Induction Year: 1984

Edward Asbury O’Neal, IV

  • September 22nd, 2021

Edward Asbury O’Neal IV was born in Florence, Alabama, on September 9, 1905. In the years that followed, his rise from chemical industrialist to international businessman to Chairman of Monsanto, one of the largest corporations in the U.S., took him far from his native soil. But his roots remained in Alabama where his values had been shaped by a family whose history and tradition in the state dates from the days of Andrew Jackson.

Son of  Edward  Asbury  III and Julia Hartwell (Camper)  O’Neal, the young man, with his brother and sister, grew up in Florence and on the nearby family farm. He attended Florence Normal School and Coffee High School, from which he graduated in 1922. Because young Ed’s family wanted him to become a minister, he entered Davidson College in North Carolina.  He soon transferred to science, and after four successful years during which he displayed qualities of wisdom,  initiative, and friendliness, he graduated in 1926 with a B.A. degree in physics.

The young graduate had decided he wanted to return to the family farm and raise cotton, but the problem was that cotton was selling for seven cents a pound. His father (who had returned to the family farm after being educated as a lawyer, and had become the organizer and a long-term president of the American Farm Bureau Federation), told him that “someone has to pay the taxes.” An admirer of the growing chemical industry, his father sent his son to Theodore Swann, who gave young Ed a job as a  laboratory assistant for  $75  a  week with the Swann  Company in Anniston,  manufacturer of phosphate.

Years later, Ed O’Neal said, “About six months later, someone down there noticed the lab  job didn’t seem to be my turn of hand, so I was given a few odd jobs in the plant … ”

That was the beginning. 1928, he was superintendent; by 1936, assistant parts manager; and by 1938, plant manager.

While settling in Anniston, Ed had met Mildred Pruet, a native of Ashland, Alabama. They were married in 1928. They subsequently had three daughters-Mildred (Mrs. David V. Palmer, of London, England); Julia Ann (Mrs. Prescott  W.  Gould of  Santa Barbara, California); Nancy O’Neal of New York  City; and a son, Edward Asbury O’Neal V of New York City.

Monsanto had acquired the Swann  Company a few years after Ed O’Neal began work. In 1941, he was sent to Trenton, Michigan, to manage a new Monsanto phosphate plant being built there.  In a life increasingly dominated by the war effort, Ed O’Neal took over the construction and start-up of the new phosphate plant in Trenton. In spite of a cold winter and war-time shortages, by the end of 1942, he had the plant running at total capacity (about three times the output of the  Anniston plant) and all products sold out.

In May 1944, Ed O’Neal was promoted to Production Manager of the entire Phosphate  Division of Monsanto, a position that led him to move his family to St. Louis, Missouri. When World War II ended, Edgar M. Queeny, then head of Monsanto, sent Ed O’Neal on a “scouting trip” to England,  to determine whether it would be practical to continue the company’s British subsidiary in view of the possibility that the new Labor government might nationalize the industry.

When he returned after two months of consultation with leading officials in business and government circles to recommend that the company keep and expand its British branch, Chairman Queeny said, “Fine. You go over there and do it.”

Thus, in January 1946, the O’Neal family, which was becoming increasingly mobile and adaptable, sailed on the Queen Mary for their new home in England, where Ed O’Neal served as Managing Director of Monsanto Chemicals Limited from 1946-53.

After thoroughly learning about British banking and finance, government policy, and trade, Ed O’Neal established and implemented an ambitious plan of expansion and research financed mostly by British capital which he engendered. Under his leadership,-. Monsanto Chemicals Limited in England increased sales from $9 million in sales to

$75 million in less than 10 years and became the headquarters of a vast overseas operation ranging from Continental Europe to Australia and New Zealand. His success with the British company soon led to his involvement with Monsanto’s other overseas operations. He became chairman of Mon­santo Canada, Ltd. and a director of Monsanto of Australia.

By 1953, Ed O’Neal had been promoted to head of Monsanto’s Overseas Division, a position which required that he return to Monsanto’s headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. As an established international business figure, he became a strong member of the company’s top management team. He was elected a vice president in 1954 and a member of the Board of Directors in 1955.

In the early 1950s, Chemstrand Corporation, a joint venture of Monsanto and the American Viscose Corporation in the production and sales of synthetic textiles, was showing poor profit performance and market growth. The equal ownership and equal board participation had held back the company’s ability to respond to change and to new ideas-management needed reorganizing and the company needed a specific strategic plan and the backing to implement it. Because Ed O’Neal had the first-rate experience in all these areas and the style and drive to get the job done, in 1956 he was asked to become president of Chemstrand. He resigned from his Monsanto positions and moved his family to Decatur,  Alabama,  where  Chemstrand’s main plant was located.

Ed O’Neal took over the helm at  Chemstrand and turned a “loser” into a winner. With a new organization and management team, new spirit, and sound planning, Chemstrand expanded into new and growing markets. New plants were built in North Ireland, in Israel, in Luxembourg, and in South Carolina; a major research center was estab­lished in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.

By 1959, Chemstrand’s earnings had become greater than the Net Income of Viscose Corporation and only $8 million less than Monsanto’s earnings. The growth had been a result of good products and good marketing. He was re-elected vice president in 1962.

In 1965, Edward Asbury O’Neal IV was named Chairman of the Board of Monsanto and a member of the finance committee. During his three years of tenure, this proven leader, international planner, and implementor helped both consolidate and direct the activities of the now gigantic and prosperous organization. He retired as Chairman in 1968 and ended all executive duties in 1969, though he remained on the Board until 1975.

Edward Asbury O’Neal IV died in St. Louis on December 6, 1977. He was buried in his hometown, Florence, Alabama. As the Florence Times stated, “… the name O’Neal means much, not only to Florence, where the roots are planted but to the whole United States as well. The community is saddened by the passing of another in the line of extraordinary O’Neals.”

Stephen Dewey Moxley

  • September 22nd, 2021

It is not possible to think of Stephen D. Steve-Moxley being out of the thick of things. We take his retirement as only a piece of paperwork,” were the opening words of an editorial in the Birmingham News on June 3, 1963, the day Steve Moxley stepped down as President of American Cast Iron Pipe Company (ACIPCO).  Indeed, Steve Moxley had always been in “the thick of things.”

For forty years, he had been a major factor in ACIPCO’s “true American enterprise, research and manufacture of an improved product at a better price.” He had also “entered fully into every aspect of the constructive life of Birmingham, the State, and the Nation.” In no small part had his efforts helped bring a new industrial water supply to Birmingham, a full engineering school to UAB, and later the Warrior­ Tombigbee Waterway to Alabama.

Stephen Dewey Moxley was born in Arnot, Pennsylvania, on June 3, 1898, son of Richard and Elizabeth Ann (Thomas) Moxley who had recently immigrated from South Wales, Great Britain. When he was four, the family moved to Wylam, a suburb of Birmingham, where his father resumed his work as a coal miner and coal mine supervisor.

The fourth of eleven children, young Steve attended Wylam Elementary School and two years at Ensley High School in Birmingham before dropping out at 16 to become an apprentice draftsman at the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (now a part of U.S. Steel). Later, he passed an entrance exam which enabled him to become an engineering student at The University of Alabama. He completed his high school credits by correspondence at Tuscaloosa well after he had enrolled in college.

To finance his college education, he fired the central furnace at The University and worked between terms at TCI. By 1921, he had earned a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering, and by 1922, a Master’s degree in the field. While at the university, he led the organization of both Theta Tau and Tau Beta Pi. After graduation, he became a Mechanical Engineer at ACIPCO, the company to which he would give forty years of service.

In 1924, Steve Moxley married Marion Frances Bishop, a native of Marseilles, Illinois, whom he had met at The University of Alabama. The Moxley’s subsequently had three children-Gladys (Mrs. William M. Ikard) of Winchester, Tennessee; Stephen, Jr. of Huntsville, and Thomas C. of Birmingham-and 11 grandchildren.

At ACIPCO, he conceived and designed a number of machines for the production of cast iron pressure pipes by the sand spun process. In 1926, he was named Chief Engineer. Because a totally new process for the manufacture of pipe was being placed in operation, the engineers-with no precedent to follow-had to design all machinery connected with the process “from the ground up.”

Between 1927 and 1935, eight of Steve Moxley’s nine patents were issued. He had been a co-inventor of the centrifugal casting method of producing iron pipe using sand­ lined molds-a process which was very significant in the success and growth of ACIPCO in its production of superior strength cast iron pressure pipe.

In 1932, The University’s College of Engineering recognized his part in the development and practical application of this process by conferring upon him the degree of Mechanical Engineer. He was an early pioneer in pollution control at a time when few cared about pollution. By 1928 he had already incorporated dust collection equipment at ACIPCO. His 1935 technical paper on dust collection in the foundry-one of at least a dozen technical papers he wrote during his career-became the definitive paper on the subject and was reprinted and distributed for many years thereafter.

In 1937, Steve Moxley was named Assistant to the Vice President in Charge of Engineering, and by 1946 had been promoted to Vice President in Charge of Engineering and Purchases. By 1953, he was named Execu­tive Vice President; and two years later, President and Chief Executive Officer. During his presidency, the corporation in­ creased in international prominence as a producer of cast iron pipe and other metal products, with sales exceeding $40 million, a goodly percentage of which came from sales of new products first manufactured by ACIPCO under his astute leadership.

In recognition of his professional achievements, Steve Moxley received innumerable awards, such as being named in 1953 a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In 1966, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by his alma mater.

But his contributions to the state and nation extended beyond the professional sphere. The list of his civic, educational, and cultural activities would be as long as the uplifted arm of Vulcan, the statue standing on the mountain above Birmingham. For Steve Moxley was driven by a strong sense of obligation to repay his college, his company, and his community for the success he had achieved.

He was the head of a committee which in 1951 completely equipped Alabama’s Engineering School with one of the most complete foundries at any college. His eight years as Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Industrial Water Committee brought him “outstanding credit for the attainment of Birmingham’s new industrial water system” and in 1958 he was elected first Chairman of the City’s Indus­ trial Water Board.

He headed the Business and Industry Division of the capital fund drive that enabled UAB to establish its first degree­ granting engineering school in Birmingham.

For these and other accomplishments, and for his reputation as a “man who went the extra mile,”   Steve Moxley was named Birmingham’s Man of the Year for 1960. Later, as President of the Warrior Tombigbee Development Association, he helped promote the _successful completion of that waterway. He served as a trustee of Southern Research Institute and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

He was a director of Carraway Methodist Hospital, Jefferson County Community Chest, and Junior Achievement of Birmingham. He contributed significantly to the support of the Medical School at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. He was a member of the Board of Stewards at the First Methodist Church.

Steve Moxley told his employees “It is our job to prove that the Golden Rule in the industry is practical” and the “only way to meet a problem is full-on-face-to-face.” To his friends, he often said that whatever success he’d achieved in life, he owed to The University of Alabama and his wife “Bunny.” What others said of him is equally telling-“His incomparable quality is his ability to find the time and energy to do what needs to be done. He does not seem to be able to say No to any worthwhile endeavor or individual.”

Steve Moxley’s continuing involvement ended abruptly on February 22, 1967, as a result of a tragic automobile accident in which four days before, his wife and three others, including his wife’s brother and sister-in-law, had also been killed.

The people and the community he loved and served will long remember this great man and his accomplishments.

Ben Screws Gilmer

  • September 22nd, 2021

This realistic philosophy, combined with the humanistic belief that people and their needs should be uppermost in decision making, led him through four companies and 17 positions in the Bell System to the chair he occupied from 1967-1970 as the first Southern president of AT&T.

Ben Screws Gilmer was born March 5, 1905, in Savannah, Georgia, son of Meriwether Nicholas and Josephine (Screws) Gilmer. His parents, each descended from a long line of native Alabamians, returned to their hometown Montgomery when he was six months old.

Ben Gilmer grew up near the State Capitol. As a boy, he often played on the western slope of the Capitol grounds and sat in the gallery after school watching the deliberations of the legislatures in which his grandfather Ben Screws (former captain in the Confederate Army) had served as State Senator.

The young man was educated at what a Montgomery reporter called “the famed schools” of Sayre and Lawrence streets and Sidney Lanier High School, from which he graduated in 1922. Having exhibited a natural facility for precision, order, and mathematics during high school, he chose engineering as his calling. He enrolled in the electrical engineering course at Auburn University and graduated with a B.S. degree in 1926.

Ben Gilmer’s long career with the Bell System began in June 1926. He worked in Birmingham as an in­ staller for the Southern Bell   Company or a month before the time when he and 41 other recently recruited college graduates were to report in Atlanta for the Company’s six-month training course.

His first day was not exactly auspicious­ he remembers that he ran out of gas on the way to work. Some have said that this may have been his last faux pas. From then on, his commitment to be “the best telephone man in the world” was evident in the steadily increasing responsibilities delegated to him.

Although a graduate electrical engineer, he never got involved in watts, volts, and decibels in the telephone business. He wound up in marketing and development activities which led to cost and rates with a natural transition into regulatory matters. After completion of the introductory training course, the young man progressed through a series of positions in the Commercial Department of Southern Bell in Atlanta.

During the early and middle 1930s (when depression had created a de­ mand for rate reduction) and up until the U.S.’s entry in World War II, he appeared frequently as a witness before regulatory commissions in the nine states comprising the Southern Bell Territory and acquired the mantle of Expert Technical Witness. Although he found it “fun” to match wits with witnesses and lawyers “on the other side,” the young executive always kept in mind that his main purpose was to represent the company policies and position favorably-to stress that the basic aim was to serve the customer most economically.

As he later said, “Business teaches us a stern lesson: The consequence of attempting too much, as the consequence of doing too little, is a failure. Finding what is right is a process of matching needs with resources, of rigorously assigning priorities that distinguish between what must be done, what can be done, and what had best be scheduled for tomorrow.”

In 1942, Ben Gilmer went on military leave. After serving for three years in the U. S. Army Air Force and attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel, he returned to Southern Bell as an executive in the Atlanta office. Once more he was called upon to testify before regulatory commissions, this time in an economy faced with the decline in purchasing power of the dollar.

By 1948, he had been named Assistant Vice President. When the Louisiana manager of the company became ill that year, Ben Gilmer was sent, on 24 hours notice, to take over the position. He was responsible for all public aspects of the job, including customer accounts, customer relations, public relations, regulatory and legislative affairs, market studies, and growth forecasts for the construction of expanded facilities and capacities. In less than a year, he was back in Atlanta as General Commercial Manager, assuming responsibility for the management of these activities in the nine states serviced by Southern Bell.

In two years, he went to Northwestern Bell Company as Vice President and General Manager with responsibility for all company operations. In only one year, he was named Vice President of the California operations of the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company, where he served three and one-half years before re­ turning to Atlanta as Southern Bells’ Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. He served in this position for about a year before being named President of Southern Bell, where he served for 8½ years. In 1965 he went to New York as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of AT&T. During his tenure as vice president, he made his last appearance before a regulatory commission about the need for objectivity in controlling competition in communications so that the public would receive optimal service for the least cost.

In 1967, Ben Gilmer was appointed President of AT&T. During his career, Ben Gilmer was known as a man who had an uncanny knack for pulling together the technical and non-technical aspects of a problem.

Even after his retirement, he remained a director of AT&T, a member of its executive committee, and the director of several of its corporate subsidiaries. Among the other corpora­tions on whose board he has served are the U.S. Pipe and Foundry Corporation, Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, Merck & Co., and the West Point Pepperell Manufacturing Corporation.

In addition to his demonstrated ability in the corporate world, Ben Gilmer has contributed leadership in the economic, civic, cultural, and educational activities of his community and region. He has served as either director, chairman of the board, or trustee of more than thirty civic and charitable organizations, such as the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the Atlanta United Ap­ peal, and the National Executive Council of the Boy Scouts of America. He has been chairman of the Auburn University Foundation, a trustee of Agnes Scott College, an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and a member of various professional engineering and business honoraries.

Despite the long absences demanded by his career, Ben Gilmer has maintained close ties with the State of Alabama, as the Governor and the legislature recognized when they invited him to address a joint session in 1967. Nine years before, Auburn University demonstrated its respect for his achievements by awarding him an honorary Doctor of Science degree. In 1969, the Alabama Conference of Christians and Jews recognized his “outstanding contribution to improving human relations” by giving him its National Brotherhood Award for promoting equal opportunities in the industry. In 1975, he was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor by the State Legislature. Similar recognition of his achievements and contributions has also come in Georgia and the nation.

Since 1939, Ben Gilmer has been married to the former Dorothy Cunningham of Decatur, Georgia. They now reside in Atlanta where their daughter, Mrs. Penn W. Rooker, and their two grandsons-Penn W. Rooker, Jr., and Ben Gilmer Rooker – also live.

Realism, humanism … “The Gilmer Blend” continues to be apparent in the life of Ben Screws Gilmer, the man whom both Alabama and Georgia claim as a “native son.”

Alfred Frederick Delchamps

  • September 21st, 2021

In 1921, two brothers purchased a 20 by 50 frame store on the corner of Lawrence and Canal Streets in Mobile, Alabama. With a $1,000 capital investment, they opened a new type of “cash and carry” grocery store­ a store that evolved into a multi-million dollar corporation­ Delchamps, Inc. – which today operates 79 stores in four states. A driving force behind this success story was Alfred Frederick Delchamps, who not only rose to Chairman of the Board of the Corporation but also became a leading citizen of Mobile.

Alfred Frederick Delchamps was born in Mobile on January 25, 1895, the second child of Alfred W. and Anna Maria (Theuer) Delchamps. When young Alfred was five years old, his father died, and the youngster soon began working to help support his family. He picked produce on a farm in exchange for part of a crop, which he then sold from door to door. While in the second grade (after which his formal education ended), he worked as a cash boy in department stores for $2.50 a week. As a youth, he worked for the Pinch Gas Company and then as a mailroom supervisor for the Mobile News-Item, until he joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps in May 1917.

Throughout these years and later, the young man (who later confessed that he would like to have become a “professional man”) managed to study at night school at the YMCA, take correspondence courses, and read widely.

After discharge as a sergeant in May 1919, Alfred Delchamps returned to Alabama and secured work at the Gulf Shipyards in Chickasaw. When he was laid off because of a reduction in naval construction, he “bought himself a job.” He purchased a small grocery store (the New York Cash and Carry #10) which he operated alone for several months. When his younger brother Oliver lost his job at the ship­ yard, they pooled their (and their family’s) savings to purchase a larger store on the corner of Lawrence and Canal Streets. This first of the Delchamps grocery stores opened on a warm November day in 1921.

When Alfred Delchamps later reminisced about this beginning of Delchamps, Inc., he said that the first store had to be “cash and carry” because daily business was the only source of cash flow. The $1,000 investment had “emptied our pockets and filled us with enthusiasm” to succeed. To attract customers, the partners began to offer low prices every day on quality merchandise, at a time when most other cash and carry stores relied on weekend specials and carried poor quality merchandise and when quality merchandise was usually found only in higher-priced, credit and delivery stores.

The store thrived on the policy of low-profit margins on quality foods. For each of the next five years, Delchamps Grocery Company opened another unit and “ended up with a chain of small frame stores-and everybody in the family working.”

The company opened its first ware­ house in 1927. By 1937, Delchamps was operating 10 stores, making it the dominant, growing company in the area. In 1946, with 15 stores, the company was changed from a partnership to a corporation-Delchamps, Inc.-to make further expansion possible and enable employees to own shares in the company. At that time, Alfred Delchamps became President, a position he held until he became Chairman of the Board of Delchamps, Inc. in 1965.

In 1921, the Delchamps brothers (who became known as Mr. Al and Mr. Ollie) had been among the first in the country to put a low-profit margin on quality foods. During the ensuing years, the corporation established a record of firsts in the retail food industry, including the first supermarket size food store in Alabama; the first self­service meat markets in the area; the first chain in the Southeast to offer generic label products as an additional choice for its customers; and among the first in the region to introduce computerized checkout systems.

As Alfred Delchamps was becoming a leader in the retail food industry, he was also becoming a leader in educational, civic, and religious organizations in the community.

This self-educated man showed his respect for formal education through 12 years ser­ vice as a member of the Board of Education of the Mobile County Public Schools­ including two terms as president of that board. For more than ten years he was a member of the Board of Mobile County Foundation for Higher Education. He served as president of the Board of Trustees of Huntingdon College in Montgomery and was made a lifetime member of this board by special act of the North Alabama and Alabama-West Florida Conferences of the Methodist Church-the first to be designated as such.

Always interested in every aspect of com­ community development, he contributed his time as a member of the Commission to bring the U.S.S. Alabama to Mobile and of the Revolving Fund Board of the Mobile Historic Development Commission. He was a president of the Industrial Development Board of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce and a director of the Mobile Safety Council.

He was the first man to serve twice as a Campaign Chairman of the Mobile Community Chest, of which he was also president for a year. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the United Fund and Councils of America.

He served as Chairman of the Advisory Board of Junior Achievement; Chairman of the Planning Committee for the American Red Cross; and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the YWCA.

He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Mobile Infirmary Association and a member of the Building Commission for both the Mobile Infirmary and the Alabama Medical College.

In addition to his other activities, Alfred Delchamps also became a leader in the Methodist Church. When he and his brothers and sisters were small, his widowed mother insisted that they go to Church every Sunday. As children, they all attended the Methodist Church nearest their home.

Alfred Delchamps became chairman of the Board of Trustees of Dauphin Way Methodist Church; a president of the Mobile Federation of Churches; a member of the Board of Trustees of the Religious Heritage of America; and a member of the Jurisdictional Advisory Board of the Chandler School of Theology.

In 1950, Alfred Delchamps was named Mobilian of the Year and in 1963, “Man of the Year” by the Phi Delta Kappa honorary educational fraternity. In 1955, he was granted an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Huntingdon College.

Nine years after the first Delchamps retail food store opened, Alfred Delchamps married Lucile Crowell of Mobile. They became the parents of three children: Alfred Frederick, Jr. (now President of Delchamps Inc.); Margaret (now Mrs. Edward W. Young); and Lucile (now Mrs. Richard T. Nelson.)

Alfred Delchamps died in Mobile on July 22, 1978. His leadership in business, education, civic, and religious affairs might be attributed to the philosophy that a person must, “Do what you have to do the best you can and if you have to do it tomorrow, do it better.”

Alfred Delchamps was a kind man who knew business, but most of all knew people. He believed a person did not just make friends but had to be a friend.

Robert Hugh Daniel

  • September 21st, 2021

After less than a year in Jasper, the young man evidently decided that his future lay in Alabama, for he received authorization from his brother to open a branch office of Daniel Construction Company in 1935 as a new vice president of the company.

By the time that he retired in 1977, Hugh Daniel had become the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of one of the nation’s largest publicly owned, full-service construction companies-Daniel International Corporation. He had led the way for the organization of general contractors in Alabama. He had exhibited his faith in the future of Birmingham-concretely, through such structures as the 20-story Daniel Building in the downtown area, and less visibly, in the contribution of his time and talents to almost every worthy cause in the community.

Born in Anderson, South Carolina, on September 1, 1906, Robert Hugh Daniel was the youngest of five sons of James Fleming and Leila Mildred (Adams) Daniel. Even during his elementary and middle school days in Anderson public schools, young Hugh showed the same eagerness to learn and to achieve that he did in later years.

Always an excellent student, at an early age he also had the initiative to secure a paper route. While completing his secondary education at Piedmont High School and Junior College in Demorest, Georgia, he worked as a typesetter for the local newspaper; and after graduation from high school, he continued his newspaper work for a year until his next oldest brother could complete his senior year at Georgia Tech.

Hugh Daniel then entered the Citadel, the military college in South Carolina, where he achieved a distinguished record as a scholar and as a leader in extracurricular activities. An English major, he became the valedictorian of the Class of 1929. He participated in almost all phases of college life as editor-in-chief of the college paper, as vice president of the senior class, and as a leader in various athletic, cultural and social organizations. During the summer months, he continued to show energetic drive by working for Townsend Lumber Company in Anderson, South Carolina.

When Hugh Daniel graduated from The Citadel in 1929, the Great Depression had begun. Even with his outstanding college record, he felt fortunate to get work as a night clerk at the Atlanta YMCA where a small salary and room and board were provided. Then, in 1934, came the opportunity to join his brother’s newly founded construction company, called the Daniel Construction Company, in Anderson, S.C.

In November of that year, Hugh Daniel was sent to supervise the building of the Bank­ head Housing Project in Jasper, Alabama. And while the project was under construction, he persuaded his brother Charles to let him remain in Alabama. Thus, in 1935, Hugh Daniel opened a branch office of Daniel Construction Company in the Webb-Crawford Building in Birmingham and was made vice president of Daniel Construction Company.

A year later, he married Martha Stone Cobb of Vernon, Alabama; and the Daniel family began to become an important part of the business, civic, cultural, and educational life of Birmingham. The couple subsequently had two sons-Robert Hugh, Jr. (now of Atlanta) and Charles William (of Birmingham). Within three years after Hugh Daniel opened the office in Birmingham, his impact on the construction industry in Alabama was apparent. He foresaw the need and initiated the move to organize general contractors into an Alabama Branch of Associated General Con­ tractors. He served as president of the organization both in 1941 and 1949 and was later named a life member.

When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, Daniel Construction Company received two of its largest contracts to date-to build shipyards in Savannah and Brunswick, Georgia. As soon as the shipways for the Liberty ships were completed, Hugh Daniel volunteered for military service. He served as a lieutenant in the U. S. Navy Civil Engineering Corps from 1943 to 1945.

Returning to Birmingham after his discharge from the Navy, the young vice president of Daniel Construction Company rose to the challenge of the demand for construction during the next ten years. By 1955, he had been made President and Treasurer of the company. In 1957, the company built the Bank for Savings Building, the first high-rise building to be constructed in Birmingham since 1927. Hugh Daniel’s theory was that if space was avail­ able, new firms would be attracted to the city.

In 1964, after the death of his brother Charles, Hugh Daniel was named Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Daniel Construction Company. In that same year, he helped found Central Bank and Trust (now Central Bank of the South) and remained as Chairman of the Board until 1979; and he became Chief Executive Officer and Treasurer of Daniel Realty Corporation, formed as a subsidiary of Daniel Construction Company.

To his adopted hometown, Hugh gave many hours of service to various cultural and educational organizations. He also served as a director of the Alabama Gas Corporation, Florida National Banks o Florida, Inc., Southern Bank, and Trust Company in Greenville, South Carolina, and the United States Pipe and Foundry Company.

In recognition of his achievements, he was awarded four honorary degrees: a Doctor o Science by the Citadel in 1957 and by Piedmont College in 1965; a Doctor of Humanities by Birmingham-Southern College in 1976; and a Doctor of Letters by the University of Alabama in Birmingham in 1977. In 1976, he was elected to the Alabama Academy of Honor, and in 1977-78 was listed in “Who’s Who in America.”

Robert Hugh Daniel died at a Birmingham hospital on October 28, 1983.

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