Jim Wilbanks believed in living life to its fullest and refused to let age stand in the way of the things he wanted to do - whether it was becoming a father a little later than most or taking up tae kwon do when he was nearly 60.
Wilbanks was born in Ripley, Miss., to Hoyt and Frankie Wilbanks. The second-oldest of seven children, he was introduced to mechanics early in life by his father, who ran a garage.
After graduating from high school in Ripley, Wilbanks joined the Navy, where he taught electronics and became a chief petty officer.
He then attended Mississippi State University, receiving a bachelors degree in electrical engineering.
After college, he joined Hughes Aircraft and worked in Germany on fighter interceptor planes.
In the 1950s and 1960s Wilbanks worked with General Electric Corp. as a system testing engineer on the Saturn V rocket captive testing program.
Once man landed on the moon, the space program slowed and Wilbanks turned to cable television. He became chief engineer for Mobil Cable and then worked in Tulsa, where the nation's second satellite receiver was installed.
"He was a front-edge kind of guy," his wife, Jane Wilbanks, [and everyone else who knew him] said. But he was more than intelligent, she said.
"He was just a good person - one of the guys - who always felt honor and integrity were the way to go.
Wilbanks was chief engineer for the Tulsa/Oklahoma City cable television company when je joined WEHCO Video in 1978 and moved his family to Arkansas.
He was literally one of the foremost cable engineers in the United States," said Walter E. Hussman Jr., president of WEHCO Media and publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette [the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi].
In 1980 shortly after joining WEHCO Video, Wilbanks was named executive vice president, a position he held for 18 years. Under his capable leadership, WEHCO Video grew from less than 50,000 to over 116,000 subscribers. "He was a very good businessman and made most of the decisions concerning the company himsef," Hussman said.
One of Wilbanks' greates accompishments was overseeing the rebuilding of the 17 WEHCO-owned cable systems into fiber-optic systems during the last five years, Hussman said.
Wilbanks zest for life became even more apparent when he took up martial arts, along with his son, in 1986. After training for only about a year and a half, he had earned a blue belt with a tip, was able to do a 6-foot flying sidekick and had beat other men 15 years younger in tae kwon do competitions.
When Wilbanks took up tae kwon do he didn't have a regualr exersise routine, but he was always physically active, doing such things as cutting wood and building fences on their rural Arkansas farm.
But his wife said he'd be remembered for his softer side. "To me, he's my sweetheart and to others, he was a good person who was always willing to help others, and he preferred to do it unobtrusively, so they wouldn't know he'd helped them."