SALESMAN FOLLOWS RETIREMENT WITH SOCIAL ACTIVISM.

Byline: Bettie Rencoret Senior columnist

Charles E. ``Chuck'' Compton has been a salesman most of his life, and people who know him will readily admit he's been good at it.

He's also been an enthusiastic community activist with a penchant for caustic comment on a multitude of social and political issues. He turns touchy topics into erudite discussions, and is a strong advocate of moral and family values.

``At any given moment, at any given time and place, we all do the best we can with whatever situation is dealt us. If that weren't true, we'd all do a lot better than we do,'' he said. ``I learned that from a minister we once had over at the Church of Religious Science. It makes sense.''

He is not a religious man and claims he hasn't the slightest idea of what life is all about, but he believes that God provides some answers.

``Good old common sense is seeping away from people,'' he said. ``If future generations are to survive they must have an answer of some sort to the meaning of life. I believe it will have to be religion.''

Always interested in the best for his family, Compton has wanted his community schools and government to have goals and impeccable leadership.

To that end he used to attend numerous school board and Tweedy Lake board meetings to keep abreast of their actions.

When he witnessed what he felt was dissension or inequity in the policy making, he did not sit back and leave it up to other people to provide solutions. He ran for a seat on both and spent his terms making his positive presence felt.

``I feel that while I was on the school board I was instrumental in getting the property next to the school donated for its expansion, but I only served one two-year term. I wasn't elected to a second one,'' he said.

Compton was born Feb. 1, 1925, in Laws, Calif., a tiny community just three miles north of Bishop. It no longer exists as a town but houses a railroad museum.

``In those early days it was the train depot for the area and had two general stores, one of which my father, Jack Compton, owned.'' The town's demise came with the purchase of all its water rights by the city of Los Angeles.

``When that happened about 95 percent of the people moved out, leaving grocery bills unpaid,'' he said. ``Dad couldn't make it without customers. I was quite small when he packed us up and moved us to Los Angeles.''

He attended elementary schools in Highland Park and graduated in 1943 from Van Nuys High School.

His talent for sales began to show up during his childhood, when he went door to door selling the Saturday Evening Post for 10 cents a copy and Liberty magazine for a nickel.

``It was a hard way to make a living. I made two cents on each Post and one cent on each Liberty,'' he said.

``It wasn't too long after I gave that up that I began helping a friend sell newspapers down on the boulevard the corner of Avenue 64 and Pasadena Avenue, and at Avenue 50 and York Boulevard,'' he said.

``It was during the Depression, and it took 10 cents to get into the Saturday matinees. I always had enough money to pay my own way in and to buy other luxuries like Little Big Books. I always felt good that I had earned it all myself,'' he said.

His maternal grandfather, William Rogers, bought the property known as Voltaire, which surrounded Tweedy Lake in 1913, and established a ranch that included a house and a barn.

He was 6 or 7 the first time he came to the Antelope Valley and Tweedy Lake, where relatives had a cabin.

Members of his family have held property in the development since that time, and while he and his wife, Estelle, now live in Palmdale, his two daughters by a former marriage both have homes there.

He went into the Marines right out of high school and served from 1943 to 1946 in the South Pacific.

He attained the rank of buck sergeant, which he laughingly claims is ``the equivalent of a captain in the Army.''

After World War II and before he moved his family to Antelope Valley to stay in 1956, he worked as a salesman for Terminex, Prudential Insurance Co. and Sparkletts Water Co.

When they were settled at Tweedy Lake, he went looking for a different job and found one with Bill Martin's Pontiac-Cadillac, followed by a stint at Frank Clymore's Lancaster Ford.

It was at S.E. Rykoff & Co. that he finally found his niche. He retired from that company in July 1987 after 30 years of sales.

He and the former Estelle Jacobs, a widow with five children, were married in Las Vegas on Dec. 12, 1969.

His own two daughters, Claudia Brower of Tweedy Lake, and Cyndy May of Sylmar, were grown by this time, and he began the adventure of being a stepfather. It was a task he welcomed and still enjoys.