It’s a long way from Dora, Alabama to LaQuinta, California, but Charles W. Adair is no stranger to travel.
Born in 1923 to William Fred and Frances Esther Adair, he began his working life as a laborer in a blast furnace and along the way held a variety of professional and managerial positions with companies whose names are synonymous with Birmingham’s development as a 20th-century city.
Adair graduated from Bessemer High School in 1941 and went to work in the iron ore mines operated by U.S. Steel Corporation. Two years later, he found himself in the middle of World War II, serving for eight months in the Army Infantry before moving over to the Army Air Corps. While in the Air Corps, he served in the 20th Air Force in the South Pacific as a flight engineer on a C-46 cargo plane.
When the war ended he returned to Alabama and attended The University of Alabama, where he received an accounting education and went to work in U.S. Steel Corporation’s steel mill.
His next move was over to Woodward Iron Company in 1948, where he held various positions in accounting and finance, and in 1966, was named vice president of finance and controller, positions he held when Woodward merged with Mead Corporation. He also was general manager of Longview Lime Division, Chattanooga Coke and Chemicals Division, and Roane Electric Division.
He was promoted to executive vice president of the Mead’s Woodward Division in October 1971 and a few months later was named president of Mead’s Iron and Metals Group and Group Vice President of Mead Corporation.
In 1982 he retired from Mead to become vice president and assistant to the chief executive officer at the Drummond Company, a mining and real estate development company with corporate headquarters in Birmingham. Presently, Drummond operates surface and underground coal mines in Alabama and a large surface mine near LaLoma in Colombia. In addition, Drummond operates Alabama By-Products Corp., a coke facility in Tarrant, Ala., where Adair went to work in 1983 as president and chief executive officer. Three years later he became executive vice president of administration at Drummond, before retiring from that position in 1989.
Drummond called again in 1994, this time asking Adair to handle the start-up duties at a real estate development in the California desert. By this time the Drummond Company had moved into real estate development and golf courses, a ready-made position for Adair, who still plays frequently and shoots his age.
Adair was given the responsibility for planning and managing the operations of Rancho La Quinta Country Club in La Quinta, California (home of the ’96, ’97, and ’98 Skins games). Homes there range from $400,000 to $850,000 plus.
Adair now is a member of the board at Drummond Company and at Ford Tool & Carbide Company, Inc. He formerly served on the boards at Central Bank (now Compass Bank), AmSouth Bank-Birmingham, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, and Alabama By-Products Corporation.
He is presently on the board of Fellowship House, and has a long history of civic involvement, including serving on the boards of the Boy Scouts of Central Alabama, St. Anne’s Home, as president of the Regional Council on Alcoholism, as chairman of the Baptist Hospital Foundation, the United Way of Central Alabama, the Bessemer Committee of One Hundred and the Bessemer Chamber of Commerce. He is a former member of the Birmingham Rotary Club and a member and elder at Briarwood Presbyterian Church.
He and his wife, Martha Edd Chisenhall, have three children, seven grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.
