slick, shiny, very inviting kind of environment for everything in the world. That's exactly what we did. We did big boxes. Mr. Rich of the Rich's Department Store had a home out here on one of the major popular streets in Atlanta. And I was asked to design his guest house where he was going to have a much, it's almost like he wanted to move out of the big house, turn it over to his kids. And he would live in this secondary guest house. Big room, nice bathroom. And I did a concept for that, which in the way I worked at that time, I was designated as a designer, the lead designer. And I was his assistant. And so I learned from him. And that him fellow turned out to be the fellow I partnered with later to go out on my own. But at that time, he was five years older. His name was Sid Barrett. And Sid was a great colleague and a great designer. He won the Beaux Arts Prize at Tech when you go back and you create your big thesis. And the prize for that at Tech was to spend a year of study abroad. And unfortunately, he had kids. He couldn't make the trip. And so a number two guy went. And I don't know who that might have been. But Sid was who I was working with. And he and I were fortunate in that 62, 63 year time frame to be asked to design these buildings out at Executive Park, which was the brainchild of a fellow named Mike Gehry. Mike came to the firm. And he had a contractor who was Hardin Construction Company. And he had tenants who were going to move to Atlanta. And his real estate company that he had worked for had the connections to be appealing to these oil companies that were locating from Texas and New York and out into the north. And they were coming to Atlanta like Phillips Petroleum, Texaco, SBC Corporation, and a number of others. And we were doing modest, mid-rise office buildings there for that client, Mike. And that office park was actually the very first suburban office park in the country. Wow! His concept we executed. He had the property. He had bought the property on North Druid Hills Road that was formerly a dairy farm. And the dairy farm moved to the back part of the property and Mike. We didn't develop, but we designed the buildings and had that as our first early-on commission. And that's probably the most memorable type of thing that we got involved in doing, office buildings. And again, it was an exterior type of thing that we did, exterior design. And my main role was not to do the exterior, but to do the space plan for the offices that came. So we sat down with the folks that were going to be the outreach for that company. And they said, here's what we need. Ten 10-by-10 offices, five executives that are 10-by-15, and then a corner office that's supposed to be like 15-by-20 or 20 or so. We developed modules to lay out those space plans. And so I got to sit with a lot of interesting people to do the layouts. And the thing that developed as a special ability, as a result of being faced with sitting in front of somebody and laying something out simultaneously. So when they spoke, I was literally the hands that were drawing what their image was. And they could see it right off the bat. And the leasing agent said, wow, this is something we haven't had before. It's like having, I was their computer. Literally right in front. They were typing the keys in, and I was creating the floor plan in front of them. And the agent said, we'll do this again. We repeated it over and over. Sometimes they would do a spec building without a tenant. And they had the backing of the banks. And so they would be able to borrow enough money to put together a speculative office building, which was a new concept. And we'd sit down and take the space and lay it out. And the lease would be written almost on the spot. Because they'd say, OK, this is good. We like it like it is. When can we move in? So that speed of being able to conceive of your space and have it within months. Good stuff. Pretty amazing. How do you balance artistic vision? I guess throughout your entire career, clubhouses, residential, commercial, whatever. How do you balance artistic vision with practical considerations and client needs in your design? The interesting thing about the different avenues of expression is the office buildings of that era that I was working in, the 60s through the 80s. The office buildings were dull. There was no personality. Today, there's personality dripping off. Is it waste? We can interrupt or screw things up. Deposit. Expression. Then the office buildings were dull and no personality as opposed to today. So the thing that I gravitated to with some of the first clients after I opened my own practice, I did work with Sid Barrett for about five years. And we had his firm, Barrett Associates, and I was his first associate. Then I always wanted to have my own firm. And in my own firm, the first client that I had wanted me to do residential appearing buildings, but they were office buildings. So we developed a Williamsburg theme that was residential looking that for an architect who was trained in modern architecture, it was unheard of. I mean, I was like a turncoat who was not practicing commercial architecture in a modernist way that was squared off and flat roof and all that stuff. I was doing sloping roofs and windows. I didn't know how to do that. I had to go learn a vernacular to express what residential looked like. And this client was Jim Cowart, who was the real estate broker, home builder, who came to Mike Guerin and said, I want you to do perimeter center with me. And so we had begun doing perimeter center, laying out the mall, the office park, all the buildings, and at that point I left Sid and went to work for Jim, the actual owner of all the land that was sold to Guerin and Company, which later became Taylor Mathis, and did what Jim wanted to do with his own personal practice, which was not doing homes, but to do commercial buildings in neighborhoods like Dunwoody and Chamblee, where they had strong homeowner associations and had restricted design motifs. We could have contemporary down there next to 285, but up in Dunwoody, at the five corners there, it had to be good looking, residential, needing residential. So my partner and I, who I partnered with Barry Coyle, with Chapman Coyle's architectural firm, which later became Chapman Coyle Chapman, we went to Williamsburg and took photograph after photograph after photograph of Williamsburg and what it really, really looked like. And that was authentic. That was the best that John D. Rockefeller could create in terms of a true American village that was done, and it was a recreation. It's all reproduction. There's nothing original to it, but it's just right out of the history of that area and that era. So we copied that and did Dunwoody Village and other neighborhood shopping areas and office areas for Jim Coward. So in doing the skin that's on a phase of architecture, we chose to do because that's what our clients asked for, and we became noted for doing whatever the client asked for and not trying to force our ideas of what architecture should be. You don't really know what you're talking about. We know what you want. We're going to give you this, and this is what you want. Right. That didn't get that. Nobody wanted that. That was not. I'm so used to saying, yes, sir, whatever you say, sir, I'm going to give it to you. You ask for it. That's your concept. This is going to be the best concept you can have for that design, and that morphed into the club field and the golf clubhouse era of the firm. We went from office buildings and doing the first office condos in the city of Atlanta, which were also in Williamsburg type motif, and that just came to where it just overwhelmed suburban Atlanta with traditional office buildings that people look at today and say, God, we've got to paint those buildings white because they're all red brick. So we just made a mess of Atlanta with Williamsburg condo office buildings, which made us the first kid on the block doing stuff like that. Yeah. Reputationally, for sure. We had some interesting firsts. The first suburban office park, connections, and the first shopping center with Linux Square. And then Atlanta, being that it's grown so tremendously, has had the opportunity to have firsts of everything. The first big airport, Park City. Right. The world's biggest. Right. When you're brand new, you can take all the ideas you can imagine and turn them into great products. What would you say your proudest achievement is, personally or professionally? Well, personally, my family I'm super, super proud of. I think that everybody's done well. They've gotten good educations at places they wanted to go to. And I wanted to go to Tech, and they wanted to go where they went. And they had the opportunity, fortunately, due to the good architectural rewards of my practice, that they wanted to go to. So personally, just the family and the good fortune, the fortune to be healthy for all of my life. For sure. And I attribute a lot of that to my father and my mother, who were supportive and most interested in sports and fitness, good health. And architecturally, I think some of the interesting things that we have been associated with was in 96, we were involved in creating the Players Club in Ponte Vedra from scratch in one year. Wow. Which was phenomenal. From start to finish in one year, demolishing the existing building and building the new Players Club is astounding. And while I can't take personal responsibility for doing the design, one of my wonderful partners did that. But I did Southern Hills in Tulsa. And that was the ninth site of the club. 96 opened. Players Club opened for the first tournament that year. And we did Woodmont. And that was a nice addition to the club, not a major addition, but three clubs of the four clubs that had the major tournaments that year. We didn't do ever anything down in Augusta that I really regret. But only lately have they actually added all their new construction down there that's pretty phenomenal. Oh, it's amazing. It's tough. It's amazing. I've not actually seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I have. It's incredible. It must be incredible. It's incredible. Oh, boy. I know the contractor who did it. And he said, I can't tell you anything about it. But we're involved at Augusta. Of course. Yeah. Oh. So how do you define success? I think a lot of it is financial. But a lot of it is the most of it is the personal relationships you get. Because in architecture, it's, you know, in the medical field, you know somebody for a short period of time. And you get to have the success of seeing somebody succeed and get healthy. Or otherwise, you've done your best. But I think in architecture, you really do get to know the people that you work with. Because your jobs last maybe five years in doing a club. It's a long-range process. And getting to know the board people and membership and the club presidents and managers. The manager network has been the most successful pathway to our firm's success. And while I graduated from a firm I founded in 69, 69 is when I started that firm. And I graduated retired, semi-retired in 13. We are, that firm is still thriving. Kept the same name. And I'm totally proud of the guys that we've associated and brought in and put onto a partner path. And they've done the same thing since my departure in bringing in new partners. So there's a lot of things to be grateful and proud of. So I know you mentioned, you know, you grew up Baptist and Mary Ann is Methodist. But how has spirituality played a role in your life? Very much so. She actually, she had early employment for money before we had the family. When we had the family she very happily devoted her life to the family. And as they got older through high school she went back and refreshed her education. And together we've always had a strong relationship with a specific church where a member and relationships with the people and having fun fellowship and spiritual nurture and Bible study, which I can't say that I've done nearly enough of. But being involved with what goes on in the church and active in supporting the church financially and just physically being there. And being part of that scene. But Mary Ann, she became what was for her a licensed spiritual director. Very cool. And just went to school up in Union Seminary in Washington, Washington Union. And on that campus and she studied with Catholics and all different faiths. And she brought that home to us and to the family. So I can say that everybody in the family still has that strong relationship to church and faith in God. And it just translates to everything you do. Everything. You can see the world from an inside out perspective. Which I think the world needs more of. Totally. So the last question I'll leave you with. And I love this question. My friend, I can't take credit for this question. But he likes to ask people, what is your superpower? I think I have a, somehow I have a drive that makes me want to create. And I can't say that that comes from God or something that I've absorbed. Something in my physical nature makes me want to live and thrive and produce and draw. And the idea of making a deal. You read about the art of the deal. I've never read about it. But I can imagine it. The thrill. Something about me wants the thrill of the success of winning a client. A new client. Winning and having the opportunity for a new challenge in relationship. It's just, I think it's part of what I come to work still every day for. Six days a week I'm here where we're talking from like 10.30, 11 until 3.30. And it just gives me such a thrill to be involved, to have people and community to be around and be hopefully a vital part of and contribute and be enthusiastic and enjoy the idea. Tomorrow I'm going to lay this out. And I'm going to have the fun of talking to somebody who's going to be interested in having something drawn up. Something to, whether it's a doghouse or a club, whatever it is. Just the idea that on the horizon something that keeps me together is that knowing that when I go to bed tomorrow I'm going to get up and I'm going to be fine and I'm going to be committed to the same pattern that I've done every day all my life. You know, it's very inspiring because a lot of people my age as they approach their 40s or maybe even younger will try to figure out this Venn diagram of profession and passion where they overlap right there in the middle. That is, if you can figure out a way to sort of monetize your passion and your creative expression is clearly your passion, your creativity, right? And that's why they say, I'm sure you'll say this too, you may feel as if you haven't really worked a day in your life because you're doing what you love. That's true. I think that's very true because work is play. I tell people who say, what do you do? I say, I cut, paste, and color every day. I just, I go to kindergarten every day. That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, I really appreciate you sitting down. I know you got to get out of here and hopefully this won't be the last time we'll do this, but I'm excited to package this up and share it with your family and appreciate your friendship, Jim. Oh, thank you. Gosh, great, great. It's been a pleasure getting to know you and a lot of different aspects, right? For sure. I didn't know it had been eight years. Yeah, eight years. Well, thank you so much. Amazing. Great. Well, I appreciate it. That gave me a thrill, totally. Absolutely. Gave me a big hit. Yeah, that's right. Great.
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