John R. Miller, Jr.

• October 25th, 2021

Like his father and grandfather before him, John R. Miller, Jr. will be a part of the T.R. Miller Mill Company until he dies.

And like his father and grandfather before him, John R. Miller, Jr., now serving as director and chairman of the board of the company where he has been employed for fifty years, believes with all his heart that the continued success is due to the vision his family shares for its future.

Born May 8, 1920, to John R. and Lucille McGowin Miller, John is a native of Brewton, Alabama, where he received his early education before attending Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, from 1934-1938. Upon graduation from that institution, he then attended the University of Virginia and The University of Alabama, leaving his academic career to answer the call to service for his country. John served as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, 8th Air Force, in the European Theatre of Operations in World War II, receiving the decorations of Air Medal, E.T.O. Medal, and a Presidential Citation, and was honorably discharged with the rank of major.

It was during his time in the service that he married Virginia Kersh of Monroe, Louisiana, with whom he would later have four children: Nancy M. Melton, J. Richard Miller III, David Earl Miller, and Jean M. Stimpson. Remembering his childhood, Richard Miller said his memories of his father will always be inextricably linked with fishing and fun, and with the image of a man who encouraged his children to follow their own paths. “He always did and continues to encourage us to pursue our dreams without constraints,” said Richard.

Upon returning to Brewton after his discharge from the service, John was formally employed by T.R. Miller Mill Company, where he worked at various positions in the manufacturing division before being elected a director in 1946. He served as vice president and director from 1947-1967, then assumed the presidency, which he held through 1986 when he was then named chairman.

Over the years, the Miller family’s vision for its business has played out into a solid reality. When John’s grandfather, Thomas R. Miller, purchased a small, water-driven mill along Cedar Creek in 1872, he in all likelihood did not envision its growth into a firm that is one of the largest timberland owners and diversified wood products operations in the South. In his day, the waters of Cedar Creek transported logs to the mill from the vast virgin forest nearby and turned the mill as well. Later those same waters transported the timber to Pensacola, Florida, for export. John Miller explained that with the expansion of lumber markets, T.R. Miller later decided to relocate the mill to the town of Brewton, where it was converted to a steam-powered operation in 1892. The new mill, built along the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, enabled T.R. Miller’s new· company to ship its products by rail as well as water.

“Timber has been good to us for many years,” said John. “Actually, I’m not the first Miller to say that. My father used to remind each of us that if the company was to survive and grow, we must constantly be aware of the land – and of what it can provide sensing that diversification was the way to go, John’s father was instrumental in the company establishing veneer mills, a wire-bound box plant, and a treating operation. Through the years, John has been involved in helping to establish any number of companies, from vineyards in California, television and cellular phone companies across the United States, and commercial and residential real estate, to name but a few. These operations are a bit more sophisticated and far-flung than they were in the days when Thomas R. Miller laid down his hoe and swore he’d never chop another row of cotton again, thus beginning a new era in his family’s history.

“My first thought when you mention my father’s approach to business is that Daddy always approached everything – business or anything else – from a totally honest standpoint,” Richard said. ”Whatever he was involved in, it had to be good for both parties. Integrity is the word that comes to mind. He is probably the nicest guy I’ve ever known – that’s not to say he’s soft in approach – he’s just basically a good people person.

“He can reach compromises when there are none to be had.”

And it was that combination of people skills, business acumen, and integrity that made John Miller and his company major players in the discovery and subsequent drilling of Jay Oil Field along with the Escambia County, Alabama-Florida line – a find that meant the discovery of the largest finding of oil in the lower forty-eight states in the last fifty years. That ability to facilitate a compromise also led in 1968 to a deal that John Miller will always consider one of the highlights of his more than half-century-long business career, said Richard. For it was that year that Container Corporation of America had acquired a more than 51 percent share of T.R. Miller Mill Company – an acquisition that would have meant the end of three generations of family ownership of the forest products industrial site. However, prior to the sale being finalized, John convinced Container’s chairman to allow the family to buy enough of the offered stock so that the Millers could retain controlling interest.

“That deal in 1968 allowed the families to remain in control of what has been an asset for our family now into the fourth generation,” Richard said with pride. The original owners were able to purchase the remaining stock held outside the company in 1989.

And as John Miller has served as the third-generation patriarch for his family and business, he has also not neglected his commitment to his church, his community, or his state. He and his wife, Virginia, showed their firm commitment to the future of Alabama’s forestland and its wood products industry in the early 1990s when they made a gift of prime timberland to Mobile College. The proceeds from the sale of the property were directed to the college’s Forest Resources Learning Center, a joint initiative of the Alabama Forest Resources Center and Mobile College.

“The center is a worthwhile project,” said John Miller, whose company received the coveted Forest Conservationist of the Year Award from the Board of Directors of the Alabama Wildlife Federation in 1995. “I believe that the continued success of the industry depends on a better understanding of environmental stewardship and good land practices.” He emphasized that this will only happen if the next generation understands the importance of forestry issues.

Thanks to John R. Miller, Jr., the next generation has a better chance.

Earl M. McGowin

• October 20th, 2021

Earl McGowin decided early on in his career as an elected official not to play political games with the voters of Alabama.

“I went out to the people of Butler County with a number of disadvantages,” he recalled late in his life. “I was inexperienced, young, and I had a mustache.” That mustache, wrote Alabama journalist James Saxon Childers, told a story about McGowin that nothing else could tell so well.

When he was thinking of running for office, a friend told him to shave it off. Earl said, “It’s my mustache. It’s a part of me. If I should shave it off, I’d be doing a political trick and I’m damned if I’ll start by tricking them, by pretending something merely to get their votes. They’ll have to take me with my mustache and all my other detriments, or else they’ll have to leave me out.” They took him.

Earl Mason McGowin was born November 18, 1901, to James Greeley McGowin and Essie Stallworth McGowin in Brewton, Alabama. A product of the public schools of Chapman and Greenville, Alabama, he received a degree from The University of Alabama in 1921, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. Out of fourteen candidates from Alabama, he was elected a Rhodes Scholar and attended Pembroke College at Oxford University in England from 1922-1925. Earl’s zest for politics, friends said later, was kindled during that time. Again, words from journalist James Childers: “Earl would go to the House of Commons to listen to the debates … always it was government with McGowin. That was what he was studying at Oxford.” Although Earl returned home to the family business after his experience abroad, his ties with the British institution and the program remained strong. The well-stocked McGowin library at Pembroke College, donated by the family in 1974, is one of the prominent landmarks of the campus, and Earl served for many years as secretary of the Alabama Rhodes Scholarship selection committee.

In the book Earl McGowin of Alabama, the story is told of the young McGowin’s return to Chapman to work at W.T. Smith Lumber Company. He arrived from Europe Friday, September 1, 1925. His father greeted him with warmth, but also with the admonition: “I’ll expect you at work Monday morning. Remember, you’re on your own.” Earl quickly became immersed in and conversant with the administrative acts of sawmilling, learning of lumber and mills, ripsaws, and railroads. He and his brothers, as operators of one of the largest lumber companies in the South, were front-runners in putting into practice the concept of the sustained yield – the idea of treating trees as a crop and adhering strictly to selective cutting to extend the lifespan of a forest indefinitely.

And some of the Oxford-educated mill worker’s most lasting accomplishments were in the area of resource management and forest conservation. He spearheaded the passage of legislation outlawing the practice of burning millions of acres of woodlands for pasture (Alabama’s “stock law “); improving forest fire protection and control programs; and forming the Alabama Forest Products Association. In 1941 he was elected president of the Southern Pine Association – at forty, one of the youngest executive officers in the group’s history. He was also instrumental in Governor Chauncey Sparks’ selection at the end of World War II of Auburn University as the site of Alabama’s School of Forestry.

And although the family sold W.T. Smith Lumber and its some 197,000 acres of timberland for approximately $50 million at the height of the concern’s success in 1966, Earl would remain in the lumber business, becoming increasingly active in the fight for improved lumber standards and quality control with the Southern Pine Inspection Bureau, of which he had been chairman of the board since 1960. He was simultaneously engaged in other efforts to develop uniform American lumber standards as chairman of the American Lumber Standards Committee of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

But Earl McGowin was not known in the public service arena strictly for his work regarding forestry issues. The gentleman began his political career in 1930 as an elected member of the Alabama House of Representatives, and throughout his five-term career as a state legislator, displayed a stubborn integrity – perhaps best exemplified in his refusal to have any dealings with the then-powerful Ku Klux Klan, and in his efforts in the reform of state government while serving as Governor Frank M. Dixon’s House floor leader. In recognition of his contributions, he was voted “Legislator of the Year” in 1939 by the Alabama Press Association, and Dixon also appointed him as a member of the State Board of Education.

While Earl was making his mark on state history as a legislator, he also added some extremely significant chapters to his personal history. He married Miss Ellen Pratt December 29, 1937, and the couple would go on to have two children, daughter Florence McGowin Uhlhorn and son Earl Mason McGowin, Jr. And in 1942, much to the chagrin of those in Butler County who would have had him remain at home in charge of a lumber concern that was then playing a vital role in the war effort, he volunteered his services to the U.S. Navy, turning down an opportunity to serve as speaker of the House.

Earl was accepted by the Navy as a senior lieutenant, and after a few weeks was assigned to open a Navy lumber unit in Jacksonville, Florida. He eventually became chief of the Memphis and New Orleans offices of the Central Procuring Agency and Navy Lumber Coordinating Unit, jointly operated by the Army and Navy, and was also in charge of a unit at Shreveport. The Alabamian’s contributions to his country while on active duty did not go unnoticed; he received a citation for outstanding performance of duty during World War II from Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal.

In 1949, at the age of 48, Earl declined to run for a sixth term in office. That did not, however, end his career as a statesman. In 1950 he was appointed director of the Department of Conservation, and he served as director of the Alabama State Docks from 1959 to 1963. It was during this time that Ellen Pratt McGowin, who had been fighting a battle with cancer, passed away in 1962. Earl remarried July 28, 1964, taking Claudia Pipes Milling, widow of New Orleans attorney Robert E. Milling, as his bride.

As a member of the legislature, Earl McGowin had led extensive efforts to reform and enhance education in Alabama, and his interest in this area continued throughout his life. He served as president of the University of Alabama National Alumni Association from 1950-51, was an emeritus trustee of the Alabama Association of Independent Colleges, and in 1970 at the age of sixty-nine was named the first chairman of the newly formed Alabama Commission on Higher Education. In 1975 his former political foe, Governor George Wallace, inducted him into the State Academy of Honor for these and other accomplishments.

So much could be written to memorialize the life of Earl Mason McGowin, but perhaps his own words best capture the spirit of the man. “In retrospect,” he said in the mid-1980s, “I have enjoyed a full life.”

Earl McGowin died June 2, 1992, at his home in Chapman.

Ed Leigh McMillan

• September 17th, 2021

Ed Leigh McMillan started out to be a good country lawyer but became “Mr. Forester” because of his leadership in the lumber industry.

At an early age, McMillan developed a great respect for the law and history, a devotion that he clung to throughout his life. McMillan received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1909 and a Bachelor of Law degree in 1910 from The University of Alabama. McMillan moved to Brewton, married Iva Lee Miller, and began to practice law. In 1914, he became a legal advisor to the T.R. Miller Mill Company Incorporated of Brewton. McMillan became president of Wiggins Estate Company, director of Cedar Creek Store Company, president of the old Citizens Bank, and leader of the First Methodist Church. He was also the state chairman of the Liberty Loan Committee in World War I, a member of the State Banking Board from 1935-1949, president of the National Alumni Association for The University of Alabama, and chairman of the War Finance Committee for Alabama from 1941-1946. In 1950, McMillan was named president of T.R. Miller Mill Company, becoming the head of the oldest lumber business in continuous operation in Alabama. He was quick to recognize the advantages of the scientific forestry approach to the timber industry; advocate the protection of forests from fire, disease, and insect infestation; and utilize artificial reforestation by planting seedlings on a commercial basis. McMillan played a key role in the creation of Conecuh National Forest.

Thomas R. Miller

• September 17th, 2021

Using his native intelligence and the resources at hand, Thomas R. Miller opened the door for the lumber industry.

Miller, after the Civil War, quickly recognized the need to break the south’s total dependence on agriculture. He began to produce hewn timber as an alternative source of income. In late 1868, Miller married Mary Elizabeth Foshee. By 1870, Miller had accumulated enough capital to purchase a small grist and sawmill. Miller took on a partner, and the enterprise became Miller and Foshee. The partners operated the mill successfully until 1887 when they decided to sell out and invest in a larger mill. Miller, taking with him $50,000, invested in a mill that became known as Blacksher-Miller Lumber Company. Miller moved to Tennessee planning to raise horses. However, his plans were changed when he was approached to purchase a much larger timber company for more than a half-million dollars, which became Cedar Creek Mill Company at Brewton. Shortly after arriving in Brewton, his wife died in childbirth. Two years later he married Alice Collins. Miller became one of the first to advocate and follow good forestry practices by practicing selective cutting. Miller’s success at Brewton was an entry to other ventures. Over the next fifteen years, Miller acquired a sawmill, a cotton oil mill, an ice plant, and organized Citizens Bank in Brewton where he served as president until his death. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, Miller had built a small sawmill into a timber empire.