Page 6 - Volume 13 Number 5

A Father’s Influence
Most of Lonnie’s interests were influenced by his dad Joey, who was a rodeo clown and bull fighter for 27 years. He also loved to fly and took his son up in his Commander often. “My best memories of me and my daddy are in the airplane flying,” Lonnie said.
Flying was mostly a hobby for Joey, but as he grew his business he occasionally flew the Commander to check on jobs, bid work or meet with clients.
Joey and Jill started in business in the late 1970s, taking whatever painting jobs they could find: from water towers to houses, even jobs in the shipyards of Alabama when local work was slow. That industrial work led Joey to bid on a project at a local paper mill. He got it, did a good job and that led to regular work. One Christmas Eve, a large piece of equipment plugged up at the paper mill and they couldn’t find a hydro blasting company to dispatch crews out to service the machine on the holiday. Joey had purchased a small hydro blaster for paint prep and was able to unplug the machine and get the plant back running again that night. “And the wheels in Joey’s head started turning,” Lonnie said, “and suddenly he was in the hydro blasting business.”
By the early 1980s the business had evolved into Circle S Inc., an industrial maintenance company that both Joey and Jill ran. Beyond painting and hydro
blasting, they also handled vacuum truck services, scaffolding, insulation, as well as applying industrial coatings on tanks, piping and equipment for a variety of manufacturers. Joey was the type of guy who could find a solution for just about anything, for example converting a manlift into a machine that he could use to clean the paper machine rolls at the mill, solving a problem the mill had been having for years.
Lonnie grew up flying with his father and soloed an ultralight aircraft by time he was 14 and a Cessna 150 the day after his 16th birthday, but he didn’t immediately complete his pilot’s license. He also followed legendary bull riders like Ty Murray, Tuff Hederman and Cody Lambert, and when he graduated from high school in 1992, he was determined to someday ride at that level. As Lonnie worked to establish a rodeo career, he didn’t pursue flying though he said he continued to fly locally on a student certificate. His dad often asked, “Lonnie, when are you going to finish up your license?”
On Father’s Day 1994, Lonnie was on the rodeo circuit in Canada. He got a phone call from his mother that Joey had been in an accident, though his condition was unknown because the airplane had gone down in a heavily wooded area and had not yet been reached. As he made his way home via commercial flights, Lonnie checked in with family to find out that his dad had died in the accident. “That was the longest flight home,” he said.
Lonnie and his family (L to R): wife, Joann and daughters Cali and Kenzi.
4 • KING AIR MAGAZINE MAY 2019