Glenn Wilson traveled the country and the corporate ladder as a longtime manager and employee of JC Penney before his retirement, but he is still on the move.
Although he will be 87 on Feb. 25, this man who became acquainted with the real Mr. Penney and star Ginger Rogers in his work is still keeping busy as the president of Genesis Center, which provides home health care equipment and services. The Hixson resident also stays active with the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE), the Shriners and the Hixson Kiwanis Club, among other groups.
“God has been good to me and given me good health and a good mind to work with recognizing the needs of my fellow man,” he said. “I have spent the rest of my life in trying to be leadership help to the various social societies where the need is.”
Mr. Wilson was born and reared on a farm in Thief River Falls, Minn., near the Canadian border. He lived a mile and a half from the school and often rode his horse there, sent the horse home, and then walked home in the afternoon.
He quickly began showing plenty of horse sense as well. One teacher interested him in debating, and he went on to win a Minnesota title for public speaking.
He graduated from high school at the height of the Depression and remembered wondering what he would do for a living. “Men were working for 25 cents an hour and the soup lines in Chicago were a mile and a half long,” he remembered.
He was able to go to a teachers’ college in Thief River Falls and became a teacher. The pay was not very high, but his enthusiasm was, and he always tried to be prepared for class every day, he said.
One night, after he had finished his school preparation work for the next day, he began reading department store magnate JC Penney’s autobiography. Mr. Wilson was impressed not only with Mr. Penney’s ethical manner, but also with the fact that the company had a profit sharing plan at that time.
So, he went to the local JC Penney store about a job and was eventually hired, after a brief stint selling shoes independently. He soon found that he was as comfortable talking to people on a showroom floor as he had been on a debate hall stage.
He eventually went to work at the St. Cloud, Minn., store. While there, he received word that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
After a stint working stateside in the Navy, during which time he met and married his wife, Edith, he soon began working at the JC Penney in Brainerd, Minn. He then went to Billings, Mont., and then to Salt Lake City.
Salt Lake City was the second largest producing store behind one in Seattle at the time, but the officials at Salt Lake wanted to be first. So Mr. Wilson, who was an assistant manager, came up with a plan to hold back $600,000 in investments and then buy special merchandise for the December holiday season. As a result, Salt Lake City had the best sales for that month. “We had a heck of a month and shut off Seattle,” he remembered with a smile.
While in Salt Lake City, Mr. Wilson was asked to entertain the famous Mr. Penney for a weekend. Mr. Wilson had him speak at his church and invited him home to eat with Mr. Wilson, his wife, and their two young daughters, Barbara and Darlene.
Mr. Wilson remembers that Mr. Penney started crying while at their house because he realized he had so little opportunity to visit and get to know the younger employees of the company.
Mr. Wilson met on several other occasions with Mr. Penney, who died in 1971 well into his 90s, and thought he was a very decent man. “He was one of the better people ever born,” he said.
While Mr. Wilson was in Salt Lake City, word soon spread throughout the company of his talents, and he was asked to manage a new store in Kansas City, just away from downtown. That store had a number of black customers, and Mr. Wilson did his homework studying how their shopping habits and interests were different from the white customers. As a result, the store was able to appeal to all of the customers.
“We were successful enough to take honors for the entire nation,” he said. “We had sales 167 percent over estimates.”
Mr. Wilson’s achievements were written up in the JC Penney corporate magazine, and he remembers getting a letter from his former manager in Salt Lake City saying, “I knew you were good but I didn’t know you were that good.”
Mr. Wilson later became a traveling district manager for JC Penney for 15 years before serving as the first manager of the Northgate store when the mall opened in 1972.
In 1974, noted dancer and movie star Ginger Rogers, who had performed at the Tivoli as a young child, made a special appearance at the store, and Mr. Wilson served as her host. He gave her a hug and a kiss as she left, and he remembers her remarking that he was a pretty good kisser.
In 1976, at age 60, Mr. Wilson retired from JC Penney and began playing golf regularly at Valleybrook. However, he was bothered by the fact that some other people who retired and did not do much began aging quickly. “When the mind slows down, look out, the body follows,” he said.
He was looking for some other activity to involve himself, and soon learned about a man in Philadelphia who was selling home health care equipment.
He started what is now the 23-employee Genesis Center, located on Jordan Drive in East Brainerd. Although still the president, Mr. Wilson has pretty much retired from the day-to-day operations and lets his daughter, Barbara, run it.
But he is still as active as he was as a small Minnesota farm boy.