Derrick Mostella

Becoming Ashville’s
mayor was a lifelong destiny

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photo by Meghan Frondorf

Derrick Mostella was destined to be mayor of Ashville. The first time he walked into the old B&R Grocery on Sixth Street as a kid, proprietor Bill Murray looked down at him and declared, “You’re gonna be mayor one day, kid.”

“My mom told that story so much with me growing up, at some point, I just decided it was already written, that it was something I had to do,” Mostella says. “She told the story like I didn’t have a choice.”

The path to the mayor’s office wasn’t a straight one, nor was it lined with roses and violins. Rather, it was a circuitous route fraught with identity issues because of his biracial background. But dealing with those issues shaped Mostella’s character and, ultimately, his vision for the City of Ashville. It’s a vision that is changing the face of the downtown area and the way city government operates. Mostella hopes it’s changing the way Ashvillians feel about their town, too.

“My mom and I do a Thanksgiving dinner every year that’s free to the public,” Mostella says. “We did it take-out style in 2020, but it really kind of embodies what we want for Ashville. We want it to be a kind of mix of Mayberry and Cheers, where everybody knows your name.”

Derrick Mostella and his mother, Belinda Mostella

When Mostella was elected mayor for his first term in 2016, he was 37, making him one of the city’s youngest mayors and its first biracial one at the same time. Local newspaper headlines portrayed him as the city’s first Black mayor, and that made Mostella cringe. He works hard at avoiding labels, believing they are meant to separate and divide. Besides, calling him “Black” doesn’t tell his whole story.

“I do understand the pride our Black citizens feel about my election, and I appreciate the fact that they feel they have a voice now where they may have not in the past,” Mostella says.

It’s no secret that Mostella has a Black mother and a white father. His mother, Belinda Mostella, was a dispatcher at the city jail when she met his father, James Murray, who was an Ashville police officer. Although he has never had an in-depth relationship with his father’s family, Mostella has always known where he came from and is proud of that.

“I’m a child of Ashville,” he says. “Everybody knows who my folks are. I would hope that race doesn’t do a whole lot to dictate how somebody feels about me. I got elected not by Black people, not by white people, but by the people of Ashville, and I like to thinkthey elected me because I share their values, and they trust me, and none of that has anything to do with race at the end of the day.”

Race played a big role in Mostella’s childhood, though. He was raised in a Black household by his mom and his great-grandparents, Walter and Lila Mostella, but his light skin and curly blonde hair led casual acquaintances to think he was white. That made for some testy situations, some of them funny, some of them heart-breaking, all of them shaping his view of the world.

“My first experience in elementary school, and I can remember it like it was yesterday, was having a white kid ask me, ‘Why you gittin’ on the bus with all those N****s?” Mostella recalls. “Same thing on the playground. I’m out there with my brother, my cousins, and some kid comes up and says, ‘What you doin’ over there with them, why ain’t you over here?’ A shy kid, often he just ran off and cried. “There were many, many times I would cry myself to sleep,” he says.

His great-grandparents tried to shield him from the slings and arrows of racial tensions as much as they could. “I can remember our church going to Six Flags and my great-grandmother wouldn’t let me go because she was convinced something bad would happen to me,” he says, choking back tears at the painful memory. “She said, ‘Being this little white kid over there with all those Black folks (from his church), everybody having fun, not paying attention, they’re not going to watch you, and something will happen, you just can’t go, baby.’ As much as that hurt, I knew she did it because she loved me, and she was really, really trying to protect me.”

He sees wry humor, however, in a repeating high school experience. His all-time favorite teacher was Gina Wilson, who now works for the St. Clair County Board of Education. Every time a standardized test came around, she would allow Mostella to stand up in class and flip a coin to decide his race for that day. “You know those standardized tests where they ask for your race,” Mostella says, smiling at the memory. “I would say heads Black, tails white. So that was a running joke, what color are you going to be today, dear?”

His nickname, Flip, had nothing to do with that coin toss, however. An uncle who was a fan of comedian Flip Wilson gifted him with that moniker and it stuck. “Everybody knows me as ‘Flip,’” he says.

Mostella says his early years were tough because he caught whacks from both ends of the racial stick. “I’ve probably seen more racism than the average 100 percent Black person. There was a period in my life where I wasn’t white enough for white folks and not Black enough for Black folks, and that was rough,” he says, the tears flowing freely now. “It was brutal. My great-grandmother was my rock. She was the one I would go and cry on.”

When Mostella was in middle school, his mom moved to Memphis. He persuaded her to let him stay in Ashville with his great-grandparents. She convinced him to join her when he was 15, and it was his first time to leave the state of Alabama. That move lasted six weeks. During the middle of those six weeks, he returned to Ashville for a football game and ran into Amanda Minton. After admitting they had crushes on each other, they hung out, and he decided then and there to move home.

Mostella was always near the top of his class at Ashville High School and wanted to go to college. His grandparents couldn’t read or write, so they couldn’t sign applications for college and financial aid. Amanda, who is now his wife, did all of that for him. “She forced me to do it, letting me know it needed to be done and holding me accountable to get it done,” he says, tearing up again. “She’s fantastic, she really is, and I probably don’t tell her that enough.”

Mostella and Minton, who is white, graduated from AHS in 1997. Both went to UAB for a year, then transferred to Gadsden State Community College to finish their prerequisites. Around 1999 or 2000, both moved to Memphis, where he worked and lived with his mom while Minton lived in the dorm and got her occupational therapist degree at UT-Memphis. They stayed in Memphis for a year or two after she graduated, then returned home to Ashville in 2004 and got married. “We knew that whatever we wanted to accomplish, we wanted it to be here,” he says.

He worked for his father-in-law, Terry Minton, at Teague’s Hardware for a couple of years while contemplating his next move. He enjoyed most of his time there, but it’s also where he had some of the same type of painful experiences he had growing up. He was often the guy standing in a corner that no one knows is part Black.

“I couldn’t believe some of the hatred that people would spew and really more for laughs,” he says. “What was hurtfulmore than anything is that it was for chuckles and giggles and little one-off comments and things like that, and that really was just like a thousand cuts.”

He considered buying the store from Minton but decided that was not what he wanted to do with his life. So, he enrolled at Jacksonville State University, finishing in 2013 with an accounting degree.He worked in the accounts payable office at Steris Instrument Management Services in Birmingham for a few years, then joined Boatner & Pugh, an accounting firm in Gadsden. “Being mayor here by nature is a full-time job with part-time pay, and that’s why I’m very selective about the places I work,” he says.

Early political career

Mostella’s first foray into politics was in 2012, when he was elected to the Ashville City Council. His motivation to run for office came from some of his experiences while working at Teague Hardware, where he heard people complain about city government without offering any solutions. “Hearing how much they cared about the city and all the things they wanted for it just motivated me to get involved and to try to see some of these things through,” he says.

His frustration with the way city government was being run prompted him to run for mayor in 2016. “The one thing that I learned in being on the Council is that Ashville never had a cash-flow problem, we had a cash management problem,” he says. “We were run inefficiently. We had an antiquated way of doing everything.”

He didn’t have a picture in his head of the way he wanted Ashville to be or to look like, he just wanted people to get more involved, to take ownership of their town, and to realize its potential. “I wanted to empower people and let them know that the City of Ashville should be a reflection of what the people who live here want it to be, not (a reflection of) one person who sits at City Hall, not the mayor or the City Council. What we should be striving to do should be a reflection of what the people of Ashville want to see.”

One of Mostella’s earliest projects during his first term was to revamp the city’s employee handbook. Working closely with the Council and City Clerk Chrystal St. John, he re-wrote the old handbook that was simply a photocopy of one belonging to another city that had nothing in common with Ashville. “We had no pay scales, no job descriptions, nothing like that, so we had to start from scratch on a lot of stuff,” he says. “We revisited literally every policy and procedure, every city ordinance, that’s on the books.” The update resulted in pay raises for many employees.

Mostella talks with city employees after a Council meeting

His second term got off to a bumpy start, however, when a pair of candidates who fell short in the general election sued their opponents over alleged voter fraud. Former Mayor Robert McKay sued Mostella, while McKay’s nephew, Randy McKay, sued Councilwoman Sue Price. Mostella and Price breathed a sigh of relief when the pair dropped their lawsuit after three days of hearings at the St. Clair County Courthouse.

With a lot of input from local citizens, the same team that revamped the employee handbook is reworking an old, 20-year Comprehensive Plan to cover the next 20 years and developing a five-year strategic plan. Those plans include a new library, revamping downtown’s image and updating the city’s parks systems.

The city purchased the Alabama Power Building on U.S. 231 Southwith the intention of moving the library there. They shifted gears when they discovered that the medical building next door, which the city already owned and had been vacated by Dr. George Harris when he consolidated his offices in Springville, was more suitable. Bids for its renovation are still out. The process will be helped by a $100,000 donation from David O. and R.L. Louisa McCain, a couple with deep roots in Ashville. “David is from Ashville, and his wife was heavily involved in the Shelby County Library System,” Mostella says. “They recently moved back to the area, read the original newspaper article about our library plans and wanted to help.” The former Alabama Power Building was leased to the state’s Pardons and Parole Board for five years, and the lease money is paying for the building.

Mostella caused a minor uproar when the city tore down the old rock building at the corner of U.S. 231 and Sixth Street. It was necessary, he says, to accomplish the facelift he wants to see around the Courthouse Square. That facelift includes updating the sidewalks and increasing the turn radius at the traffic light to accommodate the large semis that come through. To do that, overhead utilities will have to be moved a block.

The city will build a pocket park where the rock building stood, incorporating some of the rocks saved from the building as well as the historic mounting block that stood in front of it. Plans also include updating signage, some of which is almost unreadable in places, and repairing sidewalks, which are buckled and have grass growing in the cracks in many places.

Retail shops have come and gone around the Courthouse Square for several years, and part of the problem is absentee ownership of the buildings there, according to Mostella. A lack of parking and publicity have contributed to the retention problem, too.

The city purchased an old gas station behind the former Ashville Drugs building and tore it down to provide more parking and has contacted the state highway department about signage near the Ashville I-59 exit. Meanwhile, several of those buildings were purchased by local people recently, and the city hopes to make announcements soon regarding new shops and businesses moving in.

“One of the problems we fought downtown was thatthe property owners weren’t very heavily invested, and I think the city has to take a large part of that responsibility because we haven’t progressed and created an environment down there that’s conducive to a business surviving,” Mostella says. “No parking, not a whole lot of aesthetics there. The flow of it doesn’t work from one side of the street to the other, there are no crosswalks painted, you’re literally dodging 18-wheelers at times, so we never put in the work to really build it up.”

 Mostella believes the city’s futurelies in residential growth, and that people will see Ashville as an alternative to what he calls “big-city living” in Springville. The city’s approach under his administration will be to keep that small-city feel without the small-town mentality. “We wanted to play up the small-town feel but modernize our approach to it and get somemodern amenities for our citizens who may never have experienced something like that, and for the other generations that are coming along, where green space and pocket parks is not a foreign language,” he says.

Eventually, he plans to upgrade the city’s parks system, which includes the City Splash Pad Park and D.O Langston Park (in front of City Hall), maybe even hire a parks and recreation director. That upgrade will include more green space, more walking trails and replacing outdated equipment at the splash pad.

“Half of the equipment at that park was there when I was a kid,” he says. “We haven’t replaced it because I think it’s an inefficient approach to just go in and say, ‘Hey this piece of equipment is old, let’s put another one in its spot,’ when we need to be looking at the park as a whole.”

He says the city has the capital and the potential to do so much more now than it did four years ago due to better money management.

“My saying has always been that I just want Ashville to be the best version of itself that it can be,” Mostella says. “I’m not here to dictate what that is, I’m here to make sure that we do so efficiently and that we do so together.”

BIG GAME

Three St. Clair men share their love of the hunt

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Graham Hadley

Some folks get their kicks riding race cars at top speed around an oval track. Others get a rush from parachuting out of airplanes, paragliding off high mountain peaks, or surviving an eight-second ride on a bull so mean he’d just as soon kill you as look at you.

Several St. Clair County men know another type of thrill, one that’s difficult for them to describe. It comes from taking down an elephant that he has tracked for miles across a South African plain, a lion that just roared from a brush-pile 12 feet away or an Alaskan brown bear that was about to invite him to dinner … as the entrée.

Between them, Rob Smith, Gordon Palmgren and Joe Wheeler have shot hundreds of birds and animals, large and small, from grouse to sheep and elephants. Each will tell you that it’s not the kill that provides the thrill. It’s the sighting and tracking of these animals that give these guys that rush of adrenalin, a rush so powerful they’re willing to spend thousands of dollars to experience it over and over again. For them, pulling the trigger is actually anti-climactic.

“After you shoot, it’s all over,” says Smith. “There’s a tinge of sadness because you’ve taken this magnificent animal’s life.”

All three men have been hunting most of their lives. Two of them were taught by a female member of their family. Smith, for example, went on his first hunt with his grandmother when he was 10 years old. “She was one of the last of the old pioneer women,” he says. “She could do anything.” They hunted rabbits and squirrels together around Tallahassee, Fla., where he grew up. They usually took their prey home and ate it. “Man has always hunted,” he says. “It’s part of our basic instinct. As you get older, you start hunting deer here in the South. I progressed.”

Rob Smith shows off a photo of a brown
bear hunt in front of the animal.

Smith, who started Advance Machinery in 1985 and retired 20 years ago, has been hunting big game for more than 30 years. His first international hunt was in Mongolia in 1990, and netted him an ibex, a type of wild mountain goat distinguished by the male’s large, recurved horns, and a six-point elk. Their cape mounts (head and shoulders) hang on one side of his den fireplace, while a 22-point red stag from New Zealand hangs on the other side.“You only count one side of the head for the points on an elk,” he says. “You count both sides for a red stag.”

Throughout the house are mounts of many of the animals Smith has taken. Above the fireplace is the skull of a moose, an animal whose size is measured by the distance between the widest points of its “palms,” the two wide, flat antlers. This one measures 55 inches. Mule deer from Wyoming and Montana flank the doorway into his kitchen. But the dominant animal in the den is the nine-foot-tall brown bear from Alaska in the corner. “He was standing like that when I shot him, looking at a herd of caribou,” Smith recalls. “He didn’t know what hit him.” He has the creature’s skull, with worn teeth indicating he was about 28 years old. “His teeth were deteriorating, so he would not have lived through another winter,” Smith says.

Hunting has taken him all over the North American continent and around the world. He has shot Arctic caribou on Victoria Island, which is above the 60th parallel and as far north as people actually live. “It was 20 below zero there, dangerously cold,” he says of that trip. He has taken white-tailed deer in Alabama, Dall sheep, bears and mountain goats in Alaska, Russian wild boar in South Carolina, tahr (related to goats and sheep), sika deer and chamois (a species of goat-antelope) in New Zealand.

“You’ve got to be physically fit to track the mountain animals,” says Smith, who is 69. “I was much younger, and my knees were in better shape when I killed those. You might climb 5,000-6,000 feet up a mountain. You’re carrying a backpack and a rifle. I have weights and an exercise machine in my basement, and I work out almost every day. But I don’t climb mountains anymore.”

He considers the elephant one of the most physically demanding beasts to hunt. “You have to walk 10-12 miles a day for two to three weeks, sometimes longer,” he says. “You may track a herd for two or three days, catch up and find no bulls big enough to take. Then you start all over again.”

His trophy room contains several photos of game that were too big to mount, like the Indian buffalo from Argentina and the water buffalo he took in Australia. In 1993, the state of Montana sent him a plaque for shooting the second largest antelope killed there at that time. There’s a musk ox fur stretched over the pool table, and 12 mounts hang on the walls. “You mount them to honor the animal, to remember them,” he says. Smith uses Stone Taxidermy of Leeds for most of his mounts.

He has hunted Africa and Australia for the last 12 years, because he likes the challenge of tracking dangerous game (buffalo, elephant, lion, hippopotamus, crocodile and leopard). “The animal has as good a chance to take you out as you have to get him,” he says. His primary prey now are the elephant and the cape buffalo. He has a mount of the latter over the doorway from his foyer to his trophy room. “The rhinoceros is now on the endangered species list due to poaching, so we can’t hunt them,” he says. “Poachers kill them for the horns, sell them to the Asians, who grind them up and use them as an aphrodisiac.”

Poachers hunt in secret and leave the carcasses, but legitimate hunters donate the meat to local villagers, usually through the outfitters who organize the hunts. “When do-gooders start hollering, ‘Why would you shoot a magnificent animal like the elephant,’ I say it’s no different than shooting a cow,” Smith explains. “That elephant will feed a whole village for weeks or months.” He says it’s against the law for villagers to shoot the elephants because the government makes money off the trophy fees. “There’s not an animal in this house that wasn’t eaten, except for the bear. Brown bears are inedible.”

Even in Alaska, you can’t just leave the meat where you drop the animal. In some cases, Smith has had it processed and shipped home from Alaska, but usually he packs it out. “It took me four days to backpack all the meat out (of camp) when I took that big moose that’s hanging over the fireplace,” he says. “You can’t drive a truck up to get it. The outfitter donated it to the indigenous people and to charities.”

Normally Smith does two or three international hunts a year. Much of the money spent on hunts in the U.S. and abroad goes into animal conservation. “Even in this country, the biggest part of conservation money comes from hunters’ fees,” he says. “Besides, nature has to have checks and balances. Most animals get diseases from interbreeding. If they have no natural predators, they starve.”

Unlike Smith, Gordon Palmgren won’t shoot an elephant, unless it’s a rogue that’s running amuck through villages and fields. “I don’t want to disrupt their family unit,” he says. “They are special.” His wife, Sharla, does not want him to shoot a giraffe. Those are about the only two big-game animals not on display at his office.

In fact, the conference room at Gordon Palmgren Inc., which lays fiber-optic cables, looks like a natural-history museum. Murals on the back and front walls depict an African plain and the face of a rugged mountain, respectively. Painted by Springville’s Joy Varnell (see the October/November 2019 issue of Discover), they form backdrops that make the full-body animals appear to be in their natural habitats. Elephants and a giraffe are painted into the African mural, along with Palmgren’s two sons, depicted as youngsters peeking from behind a tree.

“I took Dane, who is now 30, to Africa when he was younger,” says Palmgren. “He shot a (large species of antelope) when he was 10. Travis, 35, is an artist who has never hunted, but he’ll come up here and draw pictures of the animals.”

Other animals in front of that mural include several types of antelopes, such as a sable, along with two steenboks, two duikers and a musk ox. There’s also a zebra, a lion and lioness, an impala, wart hogs and forest hogs, a bush buck (another type of antelope), a pair of monkeys, some baboons and a 14-foot-long crocodile. An Arizona javelina (type of wild boar) is placed incongruously amid all those African animals, but he doesn’t seem to object. The straw-grass at the base of many mounts has been chewed short by Sylvester, the office’s live feline mascot.

On another African wall are more full-body monkeys and the cape mounts of a rhinoceros, cape buffalo and another sable antelope. “The Safari Club International has a system of scoring your kills by length of their horns,” Palmgren says. “There are three levels: bronze, silver, gold. That sable is the only animal I’ve shot that’s in a (record) book. For a year it was No. 7 in the world.”

A lot of hunters won’t shoot an animal if it’s not a huge, gold-medal trophy, but Palmgren doesn’t hunt to get into record books. “I do it for the fun, the challenge, to see different places,” he says. “I’ve seen a lot of the world.”

On the other two walls hang dozens of cape mounts, such as spiral-horned kudu, a red hartebeest (African antelope), a gemsbok (another type of South African antelope), a moose from British Columbia, several elk out of Colorado, a bison from New Mexico, a water buffalo from Venezuela, a caribou from Greenland, a mountain goat from British Columbia, a tahr and a chamois from New Zealand. Still another wall has full-mounted mountain goats, a tahr and a chamois standing on ledges that jut out from the wall.

His mounts spill over into his office and lobby, too, including a full-body mount of an aoudad (Barbary sheep) shot in Texas and a nyala (spiral-horned antelope of southern Africa). The latter stands in a corner under a pencil drawing of a tiger done by Travis. A zebra skin is displayed on another wall. In his office stands an eight-foot-tall blonde brown bear. Who knew that brown bears are a species that come in various colors? Or that the grizzly is a subspecies of the brown bear? “Grizzlies are inland, whereas brown bears are coastal,” Palmgren points out.

He uses Capps Taxidermy in Demopolis to preserve his trophies. “Mounting them in foreign countries, you don’t know the quality, he says. “It’s not as good as here. Shipping home life-size animals is especially high, so the hide and horns are all you take home to the taxidermist. Generally, you only mount the cape, which is from front shoulder forward. To me, though, with certain animals, you miss so much with just the cape.”

Like Rob Smith, Palmgren, 69, started hunting as a child. His mother gave him a .410 shotgun when he was 12. “We used to hunt squirrel and other small game together,” he says. A big-game hunter for 25 years, he bought his first trip to Africa at a Safari Club International convention in Las Vegas in 1996. He has been to Africa five more times since then. “It’s like potato chips, you can’t do just one,” he says. “It’s such a thrill. It’s the chase and the challenge. You will go back.” He hasn’t been there this year but has spent his spare time developing a piece of hunting property he bought in St. Clair County.

In African countries, governments there require that you have a local guide, called a professional hunter there. Hunters go out in groups that include trackers and skinners. “The 10-day rate varies according to exclusivity of the animal and his dangerousness,” Palmgren says. “It can be $1,500 per day to $3,000-$4,000 for more dangerous animals, such as lions and elephants. Every animal has a trophy fee attached, too. Supply and demand determine those. There are also government fees.”

Although hippopotamuses kill more people than lions in African countries, tracking a lion still is a dangerous proposition. Palmgren found that out the hard way on the trail of a lioness in South Africa. “I had spotted her, then she got away, and I was using binoculars to spot her again,” he recalls. “I walked by a room-sized brush pile, heard growling, then a roar from 12 feet away. She was in that brush pile. I shot her, but I also found out how I would react to a dangerous situation. I didn’t think I would ever quit shaking.”

Joe Wheeler and the brown bear that almost got him.

Joe Wheeler had a similar experience with a blonde brown bear, but it was much more personal than Palmgren’s. The bear was trying to snare him for her lunch and managed to sink one of her powerful claws into his hand.

“I was watching some wolverines and got a funny feeling that something was watching me,” he says. “I turned around and she was in attack mode. I shot her in the mouth, which knocked her down. She got up, and I got off a second shot into her neck, and she went down again.”

 As he was reloading his rifle, her left claw dug into his right hand. Working from instinct, he turned around in the opposite direction to avoid that claw dragging through a ligament. As he did, she slapped him across the back with her other paw. He got off a shot to her heart. She ran 60 yards, forcing him to track her. She was dead when he got to her. “That’s the only female bear I’ve ever shot,” he says. “She’s mounted in the same position as when I first saw her.” She’s crouched in a corner at the top of the stairs in his Gun South Inc. (GSI) office in Trussville.

In a hallway of the first floor, he has another brown bear, a wolf snarling on a tabletop, bobcats fighting over a pheasant and a pair of Alaskan wolverines. “Pound-for-pound, wolverines are the most vicious animal alive,” Wheeler says. (Wolverines resemble small bears but are actually the largest member of the weasel family.) He has a wolf-skin rug stretched out on a wall in the office at GSI. On another wall is a pair of ptarmigan(type of grouse) he shot in Sonora, Mexico.

Wheeler, 77, started hunting rabbits, quail and squirrels with his uncle as a kid. He killed his first deer when he was 14. It had eight-points. “I went to Bud Jones’ house (in Tallapoosa, Ga.) and skinned it there in his back yard, and he mounted it,” Wheeler says. “I still have that mount. It’s probably my favorite.”

He made his first trip to Alaska in 1972, killing a caribou and a moose. He has gone twice a year ever since, sometimes to hunt, sometimes to fish. In addition to bears, wolves and wolverines, he has killed siska deer, pocka squirrels (similar to prairie dogs) and Arctic hare. Due to the pandemic, he probably won’t return this year. He has taken his two brothers, his two stepsons, and several other St. Clair County men with him on several trips. In fact, he took Gordon Palmgren on his first hunt to Alaska and got him his first bear.

“I was a registered guide in Alaska from 1984 to 1998 or 1999,” he says. “Licenses were for five years when I started, but they changed that to three years, and I didn’t get the notice in time, so I accidentally let my license expire. I would have had to re-test, and I didn’t want to do that.”

 An Alaskan hunt usually lasts 17 days and involves a lot of walking. “If it’s a bear hunt, you’ve got to find the bear with a spotting scope,” Wheeler says. “You can see for eight miles through the scope, and if you spot one within five miles, you go after it.”

He has hunted big game in Canada, Montana, Colorado, British Columbia, Alaska, Texas, Mexico and parts of New England. He has been wing-shooting (bird hunting) 15-16 years in a row in Argentina, Nicaragua and Honduras. He has shot spur-wing and Magellan geese in the Yucatán Peninsula, and jack rabbits in Argentina so big that if laid across a horse they would drag the ground. “I tracked one running at 64 mph one night,” he says. “I could not bring it back to mount because of some disease.”

He used to have a lot of mounts in his Pell City Steakhouse, but the women employees there prefer seeing historic photos of the Pell City area, so he obliges them.

In the gunsmithing room at GSI, a wholesale gun dealership, Wheeler has the capes of a mouflon sheep from Austria, an elk from Saskatchewan taken with a bow, and a caribou his stepson, Danny Spann, shot in Alaska.

 “The tips of the mouflon’s horns were worn off from where he rubbed them on rocks so they wouldn’t poke him in the eyes,” Wheeler says. “It’s called ‘grooming.’”

The elk is called a 7×7 because it has seven points on each side of its head.

“Only one caribou in 10,000 has a double shovel (flat, front points), and he’s shot three,” Danny says of Wheeler. “We were fortunate to see tens of thousands of the Mulchatnaherd of caribou in Alaska.”

 Hunters in Alaska are required by the state’s Fish and Game Commission to pack out the meat or face a fine and the possible loss of a guide’s licenses. “One time we had all the meat in elk bags and a bear got some of it in camp overnight,” he says. “Fish and Game did not want to accept that we hadn’t hauled it all out, but I had made photos before and after.” Like Rob Smith and Gordon Palmgren, he always gives away the meat. “We killed 125 geese in one day in Nicaragua,” he recalls. “We put them on a wall in the town square, and they were gone by the next day. The natives got all of them.”

Asked what he likes about hunting, he cites being “out in nature, seeing things, making a lot of friends.” Take the bird boys who pick up the fowl that hunters shoot. “We (he and his friends) have gotten to see them grow up in Nicaragua,” Wheeler says. “We do a lot of personal things for them. We’ve sent them money for school supplies, candy, bought them shoes.”

He also likes teaching young boys to shoot, the way his uncle taught him, and he taught his stepsons. He’ll even take friends’ grandsons and nephews hunting, showing them how to track, read the signs, keep quiet and still, be patient and to enjoy the outdoors the way he does.

Wheeler probably will miss his 2020 trips to Alaska, thanks to COVID-19. He will still be able to hunt birds and small game on his own property in St. Clair, where he has a hunting club. After all, as he, Smith and Palmgren keep emphasizing, it’s not about the kill or the size of the trophy. It’s all about the hunt.

Gateway Community Garden

Growing a bounty to serve others

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Carol Pappas
and Graham Hadley and Glenn Wilson

Much like the single seed planted years earlier that grows into the towering oak tree offering shade and comfort to next generations, today’s Pell City Gateway Community Garden thrives as an example of what dogged determination, a patch of dirt and a smattering of seeds can become.

In 2013, a handful of Pell City citizens envisioned a garden for their community. In that group were Merry and Dave Bise, Renee Lilly, Lisa Phillips, Kelly and Sheree Wilkerson, and other community volunteers. Taking root on the old Avondale Mills property, the garden on a quarter-acre plot was small, but productive – just like their dream. Early help came from Pell City Civitans, which provided the nonprofit status they needed for grants, and the City of Pell City, which provided the patch of earth they needed to grow their bounty, and it began to sprout.

Seven years later – in a new location thanks to St. Simon Peter Episcopal Church – and a growing army of volunteers, Gateway Community Garden is reaping the benefits of what it sowed by helping others.

Early mornings and late afternoons nearly all year long, you’ll find a group of “do-gooders,” city dwellers on a mission, toiling in the dirt, nurturing their crops to feed the hungry.

Row upon row tells the story of their bounty – potatoes, okra, squash, bell peppers, corn, tomatoes, butter peas and pinkeye purple hull peas in summer. Collard greens, cabbage, turnip greens, broccoli, sweet potatoes and more okra emerge in the fall.

Fruit trees and bushes abound – apples, blueberries, blackberries – a future dream now in its fledgling stage. An irrigation system is in place. A greenhouse, courtesy of Master Gardeners, has been erected. And on any given day when the sun is out, chances are these gardeners are, too, watching over their harvest like protective parents tending to their young.

Debbie Smith, a longtime gardener and board member, calls it “God’s blessing. It is always amazing to me that you plant a seed in the ground and get this beautiful plant that feeds others.”

Lisa Phillips logging hours

Her experience as a gardener is rewarding in the way she is able to use her education background to teach others how to plant, grow and harvest. She describes the end result – whether it’s someone enjoying the garden’s solitude and beauty or actually laboring in the soil as a “healing and restorative garden. It works on both ends.”

Worth Barham, project manager who fellow volunteers have labeled ‘CEO,’ agrees. “It’s a wonderful experience,” he said, noting that the whopping two tons of food grown there so far have made their way to good homes in the Pell City Christian Love Pantry, Pell City Senior Citizens Center and Lincoln Food Pantry.

“Everything is based on the wonderful volunteers we have,” Barham said. Bringing different skillsets to the organization, they have been able to write grants, develop an educational component, bring community organizations into the fold, design the garden’s physical future and of course, grow food for the needy. St. Clair Co-op has provided many of the plants. David Wadsworth brings his tractor to clear the ground for planting, and Master Gardener Tom Terry tills the soil.

“Without the grants we have received, we would not be where we are today,” Barham said. “Without our volunteers, we would have no organization at all.”

Lisa Phillips became involved early on – first as a Pell City Civitan, then as a gardener. In addition to the Civitans lending their 501(c)(3) nonprofit status to the fundraising effort, the club has provided access for the handicapped and special needs, like accessible paths for wheelchairs and lower tables for produce.

To be a part of it has been “a great feeling,” said Phillips. “And I think it has been great for the community.”

“I am awestruck at what we have been able to accomplish with a small group of folks,” said Linda Tutwiler, another board member. Volunteers only number a dozen or so on a regular basis. “I don’t think any of us envisioned what we could accomplish in such a short time.”

In 2017, it moved from Avondale to a 5-to-6-acre plot given to them to use by the Episcopal church across the street. And that is when the garden grew to its next level and beyond. First helped by a Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham grant and then a Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama contribution as part of its Sacred Places grant program, the garden began to really take shape.

Three years ago, Barham said, the garden grew 820 pounds of fresh produce to give to those in need in Pell City and St. Clair County. Last year, it was 3,600 pounds. Today, their harvest tips the scales at 4,000 pounds.

Nearby is a newly constructed nature trail. A handcrafted, oversized sitting bench underneath the trees welcomes one and all as a place for quiet reflection. A journal to record thoughts is there, as is a miniature reading library. Peace, tranquility and reflection are key to this sacred space.

A greenhouse is home to trees that grow Meyer lemons and will soon grow plants from seed. A shed painted with brightly colored sunflowers holds tools of the trade and a work log, where volunteers record their hours for grants.

On a Saturday morning in November, a group of Scouts marveled at gardener Laura Wilson’s lessons of how sweet potatoes are grown, how to pick a turnip or cabbage leaf. They ran through garden patches with prize in hand – a freshly picked turnip – with smiles almost as wide as they were tall.

They earned a badge that day. But more important, gardeners will quickly tell you, is they learned the value of growing a garden with your own hands and what it can provide in life – not just for you, but for others.

Renee Lilly, one of the founders, talked of the personal rewards reaped in those lessons for her and her husband. “It’s a wonderful experience for me. My husband is involved, too. It’s a great thing for the community, and I’m excited the word is finally getting out,” she said, encouraging others to join them in the effort. “It really does take a village.”

Mind, muscle and ‘angels’ power the Great Alabama 650

The world’s longest paddle race showcases the wonder of Alabama’s waterways

Story by Paul South
Submitted photos from Max Jolley, Great Alabama 650

Max Jolley was 7 when he picked up a paddle for the first time. And from that first pull of wood through water – a centuries-old skill he says takes the whole body, head to toe, mind and muscle – he’s been a recreational kayaker on the Coosa River and its companion lakes, Logan Martin and Neely Henry.

Needless to say, in 2019 – when the Alabama Scenic River Trail launched the maiden Great Alabama 650 – the world’s longest paddle race – he was intrigued. Fifty miles of the race traverses St. Clair County.

“Last year, I was interested in it,” he says. “This year, I was really looking forward to it.”

Jolley isn’t a competitor, but he and others like him play a valuable role in the 10-day race, He’s a “trail angel,” one of a small army of good Samaritans who do everything from providing meals and places to sleep to portage, helping weary paddlers portage their craft over land and in and out of the water at all hours of day and night.

The racecourse passes Jolley’s home. He helped competitors portage their craft out of the water at Logan Martin Dam. But the paddlers, not the paddling, draws Jolley to the competition, one of the least known events in American sports. For paddlers, it’s a magical mystery tour of Alabama rivers and lakes, featuring changing currents, landscapes, flora and fauna.

And for the trail angels like Jolley, friendships are forged. Competitors came from as far away as Hawaii.

“There are a lot of different-walks-of-life people that you meet,” Jolley says. “It’s just interesting talking to the paddlers and their ground crews, to see what they do and how they do it and why they do it.”

Alabama tourism officials, like Clarke County resident Linda Vice, president of the Alabama Scenic River Trail, hope the 650 puts the spotlight on Alabama waterways, the reason behind the race. Alabama has 5,300 miles of accessible waterways, stretching from the mountain streams of north Alabama southward to the salt and sand of the Gulf Coast. State tourism officials bill the trail as the “most experience-diverse river trail in America.”

“We started the Scenic River Trail as an environmental and tourism project, as well as a recreational thing,” Vice says. “What we wanted to do was get people out on the waterways so they could see the natural beauty and so that they could find a low-cost sport that anybody could participate in if they had a kayak or a canoe.”

The trail was the brainchild of Fred Couch, a veteran Alabama kayaker. It was decided that the trail needed a premiere event to draw attention to the river trail. After fact-finding trips to paddle races in Alaska, Colorado and around the country, Alabama organizers learned something.

A calm day and smoothe water as kayakers cross the lake to the stopping point

“We realized through them that we had the best race in the nation, because of the types of situations they would find themselves in as they traveled the trail,” Vice says. “It’s also the longest, with 632 miles. So, what we did was put together the race.”

While the inaugural race was open to all comers, qualifying was required to compete in 2020. COVID-19 sank qualifying this year, but 20 participants – tandem and individual racers, male and female – competed, and most finished the race.

“We started this race to draw attention to Alabama’s rivers as recreational waterways,” Vice says.

In a sports-crazy state that lives and dies each autumn Saturday with roaring football crowds, the Great Alabama 650 is different, the slap of wood on water, the silence of shifting currents, the quack of ducks and the splash of jumping fish.

“The diversity of landscape is a really big deal,” Vice says. “There are all kinds of fossils and plants. There are so many things.”

And then there are trail angels like Jolley, who do anything and everything to help the paddlers, from helping schlep wet, heavy kayaks, to cookouts featuring sizzling Conecuh County sausage.

“A lot of our angels will take them to their houses and cook ‘em a meal,” she said. “We have chapters of supporters and paddlers around the state.”

In its short history, the Great Alabama 650 is generating attention in the paddling community and beyond.

“The 650 is the most challenging race in the world according to the participants,” Vice said.

And the race is having an impact on tourism in St. Clair County, even with its short span in the county. Ecotourism is a growing sector of the local economy.

“We’re delighted that they’re here,” St. Clair County Tourism Director Blair Goodgame says. “Any economic, or any ecotourism is going to promote quality of life for the area here. It’s going to promote a healthy lifestyle, our connection to nature and wildlife and really push our citizens to be guardians of the resources that we have.”

Ironically, COVID-19 has led to an increase in outdoor activity, as residents look for socially distant activities to combat coronavirus cabin fever.

“COVID-19 has amplified things. But even before the pandemic, people were beginning to re-invest in the outdoors in their local communities. And luckily for St. Clair County, we have the natural assets here to be able to play on that. So, we have become just an outdoor recreational paradise because we do have so much potential to grow,” Goodgame says.

Don Smith, executive director of the St. Clair County Economic Development Council, says the 650 fits in the ecotourism sector of the county’s economic vision. Interestingly, Smith saw something similar, thanks to the trail angels who serve hikers along the Appalachian Trail. For hikers, those angels spark a fondness and an everlasting memory of those communities, and perhaps a desire to return.

“I think if we can continue to encourage those racers as they’re going through our community, the word about how we support those communities will get out and hopefully will get folks to come back and visit with us,” Smith says.

The kayakers in the Great Alabama 650 share the waters with ski boats, bass boats, sailboats and pontoons. And sometimes, hospitality comes in colorful – yet illegal ways.

“A guy in a boat offered one of the paddlers a beer …,” Jolley says with a laugh.

Not unexpectedly, the paddler refused the offer.

The paddlers, you see, have am abiding reverence for their sport. And like many of the residents on the Coosa, on Logan Martin and on Neely Henry, they have a reverence for the land and water. The attention wrought by the Great Alabama 650 may deepen that respect.

“It certainly won’t hurt,” Jolley says. “Boaters in general – kayakers, canoers, outdoor sports people in general – they respect the environment. They understand the water, and they know what happens on the water. And they want to keep the water clean.”

Carolyn Hall

Amazing handiwork tells a story in every delicate stitch

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Photos by Graham Hadley

Carolyn Hall is surrounded by heritage.

In her parlor are shelves of medical books belonging to her grandfather, Dr. R.A. Martin, and a wicker baby scale from a nursery unit at Martin Hospital. A collection of apothecary jars recalls the three generations that her family ran the corner Rexall drug store in downtown Pell City.

In a sunny room down the hall are two exquisitely detailed quilts that her grandmother Ada Kincaid made prior to 1936. The stitching of one quilt forms an intricate feather design, while the stitching of the other quilt is an equally complex rose pattern.

Treasured heirlooms they are.

Such a setting seemed appropriate for discussing keepsakes – those Carolyn inherited, as well as those she is creating for her four children, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

The trove of cross-stitch artistry she has sewn for her family represents thousands of hours of work spanning decades.

“I have done a little bit of everything with cross-stitch,” Carolyn said.

She has made switch-plate covers, Christmas ornaments, a multi-dimensional Christmas train, tablecloth and napkins, pillows, pictures and cross-stitch designs on sweatshirts.

Several colors of thread were used to get the shading just right.

Cross-stitch afghans are the bulk of her work. She has completed many different afghans, featuring lighthouses, dogs, cats, stars and sailboats, ABCs, mallards and fruit.

Each piece has its own unique story and exhibits the special bond between the giver and receiver:

The afghan with an Aztec motif was the choice of daughter Cindy, who lives in Tennessee.

Daughter Stacy, who lives in Birmingham, wanted the afghan of “ice cream colors” that Carolyn made in the 1990s. “This is my favorite (afghan),” Carolyn said.

Daughter Mick, who lives in Colorado, displays one of her mother’s afghans as an art piece. Mick’s features wild birds perched on branches that stretch from square to square across the afghan.

For the afghan of son Rob, who works in construction in Florida, Carolyn chose storefront designs. She even altered the size, shape and lettering on the apothecary sign to make it read “Pell City Drug Co.”

Each grandchild and great-grandchild has one of Carolyn’s afghans, and a stash of afghans awaits future great-grandchildren.

Susan Mann, assistant director of Pell City Library, said Carolyn’s creations are priceless treasures the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can “cherish. … They will be special keepsakes forever. And each time they see them or use them, they will think of her, and remember those sweet moments shared.”

Friends and neighbors also have been beneficiaries of some of Carolyn’s handiwork.

Much care goes into each cross-stitch piece because Carolyn wants flawlessness.

“I don’t want to do anything that isn’t first class,” she said.

Joyce Thrower of Pell City, who has known the Hall family at least 50 years, has seen nearly every piece Carolyn has finished.

“She does beautiful work. Everything she does is perfect,” Joyce said.

Susan, likewise, described Carolyn’s work as “meticulous.” She pointed out that Carolyn’s cross-stitch is as pretty on the back as on the front.

When trying to decide which of Carolyn’s afghans she likes best, Susan confessed, “Every time she does a new one, it becomes my favorite.”

But Susan did say her top three would be the colorful birds on a pale mint afghan; a kitten whose spilled milk “drips” down an afghan, and the Victorian “painted ladies” homes of Chincoteague, Va.

The last one is in progress. Carolyn started the “painted ladies” afghan around Labor Day 2019. In August 2020, she reached the halfway point.

Carolyn may spend a year or two, working almost every day, on one afghan until it is completed.

Her longest project took more than two decades. She started the piece – a cross-stitch, bed-cover quilt – when pregnant with Rob, her fourth child. She finished it when he was 23. In between, the project got shelved while she reared her children, was a homemaker and helped her pharmacist husband, Robert “Bob” Hall, run Pell City Drug Co.

A Pell City legacy

Carolyn’s grandparents – Dr. R.A. and Mary Martin – arrived in Pell City in its infancy.

“My grandfather moved here in 1903. He was a surgeon at the Gertrude Comer Hospital” at Avondale Mills, Carolyn said.

After the hospital closed in the 1920s, Dr. Martin opened a six-bed clinic above Pell City Drug Co.

When the building next door became available in the 1930s, Dr. Martin moved the hospital there. For more than 30 years, Martin Hospital occupied that building, which is now the law offices of Hugh E. and Gibson Holladay.

Carolyn and all four of her children were born in Martin Hospital.

Carolyn shows off one of her favorite afghans depicting famous lighthouses.

As for Pell City Drug Co., Dr. Martin established it soon after arriving in Pell City. “That was one of the first Rexall franchises (in the nation),” Carolyn said.

Her mother, Mary Ruth Kincaid, later inherited Pell City Drug Co. and then Carolyn and Bob acquired it after Mary Ruth’s death. Carolyn and Bob, who had met while studying pharmacy at Auburn University, operated the drug store from 1961 to November 2001. In just two more months, the store would have been 99 years old.

The drug store, with its iconic soda fountain, was such a fixture and a necessity in Pell City that is was open every day except Christmas.

Until her last child was in high school, Carolyn worked at the store only when needed. But after long-time bookkeeper Annie Scott Stephens died, Carolyn assumed that job.

Bob passed away six years after retiring.

No idle hands here

When Carolyn was in junior high school, her grandmother Mary Martin taught her to embroider. Carolyn’s first pieces were pillowcases and dresser scarves, most of which she still has.

Though she gave up needlework for a time, she resumed after college, putting it down again during child-rearing.

What drew her back to it is the fascination of creating an art piece one stitch at a time.

“The creating is what I like,” Carolyn said. “This satisfies my creativity.”

Instead of using pre-stamped, cross-stitch patterns, Carolyn prefers the challenge of starting with a blank “canvas.” She must align the subject perfectly and count each stitch she sews in order to be precise.

“With cross-stitch, you’ve got to pay attention,” because one mistake affects the entire design, Carolyn said.

Some of her projects are so complex that they may require as many as 75 different thread colors.

Though dealing with macular degeneration and glaucoma, Carolyn sews for hours each morning. Often, she becomes so engaged that she does not want to put it down.

“It’s calming. It’s peaceful. It keeps your mind occupied. And you’re creating something. What’s not to like? … My grandmother would be proud,” she said. “… My grandmother didn’t believe in idle hands sitting around at night.”

Carolyn also walks four times a week, reads mysteries and is a volunteer hostess for library events. She might also be found on a travel adventure, such as Iceland in winter.

Just the same, she is always looking to the next cross-stitch challenge. Already, she has another afghan to begin after she finishes the “painted ladies” … in about a year.

A Night at the Opera

Summer-ending concert may become
yearly event on Logan Martin Lake

Jason Rogoff and Jeff Thompson found the cure for the quarantined summer blues: an outdoor rock concert … during Labor Day weekend.

But it cannot be your normal concert.

This one has to be arranged in less than eight weeks; it has to feature a sought-after performer who just happens to be available because of pandemic cancellations; it has to provide seating that socially distances audience members attending by land and huge video screens visible to those attending by boat; it has to raise funds for two entities, and it has to be full of energy.

That concert – which was on Sept. 4 at Pell City Sports Complex on the shores of Logan Martin Lake – fulfilled all the requirements and quite possibly began an annual event.

For the concert, the Black Jacket Symphony performed the songs from the Queen album, A Night at the Opera, and featured the vocal talent of Marc Martel.

The stage lights up the night

Martel provided some vocals for Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic about Queen’s late lead singer Freddie Mercury, said Rogoff, director and producer of the Black Jacket Symphony.

Thompson, who is director of the Center for Education and Performing Arts (CEPA) in Pell City, said Rogoff approached him about an outdoor concert patterned after others that the Black Jacket Symphony had held in Birmingham.

For the Black Jacket Symphony, this would be a return visit to Pell City.

In February 2020, the Black Jacket Symphony performed Fleetwood Mac’s album, Rumours, in concert at CEPA and had scheduled Led Zeppelin IV for May. But COVID containment measures canceled Led Zeppelin IV.

Visit the Black Jacket Symphony online
at blackjacketsymphony.com

Marc Martel once again playing guitar during a BJS Queen show