Only days after Chip Culpepper joined the commission overseeing the embryonic MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History in 1999, its landmark building had the roof torn off by a tornado.
"I'm sure it was merely a coincidence," Culpepper observes with a wink of the deadpan humor he wields so effortlessly.
Two decades later, on the week of Memorial Day, the 55-year-old Little Rock advertising executive will be honored Thursday with the Judy Love Alumni Achievement Award from Leadership Greater Little Rock (LGLR) Alumni Association.
The civic honor stems in large part from his continuing volunteer work for the MacArthur Museum, which reopened last year after major U.S. Arsenal Building renovations that he helped shepherd.
He is also devoted to supporting the last remaining World War II veterans of the Army Air Force's 100th Bomb Group -- for which his late father, Conley E. Culpepper, flew 35 combat missions in a B-17. His son, Conley III, is a U.S. Marine second lieutenant who'll train as a military pilot. His oldest brother, Eddie, is a retired Hot Springs Village fire captain. His paternal grandfather, known as "Cape," was a Pine Bluff police officer.
"I've been fortunate to be around those who serve the rest of us in the most meaningful ways," Culpepper says. "But none of them would ever call themselves a 'hero.' Without a doubt, they would all say that the real heroes never got the chance to come home. They are buried somewhere in a military cemetery.
"And that's the sacrifice that Memorial Day is truly meant to recall. If you want to read the definition of 'leadership,' it's inscribed as a name on a grave marker at Normandy or Arlington -- or wherever a true hero fell."
Judy Love, who steered the alumni association through 27 classes of leadership development as its executive director during her 33 years with Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce, salutes Culpepper as "creative, affable, humble, self-deprecating and a great storyteller." She cites his role since graduating from the program's Class XII in 1997 as affecting "the community in significant ways." He still serves on the alumni association advisory board.
Love observes that "though Chip has never served in the military -- probably couldn't convince anyone he was older than 12 -- he holds a deep and abiding appreciation for those who do serve. He has used his time and special talents to promote awareness of the sacrifices that have been made. I guess you could call him a civilian soldier."
Culpepper was born on Dec. 14, 1963, at what is now St. Joseph's Mercy Health Center in Hot Springs. He was the youngest of seven sons. All seven were born in St. Joseph's, "and the hospital didn't charge for me."
That was actually the deal, he swears with a smile: "Buy six and get one free. My older brothers have always kidded: 'You get what you pay for.' And I've always countered: 'The best things in life are free.'"
As for the "Chip" nickname, "My dad apparently called me 'a chip off the old block.' That's the biggest personal compliment I can think of, because he was quite a remarkable block."
Culpepper's father was a professional forester. His mother, Delphia Jane, was a housewife, although she'd worked during World War II as what he calls "a Rosie the Riveter," making explosives at Arkansas Ordnance Plant in Jacksonville. He grew up in rural Garland County, in the Fountain Lake school district, in a house with no central heating.
"The majority of us boys shared a big dormitory-style room in the attic," he says. "In the summer, it was pretty hot. In the winter, it was pretty cold. When it's cold, I still like to sleep under a lot of quilts."
The family's nearest neighbors, just across a cattle fence, first stirred young Chip's interest in military veterans and their valor. Art Tuma was a World War II soldier who'd suffered near-crippling wounds at Anzio, Italy, in 1943. Tuma and his wife, Jane, shared their home with Leo Wulfsohn, a World War I veteran, and Edmund Kapica, a World War II engineer and infantryman who'd almost died of wounds in Luxembourg in January 1945.
"I grew up with these patriotic influences next-door," Culpepper says. "The Tumas taught me lessons in self-reliance and selflessness, and in humor and humility, that would be tough to duplicate. And because of them, I met other remarkable people, veterans among them, who would influence me in ways big and small."
ALWAYS, THE COMPARISONS
In school, all seven Culpepper brothers had the same fifth-grade teacher, "and she wouldn't call me by my name," he remembers. She'd just call me 'Eddie,' as if I were my oldest brother." Eddie was followed by Kent, Jack, Scott, Charles, Mark and finally Chip.
"I was always compared to my older brothers," he says. "And you knew it would get back to Mom and Dad if you did something you weren't supposed to do. Everybody knew everybody."
His mother was one of seven girls. His father was one of nine siblings, seven of whom lived to be adults. As a result, "I have dozens and dozens of cousins. And nieces and nephews. I am now the youngest grandchild on both sides of these big families."
When time came to choose a college, "I'd been compared so many times to my brothers that I wanted a place where none of them had been." So he enrolled at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, "but even there, it wasn't a totally clean slate. It was still a small world."
Culpepper began with a pre-med curriculum and did well in class. But he figured out that medicine was not the career for him. Then an upperclassman invited him to a meeting of the campus marketing club.
"I had no idea what marketing was," he says. "But I went. It seemed pretty interesting, so I took more and more business classes. I graduated with a marketing major."
He paid his way through college partly by tutoring English, "a skill I credit in some degree to my high school English teachers, Sandra Hudnall and June Smedley. Talk about really good teachers, that's what they were. They were among the first of many mentors to whom I credit a lot of my success."
An Eagle Scout, Culpepper worked eight summers as activities director at a Boy Scout camp. He remembers that as helping ease his shyness, "because part of my job was getting up in front of a bunch of people and talking."
That shyness extended to his high school social life: "I think I had a total of two dates, to the junior prom and the senior prom." In college, he began dating his future wife, Karen Carter, only when she called to ask him out after she had stopped going out with his roommate.
"The joke is that she had been waiting for me to call -- for several months," he says. They dated for five years before marrying and will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary in October. She is a graphic designer who has taught art at Episcopal Collegiate School. They live in west Little Rock.
Their Marine Corps son Conley III, with a bachelor's degree in aviation science from Henderson State University, will attend flight school this year at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla. Their daughter, Anna Elizabeth, is a University of Arkansas at Little Rock junior pursuing a bachelor of fine arts degree, with emphasis on photography.
Culpepper's career in advertising began at Brooks-Pollard Co., before continuing at Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods and moving on to a marketing position at UAMS Medical Center. He lauds mentors along the way including Pat Torvestad, Bill Jennings, Boyd Blackwood, Ron Robinson, Craig Smith "and too many others to mention them all."
In 1995, he was hired by Steve Mangan and Steve Holcomb at Mangan Holcomb Partners, where he is now a principal and the chief creative officer. He was employee No. 13 at an agency that now has 110 staff members.
Asserting that "there's no such thing being noncreative, because it's just another muscle you haven't exercised," he describes his job as "being like the athletic trainer for the creative side of the staff. I help them work out that creative muscle, to help give them focus and keep them on strategy."
In an extremely competitive line of work, he stresses the credo of professional honesty at Mangan Holcomb, citing "one of my dad's sayings: 'At the end of the day, the only things you have are your integrity and your reputation.'"
FATHER'S COMBAT STORIES
Culpepper was the only son still at home around 1982 "when my dad was finally ready to talk about his World War II experiences. He'd been a flight engineer and top turret gunner on a B-17 in the bomb group known as 'The Bloody 100th' for its combat losses. He flew 35 missions when you could expect to live through as few as 12. His plane was damaged quite a bit, but always made it home."
After later meeting three other members of his father's B-17 crew, Culpepper wrote an informal memoir, Some War Stories Told in Short Controlled Bursts. He has circulated it to all his family members, as well as those of the nine bomber crew mates.
He serves as a Facebook moderator for the 100th Bomb Group Foundation's online network, as well as writing for the group's quarterly newsmagazine. He has taken his daughter to reunions and other events, "where she has gotten to know guys just like my dad, now in their 90s. She may be the only 21-year-old in Little Rock who is friends with -- really friends with -- World War II veterans."
That interest in World War II led him to join the nascent MacArthur Military History Museum Commission, a Little Rock city agency that he now chairs. He was involved in the hiring of Stephan McAteer, who has just marked his 20th anniversary as the facility's director.
"Nobody does more with less than Stephan," he says. "After the $1.55 million improvement project, the building has never worked better as a museum. It has been part of my family memories, too. My son Conley was 5 or so when we moved in the Army Jeep [a prominent exhibit], and he helped us get the tires into the building."
McAteer credits Culpepper with "providing crucial leadership during the extensive renovations of the past two years. The museum regularly benefits from his creative design skills in our advertising, which he does at no cost."
Culpepper, who also helped set up the Department of Arkansas Heritage's Arkansas Food Hall of Fame, believes the special qualities of the MacArthur Museum start "with the building itself. Stephan says, 'It's our largest artifact,' and he's absolutely correct. It's one of the city's oldest structures, with an amazing history in its own right.
"And it houses stories of 200 years of selfless service and heartbreaking sacrifice put forward by Arkansans -- famous and ordinary, from all corners of the state -- from Territorial times to the present day. These are spellbinding stories, of real events and real people."
SELF PORTRAIT
Chip Culpepper
• DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Dec. 14, 1963, Hot Springs.
• I'M MOST PROUD OF: Conley and Anna, my children.
• THE BEST ADVICE I'VE EVER GOTTEN IS: "Be Prepared" -- the Boy Scout motto.
• I WISH I COULD: Play a musical instrument.
• SOMETHING HARDLY ANYONE KNOWS ABOUT ME IS THAT: I rarely dream at night (as best I can remember).
• THE LAST BOOK I READ AND LIKED WAS: The Bedford Boys, by Alex Kershaw.
• MY FAVORITE MOVIE IS: The Shawshank Redemption.
• MY GREATEST SATISFACTION IN LIFE IS: A clear conscience.
• MY IDEA OF A PERFECT DAY IS: When someone is playing baseball
• MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE IS: Pessimism.
• IF I'VE LEARNED ONE THING, IT'S THAT: We need to be truly present in the lives of others. Moments matter, and they're fleeting.
• MY NEXT GOAL IS: Helping create a world-class, permanent, stateside museum home for World War II's 100th Bomb Group
• IN MY SPARE TIME: I read, research, and/or write about history.
• TO RELAX: I build something by hand out of wood.
• MY FAVORITE MEAL IS: A cheeseburger (no tomato), with fries and a shake.
• BUT I WOULD NEVER EAT: Liver.
• ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Intrigued.
High Profile on 05/26/2019