In another life, Stewart Spinks might have been a pilot.
The founder and chairman of the Spinx Co. has amassed thousands of hours of flying time since buying his first airplane, a single-engine Piper Archer, at the age of 34.
“I didn’t even know how to set the brake on it, much less make it fly,” Spinks says. “So I set out, and I got my license by the end of that summer.”
From there, he progressed to more complex aircraft, eventually earning the credentials to fly a jet.
“I guess that’s probably the thing that frees my mind of all other things in my life,” Spinks says of piloting.
Born into a working-class family, Spinks grew up poor in Augusta, Georgia. His mother worked second shift as a hostess at a nice hotel, and his father was an auto mechanic who also worked nights as a hospital orderly.
“Twenty-four hours a day, somebody was working as a family, so I learned to respect work early on,” Spinks says.
As a youngster, Spinks played whatever sport was in season — football, baseball, basketball, track. He was good enough to earn a football scholarship to the University of Tennessee, where he scored a touchdown as a freshman against Virginia Tech.
“I was not an All-American by any stretch of the imagination, but I did get through college,” Spinks says.
He graduated in 1968, was hired the same year by Shell Oil Co. in Atlanta and was transferred to Greenville in 1969.
Within a few years, Spinks left Shell to strike out on his own. He bought Shell’s worst-performing service station, which at the time was on the corner of East Washington Street and Laurens Road, then grew his empire from there. Today, Spinx operates more than 80 stores across South Carolina — 59 of them here in the Upstate.
Spinks, now in his 70s, acknowledges that he’s been luckier than most.
“You’ll hear me say the words fortunate and blessed a lot,” Spinks says.
Fast facts
- Hobbies: golf, flying, travel
- Clemson or Carolina: Furman
- Favorite place to visit: La Jolla, California
- Ideal way to spend a weekend: fly to Hilton Head Island and play a round of golf
- If you could have dinner with anyone living or dead, who would it be? My dad
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Spinx founder Stewart Spinks shares his love of aviation - Greenville Journal
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