Charles W. Howard
Howard Janitorial Service
Macon, GA

For 10 years, Charles W. Howard worked for a janitorial service in Macon as a supervisor before he decided that he could do the job himself under his own name. Now, he owns Howard Janitorial Service, which has four employees, and is contracted to clean two school buildings and two other buildings.

Charles has been in the janitorial business for 20 years, working part time for most of those years while holding a full-time job in the shipping department at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, GA.

“I had a lot of time on my hands,” said Charles, explaining why he decided to go out on his own. “And it’s good money in that kind of business.”

Charles’ penchant for risk-taking and his leanings toward business were evident years before. At age 16, tired of working on his father Alonzo’s farm, he left home.

“Me and another fella had planned to leave,” he said. “I was just tired of farming. I just didn’t want to farm. He came by one morning about 4 o’clock and just knocked on the window. I had my few things packed. So, we got out and we left.

Abbie Lee recalled that their father was “mad and scared” when he found out that Charles had left. “He didn’t know where CW was for awhile,” she said, using the name for which he was known. “His brother – possibly Walter in Detroit – wrote and told Giddy (that’s what they called their father) that CW was there. CW was about 17 or 18 at the time. He didn’t like farming at all.”

Said Charles, “We got to Macon and caught a big truck and went from city to city. We had some money. We hitchhiked ‘til we got to Cincinnati. We stayed there awhile.”

Charles stayed with his sister Rebecca in Cincinnati before he and the friend went to Detroit. There, he worked in his uncle Walter’s grocery store for about six months.

“He decided he wanted to sell it,” Charles said. “I had saved up some money and he let me have it with a small down payment.”

Charles had met his future wife, Mary, while they were both in high school. He was attending Ballard-Hudson in West Macon, he said, and she, Ballard Normal in the black neighborhood of Pleasant Hill in East Macon. He returned to Macon every two years to see her. They got married in 1950 and returned to Detroit to live. 

When Charles later returned to Macon for good, he eventually got a job “on base,” at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, GA. Mary became a school teacher.

When he first started his janitorial business, Charles said, he had contracts for 10 to 12 buildings, with an ample number of employees.

Some years ago, Charles hurt his leg at work and is now retired on disability. Because of the disability, he has cut back on his janitorial business. But he plans to stick with it until later this year, he said, and then he will give up one of the schools.