I was born the youngest of 7 children in a small farming community in a place called Chatsworth, Ga. in the foothills of North Georgia. My father was a farmer by trade. I went to Murray County High School and at Thanksgiving time in 2007 I was inducted into the Murray County Hall of Fame (the only Wilbanks in the hall). I served in the U S Air Force during the Korean War and was called up during the Berlin Crises and Cuban Crises during early 1960.
After this tour I came to Baltimore. I then worked in my brother’s business until I started my own carpet store, then began R J Carpet Distributors which I ran for 38 years. My hometown in Georgia is 8 miles from the Carpet Capital of the world, DALTON, Ga. At R J Carpet I joined the East Baltimore Area Chamber of Commerce. I was a board of director for 11 years; two of those I was President. I had a membership of about 750 members; my board totaled 18 persons. I was only one of 3 persons to receive the “President Award”. I sold R J Carpet after I purchased the East County Times 15 years ago.
The paper has won many awards, including 3 of the last 4 years as being number one in “General Excellence”. I have been President of MACnet, a newspaper association for the last 2 years. The “Mid-Atlantic Community Papers Association” covers 8 states, with circulation of over 5,000,000 weekly. We are all a free paper association.
Geri and I were honored by the Essex Day Festival as “Chairman Emeritus of Essex Day for Life”. I headed this committee for over 17 years, with over 15,000 mid-way visitors on Sundays.
I served as Chairman of the Board of Directors for over 15 years of the Lamky, Luther, Whitehead Veterans Memorial, Inc. Committee. This committee has over 10 memorials situated in the Holly Hills Memorial Garden. There are over 525 veterans names listed on the monuments.
I was a Jaycees for years and received their life time membership award: JCI Senatorship Award from the Perry Hall Jaycees.
I have been a regular at Back River UMC since August 1979. My first position at BRUMC was Evangelism Chair. I went on becoming our District Evangelism Representative at our conference and later became the first laity to chair the BWC Evangelism. I won the Harry Denman Award; the most important award presented the Division of Evangelism. It is one of the two most important awards I ever received. As the chair I got through the very first “Conference Evangelist” in our conference…Rev. Frank Wanek (He died during the night after preaching a revival service at BRUMC!) At present I serve as Finance Chair of BRUMC.
E-mail George