E. Grace Pilot

• September 28th, 2021

Given her compassion for others less fortunate, it should come as no surprise that E. Grace Pilot of Mobile has built Pilot Catastrophe Services into the largest catastrophe adjusting firm in the nation, assisting thousands of disaster victims each year with an innovative approach to putting communities and families back together after disasters strike. Mrs. Pilot and her late husband Walter formed Burch and Pilot and Pilot Adjustment Services in Mobile in 1964 as an independent adjusting firm. In 1983, the couple decided to go into business for themselves and founded Pilot & Associates, Inc. Today, Pilot Catastrophe Services, Inc. employs thousands of employees inside and outside of Alabama with the corporate office in Mobile offices throughout the country and has grown into the nation’s largest catastrophe adjusting firm.

She has been active with the company in various capacities since its inception in 1983 and still serves as secretary/treasurer and director.

Mrs. Pilot was born in Silas in Choctaw County, Alabama, and is the third eldest of ten children. She married her high school sweetheart and the couple moved to Mobile in 1954. She worked with the Haas Davis Packing Company and later joined the Mobile Coca-Cola company in the accounting department before going into the catastrophe adjusting business. Through determination and hard work, she and her children have continued the legacy of her husband.

She is an active and past member of many organizations including the Alabama Baptist Children’s Home, American Society of Women Accountants, and is an honoree of the Alexis de Tocqueville Society Award given to members who show exemplary leadership in the United Way and the community. In 2005, Mrs. Pilot was honored by Beta Sigma Phi as the First Lady of Mobile for her ideas and commitment to others through her daily acts of love, friendship, and generosity.

The E. Grace Pilot Private Foundation supports her efforts to create a positive change in the communities in which she lives and contribute to causes of eternal value. The Foundation provides financial support primarily in the areas of education, community needs, and Christian ministry. The Pilot House of Hope in Shelby County, Alabama, is named in honor of her generous support. The house serves the needs of homeless mothers and their children and offers a safe place in which to live as they work toward independence.

She has served as a member of the board of trustees of Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes which has named Its training and conference center in Birmingham the Dr. E. Grace Pilot Conference Center in her honor.

She has served as special advisor to the president of Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and has been a generous benefactor to the University. In 1994, Howard Payne University honored her with the highest honor given by a university with an honorary Doctoral of Humanities degree. In 2010, “Grace Chapel” on the campus of Howard Payne University was named in her honor.

Mrs. Pilot is the proud mother of five children, sixteen grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. All of the children are active in the family business. Mrs. Pilot is a member of Luke 4:18 Fellowship Church.

Patricia “Sister Schubert” Barnes

• September 24th, 2021

Patricia “Sister Schubert” Barnes founded her bread company in her home kitchen using her grandmother’s yeast roll recipe and transformed the business into a national brand. Sister Schubert’s currently produces more than nine million rolls per day with distribution in each state in the country as well as abroad.

Barnes has become an icon and role model among entrepreneurs and philanthropists alike, as today she focuses primarily on charitable giving and civic engagement. She sits on numerous boards, including those of the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame, the Dean’s Board for the College of Human Sciences at Auburn University, and the Board of Trustees at Troy University.

An official culinary ambassador for the State of Alabama, a best-selling cookbook author, and a popular conference speaker, Barnes gives back on a local and global scale. As the company found success, Barnes made two promises to herself and to God: that she would care for children and feed the hungry. As a result, she founded Sasha’s Home, a first-of-its-kind orphanage in Ukraine, where children live in a loving environment with access to holistic care.

Closer to home, she directs bread deliveries to homeless shelters and food banks across the southeast region, along with shipments for relief efforts after natural disasters such as Hurricane Harvey and the tornado that struck Tuscaloosa in 2011. In addition, she travels the country sharing what she has learned about building a business, spending much of each year speaking to women’s groups and entrepreneurs. In 1997, the United States Congress selected her as a Woman of Distinction. She was also the recipient of the Kappa Delta Woman of Achievement Award in 2016 due to her extraordinary achievements both in her career and community.

Barnes attended Troy University, Auburn University, and The University of Alabama. She and her husband, George, reside in Andalusia. They have three daughters: Charlotte Wilcox, Chrissie Duffy, and Laura Barnes; two sons: Evans and Alex; and seven grandchildren.

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.

Jonathan Westervelt Warner

• September 21st, 2021

To many observers, Jonathan Westervelt Warner – better known as Jack – is seen as an entrepreneur par excellence, a hard-nosed businessman who used a mixture of intuition, information, and guts to transform a single product, family business into a dynamic, diversified organization. Others view him as a traditionalist, a lover of art and history whose interests are as much with the past as with the present or future.

Undeniably, Jack Warner believes in tradition. Directing the activities of a corporation founded in 1884 by his grandfather, Warner follows in a family tradition of leadership. But the past three decades of growth under his leadership have presented a myriad of challenges in a constantly changing business world. Through the years, however, Warner was carefully groomed for his future role and the imprint he would one day make on the lives of so many.

“My mother gave me the ball early in life, and then let me run with it. Even when I tripped and fell,” Warner said in recalling her guidance. “It’s so easy for a parent to make an incompetent out of the son by dominating his position and decisions. My mother always let me make my own mistakes as well as forge my own successes.” That philosophy worked well, for under Warner’s direction Gulf States Paper Corporation began an era of unprecedented growth and development that continues to this day.

Born in Decatur, Illinois, Warner moved to Tuscaloosa at the age of 11 when his family opened Alabama’s first modern paper mill in 1929. Through the years, the Tuscaloosa mill was to grow and make the Gulf States one of the world’s leading producers of the familiar grocery bag and other products made from kraft paper.

Growing up around the Tuscaloosa facility, Warner learned about the paper industry through firsthand observation. He spent summers and holidays as a laborer in the mill while gaining a formal education at Culver Military Academy and Washington and Lee University. After military service in World War II, Warner returned to Tuscaloosa in 1946 to join the family business. In 1950 he became executive vice president, directing the day-to-day operations while, at the same time, making improvements and laying plans for the quantum jumps in growth the future would hold.

April 20, 1957, was to be a fateful Saturday for Warner: the company’s board of directors accepted the retirement of his mother, Mildred Westervelt Warner, as president and named Jack Warner in her place. Thus, he became the third president of Gulf States Paper Corporation.

Sensing the need to move into new markets to meet the challenges of the future, Warner embarked upon a bold program of expansion through the development of new products. The first such move was the Demopolis mill, which opened as a producer of pulp the year after Warner became president. This facility was soon expanded to allow the production of high-quality bleached paperboard for food packaging and achieved many innovative “firsts” in the industry.

Realizing the land resources of the corporation held great potential, Warner expanded its land holdings and extended the Gulf States presence deeper into the forest products industry with the development of timber, mineral, and recreational uses for the nearly 400,000 acres of company land.

In the early 1960s, Warner led the Gulf States in a major expansion into the packaging markets with the opening of a folding carton plant in Maplesville. The Gulf States has expanded this product line with additional plants in North Carolina, Texas, and Kentucky and annually manufacturers enough cartons, food trays, and plates to provide more than 10 for every man, woman, and child in America.

Diversification into additional areas such as school and office supplies, erosion control systems, fiberglass reinforcements, molded-wood products, real estate, resort operations, and fine arts print sales have been the result of Warner’s leadership for the past three decades. Progress has been a product of diversity at Gulf States Paper Corporation as Warner has guided the corporation from its days as a one product-one plant company to today’s varied operations in eight states.

Throughout the development of new businesses, new plants, and new products, one theme has remained constant: Quality Counts. That tradition has been the watchword for the corporation and a constant challenge to excellence for Warner. “My grandfather, Herbert Westervelt, founded this company with the idea that the way to succeed was to provide the best darn product possible,” Warner has said. “My mother and father believed that, too, and this company has been successful because of it. That formula worked because it’s true. You give somebody quality in your product and they’ll come back for it again and again.”

Although Warner could easily be called one of the nation’s leading industrialists, there are many other faces to be revealed. Active in virtually every major community organization, he has labored to bring meaning to the words “quality of life” in the communities with which he has been involved.

Eager to share his knowledge and love of art with others, Warner has frequently lectured on the subject and displays much of The Warner Collection known as one of the most outstanding assemblages of American art to be found anywhere in the Gulf States Paper Corporation National Headquarters, a uniquely Oriental complex visited by thousands annually and inspired by Warner’s war years in Burma with the U.S. Army’s last cavalry troop.

A preservationist and believer in our American heritage, Warner has participated in numerous restoration projects and was instrumental in the founding of Tuscaloosa’s Heritage Week, an annual event that attracts visitors from throughout Alabama and beyond. Among Warner’s more recent preservation projects is the restoration of the Mildred Warner House, an antebellum mansion which he named in honor of his mother.

Art and heritage, Warner believes, are not simply windows to the past but are pathways to the future. “Throughout history, artists have been visionaries,” he has said. “They were the ones who cut through everyday life to see deeper meaning; they were the ones who dreamed about the future. If we study them and learn to think like them, maybe we can find more meaning in the moment and the right road for the future.”

A belief in the sanctity of nature has led Warner to meet the challenge of improving the quality of forests, streams, air, and wildlife in both woodland and industrial settings. These efforts have been recognized through major awards from the National Wildlife Federation, the American Paper Institute, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the State of Alabama.

Warner’s faith in the future of business and the free enterprise system is summed up in his advice to young people to: “Go out to where the action is. Business and industry, that is! ‘Cause, that’s where the excitement is. That is where the solutions will be found. That’s where jobs are created. That’s where the money flows and the prosperity of the nation rises or falls. And that’s where the cream of the youth crop is needed and hopefully will be! And that’s where the real answers to, and the funding for human desires, social needs, and yes, even happiness, lie!”

In the educational arena, Warner has chaired the Board of Visitors of The University of Alabama College of Commerce and Business Administration, initiated the University’s Jack Warner Endowed Scholarship Fund, and served his alma mater, Washington & Lee University, as a trustee. Through the David Warner Foundation, named in memory of his brother who died in a swimming accident, Warner has brought new meaning to the lives of many youngsters through the funding of numerous projects designed to bring a brighter future to the youth of today.

Warner has served as a director or officer of countless civic, business and service organizations. Awards and honors from every segment of society have been heaped upon him including the “Man of the Year” award of the Alabama Council of the National Management Association, an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Alabama, and induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor.

Although his folksy style and homespun, yet incisive, philosophy may deceive more casual acquaintances, Warner is known to maintain a zesty enthusiasm for active sports and a keen appreciation of art, business, and the world around him. Besides daily overseeing the operations of one of the nation’s largest privately held corporations, Warner remains devoted to progress and is a constant promoter of the free enterprise system in America.

George Cabell Outlaw, Sr.

• September 20th, 2021

But the then thirty-four-year-old Mobile attorney saw phenomenal opportunities in J. A. Morrison’s nontraditional idea for establishing a cafeteria that would employ waiters to carry customers’ trays. He advanced Morrison $800. With a handshake, the nation’s largest and most dynamic cafeteria chain was born, and George Cabell Outlaw’s highly influential business and devoted public career was begun.

George Cabell Outlaw, son of Tiberius Gracchus and Belle (Garner) Outlaw, was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1886. After completing his secondary education at the University Military School in Mobile, he attended the University of Virginia and transferred to The University of Alabama Law School where he received his degree in 1917. After serving two years with the FBI during World War I, he opened a law practice in Mobile in 1919.

In October 1920, he married Mayme Ricks from Texas, a lady whose influence he was always to credit for his highly respected balanced and prudent judgment, generosity, mild temper, and gentleman’s bearing. In the spring of 1920, he also embarked on a business venture which shaped his career.

The Morrison’s Cafeteria opened on the corner of St. Emanuel and Conti Streets in downtown Mobile in September 1920. The cafeteria suddenly became the startling answer to the businessman’s meal problem – convenient service with low prices. Under Mr. Morrison’s expert guidance in food preparation and operations and Mr. Outlaw’s astute, professional guidance in business management, the cafeteria soon began serving three meals a day and became known as “the family cafeteria.”

With such a success beyond either Mr. Morrison’s or Mr. Outlaw’s immediate expectations, Mr. Outlaw examined other markets for a Morrison’s Cafeteria and found them in Pensacola, Florida, and Montgomery, Alabama. Morrison’s Cafeterias Consolidated was formed, with Mr. Morrison as President and Mr. Outlaw, as Secretary-Treasurer. By 1927, the new corporation had opened thriving cafeterias in three more cities-Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and New Orleans, Louisiana. In seven short years, Mr. Outlaw’s faith in Mr. Morrison’s “outlandish” idea had been justified. Morrison’s Cafeteria was a fully incorporated, successful enterprise with cafeterias in six southern cities.

In 1928, Mr. Outlaw made a decision that paved a way for further expansion of Morrison’s Cafeterias Consolidated, Inc. Sale of public stock brought outside capital into the enterprise and enabled the corporation to continue to grow. Four more cafeterias were opened in Florida-in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, and West Palm Beach.

Even during the Great Depression, the bustling southern cafeteria chain proceeded unhindered, providing people in every financial class with savings in meal tabs. The cafeterias provided breakfast for a nickel, lunch for an average of thirty-five cents, and free ice cream and cake on Thursday “Family Nights.” Thousands of people in every cafeteria city were gaining “the Morrison habit.”

In 1933, Mr. Outlaw was recognized for his contribution to the nation’s restaurant business by being named a charter board member of the National Restaurant Association. In 1935, Mr. Outlaw terminated his law practice to concentrate fully on his business career with Morrison’s Cafeterias. For the next twenty years, he provided sagacious and imaginative direction to the development of the enterprise.

Early in the 1930s, Secretary-Treasurer Outlaw directed that cost control practices and procedures of all cafeterias be standardized. The centralization was so efficient and economical that each cafeteria could offer a greater variety of food at much lower prices. He also implemented the installation of central air conditioning units in all cafeterias-a progressive and unique decision that enhanced the company’s reputation for imaginative customer service.

During the 1940s, he continued as Secretary-Treasurer after Mr. J. A. Morrison, the creator of the Morrison dining concept, sold his interest in the company and retired in Florida.

When World War II created a manpower shortage, Mr. Outlaw adapted the company’s operations (applying financial restraint in incurring debts) to continue the tradition of customer service in all units. Consequently, in 1945, a new cafeteria would be opened in Lakeland, Florida. In 1947, ‘The Cafeteria of Tomorrow” created from an old, crowded facility in Tampa-dazzled the public with its innovative and imaginative, modern design and also brought recognition to Morrison’s at the National Convention of the National Restaurant Association. The citizens of Florida never had a chance to catch their breath. Other cafeterias were quickly opened in strategic tourist centers.

Once more, the combination of Mr. Outlaw’s keen business judgment and good taste bore fruit. Working with the President, Mr. Outlaw counseled the organization of providing cost control through a network of wholly-owned subsidiary companies, which today supply Morrison, Inc. with nearly all its needs. This vertical integration made the firm one of the nation’s most self-sufficient.

By the 1950s, Mr. Outlaw had turned more of the authority in running the company over to younger men-two of whom were his sons, George Cabell, Jr., and Arthur. Though less active in management decisions, he maintained a counselor role in all business affairs. In 1952, he was instrumental in the formation of Morrison Food Services-a division that today is contracted to serve over 300 institutions, including hospitals and nursing homes, office facilities, industrial complexes, and school systems and universities.

Through the years, much of Mr. Outlaw’s energy was channeled into the development of the cafeteria/ food service that he was so instrumental in founding. But, he also worked ceaselessly in creating an economic atmosphere to lure industry and business to his native city. For a number of years, he served as President of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce.

He was equally prominent in fostering the betterment of his fellow citizens by his participation in charitable and church activities.

When George Cabell Outlaw, Sr., died on July 16, 1964, after a brief illness, newspapers, and magazines extolled his virtues as a lawyer-businessman of great ability and foresight, the co-founder of an immensely successful business enterprise, and a man who served his community and fellowman.

Tine Wayne Davis, Sr.

• September 20th, 2021

Tine W. Davis told the 1978 graduating class at a Florida University that he recommended four “Be’s to Success” – “Be a dreamer … It’s fun; be a believer in yourself … It’s fun; be a planner . . . It’s fun; be a worker . . . It’s fun.”

Throughout his life, he followed this philosophy as he worked hard to help develop two-family grocery stores in Miami, Florida, into Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc.-a a network of over one thousand modern food centers in twelve states.

Tine W. Davis was born on January 8, 1914, in Gamaliel, Arkansas, to William Milton and Fannie Ethel (Chase) Davis. In that same year, the family moved to Burley, Idaho. There his father successfully operated a typical small-town department store (all merchandise, including groceries, sold on a “charge and deliver” basis) until another store opened on a “cash and carry” basis down the street. Young Tine’s father soon realized the new merchant had the “cash” while he had the “carry.”

Quick to see the advantages of the new merchandising technique, Mr. W. M. Davis moved with his wife, daughter (Vera), and four sons (A.D., James E., M. Austin, and Tine W.) to Miami, Florida. In 1925, he borrowed money to purchase a grocery store in Lemon City, a suburb of Miami. The entire family pitched in to make the store a success. A second store was opened. The family’s dogged persistence finally made it to success and brought about the birth of the Winn and Lovett supermarket chain.

After graduating from Miami Edison Senior High School in 1933, Tine Davis attended the University of Idaho for a year. When his father died in 1934, the young man returned to Florida where he attended the University of Florida for a year before beginning to work full-time in the family business. In 1936, he married D. Eunice Chandler of Ozark, Alabama. They became the parents of three children: Diane, Tiona (Toni), and Tine Wayne, Jr.

By 1940, Tine Davis had become a director of Winn and Lovett. His career was interrupted in 1942 when he was called to serve his country for three years as a Civilian Flight Instructor in the Army Air Corps. Mr. Davis always had a passion for flying and had earned his commercial pilot’s license in the 1930s.

After World War II, Mr. Davis again became a driving force in the grocery business. By 1950, he had moved from the Miami Division of Winn and Lovett to Louisville, Kentucky, where he became Division Manager. In 1954, he started work on the Montgomery, Alabama, Division, to centralize service of existing Winn and Lovett stores in Alabama and Florida and to acquire new stores to support a warehouse in Montgomery.

In 1955, when Winn and Lovett’s name was changed to Winn-Dixie, Mr. Davis was appointed Regional Director of the Louisville and Montgomery Divisions. He moved his family to Montgomery where a warehouse had been completed. During the following eight years, Mr. Davis directed the building or acquisition of eight or more stores per year to support the centralized warehouse. By 1963, the Montgomery Division was servicing 145 stores in a tri-state area.

Because of his pioneering efforts to expand markets, Mr. Davis was made Regional Director of the Montgomery, Louisville, and Louisiana Divisions of Winn-Dixie in 1963. In 1968, he became Director of the new Atlanta Division. He directed the four divisions until 1970 when he removed the Atlanta Division from his direct leadership to cut down on his traveling time.

With Winn-Dixie’s first entrance into the Western market in 1976, Mr. Davis’ expertise was again called upon. He was assigned the responsibilities of Regional Director of the newly acquired stores in Fort Worth, Texas, and surrounding areas. Because of these added responsibilities, by 1979 Mr. Davis relinquished direct supervision of both the Atlanta and the Louisville Divisions, but still considered them a part of his responsibility. Mr. Davis was a man who believed that “the only limitations that will ultimately hold you back in life will be those you place on yourself.”

Throughout his life, like most men of great achievement, he devoted much of his spare time to worthy causes. He was a founder and then a member of the board of trustees of the Alabama Sheriffs’ Boys’ and Girls’ Ranches. Because of his extensive fund-raising efforts for these homes for orphaned children, Mr. Davis earned the nickname, “Mr. Boys’ Ranch.”

He also played an active role in championing support for educational institutions in Alabama and Florida. He served as a member of the University of Alabama’s College of Commerce Board of Visitors and of. the Board of Trustees of Troy State University. He was a former General Chairman of the Capital Fund Raising Program for Marion Institute. Mr. Davis was also a director on the boards of at least six companies in Alabama and Florida, and a loyal member of the First Presbyterian Church in Montgomery.

In recognition of his business acumen and humanitarian efforts, the Alabama legislature passed a Joint Resolution in 1976. Mr. Davis was awarded four honorary degrees: a Doctorate of Laws by Troy State University; a Doctorate of Aviation Management by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida; a Doctorate of Humane Letters by Bethune Cookman College, Daytona Beach, Florida; and a Doctorate of Humanities by Rust College, Holly Springs, Mississippi. He received honorary life memberships in the Florida Sheriffs’ Association and the Kiwanis Club of Louisville, Kentucky. He was the recipient of the Alabama Farm Bureau Federation’s Agricultural Award and the Champion of Independent Education in Florida Award. He was awarded the “Significant Sig Medal” by his fraternity at the University of Idaho.

Tine Davis died on August 6, 1980. His influence will be felt in the nation for many years to come. He will be remembered as the man with the jovial disposition and hearty laugh who was instrumental in developing a national supermarket chain and in improving the quality of the lives of those in the states where he worked.

James Franklin Rushton

• September 9th, 2021

The story of ice manufacturing in Alabama is the story of James Franklin Rushton and his father, William James Rushton.

In 1881, the elder Rushton purchased an ice machine which he set up in Birmingham. The city’s rapid growth in the late 1880s provided a ready market for Rushton ice, and the business prospered. The younger Rushton, known familiarly as Frank, began work in the family ice factory as an oiler in the engine room. Eventually, he worked in every department and became an expert in all facets of the business, and by the turn of the century, he was his father’s chief assistant. Eight ice plants were constructed in the Birmingham area. Through their retail sales outlet, the City Ice and Delivery Company, the Rushtons arranged efficient delivery of their ice to customers. Together father and son developed the business into one of the largest and most successful of its kind in the south. Frank served several years as a vice-president of the National Association of Ice Industries. After his father’s death, Rushton further expanded the family business by establishing the Franklin Coal Mining Company and the National Coal and Coke Company. Frank Rushton is also remembered for his public service. His most notable public work was his leadership of bond drives during World War I. His colleagues at his funeral observed of him, “no man of his generation was more closely identified with all that was best in Birmingham.”