Chuck Lamberth: Marketing and Design
Chuck Lamberth was born on the anniversary of VE, Victory in Europe, Day in 1949, four years after the official end of World War II in Europe. His arrival on VE day is very fitting given his father’s heroic contribution to the Allied victory in Europe. Chuck has always been very proud of what his father did in World War II and is passionate about learning more about his father’s role in the war.
His father, Tom M. Lamberth, Jr. (1923-2013) was a member of an elite group of men in the Army Air Corps who comprised the crews of the “Carpetbaggers.” Immediately after our 55th Newman reunion, Chuck and his wife Kay went to a Carpetbaggers’ reunion held in Savannah. Although the reunion was mostly attended by the children and the grandchildren of the Carpetbaggers, two of the original members of the group, now ages 96 and 101, were present. Chuck “talked into the night with them," amazed at their recall of their World War II experiences.
Chuck and Kay at our 55th reunion.
Chuck went to Newman School only for his senior year, having moved from Tulsa to New Orleans and playing on Newman’s winning football team that year. Of the five people who entered Newman in the senior year, only Chuck and I became very attached to the school and to our classmates. Chuck had moved and changed schools frequently due to his father’s career in the oil and gas business, and he attended three different schools during his last three years of high school. Chuck immediately saw a best friend for life in Larry Rabin, although he recalls that his mother was not similarly impressed when his new friends introduced him to the French Quarter. Apparently he was called “Bad Chuck” by Larry’s parents, but Larry in turn was known as “Bad Larry” at Chuck’s house. Charles Wickstrom, on the other hand, was named "Good Chuck" at Larry's house.
​
Chuck’s college career was greatly impacted by the Vietnam War. He started at Vanderbilt University, but as he described it, he enjoyed fraternity activities too much and was soon back in New Orleans. Several more colleges allowed him to remain a student and avoid the draft. After moving with his parents to Houston, he graduated from the University of Houston with a major in radio, television, and film. After finishing college he was ready to go to Vietnam and had already passed the physical when his draft lottery number came up as 323.
Chuck with Larry Rabin at Newman at our 50th reunion.
Larry's mother, Sarah Rabin, with "Good Chuck" and "Bad Chuck."
Chuck with Larry Rabin and Richie Cahn at Larry's 70th birthday party.
Chuck’s first job after college graduation was as an “audio/visual director” making training films to teach employees about sales. His company recognized Chuck's own potential for sales, and he moved from his role as audio/visual director into sales at the same company. Next he started his own graphic arts company and eventually owned a company that developed promotional products ranging from T-shirts to be given to 70,000 people at a football game to unique gifts for corporate clients, such as the leather journal below that Chuck designed.
He assisted his clients, such as the Houston Texans, by giving their logo and brand maximum exposure and at the same time developing products to be kept and remembered. He might create a die for debossing, as with the Texans' journal, and the products he designed were then sourced to manufacturers. In his work he interacted with clients, developed budgets, selected materials, came up with designs, and made sure that the end-product would be kept and remembered and would continue to promote his client's brand and logo. Chuck sold his firm three years ago and is now retired.
His wife Kay also had an impressive career, starting in cardiovascular intensive care working with Denton Cooley, MD, and then as one of the first trauma nurses on Life Flight helicopters working with trauma surgeon James Henry "Red" Duke. She is now retired from a thirty-year second career as a pharmaceutical representative.
Chuck and Richie at the 55th reunion.
Products developed for the Houston Texans: Mini bluetooth speaker and mobile phone charger, leather journal, vodka with glasses, all displaying the Texans' logo.
Leather and canvas briefcase for Interstate Batteries.
Logo created for the Houston-based department store chain STAGE.
Ice bucket designed for Coca-Cola.
Chuck's father, Tom Lamberth, grew up in Dallas and entered Texas A & M at age 17 to study mechanical engineering. He was a member of the ROTC and would have graduated in 1944 had he not volunteered to join the Army Air Corps when he was 19. He was immediately sent to officer training school and was then trained to be a pilot. He was 20 years old when he was sent to Harrington Airfield in England where, as a member of Carpetbaggers' operation, he flew 21 missions as a co-pilot on a B-24 Liberator. The average age of the Carpetbaggers was 23. After the war his father returned to Texas A & M and finished college in 1947. He was always considered a member of the class of 1944 by Texas A & M.
​
His father’s activities were top secret. It wasn’t until 1985, forty years after the war, that any of the Carpetbaggers could talk about their war service. In the early 1940s England had an intelligence operation, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), but the US did not. “Wild Bill” Donovan, a Republican politician and graduate of Columbia Law School, met with President Roosevelt, and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, was created in 1942. The OSS collaborated with the SOE to drop spies and supplies to the Resistance forces in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway, and later during the war in Germany. Like most of our classmates’ fathers, Mr. Lamberth never talked about his war experience, and Chuck only learned about it many years later. As part of the OSS, his father was sworn to absolute secrecy. The Carpetbaggers have been recognized as the ancestor of today’s Air Force Special Operations. In 2016 First Lieutenant Lamberth posthumously received the Congressional Gold Medal for his service in WWII.
The Carpetbagger Insignia.
Chuck's father, Tom Lamberth, during WWII. Trained to be an officer and a pilot at age 20, he was immediately sent to a secret airfield at Harrington, England.
Carpetbagger Veterans, Staff Sergeant Robert Holmstrom, age 96, and Lieutenant Colonel Orrin Brown, age 101. Click on Star for article.
A video about the "secret heroes," the Carpetbaggers.
A major focus of the Carpetbagger mission was to support the French Resistance, also called the Maquis. The Maquis, from a French word meaning scrubland, referred to the men and women who initially left their towns and villages and hid in the woods in order to avoid being deported to forced labor camps in Germany. The Resistance disrupted German supply and communication lines, provided intelligence information, and maintained escape networks for Allied soldiers trapped behind enemy lines. By June of 1944 there about 100,000 members of the Maquis, and the Carpetbaggers flew many missions north of the Loire Valley to assist the Resistance in preparing for D-Day (June 6, 1944).
Retrofitted B-24 Liberator, painted black and equipped with blackout curtains, flying by moonlight.
In order to carry out the tasks of the Carpetbagger mission, B-24 Liberator bombers were retrofitted to drop spies and supplies from a “Joe-Hole” in the bottom of the plane, created by removing the belly turret and replacing it with a hinged plywood door. The “Joe-Hole” was named for the multilingual spies, the Joes and the Josephines, who jumped from the hole and parachuted into Nazi-held territory. The identity of the spies was secret, and they were the last to enter the plane after the crew was ready to take off. Each plane also carried eight 300-pound packs of supplies, including radio sets, guns and ammunition, medical supplies and plasma, bicycles, money, diamonds, and leaflets for the Maquis. Each crew of eight consisted of the pilot, co-pilot, tail gunner, bombardier, engineer, radio operator, gunner, and dispatcher.
The "Joe-Hole" of the retrofitted B-24 Liberator. The Joes and the Josephines jumped from the hole and parchuted into Nazi-held territory.
Packing supplies to be dropped, including pamphlets explaining that the war was being won.
The planes in Operation Carpetbagger were "worn out" bombers no longer fit for high altitude flying. They were painted black, and the windows were covered with blackout curtains. They flew at night and only on the nights when there was sufficient moonlight. They flew at such low altitudes that they sometimes returned to the base with branches on the bottom of the planes. A code from the SOE in England notified the “reception committee,” and a Resistance member on the ground would guide the plane with high-powered flashlights. The Carpetbaggers flew forty to fifty missions per night. In all the Carpetbaggers flew 2,263 missions and dropped 600 “Joes” and 18,000 containers. Their actual activities took place during 1944 and part of 1945, during which time twenty-five B-24s were lost, and two hundred and eight Carpetbaggers died.
​
​
After the war and graduating from college, Chuck’s father worked in the oil and gas business. He was employed at the Cooper-Bessemer Corporation, which developed diesel engines for use in industrial production. He married Chuck’s mother in Dallas in 1946. Chuck was born in 1949, and his brother Jimmy was born in 1951. Very sadly Jimmy died in 1974 in a boating accident in severe weather. He was the best man in Chuck and Kay’s wedding, and his death occurred two weeks later.
Chuck's parents wedding in 1946.
At Chuck's wedding: his brother, his father, and Chuck.
Chuck and his father at Chuck's daughter's Jami's wedding.
Looking at Chuck’s college major and his career, he appears to be yet another classmate with prominent visual-spatial strengths. His father, of course, had to have excellent visual-spatial skills to pilot a plane, and those skills would have been crucial for flying at low altitudes under nearly impossible conditions. Chuck's interests and strengths were in film, design, marketing, sales, and operating a business. I asked Chuck if he felt that his year at Newman had influenced his career focus. After all, he had not been there to take mechanical drawing, and he didn't take studio art or art history the year he was there. His response was that he was influenced by being around very creative people at Newman. He stated, "You could just sense the creativity and intelligence of the students." He learned at Newman that he immensely enjoys being around creative people, and throughout his career he had the pleasure of being surrounded by very talented craftsmen, artists, and graphic designers.
​
Chuck reported that his wife Kay has informally diagnosed him with ADHD, and he agrees. When I asked him how this informal diagnosis manifests in daily life, he said that projects take longer than they should as he can easily bounce from one thing to another. His concentration can be disrupted, and sometimes he doesn’t finish things. On the positive side, he is inquisitive and interested in learning new things. As I have mentioned previously, both ADHD and dyslexia are not uncommon in individuals with visual-spatial strengths, and a number of our classmates have informally diagnosed themselves after a child or grandchild was diagnosed with ADHD or dyslexia.
​
Chuck and Kay have three grown children, two daughters and a son. They have five grand-children, all living quite nearby. Their son was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his teens, and Chuck and Kay have volunteered and raised funds for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI.org), and Kay has taught classes on mental illness and its impact on families.
​
In A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life, the author Pat Conroy talks about how his moving around as a "military brat" created the conditions for him to develop an intense attachment to his last high school, Beaufort High, and to his best friend for life, Bernie Schein. Like Chuck entering Newman, Beaufort was Conroy's third high school. Chuck feels that Newman's small size and his being a member of a winning football team that year were factors that allowed him to get to know his classmates and his teachers much better than in his previous large public high schools in Tulsa and Dallas. He felt fortunate to be at Newman and is always proud to let people know that he graduated from Newman. He has vivid memories of our math teacher, Mr. Pfister, and Coaches Tuohy and Reginelli. Newman School is a strong part of his identity. In my case, I know that being uprooted from my life in New Orleans to a small town in central Florida left me ready to reconnect with my city and to form a strong attachment to Newman and my classmates.
​
Chuck has mixed feelings about his father's role as a war hero and his not having served his country in the military during the Vietnam era. I am sure, however, that Chuck is a hero. Having an adult child with mental illness or addiction is one of the greatest challenges a parent can face. It requires the patience, strength , and endurance of a hero to walk a very fine line, a line that is constantly changing. Chuck and Kay are still parenting their adult son, as well as contributing to the welfare of other families through volunteering and fundraising. Spending time with their five grandchildren is a highlight of their lives in retirement.
Chuck with his five grandchildren helping him celebrate his 74th birthday.