Early Years, Education, Military
Wilson was born in Carlsbad, the seat of Eddy County in southeastern New Mexico, to Louisianans Hamilton Paul and Lola C. Wilson. He was reared in Vivian in northern Caddo Parish and graduated in 1949 from Vivian High School, now North Caddo High School. Thereafter, he entered the U.S. Army, attained the rank of sergeant, and served during the Korean War. After military service, he obtained a bachelor's degree in 1954, from Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, where he was a member of Kappa Sigma.
A successful businessman, Wilson owned two supermarkets, including the Big Star in Vivian, and he was chairman of the board of the state-chartered Citizens Bank and Trust Company of Vivian, which also has a Shreveport branch. Wilson helped to form the Peoples Bank & Trust Company of Blanchard in Caddo Parish in 1972. While a conflict of interest by virtue of his activities with the bank in Vivian prevented him from serving on the board in Blanchard as well, he did own stock in the Blanchard bank, and as a legislator he was able to get the state charter approved. Wilson was a Shriner.
Read more about this topic: Jimmy Wilson
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or military:
“Pray be always in motion. Early in the morning go and see things; and the rest of the day go and see people. If you stay but a week at a place, and that an insignificant one, see, however, all that is to be seen there; know as many people, and get into as many houses as ever you can.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valour, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)