John Key McKinley

• September 20th, 2021

John Key McKinley, now Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Texaco Inc., has long exhibited qualities that seemed to forecast his rise to such a distinguished position.

He was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on March 24, 1920, the son of Virgil Parks and Mary Emma (Key) McKinley. His father was a professor in the School of Education at The University of Alabama and his mother was a pioneer in providing kindergarten education in the University city. From his parents, he learned early the fascination of exploring the world of ideas and of working with people.

As a youngster in the Tuscaloosa public schools, he was known for his scholastic achievement and his enthusiastic participation in extracurricular activities. After graduating from Tuscaloosa High School in 1937, he entered The University of Alabama where he continued to excel as a scholar and leader. The extent of his scholastic achievement is apparent in his being named a member of both the chemical and engineering professional honor societies, and his wide participation and leadership in campus activities are evident in his being one of twenty-three in his class to be elected to Who’s Who.

John McKinley graduated from The University of Alabama with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering in 1940 and an M.S. degree in organic chemistry in 1941.

Immediately after receiving his M.S., Mr. McKinley joined Texaco on May 29, 1941, as a chemical engineer engaged in grease research at the Port Arthur refinery in Texas. Shortly the Army Artillery. For four and one-half years he wore thereafter, on August 15, 1941, he was called to active service as a reserve officer, with the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Army uniform, serving for three years in Newfoundland, England, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, rising to the rank of Major. He received the Bronze Star and various campaign medals in the European theater and was discharged from active service on December 25, 1945.

Returning to civilian life and Texaco employment, Mr. McKinley worked in Texaco’s research, processing, and development activities at Port Arthur. He was married there on July 19, 1946, to the former Helen Grace Heare. They have two sons, John Key McKinley, Jr., and Mark Charles McKinley.

At Port Arthur, Mr. McKinley was assigned again to grease research and then to cracking research, becoming Supervisor of that function in 1954. In 1956 he was transferred to the Company’s Central Research Laboratory at Beacon, N.Y., as Assistant to Management, and in 1957 became Assistant Director of Research. In 1960 he was named Manager of Commercial Development Processes. Later that year, Mr. McKinley transferred to Texaco’s New York City offices as General Manager-Worldwide Petrochemicals.

Always taking advantage of every opportunity to improve, Mr. McKinley attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard University, graduating in 1962. He was elected Vice President in charge of the Petrochemical Department in 1967 and was named Vice President in charge of Supply and Distribution in 1970. In January 1971, he was elected Senior Vice President for Worldwide Refining, Petrochemicals, and Supply and Distribution. Mr. McKinley was elected President of Texaco Inc. and a Director of the company in April 1971.

He received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from The University of Alabama in 1972 and from Troy State University in 1974.

In January 1980, Mr. McKinley was selected by the Board of Directors to be Chief Executive Officer on November 1, 1980, and was named Chief Operating Officer of the Company effective immediately. In June 1980, the Board of Directors elected Mr. McKinley to serve as Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer effective November 1, 1980. Mr. McKinley was elected Chairman of the Executive Committee effective July 1, 1980.

During his rise in the corporate structure of Texaco Inc., Mr. McKinley has always adhered to this business philosophy: “Business consists primarily of bringing together people, ideas, and capital to provide the necessary goods and services required by our society. An understanding of this basic fact is what makes it possible for those in charge of organizations to create a proper meld of these three elements, in appropriate proportion, to accomplish the stated goals and objectives.

“By and large, I believe that business and industry exist at the pleasure of the public. As long as the public perceives that the organization’s policies, programs, products, and services are in the public interest, that organization will be supported in the marketplace.”

Holding a number of patents in chemical and petroleum processing, Mr. McKinley, is a registered Professional Engineer and a member of a number of technical and professional organizations, including Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, and The University of Alabama ( Capstone) Engineering Society. Mr. McKinley is a director of the American Petroleum Institute and a member of its Executive Committee and its Management Committee. He also is a member of the National Petroleum Council.

Mr. McKinley is a director of Burlington Industries, Inc., Merck and Company, Inc., and both Manufacturers Hanover Corporation and its principal subsidiary, Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and Andrew Wellington Cordier Fellow of the School of International Affairs of Columbia University, a Sesquicentennial Honorary Professor at The University of Alabama, a trustee of the Council of the Americas, a director of the Americas Society and The Business Council of New York State, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Conference Board, and the Business Committee for the Arts, Inc. He has been awarded the George Washington Honor Medal by the Freedoms Foundation.

Always a believer in both individual and corporate support of an art form, Mr. McKinley and Texaco Inc. have long been patrons of the Metropolitan Opera. On May 15, 1980, Mr. McKinley was elected a Managing Director of the Metropolitan Opera Association. At the same time, he was named national chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Centennial Fund. His other civic activities over the years have ranged from service on the advisory council of Reading Is Fundamental, Inc., to membership on the committee to determine the future of the new Westchester County (N.Y.) Medical Center Hospital. He is a former member of the Board of Governors of the Hugh O’Brian Youth Foundation.

In March 1981, Mr. McKinley was elected to the Board of Overseers of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, to the Board of Managers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and the Board of Managers of Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases and the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research.

Mr. McKinley’s hobbies include personally testing new developments m automotive engines, petroleum fuels, and electronic devices. His favorite sports are yachting, hunting, and golf. With his wide accomplishments and interests, John K. McKinley continues to be a man for all seasons.

Arthur Henry Lee

• September 20th, 2021

Arthur H. Lee and his twin brother Alfred, Anniston – born sons of John B. and Mary N. (Licksold) Lee, began operation of Lee Brothers Foundry in January 1919 with $500 of borrowed money and one helper. When they sold the corporation to Phelps Dodge in 1963 for five and a quarter-million dollars, they had 750 employees, distribution warehouses in ten states, and annual sales of over ten million dollars.

The story of the growth and development of the company reflects the character of Arthur H. Lee.

Mr. Lee and his brother learned early to respect hard work and the people who worked for them. Arthur did the molding, core making, and pouring off during the day, and the office work at night; Alfred operated the furnace, melted brass, and made patterns. They did jobbing work or rough castings for local customers. Since their ambition was to make the best castings possible and to have satisfied customers, Arthur Lee read extensively about the composition of brass and learned how different percentages of the components of the alloy could be used for different end products.

In these early days, the brothers put as much money as possible back into the business to improve it. They increased the floor space in the original building from 1200 to 3600 square feet. About 1923, when they realized that only a finished, not a rough, product was necessary for the company’s continued success, the brothers (unable to afford a $7500 finishing machine that would turn out 400 three-inch brass plugs a day) made a finishing machine from two old lathes. With this machine, total cost about $150, they began finishing about 1,100 brass plugs a day for the soil pipe shops in Anniston. They added two more heads later and had a machine (total cost now $450) that would finish more than 3,500 plugs per day-they learned they could probably make better machines than they could buy.

In the late twenties and early thirties, Arthur and Alfred Lee learned other valuable lessons. In 1927, the brothers agreed to pay installments of $300 per month for $7500 worth of patterns and machines for manufacturing brass fittings. They learned that they had not thought far enough ahead to the set-up and marketing costs before starting to manufacture fittings. They opened their first warehouse in New York City in 1932, but when the banks closed in 1933, they were practically bankrupt and owed the bank about $15,000. When the banks reopened, they tried to reduce their notes as quickly as possible. In doing so in a surprisingly short time, they were able to discount their bills for the first time.

In 1947, the Lee Brothers, then employing 250 people, formed Lee Brothers Foundry Company, Inc., valued at $350,000. By plowing back or through investing all the earnings and profits, they had expanded the plant to 63,000 square feet and used all land space available in the original location.

In June 1950, they bought 102 acres of land across the mountain from Anniston and started plans for a new plant of steel buildings to provide 140,000 square feet of floor space. Their employees designed and built the new plant, including all roads. On a Thursday in August 1951, the 360 employees closed down the old plant at 3:30 p.m. They dismantled, steam cleaned, and painted all equipment (including a ninety-ton sand storage hopper and elevator) and moved it six miles to the new buildings where they installed it. By the following Monday, the new plant opened at fifty percent production on its first day of operation. In a religious ceremony, the new plant was dedicated to the good of the employees and the glory of God.

Always concerned about his employees, Arthur Lee saw a need for them to be able to save money on a timely basis and secure loans at reasonable interest rates. In 1953, he started the Brassies Credit Union which today has 1200 members and assets of over $2.3 million.

In the 1950s, Lee Brothers Company, Inc. continued to grow and expand. The brothers began selling to contract customers and using leased trucks to deliver their products and return with raw materials. They built more warehouses for the distribution of their goods. By 1963, when the corporation was sold-warehouses were operating in Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Moline, New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

As Lee Brothers Foundry prospered, so did others, for Arthur Lee was a man who believed in sharing. With the support of Edna Stoesser, to whom he was married from 1920 until her death in 1951, and of Cecile Thompson, to whom he was married from 1973 until his death, through the years, he was an active participant in community and church affairs.

He served a two-year term as President of the Anniston Chamber of Commerce, a one-year term on the City Council. He was a founder, director, and trustee of the Anniston’s Boy’s Club and a founder of The Anniston Rescue Squad. He was a member of the Anniston Airport Board for several years and a member of the Anniston Rotary Club for twenty-eight years.

Mr. Lee served for fifty years on the Administrative Board, Finance Committee, and Music Committee for the First United Methodist Church of Anniston. He was a talented vocalist who sang in the choir and was a soloist many times during these years.

In 1966, Mr. Lee purchased the former Camp Zinn for Boy Scouts, developed it into a church camping facility, and gave it, along with certain funds for its operation, to the First United Methodist Church of Anniston for non-denominational use. The camp, since named Camp Lee in his honor, was also willed other funds and Mr. Lee’s adjoining farm property and home.

Arthur Lee’s contributions to his community and church were recognized by numerous awards. In 1963, he received the “Aristocrat Award” for his many years of service to the city’s airways development. In 1969, he was named “Anniston’s Man of the Year.” In 1970, he was chosen for membership in the United Methodist Church Hall of Fame in Philanthropy, an award given annually to persons who have given outstanding contributions of service or funds to health and welfare agencies related to the church. In 1971, he was given the Religious Award by the Anniston Kiwanis Club for service rendered to God, Community, and Country. In 1974, he was named Honorary Life Member of the Music Committee of his church for his loyal contributions of time, talent, and means to the music ministry.

An excerpt from an editorial in The Anniston Star at the time of Arthur Henry Lee’s death perhaps summarizes best his meaningful life: “Lee Brothers [Foundry] prospered and grew and so did others. Arthur Lee shared the work . . . [but] the public knows only partly [how] he shared the benefits. When it came to public need, Mr. Lee was not only among the first to subscribe, but he also could-and did – twist arms effectively for the support he felt was essential. Not so well known, however, was his private generosity, the uncounted times he quietly extended help for young people who wanted to go to school, for someone desperate for a friendly hand in time of need. For all the powers he might have wielded, all the honors that came his way, he walked quietly among us, a good and selfless man whose monuments stand all around us.”

Isidor Weil

• September 20th, 2021

Possessing little more than a penchant for hard work, a keen eye for business, and a measure of good luck, young Weil was able to start his own business at the age of twenty-two.

By the time he died, at the age of eighty-nine, his business dealings spanned the globe, and Weil himself, reported the Montgomery Advertiser, was “one of the best-known cotton merchants in the world.”

When he first arrived in this country, thirteen-year-old Isidor Weil probably had less grandiose dreams. Born in Otterstadt, Rhine-Bavaria in 1856, he was the eldest of twelve children of Aaron and Magdalene Weil. In August of 1869, Isidor and his eleven-year-old brother Herman-neither of whom spoke English – sailed from Bremen to New York. From there they traveled to Huntsville, Alabama, where they made their home with two of their uncles, Isaiah and Herman Weil, who had come to the South prior to the Civil War.

In Huntsville, Isidor and his brother attended school and learned the language and customs of their adopted country. Sometime in the mid-1870s, the young Weil brothers moved to Opelika to live and work with their mother’s brother, Mose Lemle, who operated a general store. Like other merchants in the South, Lemle extended credit to his customers, most of whom were cotton farmers, for goods purchased throughout the year. The farmers then paid their debt at harvest time with a portion of their crops. Isidor was put in charge of converting these crops into cash.

His success at this undertaking was such that the young Weil was soon able to talk his uncle into buying cotton directly from the farmers and selling it to the local mills. By 1878, the services of the Weils were in such demand that Isidor and his brother Herman, in partnership with their uncle Lemle, formally went into business as cotton buyers and exporters. In 1884, when Mose Lemle died, Isidor named the firm Weil Brothers.

By 1887, the year Isidor married Eda Oppenheimer of Cincinnati, Ohio, he was already well established as a successful cotton merchant. He was also known as one of the most public-spirited citizens in Opelika, where he took an active interest in the town’s commercial, civic and political affairs, and where he served over the years as alderman, as a director in the local banks, and as chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee for that district.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the company expanded rapidly as the Weils found new markets in the Southeast, in New England, and abroad. From the ports of Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston, they shipped cotton to England and to other countries across the continent. Several of the export practices Weil Brothers employed became standard operating procedures throughout the industry. The cash-on-arrival form of payment they instituted (in which the buyer cables funds to the seller’s bank when a vessel is first sighted in a foreign port) is still in use today in England, France, Germany, and other European countries.

In 1889, Herman Weil withdrew from the firm and Emil Weil, another of Isidor’s brothers, became associated with the business. By the turn of the century, Weil Brothers had developed into such a large and complex network of services that the brothers thought it necessary to move the business closer to the shipping and distribution centers of the region. So, in 1903, Isidor Weil moved his growing business and his growing family (now two sons, Adolph and Leonel, and a daughter Helen) to Montgomery.

Once again he took an active interest in the welfare of the community. Weil was one of the organizers and directors of the Exchange National Bank; he served as director of the Alabama National Bank Company, the Union Bank & Trust Company, the Capitol National Bank, and the Peoples Cotton Mills. He helped organize and served as vice-president of the Memorial Hospital, was a director of the Anti-Tuberculosis League, the Associated Charities of Montgomery, and other public welfare organizations.

During World War I, Weil became a leading member of several committees in charge of the sale of Liberty Bonds. He chaired three separate drives to raise funds in Montgomery for European relief after the war and was Alabama State Chairman for the Jewish Relief Fund. A thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and a member of the Shrine, Weil was also an active member of the Reform Jewish congregation, Kahl Montgomery, which he served as a member of the board of directors and as president.

When Isidor’s sons, Adolph and Leonel, returned from service after World War I, they took over management of the company and were soon joined in the business by Lucien Loeb, Isidor’s son-in-law, and Alvin Weil, Emil’s son. Isidor Weil, however, never retired from the company he had spent his life building, and he continued to take an active interest in Weil Brothers’ affairs for the next two and a half decades.

These were years of growth and expansion for the company. They were also years of change as the transportation of cotton shifted from steamboats to trains and trucks, and as the center of the cotton industry began to move slowly from the Southeast to the far West. Weil Brothers shifted with the times. They opened offices in Memphis, Dallas, Houston – and later in Fresno, California – and maintained offices in New York, where the company had become a clearing member of the New York Cotton Exchange.

After World War II, when cotton production increased dramatically in many other countries, Weil Brothers opened affiliated offices in Mexico, and it pioneered the marketing of Central American cotton, especially in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Salvador. As the trend in world textile production shifted from Europe to the Orient, a selling office was opened in Osaka, Japan.

In the 1950s, Adolph’s two sons, Adolph, Jr., and Robert, assumed the company’s management, and under their direction, the firm has continued to expand. With two partnerships in Mexico and South America, Weil Brothers now deal in cotton in some twenty-four countries throughout the world, buying and selling between 800,000 to 1,000,000 bales per year through its extensive affiliated network.

Isidor Weil, of course, did not live to see all of his company’s growth. Before he died in 1946, however, he had watched the small business he had begun in 1878 develop into a worldwide concern. He had seen the fruits of his labor passed on to his children and to his children’s children, and he must have understood, as perhaps only an immigrant can, what it is to attain his own version of the American Dream.

Robert Jemison, Jr.

• September 20th, 2021

Energetic, independent, and adventurous, he was the inheritor of a pioneering spirit that had characterized the Jemison family for generations.

His great-grandparents had immigrated to the colonies in 1742, settling on a farm in Pennsylvania; his grandparents had moved to Augusta, Georgia, sometime before the start of the Revolutionary War; and his parents, prosperous Georgia landowners, sought out the rich farmlands of West Alabama and built there a plantation so productive and well-cultivated that it came to be known as The Garden.

It was near Augusta, Georgia, in 1802 that Robert Jemison, Jr.* was born. He attended the University of Georgia, read law, and in 1821 moved with his parents, William and Sarah Jemison, to Alabama. The family settled briefly in Greene County and then moved to the village of Tuscaloosa. In 1826 the elder Jemison transported his family to Pickens County where he founded and developed his prosperous plantation, The Garden, and helped finance blacksmith shops, lumber mills, and other services for the community.

Robert Jemison, Jr., who lived and worked at The Garden for ten years, returned to Tuscaloosa in 1836 and married Priscilla Taylor of Mobile. They had one child; a daughter named Cherokee. Jemison and his wife were said to be particularly fond of that Indian name because the story goes, several generations back the Cherokees had done a favor for the Taylor family and requested, in return, that the family perpetuate their name. Jemison more than complied with his wife’s ancestor al obligation by giving the name, not only to his daughter but to the large plantation he built beyond Northport.

Like his father before him, Robert Jemison was an enterprising businessman. In the 1820s he began to buy up small tracts of property in several counties. As the size of his holdings grew, he added buildings, im­proved the efficiency of his farming operations, and added grist and flour mills. By 1857, he owned six plantations, the largest of which was the 4000-acre Cherokee Place.

Industrial and commercial enterprises also interested him. He invested heavily in stagecoach lines, operated a large livery stable in Tuscaloosa, and built a thriving lumber and sawmill business. He erected a foundry in Talladega County, operated several surface coal mines near Brookwood, and constructed a plank road from the mines to Tuscaloosa. The lumber for all his enterprises, as well as for his several homes, came from his own mills; the labor, from his slaves – estimated to total nearly 500 at one point. Not surprisingly, Jemison was considered “the most enterprising all-around citizen in Tuscaloosa.”

It was as a statesman, however, that the people of Alabama knew him best. He first entered politics in the mid-1830s by filling a vacancy in the state legislature, then located in Tuscaloosa. In 1837 he ran on the Whig ticket for that same legislative post and won. For the next twenty-five years, he continued to win elections, serving in the statehouse of representatives until 1850 and in the state senate from 1851 to 1863. During his long political career, Jemison gained a reputation as a skilled debater who would speak his mind regardless of the unpopularity of his view. “The duty of a statesman,” Jemison reportedly said, “is to lead and not to follow popular sentiment. If he finds public opinion taking the wrong direction, it is his duty to throw himself in the breach and turn it the right way.”

Jemison frequently threw himself into the breach. He was a determined supporter of a system of railroads for Alabama, an active anti-abolitionist, and he fought tenaciously – and successfully – for the construction of a state hospital for the insane (Bryce). It was in 1847, though, that he took on what may have been the most challenging problem of his career – the failing financial affairs of the state of Alabama.

Jemison had long opposed the system of state banks. ‘This hydra of modern banking,” as he called it, had led to wild speculation schemes, to the panic of 1837, the failure of the banks, and to public debt that by 1847 had reached crisis proportions. Chosen by his constituents and the legislature to lead the state out of its financial mire, Jemison advocated the liquidation of state banks and the establishment of a well-regulated system of private stock banks. He was convinced that Alabama, by reason of her abundant resources, was amply able to pay her debts, and he dismissed arguments that a tax bill commensurate with the wants of the state would be disastrously unpopular. As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he introduced a revenue bill that, once passed, revolutionized the state’s system of taxation by establishing a broader and more equitable distribution of the tax burden. Even Jemison’s staunchest political adversaries applauded his skill in introducing sound business practices to the management of the state’s financial affairs.

In January of 1861, Jemison once again attempted to influence the direction of his state, but this time he was not successful. Representing Tuscaloosa County in the Secession Convention in Montgomery, Jemison argued against seceding from the Union. Such drastic action was premature and impractical, he reasoned; the Convention possessed no reliable evidence to suggest that the North planned to invade the South; the matter deserved careful consideration; perhaps there was still room for compromise. Amid the Convention’s emotional atmosphere, Jemison’s efforts to discuss the issue on practical grounds proved ultimately futile. Once the Ordinance of Secession passed, however, he stood behind the majority opinion and supported the Confederacy with all the resources at his disposal.

In 1863 he was chosen president of the state senate, and that same year he was elected by an overwhelming margin to suc­ceed the late W. L. Yancey in the Senate of the Confederate States of America. There he served actively until the fall of the Confederacy.

Senator Jemison was in Tuscaloosa in April of 1865 when Federal troops invaded the city and burned factories and mills and The University of Alabama. He escaped imprisonment by hiding in a swamp outside of town while soldiers searched his home, a large Italianate villa that still stands on Greensboro Avenue.

After the war, with most of his property destroyed, Jemison remained in Tuscaloosa and began to piece together the remnants of what had once been a vast system of enterprises. Although his health was failing, he built a ferry service across the Black Warrior River and devoted much of his time to the work of rebuilding The University of Alabama.

When he died following a long illness on October 17, 1871, the citizens of Tuscaloosa and Northport closed their shops and businesses and turned out en masse for his funeral. It was but one of many tributes paid throughout the state to Robert Jemison, Jr. – a man whose statesmanship, business acumen, and pioneering spirit had contributed to the development of the nineteenth century – Alabama to a degree that few of his generation could match.

James McDonald Comer

• September 20th, 2021

In the art of enlightened leadership, Donald Comer had few peers.

When he died at the age of 85, newspapers editorials throughout the region – and many in other parts of the country – paid tribute to him as a premier textile industrialist and a leader in civic, religious, and political affairs.

Most importantly, though, they paid tribute to Donald Comer the man, the gentle humanitarian who could look at every problem from the other fellow’s point of view. Following his personal motto, “Live and Help Live,” he became not only one of the nation’s most respected industry leaders, but one of the most affectionately regarded Southern businessmen of his time.

The facts of his life tell the story: He was born into a distinguished Barbour County family in 1877, the third of nine children of Braxton Bragg and Eva Jane Harris Comer. In such a large family, young Comer learned early the importance of “consideration of others.” Undoubtedly, he also learned the principles and responsibilities of leadership, for his father, Braxton Bragg Comer, understood these concepts well. Governor of the state from 1907 to 1911, the elder Comer established himself as one of Alabama’s most progressive statesmen. His far-reaching educational policies, in particular, benefited the state’s entire educational system and made possible, among many other things, the first construction at The University of Alabama in twenty years.

After serving four years in the Philippines as a first lieutenant in the Army, Donald Comer, as he was known all his life, married Gertrude Miller of Reading, Pennsylvania, and in 1903, he joined his brother Fletcher in managing the family’s 30,000-acre plantation in South Alabama. When his father became governor in 1907, Donald Comer moved with his growing family to Birmingham to manage Avondale Mills, the thriving textile industry that his father had founded ten years earlier. Here Donald Comer spent his life, becoming president in 1927, chairman of the board in 1935, and chairman of the executive committee in 1951. During the more than half a century he devoted to Avondale Mills, Comer helped develop it into one of the largest textile chains in the country and one of the nation’s leaders in employee-management relations.

Soon after he joined the industry, Donald Comer began finding ways to improve the lives of his workers-an an activity he would continue throughout his life. He started a Boy Scout troop for the children of mill employees that expanded over the years until there were more than fifty such troops in Avondale Mills towns; he built schools for children and adults; he established a Home Loan Association and sold village houses at low prices with low payments (by 1963 more than 85 percent of Avondale’s employees were homeowners). Concerned about opportunities available to his employees in their leisure time, Comer hired music teachers, provided instruments, and started an employees’ band; he began “Cotton Crafts” clubs for retired workers; and once, while vacationing in Atlantic City, he decided that every family working for him ought to have a chance to enjoy the beach, so he built a camp in Florida and took the first busload of mill families down for what became a yearly vacation.

In 1938, Donald Comer began one of the nation’s first profit-sharing plans. By 1941 the program was in effect in all the company’s plants with employees drawing profit-sharing checks amounting to forty percent of their base pay in some years. Comer saw it as a good investment. ‘This isn’t profit-sharing,” he once said, “it’s a partnership with people.”

Mr. Comer created “partnerships with people” in his other business dealings as well. He had the capacity, the Birmingham News noted, “to discuss cotton with an eye and a heart for the cotton farmer, the man who planted and picked the cotton, the ginner, the warehouseman and all who touched it…Donald Comer had a way of seeing everybody’s problem and wanting them all to come out well.”

A number of the problems Comer saw and – helped to solve – were nationwide. In the 1930s he worked to strengthen child labor laws and to bring into line cotton firms paying less than the minimum wage As President of the American Cotton Manufacturers Association, he fought to protect the industry from the influx of unrestricted Japanese imports and served on a U.S. mission to Japan that resulted in the establishment of voluntary quotas by the Japanese. During World War II, he served on the National Defense Advisory Commission and the War Labor Board, and in 1948, he returned to Japan at the request of General Douglas MacArthur to assist the Japanese in rebuilding their war-shattered textile industry.

Concerned about the high level of unemployment in Alabama, Comer led the movement to convert war plants in Talladega County to peacetime uses, and he worked tirelessly toward the establishment of the Coosa River Newsprint Company. In 1942, he joined with many others in creating the Southern Research Institute, which he served as a trustee for the rest of his life.

Devoting much of his time to civic and religious activities, Comer was a member of the Board of Stewards of Birmingham’s First Methodist Church. He served on the Laymen’s National Committee of the American Bible Society; he was on the board of the Y.M.C.A. for more than half his life; and for many years, he was chairman of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Donald Comer’s unstinting contributions to the lives of others were recognized repeatedly during his lifetime. In 1944 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Birmingham Southern College; in 1947 Dixie Business Magazine named him the “South’s Man of the Year”; and in 1952, the citizens of Sylacauga held a “Donald Comer Day” celebration that was attended by more than 12,000 people. The Society for the Advancement of Management presented him its National Human Relations Award for 1953, and in 1961, B’nai B’rith of Birmingham bestowed on him its humanitarian award.

Still working five or six days a week after he reached the age of 80, Mr. Comer never stopped pursuing his many interests, and he never failed to keep in touch with the people who worked for him. Long before he died in 1963, it was clear that his life-long “partnership with people” had been an unquestioned success. He was, as one of his many eulogists put it, “an outstanding example of the social-consciousness of American businessmen, one of the bright distinguishing marks of the modern-day free enterprise system.”

But Donald Comer’s deeds speak for themselves. As another eulogist wrote, “His life represents its own memorial wreath, and it is and was a lovely green accomplishment.”

George Gordon Crawford

• September 20th, 2021

In 1891, twenty-two-year-old George Gordon Crawford sat in a classroom at Karl Eberhard University in Germany.

His professors had told him that the South’s industry was in a stage comparable to the Middle Ages. Little did he know that he would take a personal hand in reshaping this image. Ironmaster, civic leader, and humanitarian, George Crawford would be the driving force to make the South a leader in the industry.

Born on August 24, 1869, on a plantation in Morgan County, Georgia, George Gordon Crawford was the son of George and Margarette Crawford. The elder Crawford, a Confederate veteran, was a surgeon and taught medicine in Atlanta.

Young George attended high school in Atlanta and upon graduation enrolled in the Georgia Military and Agricultural College in Milledgeville. He later attended the Georgia School of Technology where in 1890 he received his Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering, a member of the first graduating class. The following year he enrolled in Karl Eberhard University in Tuebingen, Germany, where he studied chemistry.

Upon the completion of his studies in 1892, Crawford returned to the United States where Sloss Iron and Steel Company of Birmingham hired him as a draftsman. But within a few months, the Carnegie Steel Company offered him a position as a chemist with the Edgar Thomson Works and he accepted.

Crawford’s diligence made him a candidate for promotions. He was soon given responsibilities in the engineering department. Later, he was made assistant superintendent of the blast furnaces. In 1897 the National Tube Company hired him as superintendent of its blast furnaces and steelworks. But within two years Carnegie Steel had lured him back as superintendent of the Edgar Thomson blast furnaces.

In 1901, Judge Elbert H. Gary and a group of financiers purchased Carnegie Steel and formed United States Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation. As a result of the reorganization, Crawford was promoted to manager of the National Department of the National Tube Company, one of the largest plants of U.S. Steel. Crawford soon demonstrated his business acumen. Realizing that the four plants that comprised National Tube were outdated, he recommended modernization of the plants. During his administration he totally rebuilt National Tube’s plants for $13,000,000, making them efficient and the largest in the world.

Crawford had served his “apprenticeship” and was well-versed in all phases of iron and steel making. Industry sources acknowledged his ability as an engineer, a metallurgist, and a corporate executive. He was now ready for greater challenges and additional responsibilities. In 1907 U.S. Steel acquired the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company (commonly called the Tennessee Company or TCI). The Tennessee Company was beset by a number of technical and labor problems. A number of previous TCI ironmasters had been unsuccessful in producing steel that could compete with Northern furnaces. Crawford was offered the position of TCI President, but he was reluctant to accept. Only at the insistence of Judge Gary, Chairman of the Board of U.S. Steel, and other corporate officers, did Crawford accept. It was a challenge and he met it head-on. Crawford’s plan to overcome TCI’s problems was two-fold. First, he would solve the technical problems facing the company by rehabilitating the existing plants and then planning for expansion. This way he hoped to improve efficiency and production. Second, Crawford planned to simultaneously solve labor problems. At one time the Tennessee Company had a labor turnover of 400 percent. By improving the medical, living, and social conditions of the workers, he could provide a steady supply of laborers. Both plans would be expensive, but he had the complete backing of Judge Gary and the U.S. Steel finance committee.

Immediately, Crawford launched his rebuilding and expansion program. Within the first three years of his Presidency, a new limestone quarry and two new coal mines were opened. Other rebuilding or expansion plans over the years involved blast furnaces, wire mills, coke plants, forging mills, the electric power plant, and the Fairfield Car Works (later the Pullman Car Manufacturing Company). Particularly significant was the construction of the Bayview Dam which provided over three billion gallons of water for TCI. Throughout Crawford’s presidency, a new construction or rebuilding job was started almost every year. During the two decades he headed TCI, more than 100 million dollars were expended on capital improvements.

In solving the firm’s labor problems, Crawford implemented a multifaceted plan. He remodeled substandard housing and built new homes in planned company towns. Included in these worker villages were churches, schools, playgrounds, and other recreation facilities. The schools were among the best in the South. Crawford hired experienced social workers to organize activities in the villages. Social workers taught courses in housekeeping and nutrition and organized cultural activities for workers and their families. To improve medical services, Crawford hired Dr. Lloyd Noland from the staff of William Crawford Gorgas of the Panama Canal. Noland first improved sanitation by draining swamps and closing polluted water sources. Noland also headed a hospital to provide medical services to the Tennessee Company’s workers and their families. As a result of these improvements, TCI workers had a higher standard of living than other workers in the Birmingham District. Crawford had succeeded. He had cut absenteeism in half and by 1930 the labor turnover rate had dropped to approximately 5 percent.

Between business activities, Crawford met Margaret Richardson of New Orleans. After a brief courtship, they were married in Crescent City on February 1, 1911. They later became the parents of one daughter, Margaret.

Crawford’s interest in Southern economic development extended beyond the industry. He recognized the interdependence of industry and agriculture, and as a corporate executive sought to develop agriculture as well as transportation facilities. As TCI President he established the Farm Products Division to provide agricultural advice and promote the sale of farm products. Under Crawford’s guidance, the Tennessee Company produced fertilizer from high phosphorous slag. He promoted the development of the Alabama State Fair and the Southern forestry industry. Crawford was a member of the Alabama State Harbor Commission and served as the first chairman of the Alabama State Docks Commission, allowing him to work for improved dock facilities at Mobile and Birmingham Port on the Black Warrior River.

Because of his distinguished service to industry and agriculture, George Crawford received a number of honors. In 1925 the Ensley Kiwanis Club presented him with a silver loving cup for his “services to people of the area.” That same year he was chosen as Alabama’s outstanding business leader by the Living Hall of Fame and dubbed “Alabama’s First Citizen.” Five years later, upon his retirement from TCI, he received a loving cup that was totally paid for by only small contributions from hundreds of Alabamians. In 1931, Georgia Tech, his alma mater, conferred upon him a Doctor of Science Degree.

In 1930, after twenty-three years as President of the Tennessee Company, Crawford resigned and accepted a position as President of Jones Laughlin Steel Corporation. He held this position until 1935 when he retired and returned to Birmingham. On March 20, 1936, Crawford died in the Tennessee Company Hospital, the health care facility he had built. His final resting place is in Alabama.

George Crawford had a profound impact on Alabama and the South. When he died in 1936, he was praised by a number of people, but perhaps the highest praise came from another iron master: “The Tennessee Company is a Monument to George Gordon Crawford … “

Herbert Eugene Westervelt

• September 20th, 2021

Herbert Eugene Westervelt pioneered the modern paper industry in his chosen home state, Alabama, when his company’s far-flung pulp, paper, converting, and administrative operation were consolidated in Tuscaloosa in 1929 under the new name of Gulf States Paper Corporation.

His farsightedness and perseverance put him in the vanguard of that industrial revolution which brought new prosperity to the Southern economy.

Westervelt was born in the frontier town, Oskaloosa, Iowa, on November 20, 1858. His father, a graduate of Oberlin College and a Congregational minister, later moved the family back to Oberlin, Ohio, where proper educational advantages were available for young eight-year-old Herb and the older boys approaching college age. To supplement the meager income of a minister, Father Westervelt opened a small grocery business. All four boys helped in the little store, which opened its doors at 6 p.m. and took orders through the evenings. Herbert and his brothers made deliveries at night, pulling a two-wheeled cart on their rounds. Their hurried evening meals consisted of cheese and crackers, consumed in such amounts that his daughter later recalled, “I cannot remember that my father ever willingly ate a bite of cheese in later life!”

A penny and a nickel at a time, young Herb saved his money. At last, he accumulated a $75 hoard, which he invested in a sight-unseen gold mine! Years later, he observed the only gold he got out of the venture was the seal on the stock certificate and a lot of golden experience.

Those early days, with the brothers working together, not only laid seeds of business acumen but established a perseverance and family tradition of cooperation which was the springboard for the paper company that is still today family-owned.

After two years at Oberlin College, young Westervelt felt his parents had sacrificed enough to educate their sons (the oldest three had graduated) and he determined to make his own contributions to his family. By the time he was28 years of age, he had proved a claim of 400 acres in Dakota Territory, where his parents had begun a new frontier mission; worked as a salesman for a wholesale paper business established by his oldest brother, Ed; had become a partner in the new Marseilles (Indiana) Paper Company which made a coarse, brittle wrapping paper from wheat straw; and had established his own affiliated business selling paper, bags, and twine under the name of South Bend Paper Company.

“Brother Herb got his brains from Mother and his sense from Father, and he had plenty of both,” recalled Brother Ed in later years, who had asked Herb to run another paper mill at Springfield, Illinois, in 1887. His salary was to come from what profits he could produce, and within three years Herb owned the mill, as he and his brother had planned. He had also set up another paper jobbing business, which ranged into surrounding states selling plain and printed sacks, sheet and roll papers, twine, butter plates, oyster pails, and a host of other paper products of the day.

By 1891, as the owner of a prospering paper manufacturing and merchandising concern, he was one of Springfield’s most promising young men. Now he started another venture he had been postponing for a long time; the patient Miss Emma Neilson of Marseilles, Illinois, became Mrs. Herbert Eugene Westervelt. Two years later, farsighted Herb sold out to a large corporation that was trying to monopolize the straw paper business, then turned right around to prove that there still was a definite role for the small independent paper manufacturer.

The Prairie State Paper Company of Taylorville, Illinois was incorporated at the end of 1893, with Herb owning 60% of the stock. Proving his resourcefulness, he purchased the large boiler house to be dismantled from the Chicago World’s Fair and arranged for it to be sent to Taylorville, along with additional lumber from other buildings. Almost-new papermaking machinery came from a defunct operation in Nebraska. “It was all cheap,” he reported, adding, “It had to be for us.”

The Taylorville firm made a good start, and in 1897 a converting operation was added for the manufacture of satchel-bottomed sugar bags. But Westervelt’s puzzle-solving genius was challenged to patent a machine that would make multi-purpose bags that would fold out “to stand on their own bottoms.” For the next few years, he led a hectic life, traveling for his paper firm and working diligently in his machine shop at his home in South Bend. Before long he had the promise of a machine that in many respects was simpler and made a better product than any existing machines, which were protected by more than 200 patents.

And so the E-Z Opener was invented, the paper bags that opened “with a flick of the wrist,” which became the standard grocery bag in America. The company’s byword soon became “Quality Counts,” and throughout the years that motto was reflected from every phase of operations.

The first full set of the new grocery bag machines expanded the operations of the South Bend Paper Company. To meet orders, work often had to be on an overtime basis. All available males turned out to run the machines, including the rangy gentleman from the front office. With shined shoes and blue serge peeking out from under striped coveralls, he was called “Uncle Sam” by his employees. The coveralls even had stars on the edges.

Prairie State Paper also became primarily a paper bag manufacturer. Then an operation was added at Fulton, New York, and another near Mexico City. In 1911, the Illinois operations were moved to Decatur. With 60 bag machines and a number of presses, the new plant had much more capacity. E-Z Opener was on the march.

Herb Westervelt had helped pioneer the paper bag industry. Now he was to take a leading part in another phase of the industry: paper’s move to the South.

Scandinavian wood pulps had recently introduced kraft paper to the country. In 1912 E-Z Opener established a bag factory in Orange, Texas, to make the very first bags from the first kraft paper made successfully from southern pine. It soon became apparent to Westervelt that the future of the entire paper industry lay in the forests of the southern states, and he committed E-Z Opener Bag firmly and permanently to the growth of the paper industry in the South.

An idle pulp and paper mill, built to utilize the refuse from sugar cane, was obtained in 1916 at Braithwaite, Louisiana, a few miles below New Orleans. It was a rusty, wreck of a place, but had potential. E-Z Opener converted the machinery for wood pulp use, and the mill assured a supply of paper through the war years. In 1918 the Fulton, New York bag factory was moved to New Orleans to be near the Braithwaite operation.

Disaster upon disaster was to be encountered at Braithwaite. Major fires and floods took their toll, but each time, persevering Herb Westervelt saw to it that the mill emerged a more modern and efficient operation as it was rebuilt. But still, the Louisiana facilities were too small and too uneconomical to meet product demand.

A search began throughout the South for a suitable new plant site. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was selected. There were plentiful supplies of pulpwood, coal, lime, water, labor, and good transportation facilities. Here E-Z Opener built Alabama’s first modern pulp and paper mill, with its connected bag factory. In April 1929, southern kraft paper began rolling off the new machine in Tuscaloosa. In keeping with his commitment to his new corporate home in Alabama, all facilities, including administrative functions, were consolidated in Tuscaloosa, and the firm was renamed Gulf States Paper Corporation.

Herbert Eugene Westervelt was now in his seventies, and much of the daily operations were turned over to his colleagues-many of whom had stayed with him from the company’s beginning days in the mid-west-and to his daughter, Mildred Westervelt Warner, who became executive vice president.

Over the years, Westervelt had developed strong associates and had encouraged them to shoulder the responsibilities of the business, and now inspiration still came from the quiet, avid world traveler. His outstanding characteristic, his daughter noted, was his balanced sense of values.

‘That is why he would meet the big troubles and tragedies of life with unflinching courage and unfailing patience,” she said. Not only did he meet business and industry problems head-on, as well as fires and floods of facilities, but he experienced the untimely deaths of his youngest daughter and a grandson.

His death on September 3, 1938, came as a blow not only to his devoted family and to the company, which he had led for 54 years, but to the paper industry as a whole.

The minister of the First Presbyterian Church, in which denomination Westervelt rendered noted Christian service, spoke tellingly of Herbert Eugene Westervelt’s career:

He set his heart on big things. There are men who spend their lives, if not on trivialities, at least on the secondary things of life … Mr. Westervelt made a selection of three great objectives: his church, his home, his business.

His quality counted.

Thomas Dameron Russell

• September 20th, 2021

Thomas Dameron Russell, one of the first two living inductees to the Alabama Business Hall of Fame, carries forward an illustrious name in the history of the textile industry in the South.

That history is so intertwined with the Russell family of Alexander City as to be almost inseparable.

Tom Russell was born in 1903 in Alexander City, the second son of Benjamin Russell and Roberta McDonald Russell.

Benjamin Russell founded Russell Mills in 1902 and his three sons and daughter grew up during the pioneer days of the firm. The three boys all finished high school in Alexander City, working summers in almost every job connected with the family business, and then going on to The University of Alabama before returning to take a place beside their father.

Tom Russell completed his college work in 1925, and after a short tour of Europe became purchasing agent for Russell Mills and assistant to his father. The assistant’s title carried broad duties, and Russell remembers well that his father had him doing many things: unloading bricks, lime, and mortar and performing any other duty that needed doing. He worked in the mornings in the mill office and in the afternoons in the spinning mill.

By 1926, Tom Russell had been appointed Vice-President of the Russell Foundry, serving as general manager of this operation until 1941. In the 1930s, he along with his brothers, Benjamin Commander Russell and Robert Alston Russell, became Vice-Presidents of the Russell Manufacturing Company. Later his sister, Elisabeth Russell Alison, was also appointed as a Vice-President. In December of 1941, shortly after the opening of the Second World War, their father’s long and fruitful life ended. Tom Russell became President of Russell Foundry, and his brother Ben succeeded their father as President of the Russell Manufacturing Company. Under this administration, the company continued to expand to meet the nation’s military needs during the Second World War. The Russell Mills responded magnificently, and clothing flowed in ever-increasing quantities to the Armed Forces.

The war years wore heavily on Ben Russell, an excellent leader of men. In late 1944-45, he became ill and in January 1945, he died. Tom Russell became President of the company. Russell moved into a very difficult situation. With war’s end, a tremendous increase in demand for textiles ensued, taxes were lowered, and manpower returned from the front. To the casual observer, it would have seemed a heyday for the textile manufacturing industry, but inherent problems also existed. During the war, it was impossible to obtain new machinery or to repair worn-out machinery. Thus, it was necessary for Russell to head a program of expansion, replacement, and modernization. The company expanded rapidly: new buildings were built, additional machinery was added, and existing machinery repaired, but the boom which had been caused by the end of the war also came to an end in late 1948. Low-profit margins brought the realization that the bonanza of orders and profits was not a built-in fixture of the textile industry. Conditions forced a re-examination of the position of the company and production methods. Efficiency had to be improved, economies affected across the board, new methods employed, and labor-saving machinery located and installed.

Tom Russell more than met the challenge. The company continued profitably and was in excellent shape to meet the emergency of the Korean conflict. War’s end again brought new problems. Prices hit new lows, demand for textiles dropped disastrously, inventories continued to build to almost an all-time high, and again it was time to make a very critical self-examination of production, sales, and expenses.

Another specter soon appeared in the form of competition from foreign countries. Textile products from the Far East, aided by the liberal tariff policy of the government, posed a serious threat to the American textile industry. Again Russell Mills responded by refusing to pile up excess inventories which would weaken the price structure and by introducing newer, more competitive technology.

As the years turned to decades, Tom Russell met all challenges squarely. The company continued to grow and Russell moved from the Presidency to the Chairman of the Board of an incorporated Russell Corporation.

This story could end here and be an outstanding chronicle of success, but the story of Tom Russell is a story of far more than success in business. His accomplishments outside the field of Russell Corporation, within the community, and the section at large, are legion. He can count memberships on the board, or chairmanships of the board, or positions as president or director of more than two score corporations or associations. In addition, he has served as a member of the board of trustees of four separate educational establishments and has been honored as a member of Omicron Delta Kappa and Phi Psi. He is a recipient of the William Crawford Gorgas Award, a member of the Alabama Academy of Honor, and recipient of the honorary degree of the Doctor of Laws from his alma mater, The University of Alabama.

But even more, Tom Russell and his wife, Julia, understanding fully that axiom of Thomas Jefferson that “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged,” have worked tirelessly over the decades to aid education toward the general well-being of their fellow citizens. As a recognition of the debt owed by the institutions of higher learning to Russell and his wife, college buildings located at Samford University, Alexander City Junior College, and Tuskegee Institute have been named for Thomas D. Russell and buildings at The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama in Birmingham have been named for Thomas D. and Julia Russell. Probably no private citizen within Alabama has had his name attached to as many buildings of institutions of higher learning as has Thomas D. Russell.

Three-quarters of a century has passed since the meager beginnings of the Russell Manufacturing Corporation. Over the years that company has dealt fairly and honestly with its customers and those who worked for it. This company, through good stewardship, has been run for the benefit of its employees, the community, and the state in which it is located. Nearly twenty years ago, Thomas Russell, in telling the story of Benjamin Russell and the Russell Manufacturing Company, stated:

The Russell family has had a heritage of public trust and responsibility to uphold. Many calls are made for its members to assume duties in many phases of activity: civic, social, and business. The members of this family have always lived up to their obligations and have taken on many jobs in civic organizations and business associations and in education.

Thomas Russell has more than lived up to that heritage and responsibility in the civic, social, business, and educational fields. He has been a giant among men in his generation.

NOTE: Portions of this biography are extracted from, “Russell of Alabama,” Thomas D. Russell, the Newcomen Society in North America.

Balpha Lonnie Noojin

• September 20th, 2021

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a standard ingredient for business or political success in Alabama was to be the descendent of a weathered confederate veteran from Central or South Alabama.

Lonnie Noojin found another way in attaining his successful position in the state. In the first place, he was born (in August 1885) in the hills of Marshall County in North Alabama, but to confuse matters even more, his grandfather, who had been sent to Alabama when he was left fatherless, returned to his native state Kentucky to don the blue, rather than the gray uniform. These circumstances apparently did not bother the exceptionally versatile Noojin; thus, he started life with no special advantages other than a sound mind and a sound body.

Noojin was educated in the public elementary and high schools about Attalla and Sand Mountain and graduated from high school in 1902. He worked for a year, to acquire enough funds to attend college, and in 1903 he entered North Alabama Conference College (Birmingham Southern). He remained there for one year and then left school to accumulate funds for further studies. He then entered The University of Alabama and received the Bachelor of Science degree from the Capstone in 1908. He was particularly active while at the University, serving as both the associate editor of the student newspaper and the school annual and also as president of the University Glee Club. When Phi Beta Kappa was reactivated in 1913 at the University for the first time since Civil War Days, he was one of the few former students chosen for induction.

Noojin was a superb athlete and was an outstanding member of the University baseball team Following graduation, he played professional baseball in a number of minor leagues in the South, ultimately playing in the major leagues for the Cincinnati Reds. After his playing days, he served as manager of the Asheville team in the Carolina League.

Noojin moved from professional baseball into education, and for some years taught at the Agricultural School in Blountsville, and for one year at the Agricultural School in Albertville. His tenure in Albertville was a fortunate period in his life, for there he met Willie Lucille McNaron, a granddaughter of the town’s founder, Major L. S. Emmet, a member of the historical Robert Emmet family of Dublin, Ireland. He married her in December of 1916.

From Albertville, he was invited to Howard College in Birmingham (Samford University) as Director of Athletics, coach of football and baseball, and Principal of Howard Academy High School. After some years at Howard, he was summoned to the Capstone in 1915 as Director of Athletics and Instructor in Romance Languages. To look at his record, we surmise that giants walked the earth in those days, for it is recorded that not only was he Director of Athletics, but also Instructor of English, French, and Spanish as well as Physics and Chemistry. Considering the number of subjects Noojin was expected to teach and the additional duties assigned to him, it is not surprising that in 1919 he resigned from the university to join his brother, R. 0. Noojin, in the hardware business in Gadsden.

The Noojin brothers operated a hardware store until 1923, when they founded the Noojin Supply Company, selling both hardware and building materials. Three years later, Lonnie bought his brother’s interest in the firm and became the sole owner. Throughout the years, Noojin worked hard to make his business successful and became active in a long list of civic and philanthropic activities.

During the next four decades, he became a member of the Board of Directors of the American National Bank of Gadsden, a member of and Secretary to the Board of Directors of the Alabama Power Company, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Gadsden Chamber of Commerce. He served as Lieutenant Governor of the Alabama Kiwanis Club, member of the Gadsden Rotary Club, member of the Board of Directors of the Associated Industries of Alabama, and Chairman of the Highways User’s Conference. He also served as President of the Gadsden Music Association, the Alabama Building Material Association, and the Southern Retail Hardware Association. He was Chairman of The University of Alabama Alumni Association from 1939 to 1940 and founded the Alumni Loyalty Fund of that association. Additionally, he was President of the Board of Trustees of the Wesley Foundation for The University of Alabama, President of the Board of Trustees of the National Home and Property Owners Foundation, a member and Chairman of the Board of Stewards of the First Methodist Church of Gadsden, and a member of the Newcomen Society, the Defense Saving Bond Committee for the State of Alabama, and the Board of Trustees of The University of Alabama.

As a member of the Board of Trustees of the University, he was appointed by Governor Jim Folsom to be a member of the Steering Committee to recommend a location for the University of Alabama Medical School, which at the time was to be moved from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham. Noojin was chosen as a member of a committee whose job was to build new facilities and to acquire the existing Hillman and Jefferson hospitals. His interest in medical school was so great that he contemplated turning his business over to his son and moving temporarily to Birmingham so that he could actively oversee and protect the interest of the State and the University. Unfortunately, Noojin died before the work was completed.

In any discussion of the life of Lonnie Noojin, his political affiliations play a large part, for he was an outstanding figure in the Alabama State Republican Party. He was a member of the Republican State Committee and was for his last twelve years the Republican National Committeeman for the State of Alabama.

Noojin had a capacity for understanding problems and solving them that was long recognized in the state. As difficult as it was to be a Republican leader during the days of Franklin Roosevelt, and particularly in a one-party South, Noojin led his party with energy and diligence.

As a Republican National Committeeman, Noojin was identified with the Wilkies and the Tafts. Both he and his wife knew the Deweys quite well and the families occupied adjoining hotel suites when Dewey was nominated for President. It was rumored that Senator Taft said that if he were elected President the cabinet member he would pick from the South would be Lonnie Noojin. Even though Noojin took a stand with the minority party in Alabama, he had numerous friends among the Democrats who thought highly of him. Members of both parties knew him to be a man of his word. Democratic Lieutenant Governor of Alabama, J.C. Inzer, for example, said that:

Lonnie Noojin believed in and worked for good government. He was an able and forceful leader in all matters seeking to make our cities, state, and nation a better place in which to live. He was honest, faithful, courageous, and charitable, beloved by his family, his church, his friends, and his country. Mr. Noojin’s life was a shining example of the kind of life each of us should strive to live.

On September 7, 1950, Noojin passed away in Gadsden, Alabama, a highly successful businessman who lived gracefully and endeared himself to all who had the opportunity to know him. Perhaps his most appropriate epitaph was his own comment to a Catholic sister nurse at the Holy Name of Jesus Hospital in Gadsden: “All I have ever done which was worthwhile in my life is what I have tried to do for humanity and concerning things of the spirit.”

Charles Anglin Hamilton

• September 20th, 2021

Charles Anglin Hamilton was born in Anniston, Alabama, on January 28, 1876, a son of James Newton and Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, pioneer settlers in Northeast Alabama.

The elder Hamilton was a carpenter. The story is told that Charles was the first child born within the city limits after Anniston’s incorporation. Certainly, the cast iron pipe industry that developed in Anniston is the history of Charles Hamilton as well.

Anniston, the Model City, was incorporated in 1872 as a private town belonging to the Woodstock Iron Company. Its early economy was, of course, based on the iron industry and manufacturing processes related to iron. Young Hamilton, or Tobe as he was nicknamed, began work at the age of eight as a water boy at Hunter’s Ore Bank in the western section of town. He literally learned the iron trade from the ground up.

By the time that Hamilton had advanced to proficiency in the art of pipe molding, he decided to start a family. In April 1897, he married Margery Embry of Calhoun County. They later became the parents of four children. Two children, Frank and Charles, learned the pipe business and followed in their father’s footsteps while another son Ralph held other financial interests in Anniston. Julia, Tobe’s daughter, married an Anniston businessman.

Hamilton’s career reads like that of a hero of a Horatio Alger novel. Hamilton never attended high school, working instead to support himself and his widowed mother. As an adult, he attended night school, but from a tender age, his education was the practical experience he could obtain for himself. His performance of early, menial chores won him the admiration of coworkers and employers, and he advanced successively to more demanding jobs. After his days as a water boy, the Anniston Pipe Company hired him to make hay rope and sift sand, both processes used in pipe molding. Hamilton remained with the company for ten years until it closed in the midst of economic depression. The Hercules Pipe Company next hired him, and he spent two years learning the art of molding and pipe ramming. The coming of the Hercules Company to Anniston did much to restore business confidence shaken by the depression years of the 1890s.

When the Hercules Company closed, Central Foundry hired him as a molder and he remained there for four years. In 1905 Anniston Foundry Company employed him as a superintendent, a position he held until 1912. During these years he was learning all aspects of pipe manufacturing and saving money to enter business on his own. In 1912, Hamilton, Major W. F. Johnston, and Thomas E. Kilby, later Governor of Alabama, purchased an inactive plant facility and formed the Alabama Pipe and Foundry Company. Hamilton was President and General Manager. Kilby served as Chairman of the Board. Soon Hamilton and his partners began purchasing other properties. In 1915 they acquired Standard Foundry and Ornamental Foundry. Five years later they purchased Lynchburg Pressure Pipe Company and thereby became the first manufacturers in Anniston of both soil and pressure pipe.

Hamilton had a policy of investing profits back into his business and his city. He believed that Anniston and its citizens could benefit from his own success, which he credited to the fact that he had faith in Anniston and remained in his hometown. “I attribute my success to the fact that I have purposely remained in Anniston,” remarked Hamilton. Once, before achieving his dream of owning a foundry, he had been offered a job in another city at double his current salary. He refused, preferring to seek his fortune in Anniston.

Hamilton also became actively involved in all phases of community life. In 1914 he was elected to the Anniston City Council. During this period there was considerable lawlessness in Anniston. Several police officers had been killed. As chairman of the Police Committee, Hamilton helped restore law and order and at the same time increased the efficiency of the Police Department. By 1920 the job was done, and Tobe Hamilton’s political ambitions were satisfied.

By 1924 Hamilton had reorganized the Alabama Pipe and Foundry Company, consolidating new acquisitions and older properties into the Alabama Pipe Company. This corporation, manufacturers of cast iron soil and pressure pipe, was the largest of its kind in the world. It consisted of twelve plants in Alabama and Tennessee and sales offices and warehouses in Chicago and New York. Later the company also acquired a plant in Kansas City, Missouri. Alabama Pipe manufactured cast iron water, gas, and sanitary pipes and fittings. The firm sold its products throughout the United States, as well as in Mexico and South and Central America.

Tobe Hamilton continued his civic work as he built his business. In 1928 he was elected President of the Anniston Chamber of Commerce and was the only individual to serve in that elected office for two consecutive terms. In 1917 the Chamber of Commerce had purchased land and presented it to the War Department as the site for Fort McClellan. As a result, the Chamber had incurred a heavy debt. Hamilton, in one of his first acts as President, created a five-year plan to amortize the debt. Another Hamilton achievement was the creation of the Inter-Club Council which was the predecessor of the Community Chest.

Hamilton was also active in church work. He was a member of the First Methodist Church where he served as a steward. For many years he was chairman of the finance committee. He was a member of the Country Club, of which he served as president, and was a member of the Rotary Club, among other organizations.

As Hamilton became financially able, he turned his profits into investments in Anniston. He invested in downtown Anniston business properties and was a stockholder in the Anniston Land Company. He also served as president or director of numerous Anniston companies: Anniston Ice and Coal Company, Polar Ice and Coal Company, City Bank and Trust Company, and Commercial National Bank. He was a director and principal stockholder of the Anniston

National Bank and the First National Bank of that city. His investments in the Anniston business community showed his deep faith in and commitment to his native city.

Hamilton was also involved in other enterprises in the state. He was a larger stockholder or director in Birmingham Smelting and Refining Company, Birmingham Fire Insurance Company, Alabama Ice Company, and the Allstate Life Insurance Company of Montgomery. Other businesses sought his business acumen.

Late in life, Hamilton suffered from heart ailments and on June 12, 1942, he died after a lengthy illness. The citizens of Anniston lost a civic-minded man committed to making his community an attractive and prosperous place.