Charles Downs
Excerpt from Article by Elaine Belsito
Latest Watkins winner works with wheels, but he has a lot of heart Heading link
“Hold on. I’ve got to thaw out your words so I can hear what you said,” joked automotive foreman Charlie Downs. “It’s so cold they came out frozen.”
True enough, it was below zero the day I met this year’s Janice Watkins Award recipient, but the warm camaraderie he and his coworkers share soon put the cold snap out of mind.
The Watkins Award for Distinguished Civil Service is presented annually by the Support Staff Advisory Council. Downs, a UIC employee for 26 years, will be honored at a luncheon Friday.
“I feel very good about it, and a big reason for being excited is because I have never received an award in the name of a person I had known and worked with,” Downs said.
Watkins, a supervisor in the insurance office who died in a 1974 car accident, was president of the council when Downs was a member.
“She was a good, dynamic person and the most deserving of commendation of anybody I’ve known,” he said. “I’m very proud to receive the award in her name.”
It’s not the first award he’s gotten, though.
Downs received a Chancellor’s Service Award and honors from the Midwest Sickle Cell Association for his volunteer work with the organization.
For the last nine years, he’s helped get donations of presents and refreshments for the sickle cell association’s annual children’s holiday party. UIC furnishes bus transportation to the families who need it; he organizes the bus routes. He arranges other outings for the kids and recruits fellow volunteers.
The secret of his success, said Downs, is cultivating the ability to get along with people.
“You’ve got to give them genuine support for their problems, and convince them you’re really trying to help them.”
Downs dispatches 300 vehicles and 55 employees on tasks ranging from intercampus bus runs to picking up supplies for emergency elevator repairs or taking a delegation of Russian visitors to Maxwell Street.
“No day is typical. You’re always shooting at a moving target.”
In winter, he’s on snow watch every third week. When a storm hits, he might work up to 24 hours, tracking the weather reports and hauling himself here at the crack of dawn to get removal crews in action.
He’s married with two sons and two daughters, the youngest still in college. He spent 30 years in the Air Force on active and reserve duty, then came to the university after a few years as a CTA bus driver.
“When I started here, it was so small you knew everybody. Now I hardly know all the people in the Physical Plant.”
Nevertheless, he says, “Everybody is involved in transportation,” so he meets many campus employees as well as students and visitors.
“The No. 1 most interesting person I met in my life was a black lawyer named Earl Dickerson. He came to receive an honorary degree here on campus.
“He was 93 when I met him. He was the man who took the restrictive covenant case to the Supreme Court in 1937. [The landmark case ruled against groups of property owners that prevented blacks from purchasing property in their areas.]
“He was a black man who graduated Champaign-Urbana law school in 1912 or 1913, and Northwestern undergrad in 1908.
“He was absolutely amazing. I was just like a kid that day.
“It was one of the best days of my life.”