Howard C. Tibbals

Howard Charles Tibbals (August 10, 1936 – March 20, 2022) was the long-time owner of the Tibbals Flooring Company in Oneida, the creator of the Howard Bros. Circus Model, a circus historian, and a philanthropist.

Early Life

Born in Ohio on August 10, 1936, Howard Tibbals was the son of Charles Ernest Tibbals Jr. and Lillian Blanche Davidson Tibbals. He was only three years old when he saw his first circus, and as a young child watched the circus unload from wagons. He was fascinated by it, and would sketch circus wagons on the back of a piece of paper in church.

In 1946, the Tibbals family moved to Oneida, where young Howard’s father and uncle, Todd Tibbals, purchased the Pearson Hardwood Flooring Co. Two years later, Tibbals received a lathe and jigsaw for his 12th birthday. He used those tools to begin creating a replica circus.

Tibbals graduated from North Carolina State University.

Hartco Flooring

Under the Tibbals leadership, the former Pearson Hardwood Flooring Co. — renamed the Tibbals Flooring Co. — flourished. In the late 1950s, Charles Tibbals discovered and patented a method for manufacturing parquet flooring using pieces of wood that were previously considered worthless. The new brand of flooring was called The Hardwood Tile Company, or Hartco for short.

The original wood flooring plant at the site of the Oneida railroad depot expanded to include operations on nearby Industrial Lane, and was Scott County’s largest industrial employer for decades. At its peak, the Tibbals operation employed more than 520 people and pumped more than $30 million into the local economy each year.

It was once said that, thanks to Tibbals and Hartco, there are “pieces of Scott County all over the world.” When future U.S. President Donald J. Trump built the Trump Tower in New York City, he selected Hartco flooring — manufactured in Oneida — for part of the building.

In the meantime, Howard Tibbals began working alongside his father when he was old enough to do so. He later took over operations completely. He once said, “I had a lot of pride in the products we were making. We put the floors in Donald Trump’s building in New York City. I had a lot of pride in the woodworking machinery I designed and altered. There’s a lot of good commercial woodworking machines in this country, but if you want to change them to do special products and run real fast and all that sort of stuff, that was my specialty — taking existing machinery and adapting it to do more things than it was originally designed to do.”

In 1988, Tibbals sold the Hartco brand to Premark International for $94 million. He later moved to Sarasota, Fla., where he spent his retirement years.

Miniature Circus

The tiny wooden toys that Howard Tibbals began building at the age of 12 in 1948 became a major part of his life. Once completed, his replica circus was a 3/4 inch-to-1 foot scale replica of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. It was called the Howard Bros. Circus. When he died in March 2022, his obituary noted: “While the plant’s sawdust often covered his work shoes, the sawdust of the circus lot filled his imagination.”

Tibbals began creating the circus’s big top in 1956, built his first wagon in 1959, and completed most of his models by 1974. The circus was premiered at the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tenn. In 1986, the circus was exhibited again at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C. Today, the circus occupies more than 2,000 square feet at the Ringling Estate in Sarasota, Fla., which is home to the expansive Tibbals Learning Center.

The Tibbals Learning Center opened in 2006, and was credited with helping transform the Ringling Estate into a family-friendly attraction. Tibbals donated an additional $4 million to add a two-story, 20,000-square-foot addition to the facility, which opened in 2011. In all, Tibbals donated nearly $11 million for the Tibbals Learning Center. He never stopped crafting new pieces for the circus, and the Learning Center included a workshop where visitors could watch him create new items.

Philanthropy

Arguably Tibbals’ most lasting impact is the millions of dollars he donated to the Oneida Special School District over the years. Those donations played a significant role in saving the school district in the 1990s when its facilities were in a serious state of disrepair.

It was following his sale of Hartco in 1988 that Tibbals became a major benefactor of the Oneida Special School District. His donations, along with donations by B. Ray Thompson, helped make the school system’s new, state-of-the-art campuses a reality in the 1990s.

Family

Tibbals had nine children. His son, Jeff Tibbals, served two terms as Scott County Mayor from 2010-2014 and 2018-2022. He is also a former vice mayor of the Town of Oneida and math instructor at Oneida High School. Jeff Tibbals began his professional career at NASA.

Howard Tibbals’ daughter, Tracey Stansberry, is a former manager of the Tennessee Plateau Oncology office in Huntsville. Herself a cancer survivor, Stansberry worked as a nurse practitioner and helped to bring cancer treatments to Scott County. She is currently a lecturer at the University of Tennessee’s College of Nursing.

Other children of Howard Tibbals include Karen Tibbals Reed, David Tibbals, Tim Tibbals, Glenda Gray, Barry Elkins, Betsy Farrell and Barsha Saliba. At the time of his death in 2022, he had 16 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Death

Tibbals died at his Sarasota, Fla. home on March 20, 2022, surrounded by his wife, Janice, and children.

A funeral service was held at First Baptist Church of Sarasota on March 23. Tibbals was buried at Highland Cemetery in Knoxville, Tenn.