The life of Charlie Digges Sr., citizen of the century
Charlie Digges Sr. knows exactly what to say. Before I’ve unraveled the cables of my recorder, he’s turned the potentially awkward moment of a first introduction into a warm conversation about menopause. Yes, menopause.
“What I love about Columbia is that there’s always something to do,” he says. “Just last night Kathy went to the funniest show at Jesse Auditorium.”
“Kathy,” he calls to his wife in the next room. “What was the name of that show you went to see last night, the thing women go through in their 50s?”
“Menopause,” she says, walking in with a tray of Milano cookies and a Diet Coke. “And it was just a hoot!”
“Here, have a cookie before we get started,” he tells me.
“Can I get you a Coke?” he asks. “What’s your favorite soda?”
Immediately, I’m set at ease and cozy up on the couch like I belong there — with a Milano and a Diet Coke.
It wasn’t until weeks later, while reviewing a June 10, 2010, copy of the Columbia Daily Tribune, that it even occurred to me that I might be an intrusion into Charlie Sr. and Kathy Digges’ sun porch (ironically, the same place Tribune reporter Steve Walentik interviewed Charlie in 2010).
“I’m not too hot on extra publicity…” he had told Walentik. “The reason I say that, if you put something in the paper, well, my guys will be ripping the hell out of me.”
And yet, here I am in his Grasslands home to ask the 94 ½-year-old lifelong Columbian more questions about his life, his career with The Insurance Group, his impressive golf game, Korea, fly-fishing, Catherine the Great and even his connection to Elvis Presley.
Growing up Columbia
Charlie was born in January of 1919 in his childhood home on Providence Road, located between Pi Kappa Alpha and Alpha Phi in the University of Missouri Greektown — not even half a mile from where we chatted in late September, almost a century later. The 1918 flu pandemic was sweeping the globe, and the beds of Boone Hospital and Noyes Hospital (in the days before University Hospital existed) were full.
In those days, what is now one of the busiest intersections in Columbia—Providence Road and Stadium Boulevard —was considered to be “out in the country.” Providence Road was nothing more than gravel, along which Charlie would walk to school each day, first to the University Lab School and later, Hickman High School. Charlie spent his childhood playing sports with other children; his love for fishing and golfing didn’t develop until he was able to afford those activities on his own. Most Saturdays, though, Charlie and his family would attend MU football games. In those days, the football field was located on Rollins Road and Maryland Avenue, and fewer than 4500 people might gather for one of the Tigers’ games. The former field became a parking lot, and these days an average game brings around 65,000 spectators.
At that time, the height of local sports fanaticism hit its climax in 1936—Charlie’s senior year at Hickman High School. Hickman won the Missouri state championship in baseball, football and basketball. At 6 feet tall, Charlie played forward for the basketball team during the 1936 championship game against Joplin at Brewer Field House. The final score, Charlie still remembers, was 24 to 21, Hickman.
“As well as he remembers,” Kathy jokes.
“Well, that’s close enough to true,” Charlie says. “Back then, it used to be that you’d have to go back to the center and jump after every point, and you could hang on to the ball forever,” he says.
According to Charlie, Bob Vanatta (later the head basketball coach at MU), the late Clay Cooper (an MU basketball and football assistant coach and MU Athletics administrator) and Sam Walton of Walmart fame were among the best on the team.
Bob Vanatta: “a solid athlete, all around.”
Clay Cooper: “just the best player.”
Sam Walton: “an all-around athlete and a true gentleman,” Charlie tells me. “We all loved him.”
And Charlie? “Well, I was okay,” he says. At 125 pounds, he was “just too damn skinny.”
“Back before there was TV, those sports were a big deal,” Kathy says.
“And they were all my good friends,” Charlie adds. “It was fun to have Sam Walton on the team, even though we didn’t know back then that he’d be a billionaire.”
After high school, Charlie attended MU and graduated in 1939. Throughout college, he worked at Barth’s Clothing Co., located where Bingham’s is today.
“We [hurried through college] because no one had the money for school, even then when it was $500 or $600 a year,” he tells me. “We needed to get through school and get to work.”
The Elvis connection
Charlie’s career began briefly with an insurance group in St. Louis in 1940, but it wasn’t until after World War II that Charlie, who was a bomber pilot in the Air Force but did not go overseas, joined the Columbia-based insurance firm of Rollins Vandiver.
After a handful of years working for the longstanding company, Charlie was called into service for the Korean War, where he was stationed in Okinawa and participated in more than 30 missions between March and December of 1951.
While flying B29s in Korea with his crew of 11, Charlie got to know radar operator Joe Beaulieu. It wasn’t until more than 50 years later that Charlie asked Joe a burning question.
“Are you the father of Priscilla Presley?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Joe said. “But I’ve got five other kids.” When Joe was later transferred to Germany, Priscilla met Elvis through a family friend. After going back and forth between Europe and Graceland, Joe and his wife agreed to let Priscilla move to Elvis’ estate, and the rest is history.
The Digges’ visited Joe in California and met Priscilla at Sunday night family dinner. Just last week, Charlie says, he recommended that Joe read Nothing to Envy, a nonfiction book about the state of the North Korean people.
“You should read it, too,” he says. “I think you’d like it.”
Charlie Digges, Jr., followed closely in his father’s footsteps and became a pilot in the Air Force.
“When I graduated from pilot training, the wings that were pinned on my chest belonged to my dad,” Charlie Jr. recalls. Out of all the life lessons Charlie Sr. passed down, Charlie Jr. remembers integrity and honesty.
Charlie Jr. recalls when they still lived on Providence Road, and his father would take 5th Street to the office every day. The city had just installed a four-way stop sign on 5th and Stewart Road.
“My dad accidentally ran the stop sign just as a police officer was coming up the hill. Most people would think, ‘I wonder if he saw me?’ But instead, my dad pulled over and waited, flagged the officer down and told him that he had just run the stop sign.”
The officer let his father go, but Charlie Jr. still remembers that story. “That was pretty remarkable to me.”
Love, loss and love again
In 1946, Charlie met his first wife, Margaret, who taught flying at Stephens College, which at that time owned 23 airplanes.
“Flying had something to do with it,” he says. “With falling in love.”
Charlie Jr. was born in 1949. But in 1967, Margaret passed away at the age of 48, and Charlie says he “just stayed busy all the time.”
A short time later, Charlie met Kathy and they were married in 1970.
“I already knew who she was,” he says. He went to a dinner at Kathy’s mother’s house, where he met her and asked if she would mind if he called her. She was 21, and he was 48. He called her the following Wednesday, and they went on a date that Friday night to Jack’s Gourmet Restaurant on Business Loop.
“At first I told her she shouldn’t date me because I was so much older,” he says. “I said, ‘Don’t you want kids?’” She told him no, that didn’t matter. “And that was that.”
“Charlie always made me feel so special,” Kathy says. “ Back then, he was such a gentleman—and he still is!”
“And Kathy was very attractive, but she also had a lot of spirit and get-up-and-go,” Charlie says. “She was always a hard-working lady.”
“Girl!” Kathy corrects him. “I wasn’t quite a lady back then,” she jokes. Lady or not, she says from day one, Charlie always made her feel like a queen.
A face in the community
After serving in the Korean War, Charlie returned to Rollins Vandiver, which became known as Rollins Vandiver Digges in 1952 (and did not become known as The Insurance Group until a 1981 merger with Conley Myers). Within that decade, he reached a high level of prominence: Rotary president, Chamber of Commerce president and a board member for a number of local banking and financial companies. In fact, it was his grandfather Sam B. Cook who in 1905 founded Central Trust Company, the parent company of Boone County National Bank.
Almost immediately upon his return from the war, though, Charlie joined Columbia’s esteemed Round Table of prominent business leaders. The group began in the 1920s, and Charlie’s father, Charlie Digges III, a dentist, was among the group’s first members. The group still meets three times each week. The location has changed from the Daniel Boone Hotel, to the Tiger Hotel, to Katy Station and now Bleu, but the group still eats at a big, round table and discusses local business issues.
In fact, it was former MU football coach Don Faurot and MU Dean of Students Jack Matthews who rolled that table around town, from the Tiger Hotel to Katy Station. “They were always telling that story,” Charlie recalls.
“I already knew everyone there because I would go down there and visit when [my dad] was there,” Charlie says.
But the dynamic of the group has changed, he says, as Columbia has grown and work responsibilities have evolved.
“We still talk local issues, but people are busier now than they were 25 or 30 years ago,” he says. “Lots of people travel for work, but the members do their best to attend when they can.” Back then, Columbia had a population of only 16,000 people.
“Basically, west meant West Boulevard, south was Kentucky Avenue, east was Old 63 and north was Highway 40, now Business Loop 70.”
The tipping point
It wasn’t until 1986 that Charlie achieved what he considers to be one of the highlights of his career.
He went to lunch with Dave Duffy, the former owner of Memorial Funeral Home, and Ernie Gaeth, the former head of Riback Supply, who were hoping to finance a new Chamber of Commerce building.
“They knew I knew Sam Walton and asked me to approach him,” he says. Walton’s father had just died, and Charlie wrote to Walton and his brother, Bud, to ask if they would be interested in donating a sum of money in honor of their father. Within two weeks, Charlie had received a letter back — they were interested.
He showed Sam the potential location (where the Chamber of Commerce is currently located). As they got back into the car, Sam turned to Charlie, who asked for a considerable amount of money.
“So, you want me to write a check now?” Sam asked. Although they had to wait for some paperwork to go through, Charlie admits he was a bit taken aback.
“Not many people can reach into their hip pocket and write a check for that sum of money,” he says.
That year, Charlie was named the Chamber of Commerce’s Citizen of the Year.
Lifelong Tiger
In 1992, Charlie retired. What that meant for him was sleeping in until 7 or 8 a.m.
“On my first day off, I think I went into the office out of habit,” he tells me. Although he doesn’t go into the office very often, he still keeps one at The Insurance Group and provides his wisdom to the firm’s partners, his son Charlie and Skip Grossnickle.
“I check my mail there, pay some bills…read the Wall Street Journal.”
Most often, if he isn’t working out at Optimus Fitness — located in the same building as The Insurance Group — golfing at Country Club of Missouri, fishing or attending a Round Table lunch, he’s reading. Recent favorites include River of Doubt about Theodore Roosevelt, The Ruins of Us about women in Saudi Arabia and Nothing to Envy. Right now, he’s reading a 576-page book about Catherine the Great.
“Ambitious for a 94-and-a-half-year-old,” Kathy jokes.
Even though he’s begun to spend more time reading these days, he still makes it out for a fishing trip or a golf game.
“I’ve gotten so damn old, my game’s not very good,” he says with a laugh. But even in 2010, he scored an 11-over-par 83, according to Walentik with the Tribune.
And just like when he was a child, he spends his Saturdays at MU football games. Family and friends park in the Digges’ driveway, stop in for a drink, and the group walks together to the stadium. Even today, his many friends play an integral role in Charlie’s daily life.
“Charlie was born with the ability to like every person he meets,” Kathy says.
In fact, that’s one of Charlie’s secrets to life: good health, a good wife, a positive attitude and always enjoying whoever is in his company.
A few weeks later, when I call Charlie up for a fact check, he stops me midway through my spiel on accuracy.
“Sarah, how are you doing today?” And I know he genuinely wants to know.