Tag: Features

Pirate’s Island

A day in the life of a
Logan Martin landmark

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Submitted photos
Drone Photo by
David Smith, Star Aerial

It’s a place that would make Jimmy Buffett proud. Surrounded by family and friends and scores more of adopted family and friends, this tiny island in the middle of Logan Martin Lake is like the star of the singer’s tune, Cheeseburger in Paradise – “heaven on earth with an onion slice.”

On this Saturday afternoon in late June, one of the hottest of the year, there are no complaints about the sweltering temperature, only laughter, music, children’s squeals and an unrivaled camaraderie of hundreds gathered around Pirate’s Island.

It has become THE place to meet, anchor your boat or personal watercraft, wade into the shallow water all around and greet friends – old and new.

It’s a recreational respite in an otherwise wide open waterway of boats darting to and fro.

Lincoln’s Kent Crumley has been coming to the island since 2012. Now joined by his son and grandchildren, the fun they have as a family is unmistakable. Brian Crumley and his children, Easton, Addie and Brynlee are there to celebrate Easton’s first birthday.

What makes this place so special? “Just the people,” Kent says. “The fellowship,” his son adds. “We came to hang out and have a great time,” Kent says, putting an exclamation point on the sentiment of the day.

And it’s precisely the purpose Jim Regan intended for the island when his wife, Laurie, bought it for him as a birthday present.

She had decorated it with crepe paper, but rain put a damper on the surprise impact it was supposed to have when approached by boat that evening. So, Laurie improvised. She grabbed a drink Koozie, wrote “Welcome to Your Island” on it, put a drink in it and handed it to Jim. He kept putting the drink down, never glancing at the message. Laurie said she finally – and strongly – urged him to look. He read it, and in that moment of realization, “he dove right off the boat!”

That was 2008. It took about a year to fulfill the vision they had in mind for the island – they cleared underbrush, built a beach, brought in palm trees, a hammock, a treasure chest and of course, a pirate flag.

They first named it Grand Island, but the throngs of boaters who found their own paradise there won out. Pirate Island, it became, and Pirate Island, it will stay. “We were outvoted by the people,” Laurie says.

And the people keep coming. On Memorial Day, 46 boats were counted anchored around the island. On this day, a typical Saturday afternoon, there were 29 boats full of people.

On the 75 x 50-foot island itself, its palm trees leaning out over the water, the Regans’ family and friends gather around a fire pit, relaxing in chairs of all shapes and sizes.

A nearby grill, still smoldering, hints at noon day activities on the island. “It was Cheeseburger in Paradise Day,” says Jim. He cooked 36 hamburgers for his invited guests and boaters who happened to be there. It’s not unusual for Jim to cook on the weekends. He simply signals in boaters when the hotdogs or hamburgers are ready, according to Laurie.

All are welcome on Pirate’s Island. It’s a tradition that evolved when a boat load of 10 year olds asked if they needed help on the island. They helped clean it, and their pay came in hotdogs.

Of course there are other riches on the island. A treasure chest full of Mardi Beads and gold coins awaits, and children rush to see what’s inside. Down on their knees like a cannon shot, they surround the chest, combing through to pick just the right color. Giggles and shrieks tell the rest of that story.

“I get them from a Mardi Gras supplier in Mobile where I grew up,” Laurie says. The treasure chest is filled to the brim, and it is the island’s most popular destination point for kids. As a bonus, Jim sprinkles gold coins all around the water’s edge for children to ‘discover.’

Palm trees don faces and perhaps a pirate kerchief – “Palm Pirates,” they call them. A ‘pirate’ pontoon boat sits anchored on the main channel side of the island. It even has a gang plank. The customary island hammock hangs between palms, an inviting place for a summer’s day.

And a skull and cross bones pirate flag flaps in the summer breeze some 50 feet above on a pole made of bamboo courtesy of a neighbor, helping passersby pinpoint this Logan Martin landmark.

On Saturday mornings, Jim puts out an oversized float a few feet offshore – a Lilypad – for kids to launch themselves in innovative ways into the water. He doesn’t dare take it up until Sunday night. Too much fun would be missed, he and Laurie surmise.

“Everybody has taken responsibility for the island,” Laurie adds. “We’ll get calls if someone is not doing something right. They help clean it up. They love the island. Everyone takes ownership in it.”

Why do the Regans share their own bit of paradise? “We love our family and kids. This is our town. It’s our home,” Laurie says. “It just feels good.”

Perhaps this email Jim sent to his family in 2008 just after he became the proud owner of the island tells the evolution of the original vision best:

Laurie surprised the living daylights out of me for my birthday by purchasing the tiny island just 1/4 mile down the beach from us. I’ve been pining for it for over a decade, and Laurie thought it was a pretty worthwhile goal also.

We have named it “Grand Island”…owing to its “massive” size (75 ft.X 50 ft. excluding beach & sandbar) and also to the original purchase price some years ago by our friends & the former owners-Randy & Sandy. The island is a popular place to park your boat and swim from its sandy little beach. It will remain open to the public. We’ve already heard some excellent ideas like: planting fruit & palm trees; placing a “Grand Island” plaque on it; mount a “Wilson” volleyball on a pole (from the movie “Castaway”); hanging a hammock between two trees; and the ideas just keep coming. Feel free to add your art to the picture.

Whether you remember this little Corona commercial of an island or not, I happen to know that each of you have been there. We hope you’ll come to the island many times again in both mind and body. Once you’ve hacked your way through the jungle and pass the lost temple beyond the largest cave on the other side of Blue Lagoon, look for us…We’ll be right there in a hammock holding out your favorite cold beverage.

On any given weekend, it’s easy to see: Dream fulfilled.

Features

Hazelwood’s Greenhouses & Nursery

A quarter century
of growing nature’s
beauty in St. Clair

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Susan Wall

John Hazelwood squinted as a streak of sunlight parted cloudy skies above, accentuating the creases in his face – the unmistakable signature of a man whose earned them in a lifetime spent outdoors.

It is outside at Hazelwood’s Greenhouses and Nursery where he feels comfortable, fulfilled, surrounded by the flowers, plants, shrubs and trees he has grown. And all the while, he has nurtured a business others can enjoy, too.

For more than a quarter of a century, Hazelwood has been doing what came natural to him – digging in the dirt, planting a seed and watching his creations grow. He grew up on a nearby farm of his family’s, and his chores including gardening. Was he always interested in growing? Not necessarily. “My daddy took an interest in me growing things,” Hazelwood mused. “I had seven brothers and two sisters. He made sure we had plenty of work to do.”

The farm where he once labored as a boy has now become growing fields for the business he built a greenhouse at a time.

Atop a hillside in Pell City, almost hidden from view of passersby, is Hazelwood’s, the business that has become a tradition around these parts. His colorful handiwork at Mt. Zion Church is a hint you’re getting close. With a chuckle, he calls it his billboard, but it really is a ministry of his.

After high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, intending to be an X-ray technician. But after four years, he figured he could pursue his future education on the GI Bill rather than re-enlist for another four years. “I figured out what I liked and what I didn’t like,” and as life has its usual twists and turns, he wound up at Auburn University, majoring in Agribusiness Education instead.

He taught in Lee County and in Odenville and eventually made his way to what is now John Pope Eden Career Technical School. He was principal his last 13 years before retiring in 2001.

Throughout his education career, he dabbled in growing. “I thought I would do a little on the side and raise some ferns,” he recalls. He bought an 80 x 25-foot, used tomato greenhouse and grew 400 ferns that year – 1985.

The manager at TG & Y, an old department store in Pell City, told him he would take them all at wholesale, but the deal fell through. He managed to sell them all, though, and people started asking if he could grow other plants. “It started snowballing,” he said.

In a couple of years, he bought another used tomato greenhouse, then another, and the business just kept coming…and growing.

In the early 1990s, he hired Harold Fairchilds, who was in the high school cooperative program. That was 25 years ago. He has been with Hazelwood ever since. So has Harold’s sister, Becky. Gayla, another sister, started a couple of years after that.

The Fairchilds siblings make up most of Hazelwood’s greenhouses and nursery ‘family,’ and he credits them significantly with the business’ success. “I can’t replace those three,” said Hazelwood. “I’d have to close up. I don’t know how I’d do it.”

The Fairchilds moved to Pell City from Missouri and a farming background, according to Becky. “At the time, it was a job. I didn’t know I would fall in love with it.”

The same holds true for Harold. “I guess I’m just comfortable here. I like being outside doing something I enjoy daily.”

And Gayla’s assessment isn’t far from her brother’s and sister’s. “Obviously, I love it, or I wouldn’t keep doing it,” she said. “I like the outdoors. I love flowers, and I love color.” It was a perfect match for her family and for Hazelwood’s. “It was the closest we could get to farming,” she said.

Harold clarified: “It’s farming in pots.”

Changing with times

Over the years, as the Hazelwood hillside landscape changed – more greenhouses and cold frame houses and rows and rows of plants, flowers and trees – the business has changed as well. Choices grew quickly. “There are so many new plants,” Hazelwood said. “There are hundreds of new varieties every year. There are new colors, new everything. There are a couple of thousand petunias.”

Where people used to prune hedges, they now want landscape that is low or no maintenance. They pick dwarf plants. “They just don’t have time like they used to.”

But fortunately, he added, “people still like to plant trees, shrubs and flowers.” And their one constant is Hazelwood’s.

As for competition from big box stores, “we just decided to do a better job, have more quality plants at a good price and try to keep customers happy and satisfied.”

You’ll get no argument there from John and Helen Golden. They’ve been shopping at Hazelwood’s from nearly the beginning. “We’ve been buying plants here for our garden for years and years,” Golden recalls. Their favorite? “Roses,” they say, almost in unison, much like the way they talk about their shared experience at Hazelwood’s.

It’s like family serving family. It’s a trust factor, an ever ready smile and a helping hand, and one would be hard-pressed to replicate the chemistry they have with each other and with their customers. “They have good plants, and they are good people,” Golden said. “Becky is really good.”

Becky is easy to spot. She is always moving, whether it’s on foot or in a golf cart. You’ll see her toting a bag of potting soil, a plant or a cartful of essentials for the garden, all the while greeting customers with a deep South charm that belies her Missouri roots. Her attentiveness to customer service is unmistakable.

Gayla is much the same way, chattering away to customers as she creates beautiful container gardens. “I’m happiest when I’m creating,” she says. Even a work in progress seems to be good enough to buy. Her work table sign warns customers: “Please do not take plants off the table.” They seem to snatch them up as if they were a finished product, and the perfectionist in Gayla isn’t about to let them go too early.

Down in the lower part of the property, you’ll find Harold watering and watching over plants, trees and shrubs as if they were his children. “We just had a handful of shrubs when I started,” he says. Now they stretch as far as the eye can see on the property. “If you don’t like the heat, this is not the job for you. If you don’t like to get dirty, this isn’t the job for you,” he says. As for him, it’s definitely the job he loves. “I guess I’m just comfortable.”

In addition to Hazelwood’s extended family, his daughters, Shelly Martin and Kelly Staples, grew up working at the nursery. Shelly even pursued a career in landscape design after graduation from Auburn and does design work in Birmingham communities like Liberty Park as well as Pell City and surrounding areas.

Hazelwood does some landscape design work himself and is quick to offer advice to customers when needed. “Fall is the time to do landscaping,” he says. Like the Goldens, he has his favorites, too: Podacarpus for shrub; any variety of begonias for bloom; and “the old Magnolia” for a tree.

As Hazelwood looks around at the bustle of activity on this spring afternoon, recounting the journey that led him to a thriving business, he notes, “It’s something that just kind of happened. I didn’t intend to do it at all. It just grew out of starting something. I’ve been blessed. The Lord had something to do with it.”

Features

Margaret, Alabama

Blossoming boomtown of Margaret won’t be ‘Alabama’s best-kept secret’ for long

Story by Paul South
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

When Pastor Chris Crain was searching for a place to start a church in St. Clair County, a Trussville friend had a simple suggestion:

“You need to go to Margaret.”

Crain’s response: “Who’s she?”

You’ve never heard of Margaret, Ala.?” his friend asked.

“I drove out here, and I was shocked at the number of homes and people,” Crain said. “I think if there is a problem, it’s that people don’t know about Margaret.”

That was a decade ago. Today, Crain, 41, who began North Valley Church in Margaret with 16 people, now draws 400 worshippers on Sunday mornings.

The church is a microcosm of the boomtown that Margaret has become in recent years.

“One in every 10 people in Margaret is in our church on Sundays,” Crain says.

The church is just one slice of the Margaret story. If economists, developers, community planners and visionaries could concoct a recipe for a boom, Margaret would be their masterpiece. New, affordable subdivisions, a state-of-the-art elementary school, virtually nonexistent crime and location, location, location have Margaret poised as one of the Birmingham metro area’s fastest growing municipalities in the first decade of this century, a perfect landing spot for young families and entrepreneurs.

The community grew by a whopping 278 percent from 2000-2010, from nearly 1,200 to more than 4,400. The city grew by nearly 8 percent between 2010 and 2015. Six percent growth is projected between now and 2020. More than 20,000 live within a five-mile radius of the city’s center. Margaret incorporated in 1960 and became a city in 2011.

Tucked between Interstates 20 and 59, Margaret is an easy hop for commuters who are moving to Margaret and St. Clair County. In the post-war period and into the 1980s, the Birmingham metro area grew southward over Red Mountain and into Shelby County. But in recent decades, all eyes seem to have turned eastward, putting Margaret in a prime spot to be a bedroom community for The Magic City.

Seventy-four-year-old real estate executive and developer Lyman Lovejoy, who’s sold and developed property in Margaret and throughout St. Clair County for more than four decades, is perhaps Margaret’s biggest cheerleader.

“Probably one of the best-kept secrets of what’s going on, even for the people who live here (in St. Clair County) is Margaret,” Lovejoy said. “You get off on the roads, and there’s 300 houses in one subdivision, 200 in another, 150 in another. Unless you get off the main road, you don’t know.”

At first blush, it would seem Margaret bucked historic trends. Charles DeBardeleben built the town around a coal mine at the turn of the 20th century. The Alabama Fuel and Iron mine – in the 1930s one of the most productive mines in Alabama – long ago played out. But unlike other towns built on coal, iron and steel that went as their industry did, Margaret not only survived, but now thrives. Location may have been Margaret’s saving grace when mining passed away.

“I think Margaret’s location as a coal mining community in a suburban growth region is the reason (growth) has taken place,” said Don Smith, executive director of the St. Clair County Economic Development Council. “Right now, as that growth around Birmingham’s urban core continues to intensify, it’s put Margaret right in that sweet spot. It has more to do with its location at this point in time than its history as a coal mining community.”

Visionaries apparently saw the sweet spot. Owners of huge tracts of land eventually sold acreage to ambitious developers. New subdivisions are being briskly built, bringing real estate bargains, and a desire for services and retail presence – a grocery store, restaurants, a doctor’s office, to name a few.

Telling the Margaret story to retailers and retail developers is an aim for the council, Smith said.

“One of the focuses that we have is to make sure that retail developers and retailers out there understand that Margaret is an underserved area as far as retail goes,” Smith said.

While many prime locations are now home to residential subdivisions, Smith believes there are other great locations available for commercial expansion.

Pharmacist Mark Ross and his wife Tracy took a leap of faith earlier this year to open Margaret Pharmacy. Lovejoy approached the couple last year about opening a drug store.

“I came out here, looked around, talked to people and just fell in love with the place,” Mark Ross said. “I fell in love with Margaret and the people here. My wife and I talked about it and prayed about it. It was just a matter of timing and Lyman Lovejoy’s foresight, I guess, that Margaret needed a pharmacy.”

Ross called his first four months in business, “phenomenal.”

“The people of Margaret have embraced us wholeheartedly. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been told, ‘A pharmacy was just what Margaret needed.’ ”

Ross has also heard something else in the voices of the townspeople that may say something about the future. Talk to people here long enough, and the vision for the city includes more eateries, a grocer, sports complexes and middle and high schools as Margaret’s kids grow up.

“They say, ‘Ahh, this is fantastic. This is the beginning of something great for Margaret.”

Margaret Mayor Isaac Howard III believes more great things are ahead for St. Clair’s boomtown. And the real ingredient that drives the little city’s success – its people.

“It’s really like a family network, the people who have lived here for years, and even the people who have moved in recently, they’ve formed a family network.”

People are really at the heart of Margaret’s success, a story that began more than a century ago. The Golden Rule that DeBardeleben based his business upon still thrives today in old-timers and newcomers alike.

“For a lot of people out there, they’re looking for a safe, affordable place with good schools to raise their family. Margaret is that exact place they’re looking for, they just haven’t heard of it,” Lovejoy said. “I don’t know what else you’d ask for in a community.”

Gene Barker, building inspector for the City of Margaret for eight years, doesn’t either. He has seen the housing boom up close. In mid-May, there were 22 permitted new homes in various stages of construction.

Barker inspects the homes from foundation to roof and everything in between. He’s done as many as nine inspections on nine different homes in one day. Each house also involves multiple inspections. “That’s pretty much all I can handle,” he said.

A variety of factors have fueled the housing boom Barker sees on a daily basis. Low interest rates, more house for the money and geography – all play a role, Barker said. Margaret is eight miles off Interstate 59, and is also convenient to Interstate 20. Thirteen new houses have been permitted so far in 2016, according to city records. That’s a good year, Barker said.

“People are getting out of Birmingham,” he said. “They’ve got access to the interstates. The houses are reasonable. A lot of our buyers are young people.”

It is an easy, convenient commute. “It’s close to 59, but if you come over here in the mornings or afternoons, you see them coming from 59 and 20,” Barker said. “We try to cut the rights of way after 9 (a.m.), and we have to be done by 2 (p.m.), or you’ll get run over. It’s like a funeral procession.”

In 2005-2007, before the economic downturn, 26 different builders were working in Margaret. After the crash, the number plummeted to from three to seven per year. “It started to come back last year. So far, this is a good year,” Barker said.

With all the new that’s coming – and will come to Margaret – there’s still an homage to the town that the Welsh coal baron founded and named for his beloved wife, Margaret. The bell from the company-built community building now hangs at North Valley Church and still beckons stranger and friend to Margaret.

Said Pastor Chris Crain, “We still ring the bell.”

For more on Margaret and it’s history, read the full digital edition of Discover St. Clair online or get the print edition for Free.

Features

A new generation

Cooperative effort key to training skilled labor force

Story by Graham Hadley
Photos by Michael Callahan and Graham Hadley

In this technological and professional age, it is easy for students — and parents and teachers — to focus heavily on high-profile skills involving computers, programming, electronics and web design or to place students on narrow education tracks with the ultimate goal of receiving at least a four-year college degree.

But as the baby-boomer generation retires, so will a large portion of the industrial- and construction-skilled workforce.

And that poses a huge problem, not just for Alabama, but for the rest of the United States as well.

It’s a problem business owners, working in conjunction with educators in Alabama at the high school and post-secondary levels, are hoping to reverse — and to do so in such a way that helps retain students in school and make sure they have a solid foundation to succeed after graduation.

Changing workforce needs

Pell City’s Garrison Steel owner John Garrison speculates his is the last generation of workers trained by previous masters in such essential skills as welding, fitting, plumbing, electrical work and similar fields.

A combination of factors has steered the country away from the kind of apprentice-style training that Garrison and other construction and industrial leaders say is so essential to key economic sectors of the workforce.

When he was first starting out in the business, training in industrial construction, unions were strong and Americans tended to buy American.

“By and large, the unions to a large degree as far as construction, trained the generation I represent,” Garrison said. That was in the late 1960s.

But soon the unions started to lose traction to non-union businesses.

Today, he estimates the unions — and their highly skilled multi-generational employees — only represent 10, maybe 11 percent of the industrial workforce in the United States.

And then there was the image of working in construction or factories. Before the government, through organizations like OSHA, started putting a premium on safe working conditions, construction and manufacturing jobs were dangerous. Those workers wanted something better and safer for their children and often pushed them to pursue a college education.

Garrison said that attitude, combined with a similar government view with initiatives like No Child Left Behind, have gutted the skilled labor force.

“We are going to run out of skilled workers — they predicted that in the 1990s,” Garrison said. “And we are seeing that now.”

The shortage actually caught something of a break during the recent spate of recessions because the demand for those employees was low.

But as the economy continues to turn the corner, the demand for welders, electricians, plumbers and their skilled coworkers is on the rise.

And companies are finding it increasingly difficult to fill those positions, Garrison said.

Multifaceted Problem;
Multifaceted Solution

At the same time the skilled labor gap was growing, so were dropout rates in public schools. The new one-size-fits-all approach to education was not working for many students — teens who were capable of succeeding but who had no interest in pursuing a four-year degree right out of high school.

The solution to both problems lies in working together, agreed Garrison and Pell City Schools Superintendent Dr. Michael Barber.

“We are working to redefine what a successful student is,” Barber said. “What we have to be is very careful to look at all careers, all professions.

“College is important, but there are students who don’t want to go to a four-year college. That’s not where their talent and skills are and not where they want to go. But they can still go out into the workforce and make a great living.

“We want to bring comprehensiveness to their educational experiences. Pull back the curtain and let them see what is out there,” he said.

To do that, the high school, businesses like Garrison Steel and Goodgame Company, and community colleges like Jefferson State are working hand-in-hand to give exactly those students the job experience, the training and exposure to the real-world work environment to put them on the path to success.

What started with industry-backed programs, like the construction-focused Go Build Alabama, has expanded exponentially to include a wide variety of needed skill sets. Students can start earning certification and training toward jobs in everything from medicine — certified nursing assistants and pharmacy assistants — to police and firefighters through the Bridge School and other programs while still in high school.

Students on the construction side of things are able to dual enroll at Jefferson State and other colleges and work on-the-job at companies like Garrison Steel and Goodgame Company. They can begin receiving accreditation with the National Center for Construction Education and Research — the industry performance standard for workers in building-related fields.

“NCCER was developed in the mid 1990s for construction only. … Over 79 trades are covered — things like welding, crane operation, plumbing,” Garrison said. Students who graduate high school with some of that certification in place, proving they have taken the core curriculum needed for that skill, are much more likely to land a well-paying job right out of school.

“If I see a student has some NCCER and says they have been through the core curriculum, now we have the door cracked open. We have a student who knows about our industry. That gives them a big leg up,” he said.

That training certification is nationally, and in some cases internationally, recognized.

“They might work in Alabama, West Texas, Oklahoma — anywhere in the U.S. — or some place like Dubai,” Garrison said.

A Two-Way Street

Students who take part in the training, who go to the job sites, are not only gaining invaluable training and experience for themselves — the idea is contagious as they share what they have seen with other students, said PCHS Principal Dr. Tony Dowdy.

“I have seen our students go out to these work places and bring that work mentality back to their high school. Before this, we had students who might not have been able to finish with a diploma. Seeing the workplace requirements, they want that diploma so they can go back and get hired at those places they visited or trained at.

“I have heard conversations between students, students telling other students that poor performance won’t cut it at places like Goodgame and Garrison or the Fire Department,” he said.

Pell City High School has gradually been phasing in this new approach to education over the past few years, said Dr. Kim Williams, system curriculum coordinator.

“We wanted to have a consistency in message. We took students to the steam plant in Wilsonville two or three years ago. That was our first big move in workforce development. We make sure we have something every quarter for the students that won’t let go of that. We are staying with this message,” she said.

Reinforcing that, Williams has been appointed to the Pell City Industrial Development Board.

“Three years ago, the school system joined the EDC (St. Clair Economic Development Council). We needed to be sitting at that table. That has allowed us to be part of what is going on and to look at trends in hiring needs,” Barber said.

Everyone came back from that first trip excited, and the ball has never stopped rolling since.

“We have done an exceptional job of identifying students who want to be in construction or welding. Getting them together in a classroom and seeing them feed off each other’s enthusiasm in a positive way, that, as their teacher, has been very cool,” said Brittany Beasley, an agriscience teacher at PCHS.

As students gain valuable work experience and skills, so do their mentors. They can actually earn teaching certificates by training students in their respective specialties.

“Through the Alabama Department of Education, there is a mentoring program where the professionals can earn certification as teachers. … They have to complete a year-long program, then they can earn their certification,” Williams said.

Already, Pell City Fire Chief Mike Burdett and firefighter Jeff Parrish have completed their certifications. “And we have two more on track to earn theirs,” she said.

Two police officers have received training on their certification, something that Principal Dowdy pointed out is available to any skilled field, “electrician, HVAC, etc. It’s another way to get skilled trainers into the classroom.”

“The advantage is, they bring real-life experience to the table. They don’t have to come in and sell themselves. They capture the attention of the students,” Williams added.

For the employers, it means ready-made workers already familiar with their jobs and with the work ethic that is expected of them. Garrison pointed out he has two students, Matthew Gunter McCrory and Karl David Graves, who graduated in 2015, working for his company. And they are following in the footsteps of other PCHS grads at Garrison Steel.

“These young guys can turn out to be very desirable employees because of the work ethic they learned,” he said.

Win-win Situation
is Just the Beginning

The program is too new for there to be hard numbers, but Williams says the school system has definitely started to see positive results, from more students entering the workplace to a decrease in dropouts.

“There is a large number of students who are positively placed, employed in an industry or in construction in fields like welding. Because of what I teach, I tend to stay in touch with my old students — it is easier to do in these types of classes. We have a vested interest in our students after graduation,” Beasley said, adding that it helps them keep track of workforce demands and which businesses are needing specific skills filled.

Though she is an agriscience teacher, she saw these programs as a way for “us to stay relevant. I now teach welding, intro to metal fabrication, intro to MIG welding, inert gas and flux cored arc welding” in addition to more traditional agricultural classes. That means her students can not only work as farmers, they can also find jobs repairing farm and other heavy equipment.

And while many students are taking advantage of the new opportunities afforded them, just as many students are still on track for four-year degrees.

“We still have the same number of students receiving scholarships, the same number of students going on to four-year degrees, but we have a lot of students going into the workforce, too,” Barber said.

The school system has hired a workforce coordinator, Danielle Pope, whose job it is to communicate with local businesses and industries about their needs.

“Then, during the students’ senior year, she matches students with employers,” Williams said.

“It’s about making the school system relevant to the community beyond education. We are asking what are the needs of the community and how can we tailor our program to meet those needs,” Barber said.

Features

Terresa Horn

A song to sing, a story to tell

Story by Linda Long
Photos by Susan Wall
Submitted photos

Terresa Horn was born to sing. No doubt about that on this Saturday night at the Dega Brewhouse in Talladega. The cowboy-booted, country music singing grandma belts out a rousing rendition of Ode to Billy Joe, a crowd favorite. Other requests come fast and furious, and Horn is happy to comply. She knows them all.

Horn stays busy singing at local clubs and special events in and around St. Clair County these days, but there was a time when her voice took her to the brink of the big time, a journey that started years ago from her from her home high atop Sand Mountain.

“I guess if there is any such thing as a music gene, I came by it honest,” she laughs. “My daddy could play just about anything there was – from the fiddle to the mandolin – and he had his own band. My brothers played bass and the drums and my mom? Well, she yodeled. Somebody was always making music at our house. It got pretty loud,” Horn recalled.

“People would ask my Mom how can you take this? She would just smile and say, ‘I know where my kids are.’ ”

One of Horn’s fondest memories growing up was Charlie B.’s Hootenanny, named for her father, Charlie B. Lang, and held every summer on a flatbed truck in her backyard.

“People came from all over the county,” said Horn. “It was an annual tradition.

Campers rolled in and stayed the whole weekend. My band would play and other musicians that we knew. We always had gospel quartets, and oh, my gosh, the food! Mom would cook dish pans full of chicken and dumplings and banana pudding. I remember one time daddy and them fried 300 pounds of catfish, not counting all the other food. Police officers would drop by and fix a plate, and politicians came to ask for votes. Everybody brought their lounge chairs and just had a real good time.”

As Horn recalls, her singing got its start in the family church. She was just four years old, but already familiar with gospel favorites. “I was nine when my Daddy put a microphone in my hand and got me up on stage for the first time,” she said. “We were at a square dance. I sang Silver Threads and Golden Needles, and I was hooked.”

That microphone was in her hand to stay. By the time she was 12, Horn and her brother had a weekly radio show. “It was live music, and we were on every Saturday morning,” she remembered. By the time she was 16, Horn was playing nightclubs from Birmingham to Atlanta. “I remember I even sang in one in Pell City back then.”

After a few years of life ‘on the road,’ Horn made her way to the mecca of country music, Nashville and historic Printer’s Alley, where country music stars are born. “Everything was going real good for me,” said Horn. “I did all the clubs along there (Printer’s Alley), including Tootsies. I sang with some really good people – Mickey Gilley, Marty Stuart. Tanya Tucker used to come by and sing with us, and I did one outdoor show that had some really big names. Willie Nelson played that one. I shared a tent with him, and that was pretty cool.”

Folks in Nashville began to sit up and take notice. As one promotional flier read, “Terresa Jhene (her stage name at the time), country gal, with super talent, debuts.” She signed a recording contract with C.B.F. Records and cut her first album, If This is Dreaming, which made the charts.

For Horn, it was “a dream come true…like a storybook. It just didn’t seem real. I went to the studio to cut a single, but when the producer heard me, he said, ‘Oh, no. This girl’s too good.’ He got the musicians in there, and we cut an album right there on the spot.”

In the meantime, another single, Sooner or Later, had climbed to number three on charts in Europe. “We were all set to do a European tour – radio shows, TV shows. They were all scheduled, and tour dates had been set.”

That’s when fate dealt a cruel blow with a phone call that put an abrupt halt to the tour and almost derailed her career. Her beloved Dad had suffered a heart attack and died a few days later.

“I came back home and thought I would just postpone the tour, but I kept putting it off,” said Horn, and just never went back. Instead, I stayed home to take care of my mother. I would do it over again because it was the right thing to do. My mom and dad were my biggest inspiration and my biggest fans. I don’t know. It seems like when my parents died, the music went out of me. It was a long time before I could sing again.”

Today, the music’s back. Horn says she is “really enjoying singing without all the pressures associated with the entertainment business. It was demanding, but I wouldn’t trade any of the memories. I did get to do a lot of fun things that other people don’t get to do. Still,” she said, somewhat wistfully, “you do look back, sometimes, and wonder what if, but I have no regrets.”

Horn sings with the Memories Band and as one half of the Just Two duo partnered with local entertainer Gary Blalock. When Horn isn’t singing, she can be found at her second career as secretary at Cropwell Small Animal Hospital.

These days, family means husband Bobby Horn and their blended family of four children and eight grandchildren. Their log cabin home by Logan Martin Lake sees a lot of music and a lot of parties – maybe not as big as Charlie B.’s Hootenanny, she said, but “we’re getting there.” l

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Adventure of a Lifetime

Father, son hike Appalachian Trail for ‘Julie’

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Bennett and Henry Fisher

It is said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. For Pell City’s Henry and Bennett Fisher, the journey of more than 2,000 miles began with a bucket list, a keen sense of adventure and an inspirational 5-year-old. Then, they took that first step.

Henry, now a retired environmental engineer, began talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail a couple of years ago. His son, Bennett, said he talked about it all the time, and on birthdays and Christmases, the family would give him Appalachian Trail-related gifts – maps, books, whatever they could find.

It was at a trip to the beach that Henry began his usual ‘what ifs’ about the hike, and Bennett said, “I wish my parents were cool,” sparking Bennett to pause and imagine his dad’s adventure and his own as one and the same.

Henry realized it, too, and asked a question that would become a pivotal moment in both their lives. “Do you want to hike the trail with me?,” Henry asked. It didn’t take long for the answer, and the deal was done.

They settled on the hike beginning after Bennett graduated high school in May 2015, and he would delay entering college that fall.

With the potential for bucket list and adventure satisfied, enter their inspiration: Julie Grace Carroll, the 5-year-old daughter of friend David and Melanie Carroll. She suffers from Rett syndrome, a genetic mutation that causes muscular regression, and the Fishers had wished they could do something to help the family.

They decided they would hike for Julie, raising money for Rett research. And that, they did – for 2,189 miles over nearly six months from Maine to Georgia and raising $25,000 for the tragic disease.

On the trail

The journey had an auspicious start, beginning on June 30 at Mt. Katahdin, Maine, with a hike into the 100 Mile Wilderness. At 56 miles, Henry became badly dehydrated. He had pushed too hard too early. A cousin picked him up in New Hampshire and after a few days to recuperate, he found his will and his way again, averaging 14 to 15 miles a day with several days of more than 20 miles.

“Once you get used to it, you can really go,” Henry said. “By the end, I weighed less with my backpack on than I did without it when I started.”

He lost 43 pounds and grew a beard that many likened to ‘Santa Claus.’ They made friendships on the trail that will last a lifetime, and memories they will never forget.

As Henry and Bennett recount the steps of their journey, it is as if they share an inside joke where only the two of them know the punch line. They smile, they chuckle, they even finish each other’s sentences.

The bonding is evident; the recollections vivid.

They rattle off a list of animals they saw – grey fox, squirrels, weasel, chipmunks, eagles, a tiny snapping turtle and “a lot of snakes.” They saw “tons of deer,” heard lots of coyotes but didn’t see any, and they were intrigued by loons, orange salamanders and woodchucks. Mice were a large part of the trail hike, but it seems a fact they would just as soon forget. They even saw 14 black bears, one of which walked up behind Henry – within 15 feet – while he was taking a break in Shenandoah National Park.

What they remember most is that the scenery was magnificent, whether it was atop a mountain peak, fording a stream, watching the sunset across a valley or the moon and stars rising above their campsites.

Bennett talked of the day before they finished the hike. They were camping with friends they made along the trail – Rockfish and Solar Body, who had been with them the last 400 miles. Wondering about the unusual names? Everybody on the trail has a nickname. For Henry, it was Powerslide, stemming from Henry’s occasional inability to keep his footing on slick spots, and for Bennett, it was Jolly, because he was always smiling.

When they finally got the fire started that night, they began reminiscing about their 2,000 miles of rugged adventure. “We were eating dinner and looked up, and there was a meteor shower. It was something special.” Just like the hike.

“We were there, sitting in silence, and I thought, ‘Wow, we’re finally here.’ ”

It wasn’t always easy, of course, but there usually seemed to be something special that followed, making the hardships worthwhile. Soaking, rainy days took their toll. “You never get dry,” said Henry. But as they scaled Clingman’s Dome in Tennessee, having not seen the sun in days, a spectacular sunset descended. “It was so cold and windy up there, my pants froze,” added Bennett, but no one seemed to care. “It was the most beautiful, spectacular sunset I had ever seen,” Henry concluded.

Then there was the climb up Big Bald, north of Hot Springs, N.C., covered in ice and snow. “It was absolutely stunning,” Henry said. “As we went up, it was better and better.”

Henry’s wife, Vicki, met them when they reached Hot Springs for Thanksgiving Day.
“Eight hikers came and had Thanksgiving lunch with us,” he said.

Neither could conceal their amusement at what they termed, “Time Share Tuesday” or “Doughnut Gap Day,” signifying moments of celebrating simple things others might take for granted. Time Share Tuesday was a rare night in a condominium with a fireplace in Gatlinburg, Tennessee that David Carroll had secured for them.

They had gone 12 days without a shower. They invited fellow hikers from the shelter to come along, and a dozen eagerly accepted the offer. They all piled into two, one-bedroom condominiums with them. “There were two rows of shoes lined up in front of the fireplace to dry out,” Bennett said. “Time Share Tuesday was just great!”

“It gave me a whole new appreciation for plumbing, clean beds and fresh water,” Henry added. “I’m not a hotel snob anymore.”

Doughnut Gap Day was a treat from in-laws who had met them along the way in a gap, bringing doughnuts and chocolate milk. When hiking in those conditions, you need as many calories as you can get, Henry noted. For six months, they “grazed” on Little Debbies, peanut butter crackers, an estimated 400 Snicker Bars, Almond Joys and Tasty Cakes. Pop Tarts and Honey Buns were in the mix as were meal time staples like tuna or salmon, Ramen noodles, pasta and mashed potatoes.

It’s easy to see why Doughnut Gap Day is etched in their memory. Hiking hunger led to doughnuts devoured, and they were on the trail again.

Oh, and they couldn’t forget “Lovely Day.” That was the day they spotted a bear and an eagle, and a hiker’s music could be heard, playing the song, Lovely Day. They all walked down the trail singing along with the lyrics – and the sentiment.

“Trail Magic” was anything someone leaves behind on the trail for you. One day, it was a bag of Oreos, but mice and ants had partaken. “We said, that’s a shame,” according to Henry. “But it didn’t stop Bennett or the other guys.”

It’s the code of the trail, Bennett explained. “You can’t turn down food.” To underscore the notion, he added that he had accidentally dropped some Cheezits on the ground along the way one day, and the hiker coming up behind told him, “ ‘Thanks for leaving them for me, man.’ ”

Meanwhile, back in Pell City

Back home, friends, family and anyone who heard about the hike were rooting for Henry and Bennett. They kept track on Facebook and the radio.

“We are grateful for all the support,” Henry said, noting that Adam Stocks and John Simpson of River 94.1 radio in Pell City would air live reports when Henry and Bennett could call in. They were dubbed, “Tales from the Trail,” and the intro music was appropriately, These Boots Were Made for Walking.

Businesses were supportive, with their windows proclaiming, “Hike for Julie.” Care packages of food came in. Some sent money to buy a cheeseburger. Facebook was full of thoughts, prayers and words of support for the cause. “It meant a tremendous amount to us. We couldn’t have done it without the support of everyone,” Henry said.

Their own encouragement to others who imagine themselves hiking the Appalachian Trail are these sage bits of advice:

“Find your motivation. You’re going to want to quit. For us, it was Julie, knowing she can’t do it. It was knowing that the family can’t quit. Julie can’t quit. Her parents can’t quit.”
“Never quit in town. You are going to be warm and dry in a hotel room or hostel, and it is going to be very tempting to go home instead of back to the trail.”
“Never quit on a rainy day. Rain is temporary, and there will be many more bright, sunny days.”
“You can’t really prepare so be prepared to not be prepared. Don’t set unrealistic goals.”
“Have people meet you (along the way) rather than hiking faster to meet people at a certain point. It puts more pressure on your body to make those miles. It’s easier for them to drive to a spot where they will be waiting.”
“Listen to your body. Take care of yourself.”

But perhaps the best advice came from a New York marathon runner Bennett met on Instagram who picked them up one day and treated them to a cheeseburger. She raises money for causes through her runs, and Henry described her as “the most positive person I have ever met in my life.”

Her message was simple: “Never Give Up.”

And they certainly took heed. The pensive smile father and son share tell it all.

“The longer I’m away from it,” Henry said, “I think I could do it again.”

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