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Nixon's Tenure Paralleled ATA Growth, Expansion
Nixon’s Tenure Paralleled ATA Growth, Expansion
From old school truck tariffs to planning ATA’s biggest events, Jane Nixon saw it all for 45 years.
By Dan Shell
Way back in 1974 the Watergate scandal gripped the nation, Stevie Wonder won five Grammy Awards, the Crimson Tide lost a national title to Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl — and a young lady named Jane Nixon came to work for the Alabama Trucking Assn. She didn’t leave for 45 years, not until this past July 31, and retired as the longest-tenured employee in Alabama Trucking Association history.
“Everyone I started with is dead except for one person,” Nixon says with a laugh.
An Alabama native from the big city of Columbia along the Chattahoochee River east of Dothan, after high school Nixon attended George C. Wallace Jr. College in Dothan for two years, then moved to clerical school at the Alabama Institute of Business in Tuscaloosa.
Jane was living in Tuscaloosa, working part time at Druid City Hospital, when she moved to Prattville in 1974. Looking for employment in the greater Prattville-Montgomery area, she went through a staffing agency that matched her with the Alabama Trucking Association.
Of course, ATA quickly offered her full-time employment. However, at the time she was just getting started working, had come from a hospital, and “At first I just wasn’t sure I wanted to work around trucks and truckers,” she says.
As Nixon remembers, “I put them off at first, told them I wanted to think about it.” Any misgivings were overcome, and soon she decided to go to work for ATA, starting in June 1974. Way back 45 years ago in the early 1970s, in Alabama and most other places, the work environment was much different than it is now. For starters, the longtime ATA head at the time, Jim Ritchie, had women in the office wear dresses and high heels during regular business hours, and they were required to wear formal dresses for the ATA annual meeting’s chairman dinner or Saturday dinner, Nixon remembers. “Once Frank Filgo came on board in 1995, he let us wear pants, and that was a lot better,” she says with a laugh.
Of working with last-century technology in the 1970s (actually closer to the 19th century), Nixon remembers that, in addition to being the receptionist, soon after she started she was assigned the task of typing up the old “trucking tariffs” haul rate sheets for the members, then making copies on a small offset press that ATA owned.
First, she was using an old 8 pt. manual typewriter and dealing with all the difficulties inherent in such mechanical marvels. Then there was the offset press, which Nixon remembers was a loud and very cantankerous machine that seemingly had a mind of its own: The printer required constant attention, especially when it was running, and was a constant source of aggravation, she remembers.
Nixon remembers when the first word processors showed up in the 1980s, the first hint of the digital technology taken for granted today. While the word processors were definitely better than the old typewriters, the newfangled machines still worried Nixon: “I was a little bit scared of (word processors) at first, because I didn’t want to lose anything, and I always wanted to have a hard copy,” she says, adding, “That was a big change for me.”
According to Nixon, ATA leadership has always done a great job of providing the staff with the technology they need to do their jobs and help provide services for ATA members.
“She was always the sweetest, nicest person, and she took me under her wing when we first became active with ATA in the late 1970s,” says T.J. Willings of Nextran Truck Centers and a longtime member of ATA’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee also Past Chairman.
“Jane was always thoughtful and very resourceful,” Willings remembers. “She almost always knew the answer, and if she didn’t she knew how to get it and would get you what you needed quickly. When you’re in business, that’s really important.”
Nixon was always looking out for ATA members, Willings says, and had a way of making you feel like what she was doing for you was the most important thing. “She treated everybody like that,” he says. “We sure hate to see her go.”
During her 45 years with ATA, Nixon also helped sell ads for this magazine for a while but worked herself into event planning after another staff member who had done it retired.
Filgo notes that when he came on board in 1994, Nixon was managing the tariff system for ATA members, and one of the first things he noticed was “She has always been very precise and detailed,” he says.
Filgo says that as an executive assistant, Nixon was very loyal and a stickler for keeping him on task with his schedule and calendar. “Honestly, I’m not sure I could have made it through my years at ATA without her,” he adds.
Nixon’s role included event planning, which she became involved with during the late 1990s, and since 2004 until this year had been in charge of planning for ATA’s two biggest annual events – the ATA Annual Convention and the ATA Golf Classic. “The lady who had done the convention and meeting planning left, and I just sort of fell into it,” Nixon says.
Each event is also an opportunity to fund-raise and promote the Association, and Nixon was always seeking to improve, Filgo remembers. “All the major events she handled, every year it seemed we were able to top it the following year,” he remembers. “That’s always our goal, and a lot of that (improvement) was due to her efforts.”
For her part, Nixon says she always enjoyed the conventions and golf classics, but for her, they were always about getting everything to come off just right. “It was intense at times—I can be a little intense at times,” she says with a chuckle.
The changes Nixon has seen during her time at ATA that crosses parts of five decades include a large increase in member growth for the association. “When I first started we had around 200 members, and now we’re over 600 members so that’s been really good,” she says, adding, “The Safety Council has also grown a lot since I’ve been here and is a much bigger program.”
Nixon says the most enjoyable part of her job was the people she worked with over the years. The most satisfying part, she says with pride, is to help the staff with their goals and programs to help ATA’s membership.
Not bad for a lady who once had second thoughts about working around those trucks and truckers.
Nixon was married to her husband George 11 years before he passed away in 1993. In retirement, Nixon plans to spend more time with family but also look after her dog, Lucy. She also plans to remain very active at St. Bede’s Catholic Church in Montgomery.
“It’s been a wonderful 45 years,” she says. “I don’t know what the future holds but I am so grateful to Frank and the ATA Board of Directors for keeping me so long. I’m also thankful for the ATA members – they’re the ones who paid my salary – and I never forgot that. It’s been a pleasure to serve them.”
