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THEN NOW Don’t kill your competition and do your business so that you can always go back George, Kathryn and their dog Lizzie In their garden in Ashokie, NC Photo Credit: FMIC Staff Photographer
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FMIC SUMMER 2021
WITH
In a continuation of our new series called Then & Now, we highlight the evolution of the wood products industry over the years by conducting personal interviews with people who worked in the industry and their relationships with Forestry Mutual Insurance Company.
In this issue, we visit former Forestry Mutual Chairman George Pace. For 17 years, Mr. Pace served as Chairman on the original NC Forestry Self-Insurers Fund that transitioned into Forestry Mutual’s board of directors. George was born in Sebastopol, Mississippi, in 1935 and grew up in Lena, Mississippi. He says that growing up working on a farm and in his father’s general store helped shape his business approach, character, and the importance of integrity. George graduated from Lena Consolidated High School and knew that if he wanted to advance in life, he would have to earn a higher education. He moved out to attend a college that summer, he took a job with room and board working on a farm owned by an elderly maiden lady who worked at Mississippi State College. In addition to his studies, and working the farm, George also drove her on various errands. He admits that he missed out on a lot of college life due to his responsibilities but laughs that he had
GEORGE PACE, FORMER CHAIRMAN, FORESTRY MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY plenty of fox squirrels to hunt and a big fishing pond, and that was a wonderful setting for him.
Being outside in nature has always been a driving force in George’s life. While in college, he and a friend went out to Sisters, Oregon, to work that summer in fire control. The next three summers, George spent his time working at a forest summer camp, and during his last year, he was a smokejumper in Missoula, Montana. George does admit that he may have fudged his actual height to be the required five-foot-eight inches to be a smokejumper. He tells a story, and if you know George, he will tell you a story. George spoke about how close to the ground the planes flew in the mountains. Laughing, he said, “and if you were too high, you’d end up on another mountain than where the smoke was.” As one young man discovered, weighing in at only 135lbs, George says, “he hardly ever got back to the smoke,” chuckling, saying it was a fun summer.
I asked George while he was laughing, “Is that where you found your love for forestry, or was it just the direction life took you in?” He said that it was “probably in eighth or ninth grade when he saw this picture of a fella on a big white horse on top of a mountain in a forest service uniform. And that’s when I went to study, and I never thought of anything else.” George’s family had very high regard for education. When he worked picking cotton at eight years old, every dollar he made
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