00:08:44 · Ian Dallimore, Charlie Lamar
[00:08:44] S0: a parking lot. I may add to the story, Charlie, that there's Lamar billboard there just out of spite, but I made that part of the legend up. I'm hoping that goes on for another one hundred years too. So as the history kind of goes on, so you have your grandfather started the company, And at what point did your father come on onto the company? [00:09:05] S1: Well, what happened is my recollection and I'm being told this long before my time. In the late 20s, my father was in college and his older brother had gone to Princeton and my father was at Princeton. And basically it was before the Great Depression. Pensacola had its own depression. And so my dad came back and worked basically in the little billboard company because by that time, the bank was also gone. My grandfather had been the president of it. Had gone bankrupt in one of those Yellow Pine disaster recessions in Pensacola. And eventually my grandfather sent my dad to New Orleans where his older brother was already in the bond business and was told, okay, let's start a branch in New Orleans. And that seemed like a great idea. And from all I've been told, they had a great time in New Orleans that is in their 20s. However, New Orleans kind of belonged to General Outdoor, which was a national billboard company by that time. And it was suggested that the Lamar's might want to leave the New Orleans market and in compensation, they were told we would trade their boards in New Orleans for some boards in this little river town up river called Baton Rouge. So my dad moved here in Baton Rouge in 1927.
00:10:37 · Ian Dallimore, Charlie Lamar
[00:10:37] S0: Yeah, and this is obviously an audio podcast, but Charlie basically did air quotes suggested that they move. That's a very subtle way of saying, you're not really welcome here. But it's interesting because then that opened up really the segue into what Lamar for the next twenty, thirty years, even up until the last twenty years was all about is mid sized markets. Okay, we're not gonna be in Miami, but we're gonna be in Fort Myers. We're not gonna be in LA, but we'll be in San Bernardino. And it really kind of helped shape that focus, right? Was a big part of... [00:11:14] S1: That was definitely the sweet spot for us. And it worked out very, very, very well. Mean, it was again, bad luck, good fortune because by building out that, well, Pensacola was already in the 100 to two fifty maybe markets And Baton Rouge likewise, having gotten the standard oil refineries and capital and inner cities. So it was growing, but at the time it was quite small. And we branched out over the next forty, fifty years. Yeah, that was the modus operandi is to find these mid level markets like Lafayette and Lake Charles, Louisiana and on and on. So I think the first time we had a big market was Dayton, Ohio. And that was probably in the late 70s, early 80s. And we stuck with that as far as staying out of the big cities. We didn't even try until, as you said, maybe twenty years ago or so. And now we have a substantial presence in most of the big markets, we're not the dominant player in any of them.
00:11:14 · Charlie Lamar, Ian Dallimore
[00:11:14] S1: That was definitely the sweet spot for us. And it worked out very, very, very well. Mean, it was again, bad luck, good fortune because by building out that, well, Pensacola was already in the 100 to two fifty maybe markets And Baton Rouge likewise, having gotten the standard oil refineries and capital and inner cities. So it was growing, but at the time it was quite small. And we branched out over the next forty, fifty years. Yeah, that was the modus operandi is to find these mid level markets like Lafayette and Lake Charles, Louisiana and on and on. So I think the first time we had a big market was Dayton, Ohio. And that was probably in the late 70s, early 80s. And we stuck with that as far as staying out of the big cities. We didn't even try until, as you said, maybe twenty years ago or so. And now we have a substantial presence in most of the big markets, we're not the dominant player in any of them. [00:12:27] S0: Yeah, so your grandfather passes away in 1944 and then your father completely takes over the company at that time? [00:12:35] S1: Well, it's a little more complicated. [00:12:36] S0: A little more complicated
00:12:36 · Ian Dallimore, Charlie Lamar
[00:12:36] S0: A little more complicated [00:12:37] S1: actually because, yeah, he became the general partner. But my uncle, Mart, who lived with the bond salesman in New Orleans, he had the Jackson, Mississippi office. We had Pensacola, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Mississippi and he ran that one and his son Albert eventually ran that kind of at the same time as Kevin Reilly Sr. Around 1960. They ran those in parallel. So when eventually what we call Lamar Baton Rouge bought out Lamar Jackson, but that was much later. [00:13:14] S0: And then became its own company. So you joined the company, we jokingly but seriously said it was when you were born is when you really joined the company. So going back to your story, so in college, you were going to school to be a lawyer.
00:13:14 · Ian Dallimore, Charlie Lamar
[00:13:14] S0: And then became its own company. So you joined the company, we jokingly but seriously said it was when you were born is when you really joined the company. So going back to your story, so in college, you were going to school to be a lawyer. [00:13:28] S1: By 'seventy four, Kevin Sr, again, complicated story. But basically at that time we had probably 16, 18 separate companies. So there was Lamar Baton Rouge was one, Lamar Brook, which was all the painted bulletins in South Louisiana. And we had some real estate companies like Hola, Woodlawn, which I still have. That's right. And so they had all of those, but we had reached the point with Kevin's great leadership that we could actually borrow money from banks. But before the banks would lend us this whopping $50,000,000 they said, well, we have to have common ownership. So we have our collateral be easy to seize basically if they had to. And so he formed the Lamar Corporation and all the companies were merged into that. And when that board was established, I became a board member at the ripe old age of 21 or whatever I was. [00:14:29] S0: So going to that, at this point, I have a handful of friends that are basically in family business, construction, law firms, and it's kind of just the expected. Did your father expect and want you to be in the business? Or was it more just, Hey, whatever you wanna do, you get on the path, you get educated, but here's a little bit about it. What's the story?
00:14:53 · Charlie Lamar
[00:14:53] S1: Well, unfortunately my father died when I was 12 years old. So we never got to those ambitious He was just focused on me getting educated. But anyway, but this story, it's related to Kevin Reilly Sr. Who really became like my guardian over the years through college and law school and thereafter. And I had no intention whatsoever to go into the family business. I was gonna be a lawyer. So I mean, it was a lawyer got to do with billboards anyway. And little did I know at the time. So when I came back to Baton Rouge, when I went away to school, college, law school, and I intended to practice law somewhere else. And then I decided that Baton Rouge is my home and I wanted to come home. So I came back here and practiced law in a local law firm. And after a while, I had to decide which track I was gonna go on because I'd been practicing law for about four years. So then you kinda get on a partner track and you have to make a commitment to the firm or I was gonna go and work for the company and be more active in the company and whatever role I could serve. And so I chose the latter and Kevin was supportive eventually but basically Kevin Reilly Sr. Did not like lawyers. I mean, had great friends with Ben Miller and was a lawyer for but as far as the legal process, he's a businessman. Even though he was a legislator for a long time, he basically, I don't think serving legislature improved his opinion, although I'm telling you the truth. But in any event, we had to discuss it for a while because we had more, we were bigger and bigger back in, this was the early 80s and there was more and more going on. Although really I talked to him into letting me be the lawyer by doing collections for the company because I was always an experienced collections guy because I was doing collections for the largest retail store, Goudchaux's. People from Baton Rouge will remember back in those days when I was in private practice. So I started there and eventually evolved really into my main work, which was fortunately nothing to do with collections, but really about zoning and legislation. So that's mainly what I did, although I did leasing and contracts and disputes like that. But mainly it was public relations, government relations and legislative. Because as you know, we are regulated at every level of government. So