Induction Year: 1985

Barrett Clinton Shelton, Sr.

  • September 22nd, 2021

Barrett Clinton Shelton, Sr., was a man who changed with the times and, in the process, helped to change the times.

During his sixty years as editor and publisher of The Decatur Daily, he dedicated himself and the newspaper to promoting and working for the best interests of the people in Decatur, in the Tennessee Valley, and in the State.

Barrett Shelton did not build Decatur, Alabama. But none can question his significant leadership in changing it from a struggling river town into a major industrial center in the New South.

Son of William Randolph and Margaret Clinton Sheppard Shelton, Barrett Clinton Shelton was born in Columbia, Tennessee, on September 3, 1902. In 1911, his family moved to New Decatur where his father published the first issue of The Decatur Daily on February 26, 1912. Young Barrett began his journalistic career as a paperboy for this paper which served the “twin cities” of “New” Decatur and “Old Town” Albany. (In 1927, as editor and publisher, he would be instrumental in effecting the consolidation of the two towns.)

It has been reported that Barrett’s journalistic career was almost “nipped in the bud” by his father. The youngster, a good and enthusiastic athlete, did not cover his paper route one day because he stopped to play ball. His father would have fired Barrett had his mother not intervened on his behalf.

After graduating from Albany High School in 1920, Barrett Shelton attended Washington and Lee University. When his father became ill in 1923, he returned home to help with the paper. After his father died in 1924, twenty-one-year-old Barrett became editor and publisher of The Decatur Daily.

Quite early, Barrett Shelton’s philosophy for building a good community became apparent in his operation of the newspaper and in his participation in community affairs. In his newspaper and in his life, he exhibited his belief in positive thinking to achieve good health, good education, and good jobs for the people of the community. And he believed the people could achieve these goals without interference from the government.

Barrett Shelton and his paper began to assume leadership roles in the community, for as he once said, “If you can’t give leadership, the community is just going to sit down and do nothing … (but) “People will follow you if you lead in the right direction.”

In 1928, he organized and was the first president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, which was successful in establishing a baseball league and the area’s first airfield, though unsuccessful in luring stable businesses or industries to Decatur.

When the Great Depression came, Decatur was hard hit, because its one industry (L & N Railroad Shops) closed, and its one crop (cotton) was selling for 5¢ a pound. The land was selling for taxes; the people were ill-housed, ill-clothed, and out of work. Barrett Shelton organized a new Chamber of Commerce and became its first president (and served as president four other terms).

He and other members of the Chamber set about in earnest to try to alleviate the plight of Decatur’s economy. A committee sent to Moultrie, Georgia, where no farms had been foreclosed for taxes, came back with a concept that the Chamber and The Decatur Daily championed for years-“Balance agriculture and industry.” They wanted Decatur to have cash markets every day of the year for every farm product that could be grown in the area. They determined that Decatur must develop its own farm processing plants. They would welcome industry, but not wait for it to come from outside.

The “river pirates” (as Barrett Shelton and the other business leaders who spearheaded Decatur’s development came to be called) persuaded a local icehouse to create a packaging facility for pork and beef. Through creative local financing, they helped develop a milk processing and cheese plant. These ventures were a beginning for assuring year-round income in Decatur.

Then the Tennessee Valley Authority entered the picture – an intrusion, thought Barrett Shelton and other business leaders, at first. At their first meeting with David Lilienthal, a member of the first TVA Board of Directors, the businessmen were almost hostile in their attitude of: “You’re in command. What are you going to do?” Lilienthal’s reply was essentially, as Barrett Shelton later reported the conversation, ”I’m not going to do anything. You’re going to do it.”

‘The Old Man,” (as Barrett Shelton was af­fectionately and respectfully called for many years) and other hard-working businessmen took advantage of the tools of opportunity provided by TVA; and they “did it.”

Barrett Shelton, once an enemy of TVA, became one of its staunchest supporters. In 1949, upon request, he related the story of TVA to a United Nations conference in New York. He told of how Decatur and the Tennessee Valley had benefited.

Flood control helped to save the land and the diversified crops which the group encouraged farmers to grow for sale to the increasing number of processing plants in Decatur. The TVA project also helped combat and control malaria – healthier workers became more productive. A now navigable river provided more economical transportation. The combination of all these factors helped Decatur utilize its own resources as well as attract and keep new businesses and industries.

Barrett Shelton always considered the newspaper as family and the community as a larger family – and he could not do enough for it. For example, he organized the Decatur Community Chest, which evolved into today’s United Way. He used his newspaper to help raise local money for Morgan County Meals on Wheels when federal funding was cut. He was a deacon and elder of the First Presbyterian Church.

He served for eight years on the Decatur Municipal Utilities Board. He was president of the Tri-County Appalachian Health Planning Commission. He was the first chairman of the Tennessee River Valley Development Associa­tion, formed to support TVA and industrial development in the Valley. He was a charter member of the first Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Development Commission.

Barrett Shelton’s many and varied contributions are reflected in the honors he received through the years: 1969, the Medical Society of Alabama’s William Crawford Gorgas Award for his help in improving health; 1972, the Alabama Rural Electric Association’s Eminent Service Award; 1975, Troy State’s Grover C. Hall Memorial Award for most outstanding performance by an Alabama journalist; the Audie Murphy Patriotism Award; Morgan County Young Democrats’ Democrat of the Year Award; 1976, induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor; 1981, TVA’s Tennessee Valley Distinguished Citizen of the Year Award; 1983, the Distinguished Service Medal of Alabama. He was also awarded honorary degrees by The University of Alabama, Athens College, and the now-defunct Bernard College.

Barrett Clinton Shelton, Sr., died in a Birmingham hospital on April 22, 1984. His wife, Suzanne Jones Shelton, died less than three months later. The Shelton’s are survived by a son, Barrett Shelton, Jr., now publisher of The Decatur Daily; a daughter, Suzanne Shirley, co-owner of Steve Shirley Gallery of Homes in Decatur; and five grandchildren.

On April 22, 1984, only the words, “Barrett Clinton Shelton, 1902-1984, editor-publisher,” were printed in the otherwise blank editorial column of The Daily – only one of the many ways that papers from Mobile to New York City expressed how much Decatur, the Valley, and the State would miss “the Old Man.”

George Huguley Lanier

  • September 22nd, 2021

The life and leadership of George Huguley Lanier would occupy many pages of a history of the growth of West Point Pepperell, Inc. – from the original cotton mill incorporated by West Point Manufacturing Company at Langdale, Alabama, in 1880 into the modern textile giant ranked 251 in the 1985 Fortune 500, with sales of $1.3 billion.

From 1906 until 1948, George H. Lanier led West Point Manufacturing Company through two world wars, three major depressions, some trying recessions, and near resolutions in both sociology and technology. Under his leadership, West Point Manufacturing Company grew from four cotton mills with net sales of $2.5 million in 1910 to nine manufacturing and four support facilities with net sales of over $100 million in 1947.

“Mr. George,” as he was known to thousands of his fellow employees pioneered many changes for the betterment of employees because he believed that “the plants could truly profit only as the people truly prospered.”

George Huguley Lanier was born in West Point, Georgia, on August 22, 1880, the elder son of LaFayette and Ada Alice Huguley Lanier. After having served as an apprentice in the (Chattahoochee) Valley mills in Alabama and following his graduation from the Philadelphia Textile Institute in 1900, George Lanier served for five years as superintendent of the Pepperton Cotton Mills in Jackson, Georgia. While there, he married Marie Lamar of Americus, Georgia. They became the parents of five children: Joseph Lamar Lanier, George Huguley Lanier, Jr., Bruce N. Lanier, Marie Lanier (Jennings), and Lucy Lanier (Nixon).

In 1906, George Lanier’s father, who had been the prime factor in the organization of West Point Manufacturing Company and was then its president was ill. The Boston interests of the company prevailed upon the young man who had proven his worth in Jackson to return to Alabama as vice president and general manager of the Company. From 1906 until 1925 when George Lanier was made president, he was entrusted with all but the title of the full management of the company.

Under his leadership, additional units of West Point Manufacturing Company were built at Shawmut and Fairfax. The West Point Utilization Company, the Service Division, and the Research Division were organized and put into operation. Dixie Cotton. Mills, LaGrange, Georgia; Equinox Mill, Anderson, South Carolina; and Cabin Crafts Inc., Dalton, Georgia, became subsidiaries. In 1945, the company acquired Wellington Sears Company, a selling agency in Boston, and in 1947, Columbus (Georgia) Manufacturing Company. By 1948, West Point Manufacturing Company had become one of the top ten textile manufacturing corporations in America, its products being sold in every state and in 19 foreign countries.

As West Point Manufacturing Company prospered, so did the employees and people of the Valley. George Lanier became a leader in the improvement of their health, education, and welfare.

“Mr. George” launched a health program in the mills and villages. Visiting nurses were employed to supervise the first aid rooms in the mills, see the injured and visit the homes of the employees to attend to the sick members of their families.

He had labor crews to keep the villages clean. He enlarged educational and religious facilities, constructed modern school buildings; and supplemented the pay of teachers. Night schools were established for those who wanted to further their education. Public libraries, gymnasiums, auditoriums, and play­grounds were built. The day nursery, started by his father, was expanded into a kindergarten system in each of the communities where the Company had operations.

In 1942, he was instrumental in establishing the Chattahoochee Valley Hospital Society, and because of his work, a hospital at Langdale, Alabama (named the George H. Lanier Memorial Hospital in his honor) was the first project in the nation to receive a grant under the Hill-Burton Act. The Society broke ground for the building on April 18, 1948 (only five months before George Lanier’s death), and the first patient was admitted on January 18, 1950.

George Lanier’s leadership in business and civic affairs extended beyond his beloved Valley. For example, he was a director of major professional organizations, such as Cotton Textile Institute, Cotton Duck Association, American Cotton Manufacturers Association, the Cotton Manufacturers Associations of Georgia and Alabama, and Textile Hall, Greenville, South Carolina.

He was elected to serve as a member of the Alabama State Department of Education; as a director of the Alabama Department of Public Welfare; as a trustee for the Alabama School for the Deaf and Blind, and the Darlington School for Boys at Rome, Georgia. He was also a member of the Alabama Board of Industrial Relations Committee, the State Advisory Council of the Alabama Unemployment Compensation Commission, and the Advisory Board of the Alabama State Docks Commission.

George Lanier was not only vice president and director of the First National Bank of West Point but also a director of the First National Bank of Atlanta and the Trust Company of Georgia, and of the Atlanta and West Point Railroad Company and the Western Railway of Alabama.

George Huguley Lanier died on September 17, 1948. Continuing the policies of his father, George Lanier had, as President of West Point Manufacturing Company, devoted himself untiringly to the further development of “The Valley” – concentrating on improving the living and working conditions of the mill employees; on beautifying the villages; and on improving the educational opportunities of the people.

Magnanimous of heart, “Mr. George” had personally donated land on which a scout camp was built at Pine Mountain and a lot in West Point for the home of the Girl Scout Little House. He had helped many young men and women in the Valley to be able to attend college. Deeply religious by nature, he was for many years a deacon of the First Christian Church of West Point.

In every way, “Mr. George” had exerted a tremendous influence over the economic, social, and cultural development of “The Valley.”

As stated in The West Point News (September 23, 1948):

Few men have endeared themselves so profoundly and so universally to the people of a community as Mr. Lanier. His gentle spirit, his magnanimous heart, his deep personal concern for the welfare of the employees of his companies, his unbounded generosity, and his quiet but effective leadership, made him public friend and first citizen of the Valley.

“The Valley,” in particular, and Alabama in general, benefited from the progressive and caring attitude of George Huguley Lanier.

Emil Carl Hess

  • September 22nd, 2021

Emil Carl Hess, Chairman of the Board of Parisian, Inc., headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, has been described as a “person who looks beyond himself … a person who has a high regard for people,” both in his business and personal life.

In helping guide Parisian from a small women’s specialty store in Birmingham to Alabama’s leading fashion specialty store for men, women, and children with stores throughout the State, he has always felt that “we may not be all things to all people, but we try … it’s our responsibility.”

In his personal life, he has always exhibited “a constant desire to see a general improvement in the quality of life in the community,” and “a sensitivity to need and the challenge it presents.”

Emil C. Hess was born on April 6, 1918, in Memphis, Tennessee, to Carl and Nettie Schwartz Hess. In 1920, the family moved to Birmingham, Alabama, after Carl Hess and William Holiner of St. Louis, Missouri, had purchased The Parisian – then a 25-foot outlet specializing in lower-priced women’s apparel, millinery, and piece goods.

Emil Hess grew up in Birmingham. He attended South Highland Grammar School and Ramsay High School. After graduating in 1935, he majored in accounting and insurance at the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a B.S. degree in Economics in 1939.

Returning to Birmingham, he assumed an active role at The Parisian which had moved to its present downtown location, and which had added men’s and boys’ apparel to its stock.

In 1941, Emil Hess married Jimmie Seidenman of Washington, D. C. In that same year, he began serving in the U.S. Navy, where he achieved the rank of Lieutenant Commander before his discharge in 1945. The Hesses subsequently had one daughter, Jo Ann, and one son, Donald.

Emil’s father, Carl, had been “minding the store” since before the war, for his partner William Ho liner had retired in 1940. In 1945, Emil Hess and Leonard Salit (Mr. Holiner’s son-in-law) began operating The Parisian. Though Emil’s father remained at The Parisian until his death in 1956, he gave these two veterans free rein to implement changes.

The young men decided that The Parisian would have to change its image if it were to grow. Instead of being known as a budget store specializing in lower-priced merchandise, it would have to become known as a brand name store offering quality goods and services. They built up its stock of brand merchandise while retaining its interest-free credit policy. This two-pronged attack, plus the “special” services such as free gift wrapping and free mailing to any place in the 50 states – were instrumental in moving Parisian toward becoming the primary family clothier in Alabama. The first branch stores of Parisian were built in 1963 in Birmingham and in Decatur; by 1984, there were stores in Huntsville, Montgomery, Mobile, Tuscaloosa, and Florence – making total square footage for Parisian almost 310,000.

In 1972, after the death of Lenny Salit, Emil Hess’ son Donald (a graduate of Dartmouth) became directly involved with the management of the company (he became active operating head, as President, in 1977). In 1976, the Hess family acquired the Holiner interest in the company and continued to operate it as a family-owned company until 1983. To finance the continuing, planned expansion of Parisian, the company went public, with its common stock first sold in the over-the-counter market in November of that year. By 1987, when Parisian celebrates its 100th anniversary, there will be more stores underway in Alabama and Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee.

“You’re Somebody Special” is the message that Parisian has been communicating to customers and associates in Alabama throughout its history. This business philosophy of management has been reflected not only in the increasing quality of goods and services in the stores but also in the company’s and its associates’ contributions to community life.

For example, Parisian, Inc. holds Diaper Derbies, the proceeds of which go to children’s charities. It has sponsored fashion shows for support of worthy projects, such as Linly Heflin Scholarships for Alabama girls who might not otherwise afford college.

Parisian has also provided funds for the Hess Institute of Retailing at The University of Alabama and The Hess Institute of Arts and Humanities at Birmingham Southern. Grants and contributions are made to UAB; Auburn, Montgomery; Auburn University, and other institutions of higher learning. Parisian also provides internships for 30 to 40 high school and college students each year. Parisian was the 1985 recipient of The University of Alabama Chapter’s Beta Gamma Sigma Firm Award, presented in recognition for the most outstanding in community service in Alabama.

For the last seven years, Parisian has recognized its associates on the selling floor and behind the scenes at a Standards of Excellence Banquet. And for the last seven years, the Emil C. Hess Humanitarian Award has been presented to associates who have given freely of their time and expertise to the community through volunteer work and civic involvement. As Emil Hess has said, Parisian is excellent because of its people – “our people are our most precious asset.”

Emil Hess, as an individual, has played an active role in improving the quality of life in the community. He has been “unselfish of his time, energies, and money,” perhaps because “he judges his happiness by the community’s success.”

He has served as president of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, the Jefferson County Community Service Council, and the Greater Birmingham Safety Council. He has served as co-chairman of various divisions of United Appeal, United Jewish Appeal, the United Way Drive of Jefferson, Walker, and Shelby Counties, and various other civic and community boards.

He has also served as president of the Birmingham Festival of Arts, the Greater Birmingham Arts Alliance, and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He was Chairman of the “Goals for Birmingham” Committee. He was appointed by the Alabama State Superintendent of Education as Chairman of the Alabama School of Fine Arts for 1975-1979. In 1983, he and Mrs. Hess endowed the principal’s chair in the cello section of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra.

Throughout his life, Emil Hess has assumed certain leadership jobs in the community, because, as he has said, ‘Tm perceptive enough to see where I think there is a need and rally around the forces.”

Emil Hess has received many well-deserved honors. In 1978, he was named the Birmingham Young Men’s Business Club “Man of the Year.” In 1979, he was awarded a Doctor of Humanities degree by the University of Alabama in Birmingham; in 1984, a Doctor of Humanities degree by Birmingham Southern College; and in 1985, inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor.

Parisian continues to contribute to the quality of life in Birmingham and the State. And, Emil Hess, the cheerful man who says almost everything with a smile, is still helping to make sure that the citizens, “see flowers and trees in the spring,” without tripping over the “cracks in the walks.” He is still helping to remove the obstacles to the best quality of life in the community.

Sidney Zollicoffer Mitchell

  • September 22nd, 2021

Sidney Zollicoffer Mitchell was born in Dadeville, Tallapoosa County, Alabama, on March 17, 1862.

Starting as exclusive agent for the Edison Electric Light Co. and the Edison Company for Isolated Lighting in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, and British Columbia, he raised the money for and, as stated in Forbes in 1925, built “the power plants that produced the power that created the market for his products” – the incandescent light bulbs and generators produced by Edison.

By 1925, continued the Forbes article, as head of Electric Bond and Share Company, he had guided “the destinies of more public utility plants than any other man in the world,” and had handled the “raising of capital for more utility plants than any other man in the world.”

Sidney Zollicoffer Mitchell was the youngest of three sons of Dr. William Mandon Alexander Mitchell and Elmira Sophia Jordan Mitchell.

Like many Southerners, Dr. Mitchell depleted many of his resources in support of the Confederacy. Thus, after his wife died in 1865, he sent the three boys to be raised by their widowed grandmother, Ann Spivey Jordan, on her plantation in neighboring Coosa County, and he moved to Pensacola.

Despite the economic restrictions of the war years and the Reconstruction Period, Sidney Mitchell had a good boyhood. He attended the primitive local schools and received supplemental instruction from his grandmother. When he was old enough, he helped in the fields with the planting and harvesting of the crops that would feed the family or be sold or bartered. In his spare time, he learned to ride horses (and continued to ride until the year before his death). He learned all about hounds and hunting, which became an abiding passion.

From his grandmother, he learned two important tenets that he followed all his life: to put himself in the other fellow’s place when he was in doubt about what to do; and to get his job done before he started anything else.

Perhaps the first test of this young man’s mettle came when a friend of the family placed his name in competition for an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. After six months of concentrated study in a Columbus, Georgia, school, he took the competitive examination in Dadeville and won the appointment to Annapolis.

After graduating in the Class of 1883, he served as a cadet on the “U.S.S. Trenton,” and then on the “U.S.S. Quinnebaugh” to earn his commission through two years’ service in the Navy. He helped install and operate the new incandescent lights on the “Trenton,” the first battleship in the world to be so equipped.

Seeking more opportunity for individual initiative and advancement than the Navy then provided, he decided in 1885, to resign his commission.

In New York, Sidney Mitchell heard from two school friends about the opportunity for organizing electric light companies under Edison licenses. He went to see Thomas A. Edison, who, impressed by the young man’s enthusiasm, hired him to work in the Goerck Street factory to learn about construction, testing, and shipping of generators and to attend a night school Edison conducted for training electrical engineers. Sidney Mitchell also learned the basics of distributing electricity by working as a laborer for one of New York’s leading contractors.

The young man and the young electric industry were to grow up together.

When, in September 1885, the agency for Edison products in the Northwest became available, he applied for and obtained the rights as exclusive agent. He persuaded his friend Frederick H. Sparling (Annapolis ’84) to go with him.

Sidney Mitchell and his friend were undaunted by the fact that people in the Northwest knew little about electricity. They set about to create the market for their incandescent lamps.

They chose Seattle, then competing with Tacoma to become the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. They evidently persuaded the citizens that an electric plant would be a bonus in the competition. To finance their venture (since the fledgling Edison Co. had to demand cash for its products) they obtained contracts for the sale of 250 lamps at the flat rate of $3 per month and used the contracts to build a small, waterfront generating plant. This was the first central station electric light plant west of the Rocky Mountains.

With Seattle boasting about its new electric lights, it was not difficult to organize a company in rival Tacoma. Mitchell and Sparling became so busy that they took in William J. Grambs (Annapolis ’84) and incorporated themselves as the Northwest Supply & Construction Co. By 1888, they had organized lighting companies in thirteen other cities in the territory.

In 1890, The Edison General Electric Co. initiated the unification of all its agencies and purchased the Northwest Supply & Construc­tion Co. Mitchell’s headquarters became the District Office of the Northwest in Portland, although he spent much of his time in the field.

In 1892, the various Edison companies and the Thomson-Houston Co. merged to form the General Electric Company, and the new company was able to provide financial assistance. The new policy aided Mitchell in assisting the companies he had helped organize to maintain and expand their facilities to meet the increasing demand for electricity, not only for lighting but for street railways and industrial processes.

In 1893, Sidney Mitchell met and married Alice P. Bell of Portland. They had one child, Sidney A. Mitchell.

By the time he had reached his forties, his reputation as a hydroelectric power developer and financier had preceded him to New York where he was invited by the president of General Electric Co. to assist in organizing Electric Bond and Share Company. Under Mitchell’s leadership as president and later as Chairman of the Board, the company became one of the largest holding companies in the world.

In 1927, he attended the dedication of the Jordan Dam, named in honor of the mother of Sidney and Reuben Mitchell, the two who had contributed so much to the electric industry. On this occasion, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Dr. George H. Denney, President of The University of Alabama. After the ceremonies, he and his brother spent several days in the area where they grew up. Sidney Mitchell determined to return and build something of a hunting resort there in his native Alabama.

In 1930, he built a commodious lodge and fine dog houses on some 5000 acres of land. To Ann Jordan Farm (named for his grand­mother), he would invite “Yankee” business associates and friends to enjoy the Southern cooking and hounds and hunting he learned to love in his youth.

After his wife died in 1941; he married a widow, Mrs. Palmer. Sidney Mitchell suffered a fatal heart attack on February 17, 1944.

Sidney Zollicoffer Mitchell had been “a typical Western pioneer, a physical as well as a mental giant, a trailblazer, an up-builder, a torchbearer for advancing civilization,” as Forbes had stated in 1925.

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