Category: St. Clair Business

Retired policeman turns on “blue light” for business

Story by Jackie Romine Walburn
Photos by Graham Hadley

Retired police officer Ed Brasher has found his ideal after-retirement avocation.

Brasher – a former police chief and regional drug task force officer – combined an innate mechanical ability and career-honed knowledge about emergency equipment with a passion for the adrenaline boost of fast, cool vehicles to create a growing electronics, lighting and warning equipment and installation business in Odenville.

BEI Lighting and Warning (BEILW), previously Brasher Electronics, outfits police, fire and emergency vehicles with lights and security features, produces graphics and detailing for business and public vehicles and, most recently, is marketing its own line of LED lighting and sirens.

Today, the business Brasher and son Trey started in 2003 in the family’s two-car garage is the largest supplier of emergency equipment in Alabama with 5,000 square feet of custom work space and three employees.

And, as they expand the business with a new line of lighting and sirens and a growing list of services and clients, the father and son are continuing a family tradition of owning a business – begun by Ed Brasher’s businessman father.

Law enforcement career

After a very short tenure training as a butcher apprentice (too cold and messy, he recalls), Brasher began his three-decade career in law enforcement as a policeman in the small St. Clair town of Whites Chapel, a community that’s now part of the town of Moody. Next, he moved to the Odenville police department and served as police chief for Odenville from 1987 to 1990.

Joining the Pell City police force in 1990, Brasher served as night shift patrolman, then sergeant. He spent the mid-90s as part of the 30^th Judicial Circuit’s Drug Task Force. Eventually promoted to captain then assistant police chief with Pell City Police, Brasher officially retired in 2014.

While a police officer, Brasher continued to drive trucks for his father’s business. “Some days I’d park the patrol car at the end of a shift and get in the 18-wheeler for a long haul, then return to start over again,” says Brasher, who noted that many police officers and firefighters supplement their incomes with additional work. “You do what you have to do when you are raising a family.”

Family tradition

Born in Birmingham, Brasher moved with his family to California and spent his childhood on the west coast where his father operated one of his businesses. Returning to Alabama with his family when he was 16, Brasher attended Hueytown High School for six months, then settled in at St. Clair High School, where he would meet his future wife on his first day.

“I sat down behind her in homeroom. I saw this beautiful girl and fell in love,” he says of his wife of 38 years, Kathy Foreman Brasher. “I told my best friend then that I was going to marry Kathy one day.”

And, he did marry Kathy Foreman, who it turns out shares Brasher’s mechanical bend and “adrenaline junkie” passion. They raised two sons, Trey, 33, and Shannon, 30.

Before becoming a police officer and as a sideline income since, Brasher drove long haul trucks for his father’s business, including delivering natural gas in 18-wheel rigs.

While Brasher worked as a police officer and sometimes truck driver, Kathy worked for the St. Clair sheriff’s department as a 911 dispatcher for 10 years and today manages the county’s pistol permit program.

Fast cars, motorcycles and an airplane

Always an “adrenaline junkie,” Brasher first flirted with speed and daring as a drag racer in California as a teen. He’s since had fast cars – a favorite being a 1969 AMX hot rod – and motorcycles, enjoying both the rides and the tinkering with engines and anything mechanical.

When their sons were young, Ed and Kathy Brasher loaded the boys up on their his-and-her big motorcycles and traveled on vacations to the west coast and Canada. Trey recalls these trips with fondness and admits to inheriting the mechanical adventure spirit from his parents.

 Brasher recalls with Trey, who is co-owner of BEILW and the company’s graphic expert, the time his parents had a 350 Chevy V-8 engine up on blocks in the living room, rebuilding it.

Since then, there have been other fast cars, a Piper 235 airplane that he and Trey are both licensed to fly and a new Gold Wing motorcycle, purchased as Brasher’s retirement present to himself.

Try this

The catalyst for what became BEILW was a friend who was selling police equipment but didn’t install the equipment. “He knew I had a background in electronics and asked if I was interested in the installation side of the business,” Brasher says. The friend knew the products would sell better if installation was part of the deal.

One day, Brasher came home to find a Crown Victoria in the driveway with equipment in the seat and a note, “Try this.”

Brasher and Trey installed the equipment on the Crown Vic. Then there were two or three more police cars in the driveway. They soon set up shop in the family garage.

Four years later, in 2007, they built the lobby and first workspace at the current location on Oakley Avenue in Odenville. In 2015, a graphic workspace was added. Then, in 2017, the company added its giant warehouse addition designed to accommodate fire trucks and ladder trucks, even 18-wheelers, with a 12- by 16-foot door. Upstairs is a break room and Brasher’s office. There’s also a parts room. The most recent workspace addition is a converted garage outfitted for painting and powder coating equipment.

Lights, sirens, graphics

Brasher’s company serves a specialty market, installing lights, sirens and other equipment on police, fire and emergency vehicles. The services and products include prisoner partitions, equipment consoles, radar, gun racks, laptop connections and push bumpers for police vehicles. They add towing bars and safety lifts on wreckers. The company creates graphics for the exteriors of emergency vehicles and for Realtors and others businesses. The graphics side of the business also produces signs and banners for the general public as well.

As each job on a vehicle begins, the business digitally records the VIN number and image of each vehicle they work on, before and after. This video databank helps with quality control, warranties and being able to reproduce exactly what the customer wants again.

In addition, video security cameras – and screens in Brasher’s office – work 24/7 patrolling the areas around the business to protect the expensive equipment and the customer’s vehicles.

Smart start

Another service offered by the company is installation, testing and removal of “Smart Start” ignition interlock systems in vehicles as part of court-ordered alcohol monitoring of drivers convicted of driving under the influence. The company is one of the state’s certified installers of the system that analyzes the driver’s breath and locks up if alcohol is detected. The Smart Start program is operated by Alabama’s Department of Forensic Sciences.

LED lights a game changer

LED lights that last longer and shine brighter have changed the world of emergency lighting, Brasher says. “They are compact and more reliable and use less power.”

The company’s new line of lighting and siren products, called BEILW and for sale online at BEILW.com, include products designed by Brasher and son with installation and use in mind. “They are more installer friendly, more functional and more aesthetically pleasing,” Brasher says. The line includes siren speakers, beacon lights, light bars and dash lights.

Emergency lighting on vehicles is color coded. Red is for firefighting vehicles; blue is for police, and amber is for emergency vehicles. “It’s always been against the law to have colored lights on civilian vehicles. The type of lights might change, but the color code is consistent, at least regionally. But, it’s the opposite “up north,” Brasher says, with fire being blue and police red.

Investing back in the business

When Brasher still worked with the police department as the company ramped up, he made sure he met all ethics requirements to not do business with police department he’d work for, and he made sure to funnel company proceeds back into the young business. Today, he says, the company is debt free as it continues to grow and add services. Before he retired and went to work there full time, “we invested everything back into the business,” he says, noting there were many what seemed like “43-hour days and 23-day weeks.”

But now the retired police officer tries to hold his work days to five-day weeks, leaving him time for adrenaline-inducing fast cars, motorcycles and airplane rides.

Handed over the blueprints for success

Story by Paul South
Submitted Photos

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
— Proverbs 29:18

For most, visions of economic development mean shiny, sleek sedans slowly rolling off assembly lines.

But Ed Gardner Sr. envisioned St. Clair County’s economic boom not just in big manufacturing, but in cozy convenience stores, fueled by gasoline, soda and snacks.

Local entrepreneur Bill Ellison remembers Gardner’s first retail project, a convenience store on the I-20 corridor. The area would later grow to include a Wal-Mart Superstore and a wealth of other retailers, restaurants and motels.

Ellison recalls a ceremony announcing the project, the biggest he’d undertaken.

“Ed Gardner got up there and basically, he said, this project was going to change the whole way of life as Pell City knows it. It was going to be so important to the community, it was going to be about a way of life. It was going to be about better city services. It was going to be about public parks. It was going to be about all the things they could do with that money (tax revenue) that would start coming in off of that development. They would have extra money to do things to make this a better community, and it actually turned out that way.”

Indeed, it did. And the seed planted by that small retailer, and the recruitment of big manufacturers across the county, would lead to public parks, better public access to Logan Martin Lake and the Coosa River, the CEPA Center, more money for education and emergency services. Higher wages and better benefits for the county’s people in turn boosted the real estate market.

Gardner, now 82, the recipient of the 2018 Chairman’s Award from the St. Clair County Economic Development Council, is quick to downplay his role. While he was honored by the award, he says it was undeserved.

The award is given annually to a person who has gone above and beyond in their support of economic development in St. Clair County. “These are private citizens – not public officials – who are out there trying to make this county better,” said current St. Clair County Economic Development Council Executive Director Don Smith.

“I’ve always looked at that as, I was paid for everything I did. Like when I was nominated Citizen of the Year, I didn’t think it was fair. The things that I have accomplished are what I’m supposed to be doing. That’s my job, it’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I get up every morning, every day with that in mind, that this is what I’m supposed to accomplish. Awards like that are for people who give of their time, not people who are paid for their time.”

He adds, “It’s a great award, and I’m extremely proud to receive it. And it certainly makes me feel good that the people that I’ve known for the 19 years that I’ve been here, feel toward me that they would want to acknowledge what I have done with a ceremony and a way to commemorate it. It’s a tremendous honor and one that I really don’t feel that I necessarily deserve.”

His resume’ and those who have known Gardner through the years would quickly disagree.

Consider just a few of his accomplishments: Director of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs in the second administration of then-Gov. Fob James, Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the late Jack Kemp. He also served in regional leadership roles for HUD in Birmingham, Atlanta, Florida and Oklahoma City.

He played a key role in Alabama’s burgeoning automobile industry, helping continue the Mercedes Benz project in Tuscaloosa County, and later Honda in Lincoln and the industries that would spin off the auto industry, benefitting all of St.  Clair County. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Those who have come to know Gardner over his 19 years in St. Clair County are quick to disagree with his claim that the Chairman’s Award is undeserved. They contend he is the foundation for economic prosperity that St. Clair County has enjoyed in recent years. Its ranking as one of the fastest-growing counties in the state was built in large part, they say, through Gardner’s efforts.

And it came because he brought unity to the county’s drive for prosperity.  Former Pell City Mayor Guin Robinson said in the late 1990s, local leaders committed to work together, ignoring political turf wars that can kill the best-intentioned ideas in small towns and rural counties. St. Clair has had its share, thanks in part to its geography. Not this time.

 “Sometimes the stars align. We had progressive leaders, and we were all committed to do whatever it took to bring the county together around economic development.”

And the biggest piece of the puzzle, many say, was attracting Ed Gardner to St. Clair County.

“The Ed Gardner hire was the biggest the county ever made,” Ellison said. “Forming the EDC and hiring him, I can’t think of anything that’s been more important for this county. Ed always had the right words at the right time. He was an artist with words. He would pick the absolute right word. It was a work of art when Ed spoke.”

Longtime Gardner friend and colleague, local real estate executive Lyman Lovejoy, agrees. Lovejoy still pinches himself when he thinks of how the county landed Gardner for its point person on the economy. He knew how to build confidence and how to bring people together. Lovejoy was on the EDC board for 15 years and was part of the team that interviewed Gardner for the its executive director role.

“He’s got a pedigree that’s unreal. When he was in the interview, he got a phone call and said he had to take it, that it was from then-U.S. Rep. Richard Shelby. I thought it was staged. But it was Richard Shelby. That’s the kind of people he knew.”

The man that holds the job now, EDC Executive Director Don Smith, said that Gardner’s experience at the state and federal level paid dividends.

“It was critical in his ability to come here and have the patience and the temperament to bring everyone together, even if they didn’t want to,” Smith said.

Lovejoy, a past recipient of the Chairman’s Award, added, “He is the one that put us on the road to economic development here in the county. He brought our county together, the towns together, all working the same way for the same purpose.”

Gardner’s philosophy was as simple as the old adage of the rising tide that lifts all boats. A recent informal survey of the county’s major employers revealed that the workforce at each firm came from across the county.

“When you’re talking about jobs, it’s not zip code specific or city specific,” Smith said. “When a company’s expanding with 200 jobs, that’s good for all areas of St. Clair County.”

“He preached a sermon: “Just because they put something in Steele or Pell City, it benefits everybody (countywide),” Lovejoy said. “All the jobs don’t come from Steele or Ashville or wherever. His people skills were unsurpassed.”

And under Gardner’s leadership, St. Clair’s economic development blueprint became a model for other cities and counties.

“Ed validated economic development in St. Clair County,” Lovejoy says. “Other counties would call us and say, ‘How are y’all doing this? Show us what you’re doing.’ That’s going on today.”

Would economic development have transformed St. Clair into one of the state’s fastest growing counties without Gardner?

“It certainly wouldn’t have been as big,” Lovejoy says.

Gardner shies away from an individual spotlight. He will quickly tell you that economic development rests on a two-tiered foundation – teamwork and integrity, doing what you say you’ll do, without excuses.

He will quickly share credit with public and private sector leaders he’s worked with, as well as with his wife of 60 years, Betty, and his children.

And then there is his faith. In their retirement years, the Gardners travel to cities large and small, following their favorite Southern Gospel groups. Whether in Louisville, Ky., or Shipshewana, Ind., or towns near and far, he prefers performers who sing together for the glory of God, not singers who try to bring attention to themselves onstage.

“I’ve always liked gospel music, but I have never liked the demeanor of the most popular groups when they were performing on stage. To me, it ought to be a worship experience.”

Economic development is the same way, he says – perfect shared harmony. And every shared success is granted by the Almighty.

His career of success has also endured pain.

Gardner led the Oklahoma City field office of HUD. Days after he left that role in 1995 to return to Alabama, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed in a horrific act of domestic terrorism. Some 168 people died, including 35 of Gardner’s HUD colleagues. Nineteen children being cared for at the America’s Kids Day Care Center in the building, were among the dead. He tries to block out the memory, but it never fades.

Asked how he was impacted by the bombing, Gardner took a long pause. His voice broke and tears came. Those that were lost, he said, “were some of the best people I ever knew. I try to let people know how I feel about them rather than waiting until tomorrow or next week or next month, because . . . because I know that I may not have another opportunity.”

With the Chairman’s Award, Gardner’s adopted home expressed its feelings for him. And while grateful, Gardner’s humility never ceased.

“The thing that I would want people to know is that I never promised anything that I didn’t think I could deliver. And I never committed to anything that I didn’t do my best to complete in an exemplary way.”

He adds: “There’s nothing that I can look back on that can make me look back and say I wish I’d taken this path rather than that path. I tell you, the Lord has been so good to me in giving me a great family that has supported me in times I wasn’t able to be there physically to support them. They never wavered. Therefore, I know I’ve done what I should have done. I am without any doubt, one of the most blessed people that has ever lived.”

And his greatest reward comes not through gleaming plaques or grand ribbon cuttings, but in something more tangible.

“What’s gratifying to me is that when I walk through one of these plants, whether its Honda or  Eismann (Automotive, North America)  here in Pell City or WKW, and I’m walking through there and I see a man or woman there that I had  seen in the past (making minimum wage) and (now) seeing them making a good hourly wage plus benefits, that’s what does more for me than anything else – knowing that their standard of living has really improved.”

Guin Robinson characterized Gardner’s legacy.

“You can have all the necessary things for success,” he said. “But it takes a leader. And it takes someone who can put all the ingredients together. You can call him an architect. You can call him a builder, but Ed put it together. … We all knew we had those things, but we needed someone to put it together. I’m forever thankful and forever grateful that that person was Ed Gardner.”