Chipman's Legacy
The young Marvin Chipman was discharged from the Navy upon returning from WWII in the mid-1950s. However, during his deployment, Chipman’s ship was bombed and he was taken as a POW for three and a half years. Chipman managed to miraculously escape his captors, persevered, and made it back to his friends and family in the United States.
Chipman was always very skilled with his hands and was always known by his peers to be able to make pretty much anything he set his mind too. It is no surprise that after a few of his buddies asked him to make some new boat windshields for their fishing boats that Chipman decided he could make a real career out of this. As a natural go-getter, it wasn’t long until Chipman was starting his first business, Aeroshield Plastics.
Aeroshield Plastic’s first roots were in Chipman’s own garage and things took off quickly. Chipman quickly ran out of room and had to build another one car garage addition to his existing. In this space, Chipman built his first plastics heating oven. Using his natural ingenuity and skills he learned in the Navy, Chipman took an old shipping container and built it into an oven. It is no surprise that Marco Skylights still owns this exact oven today as a testament to Chipman’s craftsmanship. In the early-1970s Chipman was offered a deal too good to pass up on and sold Aeroshield Plastics to his own brother-in-law.
With his first taste of success Chipman could not and would not stop. Chipman’s personal mantra was always “Instead of climbing the ladder to success I am going to build my own.” Retaining the oven that he originally built Chipman started Marco Skylights.
Marco Skylights started by offering custom-built skylights and chair mats to the people in Houston. As Chipman grew older and looked to retire Marco Skylights was sold to some of his relatives. After several tragic circumstances, the family was left with a very tough decision to either liquidate the company or to purchase it from the estate. Given Chipman’s long legacy and in his memory the choice to keep the business alive was obvious. As such the family purchased Marco Skylights in 2009 and still operates it today.
Marco Skylights has been blessed to give back to the Houston community in several ways throughout these past 60 years. It is because of this that several other businesses have spun off from Chipman’s ingenuity and legacy. Marco Skylights strives to keep this spirit alive and continues to supply skylights to the residential and commercial industry. But don’t worry we haven’t forgotten about those chair mats either.
