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Chicken Head Run

Zachary Mason:
And the Music Lives On

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Michael Callahan
Submitted photos

On a cool, spring morning in April, offering only a slight hint of warmer weather ahead, hundreds of people gathered at Pell City Lakeside Park in memory of Zachary Mason.

The next day would have been his birthday. Music from loud speakers echoed throughout the park, a celebratory prelude to the Fourth Annual Chicken Head Run. Zack would have liked that. Music was his first love. Friends and family were his passion. “Chicken Head” is what he playfully called most everybody. It became his trademark.

And on this weekend each year, they come together to raise money for the Zachary Mason Memorial Fund, which provides music scholarships to deserving students at Pell City High School.

Zack would have liked that, too. He walked at graduation from Pell City High School to a standing ovation in 2012, a tribute to the accomplishment of their fellow classmate who was born with Down’s Syndrome.

The son of Randy Mason and Melinda Pierce, Zack had a knack for making friends – plenty of them. “Anybody who had any contact with him fell in love with him,” said Tanya Osborne, his eighth- and ninth-grade teacher, who came up with the idea for the run. “He was my gentle giant. He was the sweetest thing possible. He played with my kids. He has a special place in my heart, and I will never forget him.”

In August the year he died, she saw information on Facebook about a Down’s Syndrome run in Gadsden. She and others formed a team for Zack. They donned T-shirts with a “kissy face” picture of Zack and dubbed themselves, “Zack Attack.”

About 30 people ran in that race, and it was the catalyst for a run every year since in Pell City near his birthday. “He called everybody Chicken Head. It was the perfect name for the race,” Osborne said. Now in its fourth year, the Chicken Head Run attracts nearly 200 runners and has awarded thousands of dollars in scholarships.

It’s a way to remember Zack and to keep the music alive. His aunt and Randy’s sister, Cacky Berlin, comes each year from her home in Clyde, N.C. “This is his element,” she said as she motioned toward the crowd, the music and the runners. “He touched so many people in his short life. It’s unbelievable. It’ really great that this race can help other students. He would be so happy.”

Rhonda Purdy, Melinda’s best friend, echoed the sentiment. “The music lives on,” she said. “It’s a way to continue to share what Zack loved most – music.”

His mother, Melinda, called it “exciting” and a testament to Zack. “He touched so many lives.”

Rhonda’s son, Adam, was one of those whose life was particularly touched. When Zack died, “I was heading down a path I didn’t need to go down. He changed my life. He was my best friend and my little brother. It was so sad to lose someone so close to us, but he inspired every life he met. He touched more people than most of us will touch in our life,” he said.

“As tough as it is, it makes it all worthwhile to see all these people,” Adam said.

Stepfather Todd Pierce concurred, recounting stories of “how much he loved people. He would be in the middle of all of it. He loved everybody.”

Zack was especially close to his brother, Austin, who was running the time clock at the race. Photos of them together over the years reflect the bond the two shared.

Shelby Weaver, a student at Jacksonville State University, won a music scholarship from the memorial fund. “It helps me to know I have a community scholarship like I have. It’s support from home. Because Zack loved music like he did, it helps me continue what I’m doing.”

His father, Randy, is known for his civic leadership. You could always count on spotting Randy involved in countless worthy causes throughout the city. And you could always spot Zack right alongside him.

Randy made it a point to make sure Zack was involved, too – at Chamber of Commerce events, Civitans and at Pell City Center for Education and the Performing Arts, where Randy acts as stage manager for shows.

“Both Randy and Zack are such a blessing to our community,” said former executive director of the Chamber of Commerce Erica Grieve, as she distributed packets for runners. “It is great to be able to come together in memory of Zack.”

“He came to all the rehearsals,” said CEPA Artistic Director Kathy McCoy. “He sang with Steve Shafer in the Christmas production. He would sit in the audience, and he knew every song, every word, so we started putting him on stage. He was our real sweetie.”

Unlike most teens surrounded only by peers, Zack’s reach transcended age demographics. At his 18th birthday celebration, 70 to 80 adults showed up, his grandmother, Sara Bain recalled. Four singers donated their time to entertain. When the classic, “My Girl,” was performed, Zack knew all the words. Barely masking her surprise, she said. “I didn’t know he knew the moves!”

Zack spent a great deal of time with his grandparents, and music was usually at the center of it, Bain said. He had baskets of cassettes and CDs at their home, and in the last few months of his life he took particular interest in the Gaithers Homecoming music video, featuring Singing in My Soul. “He played it over and over. All of it ministered to him deeply and therefore to me, too, because I watched and listened through Zachary’s eyes, ears and heart.”

What reminds her most of her grandson is a saying that seems to fit perfectly. “Live Simply. Love Generously. Laugh Often. Live Freely. That was Zachary.”

Making Beautiful Music

St. Clair teachers’ latest
recording topping charts

Story by Jim Smothers
Photos by Jim Smothers,
Wallace Bromberg Jr.
and Graham Hadley

Their students may have noticed Shannon and Heather Slaughter were in an especially happy mood in mid-May, and it wasn’t just because the last day of school was approaching. This bluegrass performing couple just got word that their independent CD, Never Just a Song, had reached No. 1 on the National Roots Music Report for the week of May 13.

In their Facebook message to fans, the Slaughters said, “It’s our first number 1 on any chart, and we are really excited and feel really blessed.”

The traditional bluegrass song, Moonshiner, was the first single to be released after the album’s January release, and it’s gotten a lot of attention and airplay in the genre. But they’ll tell you quickly their favorite song on the disc is one they wrote together, The Best Thing We Ever Did.

It’s about their daughter, 2-year-old Rae Carroll Slaughter, who has changed their outlook on life and what’s really important in this world.

And it’s easy to see why. The adorable little girl inspired the lyric “She makes my day without saying a word,” and she is the center of their life together and their plans for the future.

About her

Shannon Slaughter was already a veteran performer and songwriter in traditional country and bluegrass music while Heather Sanders was playing electric bass with the youth band at her church in Argo in western St. Clair County.

She had a musical tradition in her family going back at least three generations. Her grandmother Ramona Carroll was part of a female vocal group that performed locally, and she hosted regular music nights in the basement of her store, Buckeye Grocery, near Argo.

Heather’s mom Robin was also a singer and bass player. She met Heather’s dad, Terry Sanders, when he came with his guitar to make some music with the people at the Carroll family store.

So it was no surprise that Heather could sing, but performing didn’t come naturally to her at first.

“My grandmother used to make me get up and sing at church,” she said, “and I was the shyest human being of all time.”

Her dad taught her to play guitar and mandolin, and she eventually conquered her shyness.

She made connections with Mike Toppins in Nashville and began work on her solo CD, I Meant It, and that’s what led to her first contact with Shannon.

A moderator with an Internet music site, Worldwide Bluegrass, knew Heather was ready to record, and wanted to help her along. The station had a message board, and the moderator sent Shannon a private message asking him if he had written any songs that would be good for a female singer, and he told him a little about Heather.

As any modern male would do, he looked her up on the Internet and found her photos on MySpace.

“She was really good-looking, so I replied, ‘Yeah, I think I have some songs for her,’ ” he said.

Heather recorded two of his songs on that CD, In My Heart, and Dying to Live Again.

The two communicated by email and telephone and really hit it off, but didn’t meet face-to-face at the time. Shannon was based in North Carolina where he was networked with a number of professionals in the industry. But Heather’s dad wasn’t sold on the idea of letting his daughter go out of state to meet a guitar-playing singer. The Internet station moderator didn’t like the idea, either. “She’s too young and innocent for the likes of you,” the moderator told Shannon when he asked for Heather’s phone number.

They didn’t have any more contact for two years.

“He left me high and dry,” Heather said. “Then I got home from a vacation, and there was an email waiting saying he wanted to see me.”

Meanwhile she joined the Gadsden-based band, Acoustic Rain, and played a number of shows across central Alabama. Shannon came down for a weekend to see her perform at Moonsong near Noccalula Falls in Gadsden.

“By the time I heard her sing five notes, I knew she was as good as anyone I had ever heard,” Shannon said. He sat in with the group for a couple of songs that night and stayed up all night singing with Heather. They hit it off so well in person, he extended his stay to spend more time with her, and they’ve been together ever since.

They swap lead vocals and support each other with silky smooth harmonies sure to please.

About him

Shannon is one of the better-known performers in bluegrass and classic country music today. Fans are quick to say he is “the real deal,” with his solid songwriting and guitar playing and friendly, soothing voice. He was raised in Chiefland, Fla., where he started performing while he was still in grade school. He started playing guitar when he was 8, and within two or three years he was singing at churches and livestock fairs and anywhere else people would listen.

As a teenager he met professional player Booie Beach at a Tony Rice concert and asked him if he would help him improve his playing. Beach taught Slaughter a lot of techniques and guitar licks that helped him on his way.

“We became lifelong friends,” Shannon said. He had played professionally already five to 10 years by that time.

“Two years later, Beach left the Larry Stephenson Band, and I took his place. Since he was my teacher, I already knew his licks, and I played my first two gigs with them without a rehearsal, and they told me, ‘You’ve got the job.’

During more than two decades of performing and recording, Shannon also played with Lost and Found, and for two years, he was the lead vocalist and guitarist for The Lonesome River Band. He was part of the Lou Reid and Caroline band, performed with Grasstowne and with Melonie Cannon, and he is also an award-winning songwriter.

But with all his experience and stature in the music industry, Shannon has kept his feet on the ground.

“There aren’t really any stars in this kind of music,” he said. “We’re just regular people.”

And they don’t have any intentions of quitting their day jobs. Both are school teachers. Heather is a special education teacher at Walter M. Kennedy Elementary School in Pell City and Shannon, a history teacher at St. Clair County High School in Odenville. He recently resigned from his additional duties as a football coach to be able to spend more time with his family.

“We want to keep on doing music, and we would like to have about 15 gigs a year,” he said.

Together

Alabama influences are making their way into the couple’s music, as reflected on their newest CD, Never Just a Song.

Back to Birmingham most obviously touches on Shannon’s new home state. Co-written with Heather and Dale Felts, they sing, “When I need to find out who I am, I go back to Birmingham.”

Less obvious is the Alabama connection in the song, Company Town. It’s about the lifestyle of a coal mining community in Margaret, where Heather’s grandfather once lived, the poverty the people endured, and how they lived together.

The sight of a farmer in bib overalls on Sanie Road between Argo and Odenville inspired the song, That’s What’s Good in America. It’s about “doing honest work for honest pay,” football, God and family.

The CD has 14 tracks, half of them written or co-written by Shannon.

You can find more about their music and CD online at shannonandheatherslaughter.com

Mud Racing

A whole new kind
of racing comes to
St. Clair County

Story by Graham Hadley
Photos by Michael Callahan
and Graham Hadley
Video by Graham Hadley

From private parties to massively popular competition racing, Beaver Creek Offroad Park is St. Clair County’s place for fun in the sun with mud.

When Allison Morgan and her husband, Jason, inherited St. Clair farmland near Vincent that has been in the family since 1823, they knew there was one thing they did not want to do with it — farm.

She is a teacher, and he is an engineer, and while they loved the outdoors and spending their time with their kids outside, they had no desire to plant crops and till the soil.

“I grew up learning to work in the fields, but we don’t have time to do that. We had a garden for awhile, but before you knew it, it was overgrown,” Allison said.

Then one day, while driving to Walmart, like lightning, an idea struck: The property, with an abundance of wet springs and good terrain, would make the perfect outdoor park, complete with a massive serpentine competition ORV mud track with steep banks, a long straightaway and deep mud holes.

“It was an idea that we, me and my husband, had on the way to buy groceries. I was looking online, and all our friends from Pell City were going all over the place to drive in the mud,” she said.

Beaver Creek Offroad Park was born, and mud racing had officially come to St. Clair County.

“We had come up with something that provided family time where we could have fun, and we wanted the public to come out and enjoy the outdoors the way I did growing up. This was a good fit for us,” she said.

The project started out modestly, with just a simple muddy area for riders, but has steadily grown since then.

“The first time we opened, it was just basically a mud hole, but we had 800 to 900 people out here.

“Then we posted on Facebook just to see if people would be interested in having something like this track. We ended up with 40 people on our doorstep who wanted the park. The racers just showed up at 9 at night and asked if we would build them a place to race,” Allison said. “We did not know what they were talking about, so we researched online.”

From the word “go”, the park was a success — and since both Allison and Jason were new to the sport of mud racing, there was an admittedly steep learning curve.

“We started on the track in August and worked through September and October 2013. Then the racers showed up, and we had our first race in April 2014,” Allison said. “We had an excellent turnout. We were kind of shell-shocked by the number of people who came out. We were understaffed; we had no clue what was coming.

“Since that day, we have learned a tremendous amount about running these kinds of events and this sport.”

On average, they can easily see 800 people at the park in a single weekend, with bigger events drawing even more.

Those big events can include truck racing, ATVs, side-by-sides, sometimes combined with a music fest where they play everything from country to hip-hop. The music events are taking on a life of their own, with an emerging style of music that actually combines those two disparate music styles becoming especially popular with the mud-racing crowd.

Allison says the park is making money, but they are not pocketing the profits. She has put her teaching career on hold to run the park, while Jason works as a plastics engineer supporting the family. The extra money the park earns goes into expanding the park and building on the already solid business foundation.

“It is a work in progress. I don’t know if we will ever be finished in our eyes. We are always working on something,” Allison said.

“I put my dreams as a teacher on hold for this, but it has been a success. We are still in the process where we are growing and expanding, so every dime we make at the park is turned around and invested in the park. I believe 100 percent it will be a financial success, but we are not calling it that yet because we are still investing in making the park the best it can be.”

Family Fun

A key to that success is the family-inclusive nature of the park, with a focus on providing a place where people of all ages can experience the outdoors. Allison and Jason want a place where they can have fun with their children and where other families can do the same.

“Family time is important. It’s kind of our motto: This is a family place. We want to be able to bring our kids out there,” Allison said.

“It took awhile for people to realize our dedication to the family environment. We have been fortunate that we have not really had any problems. The fans respect what we are trying to do. The people show up, respect our rules — they have an amazing time. It is turning into a great thing.”

Race Day

That family atmosphere was pervasive at one recent mud-racing event April 19. Everywhere you looked, people were out riding around the park with their kids, cooking out with their families and watching as the specialized trucks raced against the clock and each other through the track, several areas of which were full of many feet of water thanks to days of heavy rain.

For the Morgans, they were hard at work as a family supervising everything — a busy job for Allison, who was running the concessions, and Jason, who was down in the pit area keeping the drivers and their crews organized.

And many of those teams were family and friends themselves, often racing against each other in different trucks.

Eddie Blevins from Shelby, Ala., said he just started racing last year.

Pointing to the stands, he said, “I used to be up there watching. Now I have not missed a race here.”

With pit support from his son Cale, Blevins had a solid showing with his truck Never Satisfied — “We did pretty well, won two and lost one” of the races.

At a previous race, they had won almost $1,000. For Blevins, that’s a win-win situation however you look at it. “You get paid to get out here and do something you love,” he said.

The winnings from those races can add up quickly — something that is important in a sport where the price of vehicles can hit the $40,000 range or more for the higher-end trucks.

But many drivers, like Blevins, are fielding much more affordable rides.

One young man who had just turned 15 was racing that day — and winning — in a truck he and his friends, with help from his father and family, had built literally out of spare parts for almost nothing.

David Matzke pointed proudly to his son Austin, saying, “He won his first race today. He turned 15 Friday. We probably have $1,000 in that truck.”

Austin grew up watching his Dad drag race. “He always wanted to race, so I taught him mechanics. We built this truck in two weeks.”

David said he is a huge fan of the mud racing scene and the family-friendly environment Allison and Jason are fostering at Beaver Creek.

“I love to see the kids out here doing this. Out of everything they could be out doing, this is a good thing to do,” he said.

Travis Perkins from Columbiana, who is also in his second year of mud racing, and Brian Johnson said the Beaver Creek track fills out the area perfectly. With two other regional tracks, Beaver Creek makes three. That lets them rotate venues every week or so without having to travel all over the Southeast to keep a regular racing schedule.

“We love it here. Allison and Jason Morgan, they are good people. If it was not for them, we would not be out here,” Johnson said.

While mud racing may be the big draw, with music fests a close second, the 150-acre park also has paths for ATVs and other off-road and off-highway vehicles, room for camping and other outdoor activities.

Allison says they are looking at finding a way to also eventually add rock climbing to the park. That’s not the people clambering up cliffs with ropes kind of climbing, that’s the specialized off-road vehicle clambering up piles of boulders kind of climbing.

“We are improving; we are expanding; we are making things out here that we need,” Allison said.

“I think this year is going to be great.”

The track is located at 139 Beavers Lane, just off U.S. 231 south of the Logan Martin Dam road
between Pell City and Vincent.
You can find it online @ beavercreekoffroad.com
and follow it on Facebook.

Mud Racing

76 photos

Features

Texas Longhorns

Welcome to Springville’s Lazy M Farm

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Wallace Bromberg

Mack Morgan greeted recent visitors to his Lazy M Farm with a huge, longhorn steer named Moonlight on a halter and lead rope, as if the steer were a horse and Morgan was about to saddle up for a ride.

“Keep an eye on those horns,” Morgan cautioned, stating the obvious. “Approach him from the side.”

It has become a tradition for motorists traveling U.S. 11 through Springville to stop at Morgan’s Lazy M Farm to take pictures when the longhorns are out. Lured by the horns that give the breed its name, they call Morgan to inquire whether he has sold them if they are in one of his hidden pastures. This tradition may soon go the way of the romanticized Old West that the breed symbolizes, however, as Morgan downsizes his longhorn herd in favor of the more profitable Brangus.

“The beef market has gone up 150 percent over the past two years, and longhorn meat is too lean for most folks,” Morgan explains. “It’s a matter of supply and demand. There are so many old farmers getting out of the beef cattle business and no young ones replacing them.”

Morgan has always had cattle. His father raised Herefords before him, and Mack began raising longhorns 30 years ago so he could practice his roping skills. Soon he started selling them to other ropers and rodeo companies. He held roping events at his own arena behind the trees on the north side of U.S. 11. “We held round robins, where every header (the one who lassos the horns) ropes with every heeler (the one who lassos the hind legs),” he says.

Born 56 years ago in a former plantation home reduced to its rock foundations years ago, Morgan lived in that house six months, until his daddy decided he wanted to be off the road. There were five slave houses around the property when it was a plantation. Look closely, and you’ll see the remains of one at the edge of the woods behind and to the right of the stone enclosure that Morgan now uses for pens and hay storage.

Morgan started out riding bulls when he was 13 to get out of doing farm chores. He hitchhiked to rodeos in Mississippi, Georgia and North Alabama before he was old enough to drive. “Five boys from the Springville area all started riding bulls together around 1972: Clayton Bromberg, Barry Long, Doug Downing, Mark Cousins and me,” he says. “We taught ourselves, went to bull riding school, too,” he says. He went into the sport to prove a point to his father.

“I worked for him and was cutting grass, stacking hay on the side,” he explains. “I went to a rodeo and thought, ‘I can do this, and if I can win, I won’t have to cut grass.’ And it worked.” He also went to saddle-bronc riding school, but his heart was in bull riding, which won him more money than the broncs.

“As a teenager and through my 20s and into my 30s, I could win enough on weekends to support my lifestyle,” he says. “I knew my limitations, though, and I knew the bulls.” The only major injury he suffered was a separated shoulder, but his arthritis reminds him of the ones he either wasn’t aware of at the time or that have faded into distant memory.

From bull riding, Morgan went to team roping and “did pretty good,” he says. “There were lots of Saturday and Sunday ropings around Alabama.” Rodeoing became an addiction, one that helped him preserve his farm all these years.

He hasn’t roped since his knee replacement a year ago, although a back operation the year before had already slowed him down. “It had become more of a hobby than competition by then anyway,” he says. “I can rope if I have to, though. I have a couple of Quarter horses. But the cows are so gentle they follow me across the road to the other pastures.”

Longhorns are known for their gentleness. Originating from an Iberian hybrid of two ancient cattle lineages, they are direct descendants of the first cattle brought to the New World by Spanish settlers in 1493. Their horns grow from the base, and their life spans are as long in years as their horns are in inches. Cows live into their 30s, bearing calves into their mid-20s. Steers live even longer because they don’t have the stress of calving.

Scalawag, 23, was a roping steer for many years, “back when I was good,” Morgan says. He has kept him around because of his 94-inch horns. “He won me a belt buckle a year ago,” he says. Horn length competitions, it seems, are quite common among breeders.

Steers have longer horns than the cows or bulls, because when gelded, their hormones turn away from muscle-mass and toward horn growth. Morgan’s biggest steer in terms of horns was Spike, who had a span of 104 inches when he died. “The world record a few years ago was 111 inches, but it probably has been beaten by now. It’s all about genetics and putting the right cow and right bull together.”

Due to their innate intelligence and gentle dispositions, longhorns are increasingly being trained as riding steers.

Moonlight, 16, who Morgan calls his “sweetest” steer, rides in area parades. “Sweet” is hardly the adjective most folks would use for a 1,400 pound animal with a horn span of six feet, but Morgan says longhorn steers are low-key and easy to handle. “Each has its own personality, and they come in a variety of colors,” he says. (The Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America says there are no two alike.) “There are lots of speckled and spotted ones, solid whites, solid blacks, black-and-white ones, red ones, each with a different color pattern.”

Like the longhorns in Gene Autry’s Back in the Saddle Again, who feed on “the lowly Jimson weed,” Morgan’s herd will eat just about anything. They are a hardy breed, and will graze in hot weather and in the woods, even eating leaves. “But they won’t put on weight,” Morgan says. “Longhorns are the leanest of beef cattle, and not that tasty because they don’t marble. They don’t have the fat that other beef cattle do.”

Even though he doesn’t rope or ride any more, he keeps the cows because they force him to maintain the 380-acre farm that his father bought in the 1950s. Without the cattle, there would be a lot more bush-hogging, which would give him less time for his “real job,” that of landlord.

“I own two apartment buildings on Highland Avenue near St. Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham, and I go to work every day,” he says. “I work all the time.” He cuts hay with only occasional help, and finds it stressful to keep all his machinery running.

“We’re real involved in the Springville Community Theater, too,” he says of him and his family. His sister, June Mack, is founder and director of the theater. Mack used to act there and still builds sets and whatever else his sister needs him to do.

“My wife and I have raised two boys on this farm, and it helped send them to college,” he says. One is at Virginia Tech now, the other is about to enter Nashville’s Belmont University. As to whether they will continue the family tradition, Mack can’t say for sure.

“One son is an Eagle Scout, and we kid him about turning it into a Boy Scout Camp when I’m gone.”

Features

Help Is On the Way

When Disaster Strikes

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Photos by Wallace
Bromberg Jr.
Submitted photos by
Ben Chandler
and Ellen Tanner

“Jesus is the hope that calms life’s storms.”

The marquee message at Friendship Baptist Church in Odenville one March evening seemed quite appropriate because, inside the building, a large group of people was learning how to help others recover from natural disasters.

Nina Funderburg of Talladega, who sat beside Pell City friend, Sandy Gafnea, excitedly looked forward to being part of faith-based disaster relief. “If Jesus is in it, I want to do it.”

Early the next morning, Funderburg would have to demonstrate safety and skill with a chainsaw by felling a tree.

Mary Parsons of Moody was completing her disaster relief retraining to do what she finds fulfilling. “I just like helping people,” she said.

After finishing hours of training and passing a background check, the men and women in the group would receive the Homeland Security clearance necessary for entering a disaster area.

With those credentials in hand, it would be official: each had earned the privilege of wearing the yellow shirt and hat of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief.

Some of the attendees had traveled from as far away as Athens and Rainsville. After the weekend of training, they would return to their part of the state to attach to a unit in their locale. The individuals who attend a Southern Baptist church in St. Clair would become part of the St. Clair Baptist Disaster Relief team.

Members of that team are ambassadors who dispatch on short notice to a storm-damaged area, bringing with them chainsaws, comforting words … and prayer.

Sometimes, they are the first and only contact people in crisis ever have with St. Clair County, Alabama.

“We’re kind of one of the best-kept secrets in St. Clair County,” said Glenn Pender of Steele, coordinator of St. Clair Baptist Disaster Relief.

In the beginning
In 2003, efforts to organize the team began and, the next year, the first volunteers completed training. Pender said it was also in 2004 when they embarked on their first mission — a rebuilding project in Flomaton after Hurricane Ivan.

Currently, 115 men and women — from ages 25 to 85 and from 22 Southern Baptist churches in St. Clair County – make up the unit. Nearly 30 of the members are chaplains, said Pender and Ben Chandler, director of missions for St. Clair Baptist Association.

Depending on the field of service they have chosen, the members might operate chainsaws, a Bobcat skid steer, bucket truck or shower trailer; give assistance with mud-out, cleanup and recovery, or provide administrative services, explained Chandler and Pender.

Some on the St. Clair volunteers have trained to care for children or to work in mass feeding. Both of those services are provided through the state-level organization, Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief.

Mel Johnson, disaster relief and construction coordinator for Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions in Montgomery, said members of St. Clair Baptist Disaster Relief number among the state’s 7,000 Southern Baptist disaster relief volunteers.

These volunteers are included under the even larger umbrella of the North American Mission Board (NAMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“We are actually volunteer missionaries with the North American Mission Board,” Pender said.

In the United States, 65,000 Southern Baptists are trained disaster relief volunteers, said Beth Bootz, disaster relief communications coordinator for NAMB. That makes Southern Baptists “one of the three largest mobilizers of trained disaster relief volunteers in the United States.” The other top mobilizers are the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

Ellen Tanner, director of St. Clair County Emergency Management Agency, pointed out that St. Clair Baptist Disaster Relief has a crucial role in emergency response in the county. The team provides “vital” services, such as “debris removal on private property, which the county and cities cannot do.” Plus, the unit bears the responsibility of registering and directing volunteers and serving as coordinators in the Emergency Operation Center.

Tanner said the team members “are committed to serving God by serving others. Their actions and the love they show for people is often the act of unselfish kindness that can turn a person’s life around.”

During its 11 years, the disaster relief team has ministered in a long list of places, helping fellow Alabamians after floods, hurricanes and tornadoes. Just last year, the group spent three weeks working in Bessemer after a tornado.

In addition, the unit has assisted after natural disasters in Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois and New York, according to James Dendy, a team chaplain from Cropwell.

When leadership of Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief is asked to help after a crisis in another state, “St. Clair is usually one of the first to mobilize,” Johnson said.

Ron Warren of Steele, a member of St. Clair’s unit, said its volunteers worked a total of eight weeks in damaged areas after Hurricane Katrina, 11 days following Hurricane Rita and two weeks on Staten Island, N.Y., after Hurricane Sandy.

At times, they have been in areas of martial law with no electrical service for a 100-mile radius. A mob would gather at the arrival of a vehicle loaded with food and supplies. People were so hungry that the situation was dangerous, said Warren, who is also state chainsaw coordinator for Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief.

“It is a stressful ministry” on many different levels, Dendy said. Seeing the despair of the suffering people and magnitude of destruction “gets to you. It can overwhelm you, especially for the new guys. It’s one thing to see it on the news. It’s another thing to see it on the ground.”

Their hearts ache, and they weep for the people in crisis, Pender said. “It’s not an easy task.”

Because it is such an emotional ministry, Warren said chaplains are embedded in every team the St. Clair unit sends into a storm-damaged area.

The chaplains are present to attend to the volunteers, who hurt deeply for the people they are trying to help, Warren said. The chaplains minister, as well, to those affected by the storms – talking to them, addressing their needs, praying with them and, most importantly, telling them about Jesus.

Often, when the disaster relief team arrives and goes to work, property owners ask how much the services will cost. When the owners hear that it is free of charge, the answer almost always is met with surprise, Dendy said. The people find it difficult to believe that individuals will travel such a long distance to help strangers … for free.

As volunteers, the disaster relief members receive no pay. They cover the costs related to their training, as well as the expenses of traveling to an area of need. Often, they take time off work to assist in affected communities.

“If you ask why these volunteers travel such long distances, spend their own money to get to these locations and put themselves in harm’s way to help those suffering through the horrible circumstances brought on by disaster, they will respond, ‘God loves you; so do we. And that is why we are here to help,’” said Johnson.

“Our main goal is to carry the word of Christ – to let others see Christ in us,” said team member Jimmy Pollard of Riverside.

“The greatest pay is when we see someone come to know Jesus Christ (as Savior),” Pender said.

It is about “helping folks and being there when they need us,” said Ron Culberson of Springville, coordinator of St. Clair’s chainsaw-cleanup-recovery crew.

“This,” said team member Jim Thomas of Clay, “is what God wants me to do.”

Prepared and ready
Because of the financial support it receives from churches within St. Clair Baptist Association and from individuals, the disaster relief team has become one of the best equipped in the state.

Of the 54 cleanup-recovery-chainsaw units manned by Southern Baptists in Alabama, “St. Clair is one of the larger, well-organized teams,” said Johnson. “St. Clair has invested in equipment that allows them to serve in difficult areas with heavy equipment, such as a bucket truck, skid steer and shower unit.”

Warren said St. Clair was the first unit in the state to have a Bobcat skid steer and is the only one with a bucket truck.

As for the shower trailer, it is a “Cadillac” unit, Chandler said. It was the first of three built by the St. Clair team. The other two now belong to Southern Baptist disaster relief groups elsewhere in the state.

Designed by Pender and Warren, the trailer features six shower stalls, each with a locking door. One stall is handicap accessible. A laundry room boasts two pair of commercial washers and dryers.

Generally, the shower unit and laundry facilities are for volunteers to use. However, they also are made available to people in affected areas.

Like the team’s equipment, the capabilities and willingness of the members have garnered a positive reputation.

“The skills and abilities of the St. Clair unit are a testament to their ongoing training and commitment to respond for crisis mitigation,” Johnson said.

Even though the team’s focus is on ministering during a disaster, it stays busy throughout the year with community service projects.

The chainsaw crew frequently cuts trees that are deemed unsafe or are threatening nearby structures.

Also, during the summer months, the shower unit is in great demand as mission teams, such as World Changers and Mission Serve, come into the area to work.

Mission hits home
April 27, 2011 …

That 24-hour span was filled with sadness from beginning to end.

When early morning straight-line winds ripped through Moody, Pell City and Riverside, two lives were lost.

St. Clair Baptist Disaster Relief quickly went to work in the Moody area, cutting trees and moving debris.

Hour after hour, tornados cut paths all over the state. More than 60 of them crisscrossed Alabama, leaving hundreds dead.

Then, just before nightfall, an EF-4 tornado tore through the Shoal Creek community of St. Clair County.

Under normal circumstances, the disaster relief volunteers — who had just gotten home from working all day in Moody — would have been sent into Shoal Creek at first light the next morning.

This time, however, the situation was dire. It could not wait.

Damage was so widespread and debris so thick that team members were sent immediately.

Through the night and well into the next morning, they cut a path for first responders to get into the valley to free the trapped, treat the injured and locate the missing.

Around 3:30 a.m. April 28, the chainsaw crew finally reached the end of the storm’s track.

Eleven residents had perished in the tornado. Two more – including a preborn baby – died in the next few days, said Carl Brownfield, chief of Shoal Creek Volunteer Fire Department.

Broken were the hearts of the residents.

Broken, as well, were the hearts of the disaster relief team members. All the past crises in which they had worked could not have prepared them for one so tragic. This time, team members were helping their very own. These were St. Clair people who were hurting; they were “family.”

Pender grows emotional talking about that night and the days that followed.

He chokes back tears and says there are some images from that time he just cannot allow to come into his mind because they are too painful.

“We don’t like to relive that,” Pender said of himself and other disaster relief volunteers who witnessed the death, distress and devastation the tornado left in its wake. “It was difficult for all of us.”

Some team members worked nine days straight, breaking only to eat, shower and sleep.

The unit continued its cleanup-and-recovery efforts for another four weeks after that. While some of the team remained engaged in those endeavors, other members moved into the rebuilding phase.

That June, the volunteers worked another three weeks.

“We had people rebuilding in there up until a year or so ago,” Warren said.

Giving back
After the tornado, Brownfield exited what was left of his house and entered a “nightmare.” He and volunteer firefighter Mike Blanton looked for survivors and cut through trees while trying to reach the rescuers they knew were working to get into the valley.

Several times in the weeks after the tornado, members of St. Clair Baptist Disaster Relief visited Brownfield. They talked to him; they prayed with him.

Those simple acts “lifted me back up and got my faith going again,” Brownfield said.

Time and again during those weeks, he encountered different team members and found them all to be “wonderful” people.

“I had seen how much they were doing in our community,” Brownfield said.

Although he had heard of the team previously, he had not realized the size of it or the scope of its ministry.

Two years ago, he joined the unit, starting out on the chainsaw crew and then learning to operate the skid steer.

This past spring, Brownfield completed training to become a disaster relief chaplain. He wants to comfort others in crisis.

Within a year after the tornado, Shoal Creek resident David Smith joined the disaster relief team.

For Smith, a volunteer firefighter as well, being involved in St. Clair Baptist Disaster Relief is his way to give to others in return for all that his community received.

Features

The Old Is New Again

Vintage Touch Making
Furniture Into Art

Story by Graham Hadley
Photos by Mike Callahan
and Jamie Parker

Where you see junk, they see a table, a chair, a bench, a lamp, even a work of art.

Jamie Parker and her fiancé, Travis Reed, run Vintage Touch in Pell City’s historic downtown area — a store that carries home furnishings and décor items that are truly unique.

And by “unique,” they really do mean absolutely one-of-a-kind.

“My fiancé and I create repurposed furniture. We just sold a sofa or entry table that was made out of an old porch column and part of a gate. We built around that, added some wood, made it look like old barn wood — look old and new at the same time,” Jamie said.

“We are a store of all things. You never know what you are going to find in here.”

Vintage Touch opened Dec. 21, 2014, in the building that once housed Pell City Grocery “years and years” ago.

And since then, business has been growing steadily as more people are rediscovering Pell City’s historic downtown district as a walking and shopping area.

The couple had run booths in other places around Birmingham, but picked Pell City for their first store.

“We decided to open here because we live here, and I love this downtown area,” Jamie said.

“We have truly been blessed. We were a little worried, coming from places like Vestavia to a little town, but sales have been increasing every month. Pell City has really showed us a lot of love. People are so friendly.

“Our customers want to see downtown make it; they want to see downtown rise back up, and I want to see that, too.”

That walking-and-shopping atmosphere is proving to be almost a perfect combination for the kind of business Vintage Touch does. Much of what is sold in the store is made in the store, and customers can see the process of turning junk into treasures firsthand.

“They see that we are in here doing the work. When people see you putting your time into something, it makes it that much more special to them,” she said.

It’s a process Jamie and Travis love — all of it — from “picking” items from old barns and yards, combing flea markets and similar venues, even finding discarded furniture set by the street, to rebuilding it into something new.

Their designs cover the spread. They have an old tractor steering wheel made into a lamp hanging in the window and have made a bench they created from an old truck tailgate that was sold for more than they paid for the truck. It now sits in an office entrance at a firm in Birmingham.

“We can look at something that someone else thinks is trash and turn it into something that is so beautiful, so unique, that people just fall in love with it,” Jamie said.

“It’s something my fiancé and I can do together, he has a full time job, and this is a lot of hard work, but it is fun.”

Travis’ full-time job is as a farrier — a horseshoer — and a blacksmith (“He’s really good at it,” Jamie interjected), and along the way, working on farms, he has found all sorts of treasures for the shop, including old watering troughs that get repurposed into things like benches to chairs.

“Those are some of our most popular items. We have people waiting for furniture made from old watering troughs,” Jamie said.

The prices in the shop are as varied as their designs — you can always find something you can afford.

“We strive to be extremely affordable,” Jamie said. “We even sell to other stores to resell for more, and we all make money. We want people to be able to walk in here and see what we have that they want and be able to afford something,” Jamie said.

In addition to selling their artistic furniture, the store sells some accessories Jamie and Travis have found along the way, vintage items like lunch boxes and advertising signs and promotional materials.

The couple will also take on special-order jobs, but say things turn out the best when they still have some room to be creative with their designs.

Vintage Touch does sell merchandise for a few select vendors, but what they sell has to follow the business rules of being unique and special, just like the store.

Follow Vintage Touch on Facebook.