Collins Family Scholarship

Charlie Collins liked making signs.

He was painting names on mailboxes when he was in high school in Waukon, Iowa, back in the mid-1930s. A few years later he landed a job in La Crosse, driving truck for Pepsi, but the artistic talent that ran in his family meant he was painting signs on trucks on weekends and evenings.

Charlie was busy, but he made time to attend a few dances at the old Avalon Ballroom in La Crosse, and he met Sparta native Marjorie Harmon at one of those events. They were married in 1941, a union that led to four children and a husband-and-wife business partnership that was successful for more than six decades.

Charlie found himself back in La Crosse, after serving a stint in the military during World War II, and he also found that his sign-painting skills were steadily bringing in more money. He gave up his truck driving job and founded Collins La Crosse Sign Co. in 1946. Marjorie remembered those early days, when the couple would grab “a couple of gallons of paint and some brushes and ladders.” That equipment, along with the couple’s children, was stuffed into their 1937 Plymouth and the whole family would be off to create a billboard somewhere.

Billboards had already been around for more than a century, but they were mainly used to advertise things like circus acts. Hand-drawn and hand-painted billboard advertising was steadily becoming more popular, but it really took off when the Model T revolutionized transportation in America.

Better roads were being built, and more vehicles were traveling on those roads. That meant more viewers for billboards, and more potential customers for the businesses that rented space on those billboards. Expansion of the Interstate highway system in the 1950s meant more opportunities for billboard companies. Charlie and Marjorie’s little business kept growing, and growing, and growing.

His parents “built the business up from nothing,” said Michael Collins, the oldest son who entered the family business “sweeping the place out in the mornings.” He and his younger brother, Timothy, eventually became part of the management team, but there was never any doubt about who was president of the company.

Charlie filled that role when the company was started in 1946, and he was still coming to work most every day until his death in 2007 at age 89. Michael estimated that the company, called Collins Outdoor Advertising, had about 30 employees then, and was taking care of close to 1,500 billboards in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.

The company president never stopped working, and Charlie kept track of what was going on in his shop, even though he might be wearing a suit and was stationed mainly at his desk. He often would see a billboard and say: “The colors aren’t right, or the sign’s lettering would have the wrong font,” Mike recalls. “Sometimes he’d come home with paint on his tie, and mother would be so mad.”

“We had fun when we worked,” Mike said. But keeping the business operating required attending “so many meetings,” the Navy veteran added. Billboard business operators have to scout out locations for huge signs, negotiate leases with property owners, and arrange for the construction of sturdy supports that used to be wood and now are steel. There also are local codes, state codes and federal laws to be followed. Light pollution can be a concern, and regulations determine where billboards can be placed in relation to other signs and to highway exit and entry ramps.

Charlie was a founding member of the Wisconsin State Electric Sign Association and the Wisconsin Sign Association. The Outdoor Advertising Association named him that organization’s Man of the Year in 2001, and he was inducted into the association’s Hall of Fame in 2003.

“Dad had an open-door policy,” Mike recalled. “He liked to talk to people. He always had time to talk to people.” It soon became obvious that the guy with the artistic talent also was a good businessman. Those billboards were steadily generating income. They were a lot of work, but the profits were increasing. Eventually, Charlie and Marjorie discovered they could do most anything they wanted. Charlie mainly wanted to go to work every day, just as he had always done. But Marjorie liked to travel.

“They traveled the world,” Mike recalled. “Mother wanted to go, and she dragged Dad along.”

Charlie and Marjorie bought a home on Lake Onalaska, where she could indulge her interests in sailboats, birds, and gardens. She also was a businesswoman, and ran what became the real estate branch of the family business.