Business Is All In Big Family -- Street-Cleaning Firm In Rainier Valley Involves 7 Brothers Plus Family Help

When the Vinson Brothers Corp. was presented a small-business award for 1991 recently by Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, it was a celebration of one family's faith, foresight and solidarity.

Seven Vinson brothers - Jim, Don, Earl, Carl, Larry, Al and Tim - are partners in the Rainier Valley parking-lot-cleaning and street-sweeping business. They are backed up by younger brothers Joe and Rick and by their sisters, Bonnie Hunter, Yvonne Hailey, Mary Tappin and Elveria Cross.

"God blessed us with one dozen and one - and it was worth it," 72-year-old Velma Vinson said of her 13 children. She and her husband Theophilus Vinson are former Arkansas farmers who settled in the Central Area. Infused with a strong Baptist background, Velma Vinson said she taught her children "to stick together because blood is thicker than anything."

The children heeded the lesson, starting the family business in the basement of Al Vinson's South End home in 1983, with just one street-sweeping truck in the back yard.

From one contract to clean a building parking lot, the firm, at 9245 Rainier Ave. S., now has about 350 accounts to clean everything from Diamond parking lots to parking areas at the Port of Seattle's Pier 66, Safeway stores and Gai's Bakery. It employees 17 workers, excluding family members, runs seven power-sweeper trucks and is valued at about $1.2 million, according to Al Vinson.

"The Vinson brothers continue to prove themselves a successful

company as they expand and grow," Rice said yesterday. "Plus, they have from the beginning given back to the community through the Special Olympics and the YMCA Role Model Program. Since they are located in southeast Seattle, this is especially important to young people - they not only participate in the role-model program, they live it."

The Vinsons' odyssey from Arkansas began 35 years ago when the two oldest children, Jim and Bonnie, graduated from high school and decided to come West to join an aunt and uncle in Seattle.

"Every two years after that another brother or sister came West," 40-year-old Al Vinson said. In 1968 Theophilus Vinson joined them. Jim, Don, Carl and Earl were working at The Boeing Co. Dad got a job there too. When Al Vinson graduated from high school in Arkansas two years later, the rest of the family, including their mother, came to Seattle, where five of the children graduated from Garfield High School. Seven of the siblings went on to graduate from college.

"In 1974 three of us were brainstorming, Jim, Don and I think it was Earl," said Al Vinson, "and they talked about there being so many of us and all had productive jobs, so why didn't we get together as a group?"

The six oldest sons each began putting $15 a month into a common savings account. In a few years the savings grew into a sizable nest egg. "Since the pot got large, they began meeting every Wednesday night at six o'clock, brainstorming about what to do," Al Vinson said.

They could have bought 5 acres at Mill Creek for $8,000, "but it scared us," Al Vinson said. Investing in gold and downtown property also sounded risky. "One night Jim suggested why not go into the street-cleaning business," Al Vinson said.

"We decided debris and dirt are going to be here forever. There's always going to be a market for cleaning, and with the manpower we had as a family, we decided there was no way we could fail."

While keeping their jobs, the brothers each took on a task to get the business going: Al to find a truck, Jim to seek a bank loan, Don to check the street-cleaning market, Larry to look into competition. And they divided up the business responsibilities: Jim had personnel; Carl, finance; Larry, scheduling; Al, mechanics.

Two years ago Al Vinson quit his job at Boeing, where he had worked as a quality-control manager for 15 years, to run the business full time. In March, Larry, a buyer at Boeing for 18 years, also quit to assist Al as property manager for the business.

Don is a manager in manufacturing at the Boeing Renton plant; Carl, a Boeing cost-management analyst; Jim, Boeing's corporate director of safety and health administration. Tim is an Allstate Insurance Co. claims adjuster; Joe, a Blue Shield accountant.

The Vinson brothers all are good workers who know how to get ahead, said Larry McKean, vice president for human resources at Boeing. McKean has known most of the Vinsons for years, since Jim Vinson came to work for Boeing.

Their success goes back to their father, who "has done an outstanding job of molding that family," McKean said. "He's been a fine example himself of getting along well, of doing a job well and knowing the rewards will come."

While there are family differences, Al Vinson said members realize consensus is the key to the family's ability to work together. He attributes its strong religious background for the family solidarity. He is on the board of Goodwill Baptist Church in the Central Area, while Carl serves on the board of Martin Luther King Baptist Church in Renton.

"We know what tears a family and a business apart: People do," Al Vinson said.

On the wall above Al Vinson's desk at the family business are two small plaques. One bears an engraving of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a few words from his "I Have a Dream" speech.

The other is an engraving of Albert Einstein. It bears a quote that well may be a motto for the Vinson family: "In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity."

-- Times staff reporter Sally Macdonald contributed to this report.