Month: December 2011

Custom Candy

Independent business bringing its sweet operation to Moody

By Amanda Pritchard
Photos by Jerry Martin

Creating a candy wonderland for children of all ages, store owner and creator Hanson Watkins opened Indie Candy in Crestline Village with that goal in mind. The business has thrived, and now she is expanding production in Moody.

In looking for the perfect place to expand her business, Watkins searched within an hour radius all around Birmingham, but ultimately knew she wanted to settle in Moody. “My father has done business in Moody for 30 years. It has a great reputation.”

This natural gourmet sweets shop specializes in allergen-free candies. Still keeping its storefront in Crestline Village at 73 Church St., Watkins will over time be building her workforce from seven employees to approximately 25 once the expansion is complete.

Featuring treats that Watkins calls “super duper handmade,” Indie Candy provides sweets that are free from the big eight allergens — wheat, soy, peanuts, eggs, tree nuts, dairy, fish and shellfish. “If it’s on the market and fits in our all-natural, allergen-free category, then we have it,” Watkins said.

Producing hard candy, chocolate and gummies, Watkins says, “Indie Candy focuses heavily on quality ingredients, keeping things fresh and shipping immediately.” Citing its best-seller as flavored gummies, Indie Candy packages its edibles in festive seasonal wrappings. “Everyone’s gone crazy for our pumpkin pie brittle. We’ll have it packaged in our gift tins for Christmas.”

Making it a mission to bring new experiences to candy lovers, young and old, Indie Candy Public Relations Director Beth Norris said, “Watching kids come in and eat their first piece of chocolate is out of control. Women come in all the time who haven’t been able to have candy and ask which section can they have. When we say all of it, they get so excited.”

Celebrating brisk Halloween sales, the staff at Indie Candy shipped more than 8,000 individual pieces of candy.

Indie Candy does not just make candy for others. They treat themselves, too. Watkins and her family have had trouble finding the right edibles without allergens and food dyes, so she looked to herself to provide the goodies. Mango and cherry gummies are her personal favorites, while Norris says she prefers the truffle apple.

Offering alternatives to allergens, Indie Candy can be purchased at its Crestline location or through its website at www.indiecandy.com. New customers can also “like” Indie Candy’s Facebook page to find out what’s cooking in the kitchen.

Indie Candy’s move to Moody with its production facilities will be completed soon. The new location is at Moody Acres where Minnie’s Bakery once occupied space.

Looking forward to expanding her business, Watkins said, “This is such a big deal for families who haven’t been able to have candy before. We can’t help but feel like what we do matters.”

Inventive Mind

[Show as slideshow]

Master ‘tinkerer’ turning heads around the world

Story by Mike Bolton
Photos by Jerry Martin

For those who have never met St. Clair County’s Wayne Keith, the first impression is never what was expected.

To the Mother Earth News crowd to whom he is becoming a cult hero of sorts, he doesn’t have the long hair and tie-dyed T-shirt they envisioned. To the college professors who are flying him across the U.S. to speak to distinguished panels so his vast knowledge may be harvested, he’s neither the polished engineer with a pocket protector full of slide rules or the quirky inventor that they might have imagined.

Wayne Keith is just a 63-year-old farmer in overalls who likes to tinker. “He’s just a regular guy” is the resounding response from those who meet him for the first time.

On this morning, Keith arrives at the Jack’s in Springville, and his old, wood-burning Dodge truck that is causing such a stir across the U.S. and in foreign countries doesn’t even get a second glance. An old pickup truck with three big drums in the back is as common of a sight in Alabama as Hoverounds are in south Florida.

Inside, he joins the gathering of old men who assemble daily at what they jokingly refer to as the table of knowledge. There, the old men sip coffee and feign genius as they attempt to solve the world’s problems. Keith’s presence in the group is a paradox. To the old men, he’s just Wayne, the local farmer that they have known all of their lives. He is unique, however, in that he’s actually a genius solving the world’s problems.

While the old men tell their stories, Keith doesn’t bother to explain that he has just returned from the Go-Green Festival in Missouri, where his wood-burning truck was held in great awe by patrons. Nor does he explain that he was the keynote speaker at the Environmental Protection Agency’s national convention in Atlanta. There, the good old boy armed with nothing more than a Springville High diploma was surrounded by some of the most-educated environmental scholars in the world.

“When I sit on these panels, I’m the only one that doesn’t have Ph.D at the end of my name,” he says from the log cabin he built in the woods near the St. Clair Correctional Facility in St. Clair Springs. “It’s always a little humbling.”

Before Keith got the world’s scholars attention with a truck that burns firewood instead of gas and travels 5,200 miles on a cord of firewood, he says he was just another bored high school student and an uninspired worker who was unhappy with his job for four decades.

“In high school, all I cared about was hunting, fishing and building stuff,” he said. “Going to college was never considered.

“I worked in the engineering department of a trailer manufacturing plant, and I spent five years building small trailers on my own. I was a Springville policeman for years with the K-9 unit, and then I went to St. Clair Prison as the dog trainer there. The whole time I farmed.”

The entire time he was working in a controlled environment, he yearned for something else, he says. An avid reader, he once read about vehicles from several countries being forced to run off of burning wood because gas was in short supply during World War II. That piqued his interest.

“When we had the oil crisis in the United States in 1973, and the price of gas shot up, I began reading more and more on the process of gasification (burning bio-mass to convert into a flammable vapor),” he said. “I learned everything I could find out about it.

“But in 1974, the oil embargo was lifted, and gas prices went back down. I just kind of forgot about it.”

Keith became somewhat of a noted tinkerer and inventor in the years that followed. He built a sawmill from junk steel he gathered from around his farm, and he cut wood for locals wanting to build their own homes. He estimates he has cut lumber for about 60 local homes.

He eventually cut wood from his own farm and built his own log cabin on the property. The beautiful home boasts oak floors and beams as well as numerous other woods throughout.

“No other human hands except those of me and my wife touched the cabin while we were building it,” he said. “We never bought anything to build the house except nails.

“The sawmill has operated 12 years, and there has never been a breakdown.”

Building your own home isn’t that big of a deal for many in rural Alabama, but Keith’s next invention got local tongues wagging. He took scrap metal from his farm and built what he called a “Flying Jenny.” The carnival-like ride had kids across the county clamoring for a ride, especially when they learned it would toss them in a nearby creek.

But it was Keith’s next project and the increasing cost of electricity that made local adults sit up and take notice. The 63 year-old built two windmills on his farm near his house, and the wind-driven fans supplied more than half of the electricity needs for his home. Soon after, others wanted plans, so they could build their own on their farms.

“The windmills have a generator that direct current to a battery bank,” he explained. “The battery bank has an inverter that converts the battery power into power that can run your home.”

Those windmills were destroyed in a storm earlier this year, but he plans to build them back.

Keith insists he is neither an environmental nut nor should he be a hero to the “Green” crowd, but almost reluctantly he admits he more and more is being seen as such. He insists he’s just a tinkerer who is looking for a cheaper way of getting through everyday life.

“I’m not a tree hugger,” he says with a laugh, “but if something I build allows me to do things more cheaply and it is more environmentally friendly, that’s fine, too.”

Gas prices fuel Keith’s innovation again
Rising gas prices in recent years once again piqued Keith’s interest in the wood-burning powered vehicles of World War II.

“I drew a line in the sand and decided that in 2004 if gas hit $1.50 a gallon, I was going to do something,” he said. “When gas reached that point, I started studying.”

The worldwide availability of cheap gasoline and the inefficiency of wood-burning vehicles caused the gasification process to pretty much be ignored following World War II. Keith by no means invented the process, but scholars say what he is done has perfected it to the point that it has now become viable.

What gasification does is take a bio-mass, such as dried wood, and burn it in a low-oxygen container. That converts the burning bio-mass into a combination of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane, the vapors of which are flammable. The vapors are piped from the three containers (one of which is a fuel filter made from hay) in the back of the truck to the engine where it burns like gasoline.

Auburn University and Texas A&M have run extensive tests on Keith’s trucks and have come up with startling conclusions. Since the vehicle completely burns the wood and emits no smoke, it results in 70 percent lower emissions than the total electric vehicles on the market today. The only real emissions are the ashes which are called bio-char, and they make excellent fertilizers for gardens. There is also water condensation that must be drained.

Tests show the process is 37 percent more fuel efficient than gasoline.

David L. Bransby, professor of bioenergy and bioproducts at Auburn University, says Keith is not some country bumpkin inventor. He says Keith’s near perfection of the gasification process has created interest across the U.S. and world.

“He’s an extremely smart individual,” Bransby said.

“I know of no well-qualified engineers that have been able to accomplish what he’s done. And he’s done it without any college education. His understanding of the process is exceptional.”

Keith’s plans are to work out a few more kinks in the process and then apply for patents. At that point, he plans to sell the process to a company that will convert trucks from gas to wood-burning.

Land-grant universities from across the country are interested in the process for an entirely different application. Bransby says he doesn’t see the process as being viable for most U.S. drivers but sees it as a low-cost source of energy for farms. An internal combustion engine coupled with a generator could produce electricity to power chicken houses and cattle operations and the waste-heat generated from the engine’s exhaust could supply heating needs.

Meanwhile, Keith is traveling the country speaking to universities about the process. He’s spoken in Michigan three times and in Kentucky, West Virginia, Florida and other states. He even drove one of his trucks to the Bonneville Salt Flats, where he set a world speed record for wood-burning vehicles.

“Some of these trips, as the one to Bonneville, are up to 2,000 miles round-trip,” Keith said. “You may literally see 1 million vehicles on the road on a trip like that.

“It’s pretty neat to think that you are the only one running off of wood.”

Volunteerism Defined

Terry & Sandy Gamble, Robert Hood help
Alpha Ranch rebuild after April’s deadly tornadoes

By Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Jerry Martin

“Hear that wind coming down the valley?” asks Sandy Gamble, turning her left ear toward the door, which sounds like it’s about to rattle off its hinges. She laughs nervously. “Yeah, it’s scary. There are no trees now to block it.”

Sitting in a folding metal chair in Alpha Ranch’s new shop building, she glances at the door and windows, as if expecting that wind to pick up the shop and carry it away. It wouldn’t be the first time. It happened April 27, when tornadoes tore through Shoal Creek Valley, destroying almost everything in their path.

Sandy and her husband, Terry, live in the Clay-Trussville area normally. But nothing has been normal for them since the storms. On May 23, they parked their 26-foot travel trailer at Alpha Ranch on County Road 22, better known as Shoal Creek Road. Volunteers extraordinaire, they have devoted themselves to rebuilding the ranch and helping Gary and Phyllis Liverett rebuild their lives.

They came out to Alpha Ranch with Bridgepoint Community Church (Clay-Chalkville) a few days after the April storms. Their congregation put in half a day helping with the cleanup. “We came home that day crying, saying we can do more than just half a day with the church,” Sandy says.

The Gambles met the Liveretts more than 20 years ago, when they worked together at Bridgepoint’s Camp Chula Vista. They had kept in touch, so the Gambles thought about the Liveretts when the storms hit. “We moved here to help clear debris and for her to cook and for me to work,” says Terry, taking a puff from his cigarillo.

After the tornadoes, nothing remained of the original 120-by-40-foot shop building but the concrete slab. Used to teach trades such as auto repair, carpentry and electrical wiring to the at-risk teenage boys who live at Alpha, its reconstruction was a priority so the Liveretts could store materials and machinery while rebuilding the ranch. Once the shop was 85 percent complete, most volunteers had gone home. Only the Gambles and Robert Hood, an Odenville man who has worked alongside them, remained.

“Robert and I did all the finish work,” Terry explains, while keeping a watchful eye on his 28-month-old grandson, Hayden, who is running around in miniature overalls asking grandpa to kiss his boo-boos. “We built the work benches, the cabinets, the roof and walls, did the electrical work and the plumbing.”

With the shop almost complete, attention has turned to rebuilding the two homes destroyed by the tornadoes. One will be occupied by the Crawfords (daughter, son-in-law and nine grandchildren of the Liveretts) and the other by Phyllis and Gary. Maybe the houses will be complete by Christmas, maybe not.

Two years ago, Terry retired from Norfolk Southern Railway and the Army Reserves, two positions he held simultaneously for 36 years. He was deployed five out of the final 10 years of reserve duty, serving in the first Gulf War, in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Bosnia. His job was humanitarian assistance, rebuilding roads, schools and churches that had been destroyed by war. He had seen plenty of destruction, yet none of that prepared him for what he found in Shoal Creek Valley after the April storms.

“I was shocked at the devastation, but more shocked at the attitudes of the people out here,” Terry says. “These people lost everything, yet you did not see them down. They just took things day by day.”

Sandy often cooked breakfast for 50 and lunch for 150 workers and valley residents. At first, she and Terry bought the food, then donations started coming in. “One Saturday we didn’t have any food, and a pipe workers’ union pulled up with barbecue and baked beans,” she says. “We never ran out of food. We couldn’t keep water, Gatorade and ice, though. People were drinking four to six bottles a day during the hot summer. Hardin’s Chapel kept us supplied. I bet they bought 20,000 bottles of water.”

Cooking for hundreds of people and building a shop isn’t exactly what the Gambles had planned for their leisure years. They spent the first year of Terry’s retirement traveling the world, aided by Terry’s “space available” status on military flights. They were accustomed to helping people in need, giving money here, a spare bedroom there, but had never encountered the overwhelming needs they found in Shoal Creek Valley. “What got to me was the sentimental things I saw in the lake after the storms, like the teddy bears and the sofa and the dormers to the Liverett house,” Sandy says.

Terry has a brand-new bass boat that didn’t see water all summer, and he is building a street rod that he hasn’t touched in months. He has reduced his work load to three days a week, however, and manages to get in a little hunting.

So, what are the Gambles taking away from this experience?

“We thought we were going to be blessing other people out here, but we’ve received the blessings,” says Sandy, a retired school teacher. “I had surgery on my hand in October, and I was homesick for this place.”

Terry appreciates his new friendship with fellow volunteer, Robert Hood. After school started, most of the other volunteers went home, but the Gambles and Hood remained. “I never knew Robert before all this, but I’ve enjoyed working with him immensely,” Terry says. “Gary will make a list and Robert and I will go down it, checking off as we get something done. We work well together.”

Like the Gambles, Hood thought he would put in a few days at the Ranch, then return to his normal routine. “Extreme Ministries (a Pell City-based organization that mobilizes volunteers for construction-related projects) sent out an email through our church (First Baptist of Pell City) asking for volunteers for three weeks,” Hood says. “I said I would work three days, Monday through Wednesday, for those three weeks. The need was so great, after one day I realized that wasn’t going to be enough.”

Hood says he could find plenty to do at his house, such as picking up limbs and raking leaves, but in Shoal Creek, he gets a sense of satisfaction knowing he’s giving something back to the community.

A retired plant manager for O’Neal Steel, he is accustomed to volunteering, though. For eight years he put in 2,000 hours a year as a certified reserve deputy sheriff for St. Clair County. He gave that up in 2008 when congestive heart failure made it difficult to wrestle detainees to the ground. He had never wielded a hammer much or installed a toilet before his stretch at Alpha.

“Now I’ve done roofing, plumbing, wiring, carpentry, I’ve set trusses, whatever needed to be done,” he says. “But I tell people I just come out here for the lunches.”

Neither the Gambles nor Hood know when their lives will regain a sense of normalcy. “We’ll go home for Christmas, but we won’t go home permanently until the Lord tells us to,” Sandy Gamble says.

“How much longer will I be here? My wife wants to know, too,” says Hood.

“She has no problem with it, though. Since the latter part of September, I’ve cut back to three days. I volunteer two days a week for the county, filing papers at the courthouses in Ashville and Pell City.”

Ann Bobo, Terry’s first cousin and fellow church member, says the Gambles always have been very giving, very kind people who love to do things for others.

“They are always willing to help somebody out, but privately so that they don’t get any accolades for it,” she says.

Gary Liverett can’t say enough good things about Hood and the Gambles.

“Terry and Sandy have such heart. Sandy has helped feed people up and down the valley. They are a good example of what real volunteerism is,” he states. “Most people have gone back home. They’ve sacrificed and stayed.”

He never knew Hood until he came out with Extreme Ministries. “He has worked constantly and tirelessly; he, too, is the epitome of volunteerism,” Liverett said.

Flying High Over St. Clair

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By Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Jerry Martin

The tall, chubby guy in overalls and white tee-shirt runs up to the airshow emcee and in a drawl as Southern as coon dogs and camouflage starts babbling about redeeming a flight instruction coupon. Trying to get rid of the man, who claims he’s Clem Cleaver from Alabama, the emcee motions him toward a little yellow airplane. He tells the man standing beside it to give the guy a demo. But when Clem climbs aboard, he “accidentally” takes off on a wibbly-wobbly solo flight that culminates with his landing atop a pickup truck that’s doing 55 miles per hour down the runway.

It takes skill to do that. Not just the skill of landing on a moving target, but the skill of making it appear that you don’t know what you’re doing. Make no mistake about it, Greg Koontz knows what he’s doing. An aerobatics pilot, Master Flight Instructor, aerobatic pilot evaluator and the 2011 recipient of the FAA’s Flight Instructor of the Year for the Southern Region, this St. Clair County resident got his student pilot’s certificate three days before getting his driver’s license. He’s been flying high ever since.

“I learned to fly in 1969, and soloed before I got my driver’s license,” says Koontz. “At 17, I got my pilot’s license. My first plane was a 1946 Piper Cub that I rebuilt in my mom’s basement.”

The Clem Cleaver role is part of a comedy routine Greg and his Alabama Boys perform at air shows throughout the country. He developed this act in 2005, but he has been performing aerobatic maneuvers since he was a teenager. His father was a corporate pilot and took 7-year-old Koontz to an air show. At the end of the show, he announced, “I want to be an air show pilot.”

At 18, Koontz went to work for Moser’s Aero Sport Inc., in St. Augustine, Fla. His main job was flight instructor, but at 19, he began performing in Colonel Moser’s Flying Circus, flying air shows all over the Southeast and parts of the Caribbean. That’s where he learned the truck-top landing. “Jim & Ernie Moser were inducted into the Air Show Hall of Fame in Las Vegas in November (2011) by the International Council of Air Shows (ICAS),” he says. “It makes me proud that I was part of that operation.”

He spent 10 years running flight schools and charter businesses before taking a job as corporate pilot for McGriff, Seibels & Williams, Birmingham insurance agents. He held that position for 20 years, doing air shows on the side.

In 1995, he started coming to St. Clair County to do aerobatic maneuvers at a model airplane show the late Bud Caddell held every year on Slasham Road. When Caddell’s son stopped holding the shows about two years ago, Koontz held an open-house for some of his flying buddies. Strangers got wind of the event, mistook it for an air show and started showing up.

“I fed barbecue to 400 people this year,” Koontz says of his October lawn party. “With so many strangers and the cost of feeding folks, I may have to start charging and actually calling it an air show.”

The festivities take place on Koontz’s little piece of heaven on Slasham Road. When he and his wife, Cora, started coming out for the Caddell shows, they thought it was a beautiful area. In 1999, Bob Dugger sold them a corner of some land he had just purchased, along with rights to Dugger’s private grass runway. They built the hangar in 2002, and in 2004, after the last of their two children headed off to college, they built their house. They opened Sky Country Bed & Breakfast in 2005, using two spare bedrooms for their fly-in guests.

“I have the only aerobatic school with a B&B on a private grass air strip that I know about,” Koontz says. He teaches several types of aerobatic courses, specializing in beginners, and stays booked six to eight weeks in advance. “People who buy an aerobatic plane and want to expand their capabilities will take my complete course, but lots of people take aerobatics just to improve or enhance their flying abilities,” he says.

About 80 pilots a year train under Koontz at his headquarters. Hearing about him from air shows and the Internet, they come from all over the U.S. and around the world, including Spain, Portugal, Germany, South Africa, Argentina and the Philippines. The courses run from two to five days, with most pilots from outside the U.S. staying for five.

“The fun of doing this business is sitting around the dinner table talking with folks,” he says. He not only trains pilots, but does his own basic maintenance (he’s a licensed aircraft mechanic), all the cooking and grocery shopping, too. “My wife doesn’t cook,” he explains, not appearing the least bit bothered by this. After all, she works a full-time job in Birmingham. They were married in 1975, after he taught her to fly in 1974.

Koontz holds aerobatics clinics worldwide, in places like South Africa, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Canada and all over the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii. He did an air show a few years ago in the United Arab Emirates, and he’s helping establish Portugal’s first aerobatics school.

He’s also an aerobatics competency evaluator. Aerobatic pilots start performing at 800 feet above ground, and must be evaluated every time they want to certify to fly at a lower altitude. In addition, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires aerobatic pilots to be re-evaluated annually and gave that task to ICAS. Koontz is chairman of the national committee that does this, the ACE (aerobatic competency evaluators) committee, managing a nationwide group of evaluators from every state.

Three airplanes dock in his hangar today, including a red Super Decathlon built by American Champion Aircraft of Wisconsin and emblazoned with the names of 14 sponsors. He also has a 1941 Piper Cub and a 1939 clipped-wing Cub. He uses all of those planes when he trains pilots and sometimes uses the pilots’ own aircraft. He recently purchased a Cessna 182 that he calls his traveling plane. It has four seats — room for Greg, Cora and two guests. “I always promised we’d get a traveling plane, one to take trips in, rather than to do tricks in,” he says.

The difference between a “traveling plane” and an aerobatic plane is more than just its seating capacity, however. An aerobatic plane is aerodynamically designed to do maneuvers and structurally designed to handle the G-forces they encounter.

Koontz performs in 20 air shows a year, flying to them in his Super Decathlon with one of the Alabama Boys. The remainder of the troupe, which includes son, James, Steven Smith, Fred Masterson, Tommy Foster and Bob Dugger, travels in the pickup that Koontz lands on during their routine. Not all of the Boys go to every show. The truck pulls a trailer carrying another yellow Piper Cub, its wings separated from the body and stowed on the inside walls of the trailer, like a dismembered butterfly. Koontz uses it for his comedy act, but flies the Super Decathlon for his aerobatics.

“Aerobatics is a very old, traditional act that has been around for many, many years,” he says. “I traced it back to the 1930s to a man named Mike Murphy. All aerobatics today are pretty much the same as Murphy invented, but with individual twists.”

Fellow aerobatics performer Patty Flagstaff of St. Augustine, Fla., herself a six-time member of the U.S. Aerobatic Team and the first woman to win the title of U.S. National Aerobatics Champion, has known Koontz for 15 to 20 years. She has nothing but praise for his talents.

“He’s a real pro, and I’ve never met anybody who doesn’t think highly of him,” she says. “He’s very well liked and he’s a really, really entertaining showman. I don’t do a lot of training because I don’t have a training plane, and I’m very careful who I send people to for instruction. But I’ve sent a lot of people to Greg, including a relative and one of my best friends.”

Like Patty, Koontz flies for the adventure, the freedom and the challenge. “Obviously, it’s a big thrill, being way off the ground like that, but it’s also the accomplishment that I enjoy,” he says. “It takes years and years to get better at it, and there’s always a new challenge.”

The entertainment component fascinates him, too. It’s a niche in aviation only a few people fill. “I like entertaining people. It’s very gratifying to me to land and have hundreds of people wanting my autograph. It’s fun to have that attention because I did a good job of entertaining.”

Aerobatics is a dangerous sport, he’ll admit that. He has lost five friends from air show crashes this year.

“That’s the secret in this business,” he says, “Don’t hit the ground.”

Features

St. Vincent’s: More than a decade in the making

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As motorists headed up and down Interstate 20 over the past two years, they might have thought the massive construction on a hillside overlooking the busy highway is an overnight success story. After all, what they see has gone up relatively quickly.

But it’s what they don’t see that tells the story of a long road to get to where St. Vincent’s St. Clair is today. The new state-of-the-art hospital, set to open Dec. 10, is far from a recent development, local officials will quickly tell you. This has been a vision decades in the making.

It has spanned multiple mayoral terms in Pell City and on the St. Clair County Commission. The talk of a new hospital dates back to the St. Clair Regional Hospital Board and later, the county’s Health Care Authority. And it has gone through a series of health systems before finding just the right fit with Ascension Health and St. Vincent’s Health System.

But the vision seemed to really start taking shape around 2003 when officials acquired land just north of the interstate. The first to locate there was Jefferson State Community College.

The obvious next choice for the adjoining campus was a new hospital.

Guin Robinson, who was mayor at the time and had previously served on the St. Clair County Hospital Board, recalled the needs. “Our hospital was an aging building. It was cost prohibitive to expand or update. There were no private rooms or baths.

“We knew that if we were going to be the county we envisioned us to be, something had to happen,” Robinson said. “We couldn’t have written a script any better for what transpired.”

Anywhere along the way, the dreams of a new hospital coming to fruition could have fallen apart. But they didn’t because when one area of the vision would falter, a partner stepped up to make sure the whole vision was realized.

“It took all entities,” Robinson said. And now, the Health Care Authority, St. Clair County Commission, City of Pell City, St. Clair Economic Development Council and Ascension Health, St. Vincent’s parent company, are solid partners in a vision that has the power to change the face of the region.

“Had one of the parties not stepped up, the entire project would have been in jeopardy,” said Pell City Mayor Bill Hereford, who served as chairman of the hospital board before becoming mayor. “Quality of health care is one of the top three or four issues of any community. This new hospital ensures the highest quality health care for the next generation.”

Hereford agreed the land acquisition was the tipping point. “It has been like dominos, only they aren’t falling down. They’re standing up.”

He cited breakthroughs like Jefferson State as a place to train nurses and the new hospital set to open. Behind it, a state veteran’s home is going up. A townhome development is under construction nearby. “It is a great day. The ripple effect has been tremendous.”

St. Clair Economic Development Executive Director Don Smith couldn’t agree more. “There are always identifiable moments that positively change a community’s future, and for St. Clair County, one of those moments took place when St. Vincent’s Health System took over management of our existing county hospital.

“Without their partnership, leadership and a strong commitment to premium health care, we would not have a new state-of-the-art hospital opening in Pell City. This new hospital is an economic developer’s dream project. It provides a quality health care service, creates new jobs, and helps our organization successfully recruit new employers to our county,” Smith said. When new manufacturers are looking for a new area to locate, they are always interested in the quality of that community’s health care, Smith explained. “They know that their employees’ health has a direct effect on their success. In addition, having this new hospital will directly create other opportunities like the Department of Veterans Affairs Colonel Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home across from the new hospital,” which will create 300 new jobs. “This project would not have come to St. Clair County without this new hospital being constructed.”

Smith credited the county commission for its foresight in moving the entire project forward. “The County Commission has recognized for quite some time that having a new hospital in our community would have an incredible effect on local economy for generations to come. We are very fortunate to have such proactive elected officials throughout our community.”

County Commission Chairman Stan Batemon, a driving force behind the project and a constant proponent over all these years, once called the 160-acre tract of land a “green field” that is now growing a community college, a hospital, a professional medical building, a veteran’s home and a residential development.

“I’m looking at the new hospital and all the things with it as a small UAB-type development for St. Clair County,” Batemon said. “The hospital is driving the school, and it’s driving the Veteran’s Home and any other developments that will go out there. It’s our small education and health complex.”

What’s next? “It is definitely going to be the catalyst that moves the county and the region forward,” Batemon has said.

Lawrence Fields, who chairs the Health Care Authority and is a former mayor himself, called it “one of the best economic engines to come to St. Clair County in a long time.”

He pointed to the five-member partnership as the key to success, too. “It is outstanding that everyone worked together as well as they have.” In addition, “We have a great board, a good mixture from all over the county” who lent their support.

“I don’t think anything will surpass this,” Fields said. “It’s like what (St. Vincent’s CEO) John O’Neil says — ‘It’s one of the most modern, rural hospitals in America.’ I just have to pinch myself when I ride by.”

St. Vincent’s: Beyond Local Impact

When architect Russ Realmuto of Birchfield Penuel & Associates took the lead on designing a new hospital for St. Vincent’s and St. Clair County, it was more than just a professional project to him. It was personal.

“My family homesteaded the land in the 1840s. I live a mile and a half from it.” It’s home. And Realmuto calls his role in designing the new, state-of-the-art hospital “very much an honor.”

As a side note, he mentions he is due for surgery in coming weeks. “My surgery is the first scheduled in the new hospital,” he said with apparent pride, adding that he hopes others will take his lead. “It is very important that we all support the hospital now that it’s built. St. Vincent’s has such a good reputation,” but it will take a consistent community commitment to help grow the hospital.

“We feel like it is going to expand. We designed it to expand in so many different directions. It has a lot of expansion paths,” like Emergency Department treatment areas and more space for more physicians. The medical office building is built to expand.

“It is a gorgeous site.”

Realmuto is not unlike others who have worked on this project. It’s not just a hospital building to them. It’s doing something good for their hometown.

Jason Goodgame, vice president of Goodgame Company, is the project manager, who also is a Pell City native. His company joined forces with Hoar Construction, the lead contractor on the hospital, to sell it as a local Participation and Inclusion project, which meant that 25 percent of the project had to have local participation. To St. Clair County companies, that meant $6 million.

Much of the money to build the hospital came from hospital taxes of local people, and it was a way to give back, Goodgame said.

Hiring local has been the mantra of this project throughout. It is not uncommon to see names like Southern Landscapes, Joiner Plumbing or Johnny’s Electric — all St. Clair County companies — heading in and out of the site to do their work.

Nelson Glass; Kirkpatrick Concrete, which is owned by National Cement Co. in Ragland; Jenkins Brick; and Alabama Brick are just a few of the companies with ties to St. Clair County. The stained glass windows of the chapel were by Leeds Stained Glass, a Pell City-based company owned by Terry Barnes. A family business, Barnes said, it began as a church furniture endeavor that eventually led to making stained glass windows for churches and chapels all over the world.

“We are very excited” to be a part of the St. Vincent’s project, Barnes said. The hospital will be “a number-one draw for the community. You are always excited about doing something in your own community.”

For Goodgame Company, “it was important for us to be a part of it. To have our family company’s name on a building that is going to be here for the next generation is important,” Goodgame said of the 57-year-old business.

“It was a chance to be a part of something that is going to be here a long time, just like our business.”