: Edward D Miller, Michelle Miller
: The Enduring Legacy of Wallace E. Carroll From the Golden Age of Industry to the Heights of Philanthropy
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: Biographien, Autobiographien
: English
: 104
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Biography of industrialist Wallace E. Carroll, written by B.C. alumnus, Edward D. Miller. Wallace E. Carroll is the namesake of Boston College's Carroll School of Management and was chairman and CEO of Katy Industries, Inc. Wallace Carroll was one of the earliest Boston College graduates to systematically build and lead a large, diversified business enterprise. Throughout his life he was committed to producing economic benefits rather than reaping their personal rewards. A business leader and philanthropist, he remained a private man intensely dedicated to the circle that formed his extended family. The son of a Taunton, Mass, blacksmith, Carroll worked as a bricklayer's helper and railroad worker while attending Boston College. He later pursued graduate studies in business at MIT, Harvard Business School, New York University and Northwestern University. Carroll worked for New York Telephone Cos. in the early '3os before joining a gage manufacturing company in Providence, R.I. in 1934. Two years later, the company sent him to manage sales in its Chicago branch. In the Midwest, he founded Size Control Cos., a gage manufacturing company, in 1941, which prospered supplying the war effort with machine parts. Using profits from his early ventures, Carroll acquired other metals and machine concerns, which comprise the core of Katy Industries, Inc., a congolmerate of more than 43 companies and divisions formed in 1970. He was also chairman emeritus of CRL, Inc., a firm privately held by the Carroll family, which includes American Machine and Science, Inc. and International Metals and Machine, Inc.

Michelle Monique Miller Michelle is the Director of a Global Writing Association with special consultative status to the United Nations. She graduated from Harvard University where she majored in Asian Studies and Chinese. She studied at Beijing University, taught in Shanghai and received her Master's degree from Boston College. Michelle directed Pepsi and Reebok global advertising from Hong Kong, London, and New York. Recently, she launched a global mentoring program and series of anthologies during the pandemic. Michelle speaks Mandarin, French, and Spanish and is working on a Chinese-English children's book and her first novel.

Chapter I:
The Family History of Wallace E. Carroll


The backbone of the country is families. I’d like to see everyone out of the office in time to be home for dinner by six o’clock so that dinner can be had with the family, sharing in the day’s joys and frustrations and sibling arguments, all of which contribute to healthy ties. – Wallace E. Carroll (April 6, 1987)

Wallace Edward Carroll was born on November 4, 1907, in Taunton, Massachusetts. He was the son of an Irish immigrant blacksmith, Patrick Joseph Carroll, and grew up in Taunton when it was a city of 30,000, populated mostly by Irish immigrants.

Wallace would have a presence in each decade of the 20th century. He was born into a peaceful world. The pace was slower, and life was simpler, but dramatic changes would take place in each decade. He grew to young manhood in the second decade against the background of World War I. In the third decade, Wallace completed high school, college, and a year of business school. In the fourth decade he laid the foundations of a sixty-year business career. In the final decades of the 20th century, both business and academia honored the accomplishments of Wallace Carroll. His virtues of honor, tenacity, courage, loyalty, and charity, combined with a keen and farsighted intelligence, produced a life marked by achievement, which improved the lives of thousands of others. Wallace Carroll enjoyed learning about the Carroll family lineage1 in both Ireland and in the U.S. and in later years relished the opportunity to visit the land of his ancestors:

 

The countryside was all that has been described, stone walls, hedges, and green fields with fat cattle and sheep. No forests at all. The comforting smell of peat filled the air as we passed through the towns. Several were full of sheep and cattle for the fair and sale being held that day. We were at Athlone before we knew it, and the first man we asked knew my uncle Tom Carroll, in Ballymallalin, three or four miles away. We found the Carroll farm easily enough and were met at the door by Mary Carroll. She had seven sons and two daughters, all gone except one son, Danny, who stayed with his mother. Another son, Michael, was home from Rochester New York for a visit. His older brother, Paddy, emigrated to Rochester several years ago and is a plastering contractor, eventually bringing three of his brothers over. The plasterers earn $3.90 an hour in Rochester, quite a contrast to the life of a worker at 35 cents an hour had they stayed in Ireland, since the farm isn’t big enough to support more than one or two sons, one reason why my father and his sister emigrated around 1890.2

 

Patrick J. Carroll, Wallace’s father, set up his Blacksmith shop in Taunton, Massachusetts in 1903. It was called “P.J. Carroll Blacksmith,” and was located in a small wooden building with a historic legacy and where three generations of Carrolls practiced this art.3

Patrick was a hardworking man of 37 in 1907 when his youngest son Wallace was born. It had been 18 difficult years since he had arrived in Boston in 1889 at the age of 19, having left his family home in Ireland. His home was in the village of Ballymallalin. His father, Daniel Carroll, and his mother, Mary Malin, farmed 110 acres of rocky soil and raised livestock. Patrick left his home for America and arrived in Boston on the shipIowa on June 25, 1889. The ship's manifest indicates that he was trained as a bricklayer in Ireland.4

Patrick first settled in Brockton, Massachusetts, then the best-known horseshoe manufacturing city in the country. A thriving racing track in Brockton demanded the skill of shoeing horses and Patrick began his career as an apprentice. Later he had his first blacksmith shop on Ford Street in Brockton. While visiting Taunton one spring day in 1893, Patrick Carroll bought a handkerchief at a store located on the corner of Trescott and Main streets. The saleswoman working at the store was Katherine Feely. Patrick began to court Miss Feely, biking 24 miles from Brockton and back each Saturday night. Wallace Carroll recalled his father telling him that part of the trip was through the Hockomock Swamp where mosquitos would eat him alive in the summer, and ice and snow were perilous in the winter.

Wallace Carroll’s mother, Katherine Louise (née Feely) Carroll was born in Boston on August 10, 1874. She was named after her mother, Katherine (née Brennan) Feely, who was born in Indiana and raised in Massachusetts. Wallace’s parents were married on November 27, 1895. They lived in Brockton for eight years. Three daughters were born in their Brockton home: Mildred Agnes (November 11, 1896), Mary Irene (Janu