2019 Manager of the Year Credits Faith, Hard Work for his Success

BY MARY CATHERINE GASTON

The recipient of the 2019 E.P. Garrett Manager of the Year Award remembers vividly the first time he attended an Alabama Farmers Cooperative Annual Membership Meeting. The year was 2004, and Lance Ezelle was part of the Management Trainee Program at the time.

“I can recall putting people’s luggage away at Annual Meeting that year,” he says with a grin. “I remember seeing Keith Griffin win this award. It became a goal of mine right then…and it’s been a goal of mine for the past 15 years.”

Described by AFC President and CEO Rivers Myres as both intense and fun-loving, Ezelle has also earned the reputation of being loyal to AFC in his decade and a half with the company.

Growing up in the tiny river town of Pickensville in West Alabama, Ezelle’s first job was at his family’s hardware store. It was behind the counter there that he received a phone call in 2003 that would set him on a new course. A 1999 graduate of the University of Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in management, Ezelle saw himself at the helm of the hardware store one day.

All that changed when Elton Gibson called him “out of the blue” to ask if Ezelle would consider talking to the folks at AFC about entering their Management Trainee Program. Because he had great respect for Gibson, long-time manager of Aliceville Farm Supply, Ezelle acquiesced.

James Fudge, Vice President of Management Services for AFC and Director of the Management Trainee Program then and now, tells an almost identical story about a phone call he received from Gibson.

AFC’s President and CEO, Rivers Myres, presents Lance Ezelle with the Manager of the Year Award plaque.

“Lance came highly recommended from a man I really respected, Elton Gibson,” Fudge recalls. He also remembers thinking at the time that Ezelle’s experience in a small town hardware store was not terribly different from what he might encounter as a Co-op store manager. It just made sense to give him a try.

During his first six months in the AFC Management Trainee Program, Ezelle worked in three Co-op stores, finishing up at the Fayette store about the same time his then-girlfriend received her medical school residency “match” with Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola. On the verge of popping the question, as Ezelle saw it, he had a difficult decision to make—keep the girl or keep the job.

He called Fudge and told him the news: Ezelle would be relocating to the Florida Panhandle to be near his fiancée, and he would not be able to continue working at the Fayette store. Fudge responded by asking Ezelle if he wanted to continue working with AFC. Ezelle was pleasantly surprised by the question but managed to answer affirmatively.

“Mr. Fudge just said, ‘Give me five minutes, and I’ll call you back,’” Ezelle recalls. By the end of the afternoon, Ezelle had a job waiting for him in Elberta, just 45 minutes from Pensacola. He reported to work there two days after his wedding.

The memory is certainly one that popped to mind as Ezelle accepted AFC’s highest honor at the 83rd Annual Membership Meetingin February. Fudge was one of the first people he thanked after his wife, family, district managers and staff.

“There’s one man who has done more for me in my career than anyone else, and that’s Mr. James Fudge,” Ezelle shared.

It all goes back to that first phone call, Ezelle believes. “I’m a person of faith, and I truly believe that everything happens for a reason,” he says.

After three years in extreme South Alabama, Ezelle made his way back to Fayette with his wife, Kara, who, as a participant in the University of Alabama’s Rural Health Scholars Program, had committed to practice in the state’s rural areas. After seven years at the helm of the Fayette store, during which time Ezelle and his team increased the store’s sales from $750,000 to more than $3 million, the opportunity came to manage a multi-store location. Ezelle jumped.

Arriving at Morgan Farmers Cooperative in 2014, he found the store in good condition following 28 years under the previous manager, who had just retired. In his first five years at the helm, Ezelle has taken the Morgan store from annual sales of $1.5 million to $6 million—the last year and a half of that accomplished while Ezelle completed UA’s executive MBA program.

In his first five years at the helm, Ezelle has taken the Morgan store from annual sales of $1.5 million to $6 million.

Understandably, it was a big deal to leave his team every Friday and Saturday for 17 months, but he doesn’t regret it for a second.

“They hit a home run,” he says. “Inever got a phone call, never got a complaint. I could focus on my school work…they did that for me.”

In addition to his wife of 15 years, Ezelle’s parents and parents-in-law were in Montgomery to see him accept the award. He thanked them, saying that he owes his work ethic to the people who raised him and hopes he has made them proud.

Though Ezelle credits divine intervention for his professional success, he has a word of advice for the young people entering AFC’s ranks.

“I believe Mr. Fudge saw fit to keep giving me better and better opportunities because he saw how hard I was willing to work,” Ezelle says. “Be willing to work hard.”

From someone who believes he works in “the best industry, in the best state, in the best country in the world,” that is advice worth taking.

A native of Fort Deposit, Alabama, Mary Catherine Gaston is a freelance writer based in Americus, Georgia.