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Floyd Womack always wanted his son Milton to be an attorney.
"I never wanted to be a lawyer. I always wanted to be a builder," said Milton Womack. "But my Daddy said, 'Son, you're going to be a lawyer,' and that was that. Even though I'd just come back from a war, at that time you did what your Daddy told you.
"Construction is a very hard and complex business and I guess he didn't think I'd make a very good contractor," he said.
If that was Womack's father's thinking, he was certainly off the mark. M. J. Womack General Contractor Inc. is now one of the most successful contracting operations in Baton Rouge and has built some of the City's most recognizable structures.
Cortana Mall, the Earl K. Long Charity Hospital, the Hilton Hotel, and the LSU Law School are a few of the projects on which Womack's company has handled all or part of the construction.
At age 61, Womack appears to be content with his accomplishments, but he's also being faced with the challenge of his life in dealing with this area's economic downturn. The current malaise has sliced his revenues by more than half over recent years.
"For the first time since I've been in business, I'm taking money out my pocket and the company trying to keep a good organization together," he said. "I've managed to show a profit each year in my 31 years of business, but I'm wondering under these conditions if I can continue to do that."
Womack isn't spending all his time wrangling with business. He has become a fixture in the Baton Rouge landscape through his numerous benevolent activities -- probably more so than through his buildings. Last year he was honored with the National Conference of Christians and Jews Man of the Year and the Morning Advocate/State Times Golden Deeds awards.
One of his most visible roles these days is as president of the LSU Alumni Federation. "He's an avid supporter of the academic side of the University," said Charlie Roberts, executive vice president of the Federation. "He's always available any time we need him and has helped us immensely in drumming up support on the grass root level. If we had 110,000 alumni...