All in the family

He's one W shy of having the same initials as the World Wide Web.

His business card says W.W. Hankinson -- that's Whitner Wandell.

Call him Buzz.

Everyone has called him Buzz since his youth in Waynesboro, Ga.

"Given to me by an aunt when I was very young because she said I buzzed around in the house and got in trouble. It stuck with me," he said.

The Augusta financial planner, the president of Hankinson Wealth Management, is 62 now.

He doesn't have a computer at home. He'd be working all night and all weekend if he did.

"He's a driven individual," said friend Tommy Jones, an Augusta accountant. "He's one of those guys that's going to die with his boots on. I think he'll slow down, but he's going to keep his hand on the steering wheel."

Buzz doesn't know how to stop working. After a back surgery in 1984, he lived in his Greene Street office for six weeks. Confined to a hospital bed that he bought in order to accomplish this, his family commuted from Waynesboro every day to bring him food.

"Service is important to us. Whatever it takes to do right, as long as it is legal and ethical, we will do what it takes to service our clients," Buzz said.

Buzz recalled hiring a hearse to drive him and the hospital bed to Atlanta to secure a deal with some potential heavy-hitter clients that he wouldn't have lured to him without a personal appearance.

Two years later, he was running with the Olympic torch on the outskirts of Waynesboro.

The work ethic is ingrained in him, wife Judy said.

"He can't just sit around and do nothing."

Buzz has been on the move since before he graduated from high school, when he sandwiched school with two jobs to help the family financially survive.

Double W

Buzz was named Whitner after a cousin in 1945. He was the baby in a family of five. His father, John, worked for Western Union. His mother, Sara, was a schoolteacher for a time.

Sara suffered a stroke while Buzz was in elementary school and became an invalid. The family cared for her in their Waynesboro home until she died in November 1964.

John Hankinson had died in a car crash eight months earlier. Buzz was a senior in high school, suddenly thrust into the role of caring for his mother for the last months of her life. He had the assistance of relatives, which allowed him to go to college in Statesboro.

"You got to move forward," he now says of that time.

He was aiming for economics to have the business smarts to go to work for himself.

Teachers and counselors thought he couldn't do it. Buzz said he was a bad student. Not because he wasn't smart, but because he didn't study. He didn't have the time.

To help the family make ends meet, Buzz mowed lawns before class and then went to work in an aluminum chair factory until 11 p.m. each night.

"He has always worked," Judy said. "He cut grass in the dark. He would tie flashlights to his push lawnmower to cut at five in the morning."

Buzz also had a part-time job at a florist.

When he got to Georgia Southern University, he paid his way by selling cookware for a Wisconsin-based company.

It is a work ethic he has tried to pass on to his sons, James "Hank" and Benjamin, who now work with him in the wealth management firm.

"The tradition of mowing lawns carried on through me when I was in high school," Hank said.

Ben also did some mowing, after Hank went to the University of Georgia.

As a freshman in college, Buzz met Judy during a Christian youth fellowship event at North Augusta Baptist Church. He came through town a year later to attend his brother's wedding and looked her up.

"He just kept us in stitches. He has a habit of doing silly things sometimes," Judy said.

To the dismay of both families -- and his pastor in Waynesboro -- they got married in 1967, before he finished college.

"I don't want to say everyone was against it; they were against the timing," Buzz said.

Judy left her job at the telephone company, moved to Statesboro and worked in retail until Buzz's college graduation.

He interviewed with some companies, such as R.J. Reynolds, and turned down their $700-a-month offer because he was making more money selling cookware on a part-time basis.

The couple moved to Macon so Buzz could advance his career as a divisional sales manager.

"We were doing financially well, but I didn't like being away from home at night. Being away two to three days at a time is not good for a young marriage," Buzz said.

In September 1970, Buzz went to work for the insurance company Mutual of New York, better known as MONY (Pronounced "money"). After 13 years of insurance work in North Augusta and Augusta, he went out on his own.

Incidentally, he still has some of that cookware. Now, 40 years after he gave up selling it, he gets calls from time to time from people who have a broken piece and want to take advantage of the lifetime guarantee. Buzz has the address memorized.

"He's always done a fantastic job of client service. If a client needs something, he gets it done," said Mr. Jones, who has known Buzz for 25 years. "He's a special person as far as customer service. He learned that the hard way in college. It has paid off big time for him ... puts clients' interests first."

Building business

To get in the Hankinson Wealth Management office in the 1200 block of Greene Street, a visitor has to buzz the door bell.

Before Buzz bought the building in 1980, it was home to an addiction recovery center. It needed front door security with a bell. His office was once a pool room.

A room in the back has a split door where methadone was dispersed.

Buzz no longer actively sells life insurance, though he maintains the accounts of the more than 100 clients who have bought from him over the last 20 years.

The company has about 60 financial planning clients.

Buzz said he went out on his own because he wanted to give clients unbiased advice, not information dictated to him by the company.

Both Ben and Hank said following their father into the business was a natural move.

"Like most children, you grow up wanting to be like your father," Ben said. "During the summers, I would dress up in my Sunday best and come up here with him and act like I was working. Doodling around, stapling papers."

In 1998, while finishing his management degree at Augusta State University, Ben wasn't doodling around anymore, he was working for his father, performing back office operations.

Ben is now seeking his personal financial planner status.

Buzz said he was proud when his sons chose to join him.

"It is what I always had in my mind what I was going to do," Hank said. "I remember in high school coming here on the weekends. I was the human collator of his presentations," Hank said.

The company had a dot matrix printer so loud that it had a case to buffer the noise.

Coming out of UGA with a degree in accounting, Hank set off for a master's degree in taxation. He then took the steps necessary to become a certified financial analyst, one of the few in the state who isn't in academia.

"I didn't get the CFA to be the only one in Augusta, I did it for customer service," Hank said.

Hank's mission is to find the unintended consequences of an investment strategy -- peer five to 10 years in the future -- to make sure the clients are fine even if the strategy goes wrong.

Hank mans the firm's Lake Oconee office, which is about three years old now.

Three times a week, he makes the 75-minute trek to the office near Reynolds Plantation. It is a repeat of his father's experience, driving to Augusta from Waynesboro for 30 years.

Before the road connecting the cities was expanded to four lanes, the trip took an hour, Buzz said.

"I look back on it. How did I commute every day an hour each way? I was a little younger then," he said.

Buzz and Judy moved to Augusta a decade ago because their sons were having children and they were commuting to Augusta more than before.

There are toys in the back of the office for when the grandchildren visit.

Since the oldest of the six grandchildren is only 9, no one is sure whether there will be a third generation to join the Hankinson company.

Judy only works at the firm when they need someone to fill in on the phones. Being around financial planners all these years hasn't given her more financial knowledge.

"This is what they love," Judy said.

The Hankinson firm is a registered investment advisor, which has a more strict code than normal brokers.

"We have a fiduciary responsibility to our clients just like an attorney does. We got to be 100 percent, put all of our clients' goals and objectives ahead of our own," Buzz explained. "I've been fortunate over the years. The type of investments that I have, our clients have. We eat our own cooking."

An active spirit

When Buzz isn't working, his nose is in a book, Judy said.

History and national issue books aren't just for recreation, they're part of his success.

"A lot of people get comfortable. He's always been reading, always been on top of things. He could see what was coming down the road and he could gear his business toward that," Judy said. "He doesn't stagnate."

Buzz also had a brief career as a football coach on his sons' city recreation football teams.

They aren't the only ones who remember coach Hankinson.

"We had a not-so-good practice," Hank recalled. "Mom came out with pitchers of lemonade. He said we didn't practice well enough to deserve a lemonade. He poured it out in front of all of us."

That was a traumatic event for a 9-year-old, Hank said. He still meets people on that team who remember the lemonade dump.

"What I get out of it is: You don't get things for free ... you don't get lemonade just 'cause you show up," Hank said.

Ben now coaches his own children in soccer and flag football.

The boys went on to have brief athletic careers.

In high school, Ben was a running back. Hank was on the defensive and offensive line.

Buzz also played in high school, but not beyond that. Other Hankinsons went further. Buzz's brother, Crimmins, went to Clemson and played under Frank Howard. Another brother, Lon, played for Bear Bryant at Alabama.

But they didn't get to run the Olympic torch for the Atlanta summer games in 1996.

"I was 50 years old and out of shape. You jog for a quarter of a mile," Buzz explained. "There are two young girls that run with you and you can't let them show you up. I'm glad it wasn't any more than a quarter of a mile."

To get the honor, someone in the community had to nominate him. Buzz still doesn't know who that was. The torch hangs on the wall next to his office door.

His work torch isn't about to flame out. Retirement? Everyone says no. They do think Buzz will slow down ... to five days a week.

As for the three Ws: www. hankinsonwealthmanagement.com is getting a makeover to include more about the Hankinson team.

Unfortunately, Buzz.com is taken.

Reach Tim Rausch at (706) 823-3352 or timothy.rausch@augustachronicle.com.