Elvin Frick: Living a balanced life.

story by Michael Tilley; photos by Steven Jones

(Editor’s Note: For the complete version of this story, watch for updates at  www.talkbusiness.net.)

The September day before an interview with Elvin Frick, the stock markets fell like the French in 1940. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 300 points.

“It’s a good thing this is a single story house. I would have jumped out of the window yesterday,” Frick said with a laugh.

Frick is 82, although the U.S. Navy believes him to be 83.

And that’s not the Navy’s fault.

Not only did the 16-year-old Frick lie about his age and falsify documents to enlist in September 1942, but he convinced his mother that the Navy was accepting boys of his age.

“There was no way I was going to just sit there in New Orleans and watch all my friends go to war,” Frick said.

Although retiring and now living in Fort Smith, Frick was just 16 when he left New Orleans to become an aviation machinist in the Navy. The city kid who never worked on anything mechanical and nary touched a tool designed for mechanical work was shipped to Corpus Christi, Texas, to learn all aspects of the pull-apart and put-together of the radial-cooled airplane engine.

“But I promise you, after that year, I was pretty good on knowing those engines,” Frick said.

During World War II, Frick was stationed in Pearl Harbor, San Diego and at two bases in the Philippines.

It was in the Pacific where Frick admits to earning an education from “the country boys” who grew up on farms, away from the conveniences of cities.

“They were raised 30 or 40 miles from a town. You didn’t just run into town and buy something new. If something broke, you fixed it. And those (country) boys taught me that; they taught me that I had to fix it,” Frick said.

The war proved to be less dangerous than the ride back after war’s end. In May 1946, Frick was returning via a small troop ship — The USS John Land — to San Francisco. The ship, which Frick said didn’t have enough ballast to balance it secure in the water, hit a bad storm.

“That boat was all over that water. I thought many times we were surely going under. And no lie, I prayed for three days straight.”

With the war over, Frick completed high school.

After being laid off by Western Electric Co. (then a subsidiary of the first incarnation of AT&T) in 1949, Frick was hired in 1950 as an agent for the Life Insurance Company of Georgia.

Fort Smith was home for his last job with the company. It was there he suffered the pain of his first wife’s death in 1987, and discovered the joy in marrying a widowed Sally Baum in 1989. Together, they have 8 children, 17 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Sally is charming and graciously modest. She humbly carries her direct ties to Arkansas business royalty that is the Walton, Walker and Baum families. Her father, Charlie Baum, was one of the early partners with Sam Walton, Bud Walton and Willard Walker in a small retail enterprise now spanning the globe from its Bentonville base. (Baum Stadium at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, one of the top 10 premiere college baseball fields in the U.S., gained such prestige through the financial generosity of Charlie Baum.)

Elvin Frick, the young man who left a river city in 1942, retired in 1990 and chose another river city, Fort Smith, to be his home.

He preaches a simple message: “Understand finances!”

“I don’t care whether you make $7 or $70 an hour, everyone needs a disciplined way of saving money,” Frick said.

For Frick, the lesson in life and finances is very much akin to the story about a boat that almost didn’t return him home from the war: Without enough ballast (discipline in work ethic and finances), life will toss you all over the water.