If you have driven around Grenada County and the many communities that surround it, it’s quite possible that you’ve seen a Peacock high up in the sky.
Fortunately for one Grenada family, those sightings are not a rarity.
Walter Peacock has owned and operated Peacock’s Signs & Designs in Grenada for nearly five decades and work does not appear to be slowing down. What started out as a side job making personalized license plates to earn extra money in the early 70s, has grown into one of the county’s oldest and most successful black-owned businesses today.
From sign installation, relocation and repair for hometown restaurants, boutiques and shopping plazas to national restaurant and retail chain contracts, Peacock has done it all.
“Before I was in the sign business, I worked at Binswanger – they call it Trulite now,” the 70-year-old businessman said. “At the time that I worked out there, I was always doing little stuff for people like making personalized car tags.”
After five years on the job, the then 24-year-old Peacock was included in a company-wide layoff. With several years of experience with smaller side work, he began pondering the idea of starting his own business.
“I have always been a pretty good artist and people kept calling me for smaller stuff, so I figured that I might as well try to go ahead and get in the sign business,” Peacock recalled. “I really don’t know how it all happened. I started small and it just grew from there.”
In 1976, Peacock’s Signs opened for business.
Over the past 46 years, Peacock has strived to build up his business with hard work and dedication. Today, now located at 16394 Hwy. 8, it has grown into one of the state’s common names in the sign business.
Now, with the help of two of his sons, Walter “Winston” Peacock Jr., 33, and Fred “Wesley” Peacock, 29, there is no job too big or small for Peacock’s Signs.
“We do a good bit of subcontracting side work for out-of-town companies and we also do a good bit of local stuff such as signs and parking lot lighting repair,” Walter Sr. said. “We do just about anything that deals with signs or lighting and electrical work. Grenada has been good to us.”
However, working out of town is not unusual.
“There are a lot of smaller towns that don’t have any sign companies at all like Winona, Calhoun City and Bruce,” Walter Sr. said.
The Peacock patriarch said that working with his sons is a lesson of give and take. Some days the trio doesn’t agree, but at the end of the day, they are always Peacocks.
“Overall it’s good,” Walter said of working with his sons. “Usually there is a pair of us doing something and the other one is on his own.”
Winston is the first to admit that when he first started working with his father, he was wrong most of the time.
“When I first started out, I was a lot younger and I thought it was a lot more difficult then because I was more hard-headed and didn’t know much,” he said. “Now that I’m older and have more experience, it’s a lot easier to work with him and it’s a lot more fun.”
Wesley agrees that the elder Peacock has the wisdom and leads them in the right direction.
“It’s fun, but just like anything else, you know, being with your family, when you have differences and stuff, it’s easier to get over it most times,” he said. “Being a younger person and working with somebody more mature and older than you, there’s going to be some conflict. The thing I can always say when I look back on it, he was right most of the time.”
As for making him proud: “That’s all we know how to do,” Winston said.
Walter Sr. continues to work today, but is slowly taking steps back to hand the business off to his sons. Keeping the legacy alive and making their father proud is No. 1 on their to-do list.
“I may be a little optimistic, but the way I look at it – see, when he started, there was only one of him – with both of us taking it just as serious as he did at that time, we can branch out and do two different things on the same day, which he couldn’t really do,” Wesley said.
Walter Sr. considers himself semi-retired today, but admitted that he still loves what he is doing.
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing it,” he concluded. “What keeps me going is trying to make sure these boys of mine are comfortable with handling the job and I think they are now. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve already taken over. I’m kind of a helper with them now.”
