Remembering Carl Trimble

Carl B. Trimble could be a thorn in the side of people who didn’t want to give Black architects a fair shot.

His efforts, though, kicked open the doors for many minority architectural firms in metro Atlanta, including roles in the 1996 Olympic Games.

The Olympics required new sports structures to be built across the metro area. These were highly coveted projects with significant budgets.

“That was Carl,” said retired architect Wilford Ray, who attended Tuskegee University with Trimble and became friends and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brothers. “He just thought that was the right thing to do.”

Trimble, who served as a former president of the Atlanta chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects, was recently recognized by the Atlanta City Council and Mayor Andre Dickens for his architectural projects throughout the city and his efforts challenging barriers to greater minority participation in private and government projects.

Trimble, a Navy veteran, teacher, musician and artist, died Aug. 16 at 79.

A native of Opelika, Ala., Trimble was one of five children born to a factory worker, businessman and a nurse’s aide.

Helen Harris Timberlake, a cousin, remembers that in elementary school he designed and built a baseball stadium from a deconstructed doll house.

She said they always wanted to be scientists and pretended to be a laboratory. “He was the first person I ever heard mention MIT. He said we were going to MIT to be lab technicians and discover stuff.”

A teacher, Ms. Finley, predicted Trimble was going to be some kind of activist because he was always questioning the “whys and how come.”

Eventually, though, Trimble’s attention turned to architecture.

He was a registered architect for more than four decades and his firm, Trimble Architects, worked on several major projects including a Grady Health System expansion, commercial lodging and residential housing, the Fulton County Library and the North Springs MARTA Station.

He also, at times, taught architecture at Tuskegee and the University of Louisiana Lafayette.

According to his obituary, Trimble often compared architecture to classical music in both form and composition.

Rashida M. Winfrey said her father was an avid reader and a walking reservoir of information.

Her dad had battled cancer in the past, but of late there were no signs of the disease. Once, when he was ill, she had to call an ambulance.

When EMTs arrived, they began to ask her father questions to test his cognitive function.

“They asked, ‘Mr. Trimble, who is the current president?” she said. “He started at the first U.S. president and went all the way to the current, in chronological order. I could never understand how he could hold so much information in his brain.”

She said her father wanted his children to be well exposed. When she was in middle school, her father added her to his membership at a private club in Atlanta. She remembers after school arriving at the club on a MARTA bus for a late lunch or early dinner.

He made sure that she knew the soft skills of dining, like the order of silverware and how to use chopsticks. “He would say you’re not going to sit here in a Chinese restaurant and use a fork.”

As she grew older, Winfrey understood why he fought for access, even when it was uncomfortable at times.

If he thought something was negatively impacting people who didn’t have a voice or the courage to use it, he was always willing to be that voice.

Once she got a call from City Hall that officials were not pleased that her father was being so outspoken on a particular issue.

“I said, ‘Daddy, at this point your kids are older, and your activism is impacting our daily lives.’ He said, ‘You’re right. I’ll take a softer approach ”

And there was a cost to being the voice.

Winfrey and others acknowledge that Trimble probably lost business because he was so outspoken.

“There was a huge price my father paid for that,” she said.

Michael Ross, CEO of MHR International, was part of the program management team for the Olympics and had known Trimble for three decades.

“He was funny, but he was very determined to make sure that people were included,” said Ross. “I always enjoyed talking with him. He was always insightful. He came out of that school of Tuskegee architecture that produced Robert L. Brown, Cordell Ingram and Wilford Ray.  It was a strong group of Tuskegee architects who had a major impact on many of the buildings that we see in Atlanta today.”

Ray, a retired Atlanta architect, first met Trimble at Tuskegee, where both joined the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity.

Trimble enrolled in Tuskegee, later joined the Navy, and eventually returned to Tuskegee.

“Carl always walked around in a Navy pea jacket and with a camera around his neck,” said Ray, laughing. “We accused him of not having any film in it and that it was his way of meeting women on campus.”

His friend was the type of person who was very sure of himself but a “super nice guy.”

“He didn’t follow in anybody’s footsteps except Carl Trimble’s,” Ray said. “If you wanted to do something other than the way he wanted it done, you had to give him the justification as to why. You couldn’t put him in a box and shut the box because he would find a way out of it.”

And, he wouldn’t let others be boxed in either.

Leading up to the 1996 Olympics, Ray was director of technical services and was in charge of 35 architects and engineers who were consultants to AGOC.

“Carl was adamant that Black people were going to get a lot of that work,” he said.

Trimble could be pushy at times, recalled Ray, but because of his outspokenness, many Black and female businesses were able to participate in the project.

William Stanley, III and Ivenue Love-Stanley were longtime friends.

William Stanley, who with his wife founded Stanley, Love-Stanley, one of the South’s oldest Black architectural firms, called Trimble a “true jedi warrior and the original OG — Opelika Genius.”

“He taught and encouraged generations,” said William Stanley. “His legacy lives on.”