By dawn you’ll find him in the middle of a Florida-based Walmart distribution center leading his team in their morning stretching ritual before getting busy up-stacking cases as heavy as 50 pounds.
Timothy is no stranger to breaking a sweat before sunrise. On the dairy farm where he grew up working with his grandfather, clocking in at the crack of dawn was a part of life. From his grandfather, Timothy learned to value the tough-as-nails work ethic he’s known for at Walmart today. “My grandpa was the biggest inspiration in my life. He loved to work, so I had to pick up his rhythm.”
Timothy’s fondest childhood memories are of tending to his grandfather’s cows and, later, working in his junkyard where the pair spend countless hours tinkering under the hoods of old cars, taking apart transmissions and putting them back together.
Timothy never forgot his grandfather’s lessons, even when the odds seemed impossibly stacked against him. With no other family to rely on, Timothy worked to support himself through high school and graduated with honors. But after graduating, he had no place to go. “I was homeless. Literally, I had nowhere to go.”
That’s when he ran into an old friend who worked at Walmart. After speaking with him about the benefits and opportunity available, the friend convinced Timothy to send in an application. A week later, he was hired as a part-time associate in the deli. Timothy hit the ground running, immersing himself in his new position and volunteering to come in for extra shifts whenever possible. It didn’t take long before his trademark work ethic grabbed the attention of the department managers, and less than a year after he started, he was hired full time as an overnight stocker.
Looking back now, he’s come a long way. He has a career he loves and a beautiful home in which to raise his family. When it comes to the future, Timothy will be the first to say the hard work isn’t over. “Someday I want people to say, ‘Hey, that’s Timothy Lumpkin right there. He started with nothing and look, he made something out of it.’ All it takes is a little bit of willpower and you can do anything you want.”