Wilson, Warren Barrios, 1921-2012
Dates
- Existence: 1921-2012
Biographical Statement
Warren Barrios Wilson (b. 1921), a Creole attorney and business executive, was an active attorney in Oakland, California, and the CEO of Thomas Bros. Maps, the producer of popular street guides in California. As a graduate from University of California-Berkeley and University of California-Hastings School of Law, he practiced law in California for fifty years. In 1956, Wilson became the CEO of Thomas Bros. Maps and expanded the company across California and the nation, as well as leading the company into the digital age, with the advent of digital CD-ROMS and car navigational systems. Wilson was the CEO of Thomas Bros. Maps for over 40 years, after which he sold it to Rand McNally in 1999. However, towards the end of his time with Thomas Bros. Maps and after its sale, he started focusing on community outreach and philanthropy through the Thomas Bros. Maps Educational Foundation and the Barrios Trust.
Warren Wilson was born in January 1921 in Oakland, California, to Julius (Jules) Wilson and Louise Barrios. Jules Wilson was born in New Orleans of Creole heritage, while Louise Barrios, also a Creole, was born in Pensacola, Florida. The couple met when Jules traveled from New Orleans to the beach in Pensacola and attend a house party at the Barrios' home. Since Jules was eight years older than Louise, she did not consider him a possible boyfriend. However, to Jules, it was love at first sight. Several years later, Louise and her family moved to New Orleans to join her brother, Ponce, who previously moved to New Orleans to open a barbershop. Due to the success of his barbershop, he motivated his family to join him in the city. Jules and Louise married around 1915.
At the barbershop in New Orleans, Louise's brother, Ponce, had many clients who worked for the Pacific Railroad Company and spoke of California and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland. Enticed by the stories of California that he heard from African American railroad men and his opposition to the strict Jim Crow laws, Ponce decided to scope it out for his family. Since he could not afford to travel there, he applied for a job on the Southern Pacific Railroad as a Pullman Porter to make the journey. In Oakland, Ponce saw how freely African Americans moved in public places without racial restrictions. Additionally, he noticed that there was a growing housing market and a growing demand for plasterers, like Jules. When he returned to New Orleans, he convinced his family and his sister's family to move to Oakland.
After Ponce persuaded Jules and Louise to move to California, they decided that Jules would move to Oakland first to find temporary employment and establish a home for their family. Upon arrival, in 1919, he soon found work at Moore's Shipyard and rented a flat close to McClymonds High School located in north Oakland. However, by the time his family arrived, he already had a job as a plasterer.
While the family made the most of their modest flat in North Oakland, they soon needed to find a larger house to accommodate their growing family. In all, Jules and Louise had eight children, six boys and twin girls. Warren was the fifth child of the family, after Lionel, Kermit, Nathaniel, Barry (Ponce Barrios), and before the twins, Marie and Marjorie, and the youngest, Harold. The family moved during the year of 1922.
With the Great Depression, there was no more building construction and Jules was left without work, but with modest income from the W.P.A, their thriftiness, and the children's personal jobs, they never felt poor. The boys in the family all worked paper routes, except for Lionel who worked at their Uncle Ponce's barber shop. Warren Wilson took first his job as a paper boy. According the Wilson, the owner of the newspaper chain taught him "how to manage in a free enterprise, survival of the fittest system." In addition to his paper route, Wilson also cited his troubles with asthma as a defining aspect of his childhood. When he was nine years old, due to his problems with asthma, Warren Wilson went to live at Del Valle Farm, a special program for improving children's health. The farm was located about an hour away from Oakland and Warren remembered the place fondly as a place where he felt "appreciated."
Throughout his childhood and into his adolescence, Warren Wilson attended Oakland Public Schools. It was when Wilson attended University High School when he started challenging his religious beliefs. Although he came from a strict Catholic family, he did not fully agree with what he was learning and became interested in other Christian belief, particularly Christian Science. Wilson associated his exposure to Christian Science as a life-changing experience in expanding his spiritual understanding, which became the base of his "strength and self confidence, enhancing my career and achievements, both as a lawyer, humanist, and successful business executive."
As Wilson grew up, he constantly felt that he was in the shadow of his oldest brother, Lionel Wilson. Since they were young, Lionel excelled in sports and school. As he entered the professional world, he continued his success. Governor "Pat" Brown appointed Lionel as the first Black Municipal Judge in Alameda County in 1960. Later, Lionel became the first Black Mayor of Oakland. Moreover, coming from Creole heritage, their race was always a source of contention, even between brothers. While Wilson could "pass as white," Lionel Wilson looked more characteristically African American and took pride in it. In Warren Wilson's writing, he reflected on his race by saying that as "a serious student of Christian Science, I had gained a true sense of my identity as a perfect child of God, neither white nor black."
After graduating from University High School, Wilson pursued his secondary education in California as well. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and graduated with a major in speech and political science in 1949. He attended the University of California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco and received his J.D. degree in 1951.
In 1953, Wilson was admitted to the California State Bar and practiced law, first in the specialty of negligence as a trial lawyer, and later in general practice. He practiced law at the Victorian Legal Center in Oakland, California, at the Law Offices of Wilson and Casey, with his wife, Joanne Casey, as his partner. As one of Oakland's citizen-preservationists, Wilson bought the building in 1979 and restored it to perfection before the surrounding neighborhood was renewed.
Warren Wilson married Joanne Casey and had five children together. His wife was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she graduated from the University of Minnesota. She also graduated from the Lincoln University Law School in California. She practiced law with the firm of Wilson & Casey, specializing in estate planning, probate, and trust administration. Casey has served on a number of boards of community-based organizations and is currently a Trustee at the College Preparatory School in Oakland.
Although Warren Wilson began his professional career as an attorney, he became better known as the Corporate Executive Officer of Thomas Bros. Maps in California. Without any formal business training, Wilson's involvement was gradual and largely unplanned. Warren Wilson first learned about Thomas Bros. Maps in 1945 when he was working his way through the University of California as a process server. Since most of his clients were Oakland lawyers and lived in Piedmont, he found himself always getting lost on the confusing streets. In response, he went to a local map store called Thomas Bros. Maps to get a street guide. However, he never predicted at that time that he would one day become the leader of the organization. It was not until after he graduated from law school and established a home in Montclair, a practice in downtown Oakland, and started to attend the Montclair Church of Christ Science, where he met Camille Thomas, the wife of the owner of Thomas Bros. Maps. It was the friendship between Camille Thomas and Warren Wilson that set the stage for Wilson's future involvement in the company.
One morning in 1956, Camille Thomas called Wilson at home and said that her husband died and she wanted him to come to Southern California to assist with the business. Wilson agreed and took on managing Thomas Bros. Maps along with his law firm's accountant, Thomas Tripodes. The two took the map business when it was at a low point; they had about eight employees, poor credit, and marginal facilities. Wilson incorporated the firm and became the president in 1957. In the early 1960s, he and Tripiodes bought Thomas Bros.
At the same time that Wilson was ramping up his involvement with Thomas Bros. Maps, he continued his career as an attorney, as well. In 1965, Warren Wilson, along with a small group of California attorneys, went to Mississippi to assist with a case by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) that was challenging the election of five congressional representatives in 1963. The MFDP appealed to lawyers across the country for assistance taking depositions for African Americans who were thought to be deprived of their voting rights by the State of Mississippi and Mississippi citizens by a conspiracy of harassment, intimidation, and violence. In his journal, Wilson described the urge to go to Mississippi as "irresistible, as if it was destined to be."
In addition to his legal career and his burgeoning business venture, in 1970 Warren Wilson set up a small non-profit organization called Educal. The organization assisted ex-offenders and minorities in getting an education and stabilizing their lives.
Under Wilson's involvement, Thomas Bros. Maps grew from a small company with $500,000 in sales to a large company with sales of $25 million. Wilson developed a company philosophy that was based on a “humanistic attitude toward his employees, encouraging caring and teamwork between workers, and a non-authoritarian attitude by our managers.” During the big boom of the company in the 1980s, Wilson moved the Company to suburban Irvine, California, and established a larger headquarters for the growing organization.
In promoting the growth of the company, Wilson expanded the street guide maps from the West Coast to the East Coast. In the West, including California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, the Thomas Guide established a strong reputation for their street guide maps. In Southern California, the street guides were often referred to as "The Bible" for motorists, businesses, government agencies, emergency services, as well as fire and police departments. In a strategically planned move toward growth nationally, Wilson led the company to publish a Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Thomas Guide and a series of map publications, including CD ROMs, extending from Baltimore, Maryland, into Northern Virginia.
With the success of the growing company, Wilson chose to start cutting back from his legal career and focusing more on the development of Thomas Bros. Maps. Because of Wilson's heavy involvement in Thomas Bros. Maps during this dynamic period of changing technology, he no longer handles litigation, and limits his practice to legal counseling.
A large reason for the success of the company was due to Warren Wilson's focus on adapting the company's cartography methods with the digital age. For instance, in 1986, the company began the process of converting its Thomas Guide production methods from manual cartography to digital computer mapping techniques. This conversion took ten years. After conversion and completion of all of its atlases, digital CD-ROMS and in-car navigational systems became a significant part of Company sales.
As well as expanding digital cartography, Wilson also started thinking about developing the company's philanthropic involvements. Inspired by a young boy's letter that thanked Wilson for making the street guides, which enabled the boy to reach a high reading level and find his way around his neighborhood, Wilson started to think about creating an educational foundation to reach out to more children like the young boy who wrote him the letter. Wilson met with Beth Cantrell, who was the sales distributer of Thomas Guides, who also had a teaching background. They discussed the idea of creating a non-profit foundation, dedicated to the purpose of assisting in the study of geography for students and teachers. Upon the creation of the organization, Beth became the Executive Director of the Educational Foundation. She helped develop map kits for children and teacher seminars. She also started the "Community Treasures" Project, which provided children with Kodak cameras and encouraged them to walk around their community and photograph things they thought were important.
The Thomas Bros. Maps Educational Foundation became a public non-profit organization dedicated to expanding student's horizons through the study of geography, ethnic, cultural, social and human values. The foundation provided geography programs, assistance, and education through developing teaching materials, showing the values of integrating geographic concepts into teaching curricula, promoting the exchange of information and ideas, as well as establishing scholarships for the study of geography. The foundation operated from 1989-2002, three years beyond the sale of the company.
Although Warren Wilson was able to transform Thomas Bros. Maps from a small enterprise to a large corporation that embraced the digital age, as the company's sales of their paper guidebooks fell significantly, Warren Wilson decided to sell the company. He sold the company to Rand McNally & Company, the world's largest commercial map and atlas maker in 1999. After the sale of the company, Thomas Bros. Maps operated as a subsidiary of Rand McNally.
After Warren Wilson sold Thomas Bros. Maps to Rand McNally, he and his wife set up the non-profit organization, Barrios Trust, to support young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds in their educational pursuits. Warren Wilson chose to name the organization in honor of his mother, Louise Barrios. The mission of the organization, which still is in place today, is to provide financial aid and assistance to non-profit organizations, institutions, and individuals focusing on education, cultural diversity and disadvantaged youth who are seeking education, self-development, and skills to enable them to become economically self-sufficient.
In addition to his successful business venture, legal career, and philanthropic endeavors, Warren Wilson was also a writer and poet. In his lifetime, he published two volumes of poetry, as well as an autobiography, entitled Dark, Light, Almost White - Memoirs of a Creole Son.
Warren Wilson passed away on October 26, 2012.