H.W. left the U.S. Army in 1946 and joined his father-in-law, Luther Thompson in the floral business. Dad once told me a few years before his passing, 'I thought I'd go into the greenhouse business and get rich. I did not get rich!' He often compared his present situation by what possibly would have happened had he stayed in the military. Mostly he would say, 'I'd be retired now.' He never retired. He eventually renamed Thompson's Greenhouses to Small's Florist & Greenhouses.