BusinessReport.com

Three things about Horatio Thompson: He’s tall, always grinning and aging well at 93.

Sure, the years are catching up. Thompson suffers from chronic leukemia, rheumatoid arthritis and stomach problems. He lost his wife of 67 years in December 2005.

Even so, the Baton Rouge icon and elder statesman of the city’s black business community hasn’t lost his easy laugh and insists he’s enjoying the golden years.

Thompson is 99% retired, having sold off all but a few of his formerly sizable real estate holdings, which at one time included 138 apartments. He was a developer on Southern Heights. A textbook self-made man, Thompson studied to be a teacher but never taught for a living, following his entrepreneurial bent instead. Thompson was running a jitney service before he even graduated from Southern University, Class of 1937.

It was the first of many business ventures to follow. Thompson had the first black-owned taxi company and service station chain in the city, and he won a place in local history for selling gas at cost to carpooling boycotters during the 1953 Baton Rouge bus boycott.

“I was just getting started,” he says. “I’d expanded, and I just wasn’t in a position where I could go out there and march with them and what all. So that’s the contribution I made.”

At various periods, Thompson has owned franchises in wholesale auto parts, General Electric appliances and Goodyear tires. Despite the simmering racial climate during the early days of the civil rights movement, Thompson says he had support from several high-profile whites as a businessman.

Gov. Robert Kennon, District Attorney Ossie Brown and Fidelity Bank President Leroy Ward Sr. were regular customers of Thompson’s gas stations. His friendship with Ward helped Thompson get a loan when he needed to expand his station business.

“They were just glad to see a minority go into a business and make a success of it,” he says. “The community has really supported me. I don’t have any beef at all. They’ve supported me in my business. They’ve been kind to me all the way.”

Thompson has always been an active member of the community. At one point in his younger days, he served on 29 boards at the same time. Because of his health, Thompson limits his volunteerism these days to the Ochsner Board of Councilors, a fundraising and community outreach group.

As someone who’s watched Baton Rouge grow up since the late 1920s and remembers when Florida Boulevard didn’t exist, Thompson says he marvels at the city’s growth, though he’s disappointed it hasn’t been managed better—especially traffic.

As for his own life, he thinks he’s managed pretty well and can’t think of anything he’d have done differently, though Thompson has learned a couple of things in 93 years.

“A man going into business just can’t be a 40-hour man,” he says. “You’ve got to be willing to sacrifice, man. It takes determination. And by all means try to take some pride and do something for your community. I think that’s important.”