97-year-old Trussville veteran: ‘I’m a workaholic’

Two bags of topsoil can tell the tale.

Chuck Tompkins was born May 27, 1922, and by age 11 was driving a Ford Model A Coupe with its back cut off to help his dad with carpentry work in Palmerdale and Trussville.

On his second day at Woodlawn High School, Tompkins joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. He did so just to have a uniform — some clothes — to wear to school. Tompkins, originally from the East Lake area, was 16 when he moved to the Trussville area. He was a journeyman carpenter by then.

In November 1941 as a union carpenter in Huntsville, Tompkins joined the United States Army. He was inducted into the Army in Birmingham and sent to Fort McClellan in Anniston for basic training. The month after Tompkins joined the Army, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service, an act that led to the United State’s formal entry into World War II. What happened next?

“You got time for it?” Tompkins asks.

He served most of his time with the 4th Infantry Division and went into France in the first wave that landed on Utah Beach. He spent time in all the battles across all of Europe to the German border. He suffered some small wounds along the way but continued on.

In June 1944 in Normandy, according to an Army letter, Tompkins advanced with an aid man through heavy enemy fire to the assistance of wounded comrades. He covered the aid man by firing his weapon and later helped evacuate the casualties from the area.

In the Battle of the Bulge, he was hit with four bullets across his left shoulder and back. According to a letter from the Army, Tompkins’ company advanced against a strongly fortified enemy hill, but its progress was stopped by mine fields and barbed wire, in addition to mortar, machine gun and artillery fire. Tompkins ran approximately 50 yards through the storm of fire in an attempt to destroy a barricade. This is when he was shot.

Two bullets were removed, but two had to remain due to their close proximity to his spine and nerves.

“These bullets are still in this location,” he said. “My left side stays numb most of the time.”

For his courage, Tompkins earned two Purple Hearts with cluster, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals with cluster and a handful more. His name is listed on the Trussville Veterans Memorial. He got out of the hospital, and the Army, in 1945. He refuses to call himself a hero.

“I’m just an individual,” Tompkins said. “I try to be honest.”

Upon his return to Trussville, he built a house and married Margaret, whom he keeps pictures of sealed tight in his wallet. He ran a lumber yard, and bought and sold houses.

“I’ve been working ever since,” he said.

Aside from working, Tompkins hunted, fished and ballroom danced in South Florida and New Orleans with his wife.

“I’d call myself a fairly good dancer,” he said.

Tompkins said Margaret died in March 2000, and these days he does “about everything I can get out and do.” He helps a sister with Alzheimer’s and maintains his home on his own. He said he recently replaced a hot water heater.

“I do all my work myself,” he says. “I do help anybody that needs a little help. I’m a workaholic.”

He goes to Hardee’s down the street from his South Chalkville Road house every morning and tells lies with his buddies. He jokes that he has slacked off from time to time in his work, but he instructs to drive past his home and look at his yard, which he cuts with a 20-inch push mower, sometimes one-handed, he deadpans.

“It looks like it’s been manicured,” he said.

Sure enough. The bushes are trimmed. The grass is short. Two bags of topsoil are stacked in front of a row of bushes, waiting for the next day’s work. At age 97, there must be secrets to living this well, to being this independent. 

“I don’t have secrets at all,” Tompkins says. “I get up every morning and I’m thinking about what I need to be doing.”