ALARMING SUCCESS: With a fourth generation on deck, a Fayetteville family secures a promising future in the protection trade.

• Author: Mildenberc, David

During the summer when Stephen Wheeler was 14, his dad told him to join his brother on a project for the family business, installing a simple security system on doors at a Fayetteville-area school. "My brother, who was 18, said, 'Here's a drill, here's a screwdriver and here's a switch that has to go on the door. I'm going to run the wire. You make it happen.'"

At the time, Wheeler says, "I didn't know what a drill was. It took me three hours to do that one door, but I figured it out. There were 60 or 70 doors at that school, and we did every one of them."

Nearly five decades later, the school remains a customer, reflecting a long-term approach that has made Holmes Security Systems among North Carolina's largest providers of home and business alarm-monitoring services. Its success prompted judges to rank the 111-year-old Cumberland County business as a finalist in Business North Carolina's annual Small Business of the Year competition.

Wheeler, 60, is the third-generation family leader of the company, which started in 1908 when his grandfather, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., opened an electrical-contracting company. Among his first projects was leading the installation of electric--trolley lines along Fayetteville's main downtown drag, Hay Street. While the city eventually took control of the trolley business and still runs the city's electric-distribution network, the Holmes family continues to make a big mark on Fayetteville.

Oliver Holmes Sr.'s son-in-law, J.D. "Luke" Wheeler, joined the company in 1950 and transitioned it into a retail business that was famous for same-day home delivery of new appliances, long before Amazon.com was even a whisper. The Hay Street business later evolved into a general store that sold everything from crystal giftware to shotguns.

Beyond retailing, Luke Wheeler took an early interest in home-alarm systems, putting one in his own home and starting a division in 1967. His son, Stephen, accelerated the effort upon joining the company in 1980 after studying business administration at UNC Wilmington. He became president in 2002, a year before his father died. His mother is still involved in the company.

The family stopped selling appliances in 2003 and closed the gift store in 2013, driven by retailing consolidation that knocked out most local operators. But Holmes has grown into one of the state's largest companies of its type while operating from the same downtown Fayetteville spot as its predecessor gift store...