People Have Touched His Life 

            For sixty-two years, Charles Wesley Manokey, the parking lot attendant at the GPD Light Street Plant’s Lee Street parking lot, has watched McCormick and Company grow. 

            Charles is McCormick’s oldest employee, both with his sixty-two years of service and his age.  For years, people have tried to find out his age.  He maintains with a laugh that it’s a “military secret,” although he admits he celebrated another birthday in October. 

            In 1915, Charles began working as a private chauffeur for Willoughby McCormick, the founder of McCormick and Company.  Raised on a farm in Cambridge, MD., Charles was the oldest of eleven children, four of whom survive.  “My brother worked for Mr. Willoughby and when he took another job, I took his job,” said Charles, with a laugh.  “I had experience in this line of work because I drove for Governor Phillip Lee Goldsborough’s aide from 1910 to 1915.  I drove for Mr. Willoughby until he died in 1932 and later I drove for his widow.” 

            During World War I, Charles took a military leave of absence for nine months.  “I was willing to do anything to win the war except kill another man,” said Charles.  “So, I was put to work in a munitions plant.  After the Armistice was signed, I came right back to work for Mr. McCormick. 

            Willoughby McCormick, was in Charles’ opinion, a “mighty fine man.”  “Mr. Willoughby was like a father to me,” Charles reminisced.  “He was very easily approached and, although I wasn’t in trouble very often, he always gave me a chance to tell my side of the story.  He had steel-grey eyes and could look you through.  Business was his hobby.  He was always in a hurry.  I can remember driving Mr. and Mrs. McCormick to a funeral and the service was delayed.  Mr. Willoughby walked out of the church, sat under a tree, pulled out his briefcase and read until the service.  He was never idle.” 

            Willoughby McCormick had a kind heart according to Charles.  “On Sundays, he usually visited the sick either at home or in the hospital,” said Charles.  “On the Sunday before his death, he paid a call on a friend of one of our employees.  After hearing the family’s needs, he ordered two tons of coal to be delivered to their home.  He was and outstanding churchman who aided many in distress.” 

            According to Charles, Mrs. Willoughby McCormick was “a lovely, quiet lady, deeply interested in music and the opera.  Before she married, she was a music teacher.” 

            After Mrs. Willoughby McCormick’s death, Charles became the Company chauffeur in 1948, driving a black Cadillac for Charles P. McCormick and other McCormick executives.  “Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby McCormick never had any children, but their nephew, ‘Mr. C.P.’, measured up very well,” said Charles.  “He was a fine man, too.  You could say that Mr. Willoughby laid a good foundation and Mr. C.P. built upon it.  Mr. C.P. was a leader and you had no reason to fear him either as long as you did your job.  He was some man and taught me many things.” 

            Charles P. McCormick told Charles that he could have a job for as long as he stayed in good health.  In a time when people retire at 65, the Company has honored that promise.  “Of course I’ll have a job only as long as I behave myself,” Charles said, with a twinkle in his eye.  “I love my job and I love working.  I wouldn’t live long if I retired.  Quite a few people have touched my life and I know I’ve gotten a little spoiled.  People know I’m doing the very best I can and they’re very patient.” 

            Charles was appointed parking lot attendant of the Lee Street lot in 1955.  “When I came here, it was so crowded, I could get cars on the lot but I couldn’t get them off and a lot of people didn’t like to wait,” said Charles.  “I talked with people in public parking lots to find out the best way to run a lot.  Then, I told my supervisor I wanted to change the lot.  He never questioned me.  He said, ‘Charles, you go ahead and change it.  We have perfect confidence in you.’  It’s been very satisfactory ever since.” 

            At 6 a.m., every weekday morning, Charles boards a city bus near his northwest Baltimore home and opens the parking lot gates at 6:30 a.m.  “I’ve used to open at 7 a.m. but I found there were several people waiting for me,” he explained.  “I decided to just open up earlier.  This lot is my responsibility and I don’t want to bother people with it.”  At  6 p.m., he closes the gates. 

            After the morning rush hour and during the long hours before the evening rush hour, Charles keeps busy moving cars for his “customers,” trimming the small patch of grass around the building, shoveling snow and washing cars.  “I’ve always been optimistic,” said Charles.  “I like to keep moving.”  When he’s not outside, his domain is a small, cement-block renovated machine shop that is sparsely furnished with a table, a chair, a closet and a locker.  Numerous small Currier and Ives prints, as well as mottoes like “Work Smarter Not Harder,” brighten the walls.  In the table, Charles keeps a packet of yellowed newspaper clippings about McCormick and some of his favorite McCormick people.  “I refer to them when I’m making a point,” Charles said. 

            Sometimes, Charles reminisces with employees and visitors about the old days of the Company.  “When I began working at McCormick, the Company building was located at Concord and Pratt Streets,” said Charles.  “There were already quite a few people but I knew two of the three people that were there when the Company began – Mr. Willloughby, of course, and Mrs. Boeing.  I watched the entire Light Street Plant being built and we moved there in 1921.  Of course, boats used to come right to the Inner Harbor.  Now the harbor is being improved for the people.  Sometimes, I look over at the plant loading dock and I see all those tractor-trailers lined up and it makes me proud.  Also, people of all races are now working together.  I’m glad I’ve lived to see these changes.” 

            Charles believes in short lunch breaks.  “You see, I have this parking lot on my mind and heart and I don’t want to bother with something like lunch,” he explained.  In September, Charles took his first vacation in twenty-five years.  “I don’t want you to think for one minute that I’m superstitious, but when I first came to the Company, I was told to take a vacation,” Charles said.  “The first night of vacation, I received a telegram telling me my father was ill.  He died five weeks later.  The next year, I went on vacation and my second wife, who had been ill, passed away the first day.” 

            Charles explained that his first wife died before he joined McCormick.  In 1948, he married Elizabeth, his third wife, a tall striking woman, with a warm personality.  “I don’t know why she wants to stay with me but the Lord must think I need someone,” Charles said, with a laugh.  Elizabeth and Charles live on Madison Ave. in Baltimore with Charles’ two sisters, Mary and Alice. 

            Although he had to leave school during the sixth grade to help his father farm, Charles has educated himself in his spare time by reading.  “Reading is my hobby,” he explained.  “I’ve read the Bible three times and I read almost anything I can get.  I buy books that I think will benefit me and I also read the paper.  I always keep an open mind.”  Charles also enjoys helping Elizabeth around the house. 

            Charles Wesley Manokey, an ageless, soft-spoken, articulate and wise gentleman, has received many honors, including a C.P. McCormick wreath award, both for his loyal service to the Company and in appreciation for the lives he’s touched.  “I’ve known five generations of McCormicks,” said Charles.  “I’m thinking of staying on ‘til I see the sixth.”

James Clark Barrett

 
            Known as Clark, he began his career at McCormick as a salesman in 1938.  After World War II, he returned to the spice company as assistant sales manager for the Midwest.  He was appointed director of trade relations in 1954, a position he held until retiring in 1976.  He also had been a member of the company’s senior board of directors since 1949.

            He enlisted in the Navy in 1941.  After initially being rejected for flight training because of dizzy spells, he followed a friend’s suggestion that he take the examination again and not tell the examiner of his health problem.  After graduation from flight school in Pensacola, Fla., he was assigned to the carrier Hornet.  For his actions in the Battle of Midway in 1942, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

            “With utter disregard for his own personal safety,” read the citation, “Ensign Barrett participated in persistent bombing and strafing attacks against fleeing enemy forces.”  He received the Air Medal later that year for his role at the Battle of Santa Cruz, an integral part of the Guadalcanal operation, during which the Hornet was sunk by enemy aircraft.  Deprived of their ship, the Hornet’s planes were forced to land on the carrier Enterprise.  It wasn’t until all of the other planes were safely landed and his gasoline gauge was on empty, that Mr. Barrett landed his plane.

            As one of Baltimore’s early war heroes, he was honored by Mayor Howard Jackson at a dinner in the Emerson Hotel in late 1942.

            He finished the war aboard the escort carrier Natoma Bay, which was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation and saw action in the Leyte, Luzon, Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns.  He was discharged in 1945 with the rank of lieutenant.

            Born and reared in Baltimore, he was a 1934 graduate of the Gilman School and earned a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College in 1938.  He was active in college and high school alumni affairs and was a member of the Baltimore Country Club, the Maryland Club, the Elkridge Club and the lone Palm Golf Club in Lakeland, Fla.

            In 1974, he married the former Eleanor G. Goodenow, the widow of his brother, David Barrett, who died in 1971.  She died in 1993.

            James Clark Barrett died on January 23, 1995 of pneumonia.  He was 79.