Discover The Essence of St. Clair August and September 2023

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Photo by Sam Marston

Writers AND Photographers

Carol Pappas

Carol Pappas is editor and publisher of Discover St. Clair Magazine. A retired newspaper executive, she served as editor and publisher of several newspapers and magazines during her career. She won dozens of writing awards and was named Distinguished Alabama Community Journalist at Auburn University. She serves as president/CEO of Partners by Design, which publishes Discover and LakeLife 24/7 Magazine®.

Roxann Edsall

Roxann Edsall is a freelance writer and former managing editor of Convene Magazine, a convention industry publication. She has a degree in (broadcast) journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi, worked as a television news reporter in Biloxi and as a reporter and assignments editor in Birmingham.

Scottie Vickery

Scottie Vickery is a writer with a degree in journalism from the University of Alabama and was a reporter for The Birmingham News Her first assignment was covering St. Clair and Blount counties. She has more than 30 years of writing and editing experience and her work has appeared in a variety of publications. She also has worked in the nonprofit industry.

Mackenzie Free

Mackenzie Free is an experienced and nationally published photographer with a bachelor of fine arts degree. She is a Birmingham native now cultivating life on a farm in Steele with her husband & 4 daughters.

Graham Hadley

Graham Hadley is the managing editor and designer for Discover The Essence of St. Clair Magazine and also manages the magazine website. Along with Carol Pappas, he left The Daily Home as managing editor to become chief operating officer and vice president of the Creative Division of Partners by Design multimedia

Elaine Hobson Miller is a freelance writer with a B.A. in journalism from Samford University. She was the first female to cover Birmingham City Hall for the Birmingham Post-Herald, where she worked as reporter, food editor and features writer. She is a former editor of Birmingham Home & Garden magazine and staff writer for Birmingham magazine.

Paul South

Paul South, a native of Fairfield, is an Auburn graduate with a degree in journalism and a double minor in history. He also has a Juris Doctorate degree from the Birmingham School of Law. Although sports writing was always his first love, he had a versatile career as reporter, columnist and first full-time sports information director at Samford University.

Joe Whitten was born in Bryant on Sand Mountain. When he arrived in Odenville in 1961 to teach at St. Clair County High School, he found a place to call home. Joe was active in the Alabama Writers’ Conclave and the Alabama State Poetry Society. The society named him Poet of the Year in 2000. Joe has also published several local history books.

Richard (RT) Rybka

Richard is a full-time professional photographer based in the Springville area and owner of Natural Light Photography LLC. His 50+ years of experience behind the lens of a camera includes working as a photojournalist for a global technology company. His credentials include many magazine cover shots and standing as a Canon Image Connect Photographer.

Elaine Hobson Miller

Joe Whitten

From the Editor Looking back and looking ahead

I have often employed the philosophy in life and work that goes something like, “You can’t get where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.” Throughout my years as a journalist, to understand what was about to happen next, I would look back at what came before.

I guess I have always been fascinated by history. Instead of Nancy Drew mysteries as a child, you would most likely find me perusing the pages of biographies. I loved the little-known facts about people, places and things. I remember them, and I share them. I think it’s what made me a good reporter in my newspaper days. It’s a fascination that lives on in me today.

As we celebrate the beginning of our 13th year of Discover St. Clair Magazine this month, you no doubt see the influence history has on our content. From the very beginning, Traveling the Backroads, our official nod to local history has been the constant.

The stories behind the people, places and things throughout St. Clair County – little known facts, places to discover and rediscover, anecdotes tinged with happiness as well as sadness – are all a part of the driving force behind this magazine. And this issue is no different. Historian Joe Whitten takes you on a journey through Slasham Valley, introducing you to its people, its places of note, and yes, its history.

The same holds true for the next time the bell tolls at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Pell City. Now, you’ll know the story behind the tower that encases it and how the bell itself came to be.

In our medical section, you’ll learn about how a St. Clair native son returned to his hometown to share his medical skills and build the largest health care practice in the county. Look no further than one man’s quest to trace his ancestry to uncover historic roots. You may even learn a thing or two about tracing your own along the way.

And as our county embarks on another five-year strategic

plan for economic development with history as our teacher, you’ll understand not only how we ascended to one of the fastest growing counties in the state, you can envision where we’re heading from here.

History and so much more are all in this issue of Discover With a ‘thank you’ to our readers and advertisers for helping us get to this point, turn the page and discover what the beginning of year number 13 has in store.

Carol Pappas Editor and Publisher

For the love of music

Bob Tedrow uses an old trunk to set up displays for his photography hobby. These instruments are part of his concertina collection.

Story and photos by Elaine Hobson Miller

Childhood fascination turns into lifetime skill for concertina maker

Bob Tedrow has been fascinated with concertinas since he was a child. He first saw them in cartoons, watching Geppetto the toymaker play one in “Pinocchio,” and Bashful in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” He sat up and took notice when Bob Hope played one while singing to Jane Russell in the movie “Paleface,” although he admits he may have been more attracted to Jane than the instrument.

“I had an absurd interest in the instrument as a child, but I didn’t complete my first concertina until the late 80s,” says Tedrow, a newcomer to the town of Ashville. “It was rather more of a concertina-shaped object, actually. It was quite a few years until I began to get the hang of building nice instruments.”

A concertina is a free-reed instrument that consists of expanding and contracting bellows with buttons usually on both ends. Free-reed, says the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “a reed in a musical instrument … that vibrates in an air opening just large enough to allow the reed to move freely.”

The body is built from seasoned hardwoods, and the bellows are made of vegetable-tanned goat leather and neutral-Ph cotton mat board. “The levers, springs, etc., are made of various metals suitable for the task,” Tedrow says. As for the cotton mat board, that’s just “a sexy word for cardboard, but nice cardboard.”

It’s a precursor to the accordion, invented in the 1820s in England and used today in England, Ireland and Scotland. “It has 60 steel reeds, although it can have 120,” Tedrow says. “Each reed is tuned to a different pitch, and the concertina is fully chromatic. By pressing one of those buttons and moving the bellows you allow the concertina to produce a specific note, hopefully musical.”

Tedrow, 70, has built about 75 concertinas since that first one, selling them in his Homewood Musical Instrument Company for 30 years and now on the internet, too. Somewhere along the way, he also became fascinated with repairing stringed instruments, the area in which his shop specializes.

“My fascination is with the mechanics of an instrument,” he says. “I like fooling with the parts. I’m attracted to their nuts and bolts, with the process of building or repairing. The process never ends, either, because there’s always another one to be repaired.”

Homewood Music has been a fixture in that Birmingham suburb for 30 years. For the first 25, it was across the street from Homewood Park on Central Avenue but moved a bit closer to the heart of downtown Homewood on 28th Avenue South about five years ago. The shop buys, sells, repairs and

restores stringed instruments – and a few concertinas. Tedrow has customers as far away as Japan due to his internet presence. “There are almost no shops like this anymore,” he says. “We’re a throwback to the early 1900s.”

“Luthier” is the formal name for what Tedrow and each crew member does. It’s hard to find luthiers like his three employees, who play and fix instruments. “I was working alone when Jason (Burns) wandered in more than 20 years ago,” he says. “He’s far better than me at repairing. Michael (Clayton), who has been with me for six years, has a sum of knowledge I can call on. Matthew (Williams) is the new boy, he has only been with me a few years.”

Tedrow is from a small town in Colorado and moved to Homewood in 1987 because his wife, Klari, wanted to go to law school. “I did not marry a lawyer, I raised one,” he says. Klari, who is quite adept at playing a concertina Tedrow built for her, is now an immigration attorney. “We bought 60 acres in Ashville about two years ago, and we’re building a house there next to the small cabin we live in.”

Homewood was a great place to raise their three kids, who are upset because “we sold their house.” But he and Klari needed some space for their four dogs, which she runs through A.K.C. agility trials.

A real estate agent showed them several places, but they found their Ashville paradise on their own. “We bought directly from Derrick and Amy Heckman,” he says. “The property never even went on the market.”

When he lived in Homewood, Tedrow drove a 1928 Model A Ford back and forth to work. He occasionally drives it around Ashville now. “I have taken it to the town square a couple of times, where it marks its territory with several drops of leaked motor oil,” he says. “I also drive it to our mailbox at end of the road.”

His musical talent probably came from his grandmother and mother. The former was a “real good jazz piano player,” and his mother played guitar, mandolin and other stringed instruments. “Grandmom taught me to play the ukulele,” Tedrow says. He picked up other instruments on his own. “If we define ‘play’ generously, I play the guitar, banjo, bass, ukulele, mandolin, clarinet, saxophone and concertina,” says Tedrow. “I’m trying to learn the tambourine.”

While he played lots of bluegrass banjo in the 70s in Colorado, now he just plays a bit in the shop with visitors and customers. “I also play Irish tunes with my wife and a few close friends,” he says.

When he moved to Homewood, he went to a pawn shop in downtown Birmingham and

Tedrow entertains potential customers by plucking one of the banjos he has for sale

Harold “Pinkie” Pinkerton of Shady Grove (left) picks up his Gibson Dove guitar from Tedrow (center) and Jason Burns

told them he wanted to repair their instruments. “Sometimes people pawn instruments that need repair or restoration,” he explains. He opened a tiny shop across the street from the park. Then he walked into the office of the superintendent of music education for Birmingham city schools, Dr. Frank Adams, and got the job of repairing their stringed instruments. Later, he started repairing instruments for the education division of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. Eventually, he had to expand his shop.

Despite his early musical training, he originally wanted to be a forest ranger. He met his wife at Colorado State, where both were in the forestry school. “I played in a bluegrass band with her brother,” Tedrow says. “We soon discovered there weren’t many jobs in forestry, and none in banjo playing. Occupational therapists were in great need, however, so I went back to school and got a degree in that field.” He worked as an OT in Colorado and North Carolina before coming to Birmingham. Although licensed as an OT in Alabama, he has yet to practice here. “I found that I was far more valuable to the state with a banjo,” he says.

For several years, he played Mr. Mom while Klari was in Cumberland School of Law. At the same time, he was doing repairs for those pawn shops, the City of Birmingham and the ASO. He continued to accumulate skills and tools. “I’m entirely self-taught, which just means I did things wrong for a long time,” he says.

At some point he decided to concentrate on one thing he could do as well as anybody. The concertina was an orphan instrument, meaning few people in the USA played one, as far as he was aware. “I never met anyone who did for many years, not in Alabama, anyway,” he says. “So, I bought one and took it apart. The first one I built I made the bellows section from a pair of my daughter’s discarded leather pants. In fact, I sat in

If he ever tires of building concertinas and repairing stringed instruments, Tedrow can practice occupational therapy in either Alabama or North Carolina

Matthew Williams (left), Michael Clayton (seated) and Jason Burns are the three luthiers on staff

Tedrow repaired this concertina for a man in Japan, who found him on the internet

church one day, having developed that concentrated stare where it looks like you’re listening, but your mind is far away. I figured it out that day: The bellows are like origami.”

It takes a long time to learn repairing well enough to make money at it, to be good and fast, Tedrow says. “Restoring vintage instruments is an entire other field than putting strings on a guitar,” he says. “It’s an art. You want it to look like the original, without devaluing it.”

When someone points out that what he does could be considered a play on the words, “occupational therapy,” he agrees. “I use the skills I learned as an OT when I teach guitar, banjo, ukulele, etc. I try to analyze how each student will best learn. Some learn best with their auditory skills, some students are cognitively oriented while others learn best with a physical approach.”

Sometimes he or his staff will find a secret note in a vintage instrument they are repairing, a note left by the builder while the instrument was under construction. For example, “I’m sorry,” was carved into a “Mossman” dreadnought guitar from a luthier in Kansas in the 1980s. “The builder knew that one day in the far distant future a luthier like our Jason Burns would have a tricky job repairing this guitar,” Tedrow says. “He was apologizing in advance from 40 years ago. It was a note through time. Very clever and thoughtful.” A vintage violin contained a note in Latin that translated to, “In life I was silent, in death I sing.” Tedrow says that was the wood speaking.

In the windows of his shop, facing both inward and outward, are photos of artists and their instruments, ordinary people, some of them customers, most of the photos taken by Tedrow for publicity purposes.

He has a designated photo spot with several backdrops, special lighting and props. Photography is a hobby, he says. Facing outward in the windows are a couple of vintage photos of musicians from the towns he has lived in. “I like to think they are remembered,” he says.

Inside, violins, mandolins, banjos, ukuleles and guitars, acoustic and amplified, hang from the walls of his shop. Some are awaiting repairs, others for their owners

Some of the tools of the instrument repair trade look like they belong in a carpenter’s shop

collection, including some he made himself

to claim them. A glass display case shows off concertinas made and repaired by Tedrow. Tools such as lathes, saws and sanders give the appearance of a carpentry shop, and in a way, it is, because they usually have to make the broken parts they are replacing.

“My favorite job is working on vintage guitars,” says Jason Burns, 45, who started learning his craft as a teenager working on his own guitars. “Of course, I have learned a ton over the years from Bob and other luthiers.” He plays the guitar, ukulele, banjo and the upright bass.

He calculates that over the last 22 years, he and Tedrow have spent 46,000 hours together, and Burns cannot imagine what life would be like without his boss and friend. “He’s a wealth of knowledge about way more than musical instruments,” he says of Tedrow. “He’s the guy who showed me how to become a better person, how to stay married and even how to tie a tie. The list could go on and on. The world needs more people like him.”

Matthew Williams, 26, got into “all of this” because he couldn’t afford the guitars he wanted. “So, I thought with my woodworking background, I could just build them,” he says. “It turns out that’s easier said than done.”

He says he “annoyed himself into a job” by buying “project” guitars, going into Homewood Music and getting Tedrow, Burns and Clayton to tell him how to fix them. “I did this for years, and after they got fed up answering my questions, I

A glass display case houses Tedrow’s concertina

Michael Clayton works on an electric guitar

asked them for a job. After two years they finally relented, and I started coming in a few days a week and learning how to repair guitars on the job. It is without a doubt the best job I’ve ever had, and I look forward to seeing everyone each week.

Michael Clayton, 48, is a nurse by trade who started working on his own guitars about seven years ago after a bad repair experience at a different store. He watched videos from famous luthiers and followed all of Jason Burns’ repairs on Instagram.

“I happened to meet Jason about six years ago because, as fate would have it, our kids ended up on the same soccer team,” he says. “We became friends, and he invited me to the shop on my days off. I came down to watch him work and to learn from him, and that’s when I met Bob.”

He began working there “little by little,” he says, until he ended up “sort of” in an apprenticeship. “I’ve worked there for six years now and in that time, Bob and Jason have become my dearest friends.”

He describes Tedrow as “a bit of a force of nature,” adding that he’s also kind, intelligent and plays almost everything with strings. “Whenever someone comes in, he immediately greets them and everyone, I mean everyone, gets what we call the ‘Bob Show,’” Clayton says. “He’s one of the most engaging and charismatic people I’ve met. I have learned a great deal about luthiery and also life while spending time with the both of them (Bob and Jason). In short, they broke the mold.” l

Matthew Williams says he annoyed himself into a job with Tedrow

Bob and Klari Tedrow and their dogs have taken to country life in Ashville

Homewood Musical Instrument Company has been at its present location for five years

On Point. On Target.

Slasham Valley Meandering through time

Papaw J. G. and Grandma

Mattie Baswell

Story by Joe Whitten

Submitted photos

Several lovely valleys run through St. Clair County and bear the name of the streams meandering through them: Coosa Valley, Cahaba Valley, Beaver Valley, and Shoal Creek Valley.

And then there’s Slasham Valley. Why name any place Slasham? A local fellow recently commented that he hoped it had nothing to do with slashing somebody. And it doesn’t.

The name’s origin rests in folklore passed down from the 19th Century. The story has been recorded in Mildred Wright’s book, Josiah W. Wilson and Lydia Melinda Wilson and Slasham Valley, St. Clair County, Alabama Kinfolk. “Tradition holds that in the early days of the settling of the valley, a house-raising was in progress. An Irishman with a heavy brogue stopped and offered to do work for a meal. After being served once, he said, ‘May I have another slosh o’ ham?’” Folk had fun mimicking his heavy Irish brogue in the retelling, and thus was the valley named.

When in the 19th century this occurred, we have no record. However, the earliest obituary mentioning Slasham Valley is found in Pell City Library’s online copy of By Murder, Accident, and Natural Causes. It reads: “Jun. 27, 1883, Southern Aegis: Died. Odom. On June 23, 1883, in Slasham community, this county, John Odom, about 22 years old.” The name no doubt predates this obituary by a number of years, for the north end of the valley consisted of enough families by 1830 to organize Hopewell Baptist Church.

Also in Josiah W. Wilson and Lydia Melinda Wilson and Slasham Valley, St. Clair County, Alabama Kinfolk, Mildred Wright gives the location of Slasham Valley, writing, “Slasham Valley lies east of the town of Ashville, between Canoe Creek Mountain and Beaver Creek Mountain. The primary watercourse is Permeter Creek. ‘Permeter’ is the colloquial name for palmetto (U.S. Government geological survey map, Steele quadrangle). Highway 33 runs the course of the valley.”

Lelias Kirby, born 1895, included the town of Steele in his sweeping description of the valley. His parents L. S. and Nannie Lee Spradley Kirby were married February 7, 1884, and settled in Slasham Valley near the Etowah County line above Hopewell Church on today’s Rainbow Drive. In the introduction to Lelias’ booklet, How Me and Amos Won WWI, Lou Harper states, “Although Slasham does not appear on any map of Alabama, Dr. Kirby claims it does exist somewhere in a circle taking in… Steele and Ashville.” In the book, Lelias writes that the community was “…located between Greasy Cove and Smoke Neck. …It was 10 miles to the nearest little village, Ashville.” Smoke Neck seems too expansive because it was in Etowah County. Today Smoke Neck is Southside, Alabama.

Today, Slasham Road begins in Ashville at 10th Street and Greensport Road and runs from there to County Road 33 near Gum Springs Baptist Church. It is a peaceful valley of farms and homes.

Stewart and Nannie Kirby’s family consisted of daughters: Elsie, May, Geneva, and Anna; sons: Joe, Amos, Lelias, Otis and Taylor.

Lelias became a well-known physician in Birmingham and authored 3 booklets: How Me and Amos Won WWI, Corncobs, Cockleburs and Country Boys, and Cotton Picking’ Coon Huntin’ Country Boys. Otis became a Methodist Minister, serving in the North Alabama Conference for many years. He authored It All Started in Slash-Ham. In these books, the

Traveling the BACKROADS

Kirbys recorded their growing up in Slasham, St. Clair County Alabama.

In How Me and Amos Won WWI, Lilias told how the family “…walked two miles to Mount Hope Methodist,” and said, “I could see the lizards playing races across the rafters.” He told how their pastor, J. M. Wigley was encouraged as he preached his long sermons “…by a chorus of ‘Amens!’ from the ‘Amen Corner.’”

J. M. Wigley, a college student, lived in Steele and “… walked five miles through the flat woods” once a month to preach at Mount Hope. This was November 1913, and “…the log road was very muddy, but he arrived on time—11:00 A.M.”

Lelias recalled a non-religious family in Slasham that “never attended church.” However, at Bro. Wigley’s encouragement, the whole family attended a service. Two of the younger boys went to sleep on a pallet with other children. The Methodist in the South in those days were called “Shouting Methodist.” This was not “speaking in tongues,” but understandable shouts of praise to God. Therefore, as the service and preaching progressed, the saints of the Lord began rejoicing by shouting “Hallelujah!” “Praise the Lord!” “Glory to God!” As these praises reverberated from wall-to-wall, one of the boys awoke, grabbed his brother and said, “Quick, let’s head to the barn; Ma and Pa are fighting a-gin.”

In his section on church life, Otis Kirby, in It All Started in Slash-Ham, writes “Mt. Hope [Methodist] Church was a large, unpainted frame building. I remember sitting on rough-hewn benches and reading my little Olivet picture card… The church stood on the banks of Big Canoe Creek in the northeastern corner of St. Clair County where Auberry Bridge spanned the creek.”

In her History of Steele, Alabama, Vivian Qualls records that “Bro. Wigley” was J. M. Wigley who pastored the Steele Circuit in 1913 and 1914. And in History of Methodism in Alabama and West Florida by Marion Elias Lazenby, Rev. James Milton Wigley is mentioned six times. The last reference is in 1929 when the Methodist Conference appointed him “Financial Agent” to Athens College.

The Kirby children attended Ford Schoolhouse. As related by Otis in It All Started in Slash-Ham, the school was named after “Uncle John and Aunt Jeff” Ford because they lived close to the school and “the teacher always boarded with them.” Constructed of boards, the school had one unpainted room. The teacher’s desk sat on a raised section that ran the width of the room. Being on the stage gave the teacher “…better oversight of the student body and indicated who was boss.”

“The water bucket,” Otis continued, “was placed on a shelf on the wall outside the front door. Everybody drank from the same dipper. We ‘toted’ water from the wet-weather spring down in Uncle John’s pasture.”

According to both the Kirby brothers’ memories, one end of the Ford Schoolhouse rested on the ground while the other end stood about three feet off the ground and was partially underpinned. Otis related that “…on rainy days goats and hogs would move out of the flatwoods and shelter themselves under the schoolhouse.” The animal noises sometimes drowned out the human voices. There were cracks and holes in the floor, and Otis recalled one winter when his brother “Amos quite accidentally (?) let a few red-hot coals drop through the holes

onto the backs of the hogs.” This caused a pandemonium of grunts and squeals as the hogs fled the shelter and headed to the woods—for a few days.

In the April 1997 issue of Cherish: The Quarterly Journal of the St. Clair Historical Society, Ada Wilson Sulser (b1897-d1988) wrote memories titled “Zion Hill Schoolhouse.” She attended there beginning in 1903 and recalled that the school located next to Zion Hill Church held “…classes from November to April, weather permitting.” She also mentioned classmates: “Homer Waldrop , Clem Lowery, Claudie Wilson , Dora Putman, Houston Cobb, Clara Wilson, Wakely Wilson and Vivian Palmer.”

“The schoolhouse burned twice,” she recalled and added, “It was a standing joke that when a member of a certain family was expelled, the schoolhouse would burn.

Curtis and Lurla Fail Franklin set up housekeeping in Slasham Valley around 1925. In time the family grew to include five children: Hubert, Margaret, J. C., and Billy. All three boys became Church of God ministers and evangelists. Billy Franklin’s son is Jentezen Franklin, internationally known evangelist and pastor of a mega-church in Gainesville, Georgia. In 2008 his book Fasting was on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Margaret Berry

Traveling the BACKROADS

Today, 95-year-old Margaret Franklin Berry cherishes memories of living in Slasham Valley and attending Ashville elementary school. Her best friend at school was Betty Jean Hodges. “The family lived right in the middle of Ashville,” she recalled. “In fact, the first time I ever saw an electric refrigerator was at their house. She and I were in school together, and I went home with her for lunch one day. Her mother had frozen some little popsicles for us. I’ll never forget that.”

After the third grade, the family moved to Birmingham. Margaret’s father, John Curtis Franklin, had a job in Avondale. “He was a paint sprayer. And that’s when they used lead in the paint,” she told the interviewer. “Well, daddy got really sick. He had ‘paint poison,’ and ended up having to have his leg amputated. It was a terrible time. He was crippled and walked on crutches the rest of his life after the amputation. So, we moved back and forth from the farm to Birmingham several times.”

It was the Great Depression years, and the Franklin family would live in Birmingham for a while and then back to Slasham for a while during those Depression years.

“When we first moved back from Birmingham to Slasham,” Margaret reminisced, “the farm had been leased out to a sharecropper, and we couldn’t move into that house that daddy owned. So, we rented a house. We had no electricity in the area at that time, and I am positive they had no running water. Everybody had wells. But there was a spring on the place that daddy rented, and that’s where we kept our milk to keep it cold.

I guess the milk was ice cold, for the spring water certainly was. Every night for dinner, mother would send me and my brother Hubert down there to get the milk out of the spring.”

Although it was hard times during the depression, Margaret recalled that Pawpa J. G. Baswell, her step-grandfather, “… had six sons and they all had houses all down Slasham… All you had to do was to let somebody know you needed help and help was there.” She thought a moment, then spoke of God’s goodness. “I can hardly ever think about all those years and what we went through, without knowing that we were so blessed, and that God took care of us. All of us.”

After commenting, “I’ve not thought of some of this in years,” Margaret recounted things she and Hubert enjoyed as children.

“On one of our returns to Slasham, we lived in an old house that had a porch, and when they picked cotton, they made one end of the porch, the cotton spot. I don’t remember how they enclosed it, but they would just pile that cotton up there, on and on and on until the day they took it to the cotton gin. Hubert and I used to play in that cotton. We’d jump around in it just like kids today jump on a trampoline. That was so much fun!”

Then another memory came to mind. “When we needed cornmeal, they would send Hubert and me out to the corn crib to shell corn. I remember gallon buckets of shelled corn, and I’d go with my daddy when he’d take it to the mill to have it ground. It was so fascinating to watch that miller pour the corn into that hopper, and it come out cornmeal.” She couldn’t

Aunt Cattie (herb doctor),Curtis Franklin, Marshall Jester

Traveling the BACKROADS

remember the name of the grist mill her dad used.

A community event Margaret recalled was Box Suppers. In the 1930s and ‘40s, schools and churches would raise money by sponsoring “Box Suppers.” Girls would prepare a picnic lunch to place in a decorated box for this community event where the “box suppers” were auctioned, with the money going to the sponsoring school or church. These events were announced in the papers as seen in the Southern Aegis of January 29, 1920. “Box Supper at Zion Hill Saturday night Jan. 31st. Bring boxes and have a good time.”

Margaret remembered participating as a young girl. “You would just spend days and days decorating a beautiful box with ribbons and all kinds of decorations. And you’d think up something really enticing that you hoped would tempt the guys, you know. And they would bid on the box, and whoever bought it was who you ate with. Of course, you hoped that one of the guys you liked would be the one who bid on it! I must have had a sweetheart who I was wanting to bid on it.”

Margaret’s family attended Gum Springs Baptist Church in the old building and in the current building. The first sanctuary was across the street from today’s Gum Springs and located near the cemetery on that side of the road. There seems to be no photo of that first building.

An annual special occasion was “Decoration Day” (Memorial Day) each year on Mothers’ Day at Gum Springs. In olden days, the week before Mothers’ Day, community folk would clean the cemetery so graves would look nice for flower decorations on Sunday. On that Sunday, folk recalled old memories, enjoyed good preaching, joyful singing, and “dinner on the ground” after morning service. In truth, this event was a community reunion.

All day singings and singing schools occurred at Gum Springs Baptist and at Zion Hill Methodist. Margaret recalled them, saying, “They had Sacred Harp singing at Gum Springs. And they had special people come who taught us.” They called those events “singing schools.” Sacred Harp singing had no musical instruments, for the voice was the “sacred harp.”

County newspapers announced these singing Sundays, as in this September 28, 1922, issue of the Southern Aegis “Slasham News” column: “There will be a singing next Sunday at Zion Hill. Everyone come and bring your books.” Sacred Harp singers used special books which used fa sol la musical notations.

All Day Singings was another type musical event. They were also announced in the Southern Aegis, as in this October 17, 1917 issue. “All Day Singing at Gum Springs. Joe Baswell will sing at Gum Springs the third Sunday in this month, beginning about nine o’clock a.m. and sing all day. Everybody have [sic] an invitation to go and especially the singers, and still more especially those who will carry DINNER out for we may go, and if we do, it will take a lot of it, you bet.” You can’t have an “All Day Singing” without “Dinner on the Ground.” These were social as well as spiritual events.

Bo Davis, a 5th generation Davis living on the Slasham Valley Davis Farm, recounted interesting information in a recent interview.

The original Davis house burned and Bo’s great granddad, James Davis, rebuilt it. It still stands today on Davis Drive.

John Curtis, Sr., and Lurla Fail Franklin Maragret, J. C., & Hubert Franklin

Traveling the BACKROADS

“My Granddaddy, Robert Ely Davis, was born in 1878,” Bo said, “and the house burnt when he was two weeks old. His sister grabbed him up, pillow, mattress, and all, and carried him to the smokehouse.” Later, when the excitement of the fire came to an end, Jim asked, “Where’s the baby?” “He’s out there in the smokehouse,” they told him. And there they found him, sound asleep.

From the burned home, “They saved some of the sills and used them when they rebuilt the house,” Bo told the interviewer. “In that old house—my granddaddy’s house—the lumber on the walls are boards 25 inches wide. That lumber was sawed in 1878 when they built the house. They had a sawmill, and they sawed the planks and built the house back around the chimney of the old house.”

Bo was born in this house on December 21, 1943, and the valley was blanketed in ten inches of snow.

After Zion Hill Methodist Church burned, the Methodist Conference decided not to rebuild and all that remained was the cemetery. However, Bo remembered two preachers who came and held revivals on Zion Hill property.

One evangelist held services under a “brush arbor.” An online article, “The history of Brush Arbors,” gives this description: “Rural folk built a brush arbor by putting poles in the ground for the sides and then poles across these uprights. For the roof covering, they cut bushes and branches and laid them across the roof poles for a covering.”

Bo recalled that a “Rev. A. E. Jones would come from Gadsden and hold a week or two brush arbor revival on Zion Hill. He’d come down to my grandmother and get permission to run power lines down to my grandaddy’s house so they could have lights at night.”

“There was another preacher who ran a tent revival,” Bo recollected. “I think his last name was Bowlen who lived down around Margaret. He had tent revivals there back in the ‘50s.”

Slasham Valley has been a place called home for almost 200 years now. Settled year-by-year by families relocating from other states, it became a sweeping valley of farms and homes, schools and churches, and cemeteries, for with living comes dying. Folk who live, or have lived, in the valley speak of it with affection and love, and for all of those who have called it home, the lyrics of a song as old as Slasham hums in their hearts:

Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

Home, home sweet home

There’s no place like home. l

Franklin Family. Curtis, Lurla, Ruthie, Hubert, Margaret, J. C., Billy

Lights illuminate the bell tower

Divine Providence rings in Cropwell

A man, a parish, heavenly intervention, a community and a bell

Story Paul South

Photos by Sam Marston and Graham Hadley

If Zuzu Bailey’s line in the 1946 holiday film classic, It’s A Wonderful Life is true – that “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings,” a small Catholic Church in Cropwell helps get a heavenly squadron cleared for takeoff every day.

Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church’s 750-pound bell has become not only part of a parish, but of a community. It’s much more than heavy metal.

It’s a ringing result of one man’s idea, the support of his priest and parish and a heaping helping of Divine Providence.

Just ask Sam Marston.

It may have been 2017 when Marston, a 76-year-old retired airport food service manager, got the idea for the bell at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church.

“The church didn’t have a bell tower, and I like bell towers,” he says.

After meeting with the then-priest at Our Lady of the Lake, Marston pledged seed money from his 401k for the bell and its tower.

But until 2019, thoughts of the bell fell silent. The former priest retired. And what’s more, Marston’s wife, Glenda, was battling cancer.

In 2019, buoyed by an enthusiastic response from new OLL priest, the Rev. Bill Lucas, Marston began to reach out to churches in Philadelphia and Washington, looking for bells from closed parishes.

None were found. Then, he discovered Bell Castings, a firm in Loudon, Tenn., and its owner, Todd Lower.

The church found its bell – a 1934 model crafted by the Missouri-based McShane Company – in a roomful of ringers. Founded in 1856, McShane is America’s oldest church bell company.

The parish began a fundraising effort. While Marston’s pledge, funded by a government required minimum distribution was financial, both Marston and Lucas believe a higher power was at work.

“It had to be something Divine,” Marston says. “I couldn’t have come up with this. It was just something that came together. My whole thought process was to do something really, really special with this donation.

Marston, a cradle Catholic, had always loved bells. “It makes the whole church experience rich. Ringing before Mass and

after Mass is like a celebration.”

Initially, donations for the belltower project came at a trickle. Rev. Lucas was not optimistic.

“We set a budget that was much higher than what we had before … So I said, we’ll leave it to the parish and if people give enough money, we’ll build the bell. But I didn’t think there was any way we would ever get to the level we needed to get to build the belltower.”

Marston confessed to doubt as well. “When the money stopped coming in, yes I did have doubts,” he says. “I tried to put it out of my mind, but I’d go out and see the bell sitting on the ground.”

Then, after one Sunday Mass, came a miracle. A donor wishing anonymity quietly handed Lucas a check for the majority of the needed funds.

“All of a sudden, there we were,” Lucas says. “We had the money for the project. Some people would say we got lucky,” he adds. “But I prefer to say Divine Providence.”

He adds, “If you believe in Divine Providence, the whole story of our parish is that way … You can see it at work. But it’s certainly true of the bell.”

Marston agrees. “I really do think it was Divine intervention,

Sam Marston and the bell

because there were so many things that could have stopped it.”

Through friend Carl Wallace, Marston connected with structural engineer Bob Barnett, and Barnett found Birmingham architect Tim Lucy who had done work for other Catholic parishes in the past. It seemed a match made in heaven.

The link to Barnett came in true Logan Martin style, when Marston and Wallace discussed the bell project over glasses of wine during a sunset pontoon cruise.

“(Sam) was willing to make the financial commitment, but he just didn’t know how to take the next step,” Wallace, author of the popular Facebook blog, “Lake Ramblings”, says. “I’m an engineer, and I just happened to know Bob Barnett who lives on the lake … and has his own structural engineering company. My simple part was, ‘Sam, let me get you in contact with Bob Barnett and get y’all hooked up.’ And Bob jumped all over it. He hooked up Sam with the architect. He had worked with (architect Lucy) on Catholic projects before.”

Ground broke on the bell tower on Nov. 9, 2021. But it was not an easy rise to the heavens. Soft St. Clair County soil required digging deeper and reinforcing the foundation with concrete. The bell, gleaming gold against a bright blue winter sky, was raised on Jan 13, 2022.

“You talk about exciting,” Marston recalls.

The electronically programmed bell rings every hour on the

Sketch of the bell tower plans

Upper framework

Soft soil required underground cement foundation

hour between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., as well as five minutes before and at the end of each Mass and at funerals. The bell, Lucas says, has impacted the parish in a positive way.

“It’s made people more reverent,” Lucas says, “because when the bell rings, then you focus on the Mass. You focus on prayer and worship. Just like during the Consecration when we ring the bells, it’s a reminder to people where we are and what we’re doing.”

Lucas adds, “I didn’t really understand that when we were going through the project. But since we’ve had it, it’s opened my mind to the benefit of having the bell and helping people’s faith.

In a small way, Wallace says, the bell project has enriched life on the Cropwell end of the lake, especially as the tower was under construction.

“It’s almost the anticipation of it was greater than the final project,” Wallace says. “It’s not real loud. You can only hear it if you’re in the area. People see it when they drive by. It has become an instant landmark, maybe more so than the church itself.”

There’s something more at work here.

“The tradition of it, I think, is noteworthy,” Wallace says. “A church bell ringing is a great thing.”

The bell is a reminder of faith for people, regardless of their spiritual persuasion, Lucas says.

“Sometimes they’re Catholic, sometimes they’re just believers. They hear the bell, and it reminds them of that,” Lucas says. “This is a very religion-friendly area, and I think the bell speaks not just to Catholics, but to everyone of faith. It gives them a reminder that God is there and to take Him more seriously.”

While Marston was the driving human force, the community, priest and parish all played a part.

“It was a relay, and there were a lot of runners,” Wallace says. “It’s a very interesting thing that just happened to happen to

Bell tower base construction

happen.”

While at this point, folks in Cropwell may be unsure about Hollywood’s Zuzu Bailey theory on angel wings and chiming bells, the feeling Sam Marston gets with every clang is crystal clear: “Joy,” he says.

At the end of the day, the story of the Our Lady of the Lake belltower transcends one man’s dream, or money, a bell or bricks and mortar, Lucas says. “I think it does come back to that Divine Providence. If we’re open to that, and we’re willing to be molded by that, then God can use that for His glory and the building up of the Church and building up of faith, if we’re open to it.”

And in what some may see as another ring of Divine Providence, the bell chimed for the first time on Feb. 1, 2022.

It was Sam Marston’s 75th birthday. l

The tower completed in front of the church

Sam Marston and Father Bill Lucas

At Pell City Steak House with McConaughey during filming are Janice Spann and Bruce Spann

A class act

McConaughey shows Pell City why he is a fan favorite

Story by Scottie Vickery

Submitted Photos

Lena Parris went through hail to see Matthew McConaughey. And by the time the time the Ragland woman caught a glimpse of the actor, whose upcoming movie recently called for filming at the Pell City Steak House, she’d also survived five hours in the summer heat, gotten drenched from several rain showers, and acquired a sunburn to boot.

So was it worth it? “Yeah, I’d say it was,” Lena replied. “I’m not planning on going to California anytime soon, so I figured this was the closest I was going to get to seeing a celebrity. It was an experience for sure, and it was true Alabama weather. You ride out the rain and a hailstorm, it gets bright and sunny, and then you get burned.”

She also got some good photos of McConaughey, who has been in the Birmingham area since early June filming scenes for The Rivals of Amziah King, which is written and directed by Andrew Patterson and produced by Black Bear Pictures.

The award-winning actor, who earned a Best Actor Oscar for this role in Dallas Buyer’s Club and has also starred in blockbusters such as The Lincoln Lawyer and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, will star in the movie, a crime thriller set in rural Oklahoma.

Since arriving in Alabama, the actor and crew have been spotted at a variety of places in at least three different counties. In Jefferson County, they’ve eaten at Birmingham restaurants and filmed at J&J Grocery and Deli in Bessemer in addition to a Hoover church and home. Shelby County’s Elvin Hill Elementary School in Columbiana was recently transformed into Bill Waugh Elementary School for filming, and McConaughey’s trip to St. Clair County took him to the Steak House as well as a farm in Cropwell owned by Kathy and Bill Carleton.

ALL ABUZZ

Kathy had no idea just how appropriate the name of their farm – Bin Swindled – would turn out to be. She didn’t find out that McConaughey had spent a morning there until hours after he’d left, and she felt as if she’d, well, “been swindled” out of her chance to meet one of her favorite actors.

“I was so ticked off,” she said with a laugh. “I would have at least enjoyed getting his autograph or getting my picture with him while he was in my pasture. I’d have loved to have taken him a glass of tea.”

The Carletons allow a relative, a beekeeper, to keep his bee colony on their property, and he showed the actor and crew some of the finer points of beekeeping. “I guess Matthew plays a beekeeper in the movie,” Kathy said. “He was showing them how to act and react around bees.”

The fact that McConaughey was long gone by the time she found out he’d been there still stings, Kathy admitted. “How

would you feel if he was on your property, and no one told you? My husband still doesn’t get why I was mad,” she said. Now that some time has passed, however, the irritation has faded. “What can you do but laugh? It’s a good story to tell.”

That morning, she noticed several people in their driveway, so she sent Bill, who apparently hasn’t pored over many issues of People magazine, out to check. He came back and said the relative was showing some people the bees. Later, when the crowd had grown, Bill headed down for another look.

He talked with some of the folks and came back and told her a few had gotten stung and added that “one of them looked familiar.” When the beekeeper told them later who the A-list guest had been, “Bill said, ‘I guess if it had been John Wayne or someone like that, I would have recognized him,’” Kathy explained. “Can you imagine?”

Kathy, a concierge travel professional, said she was working from home that morning and not dressed in her finest since she didn’t know company was coming. “What if I had wandered out in the driveway? I would have absolutely flipped,” she said.

The farm, however, looked great. “The grass had just been cut, thank goodness,” she said. “Everything looked really pretty.”

STEAKING CLAIM

Bruce Spann, manager of the Pell City Steak House, said the crew started scouting the location a few months before the filming. “They just came in one day out of the blue,” he said. “They came in several times after that, just looking around, and

McConaughey gives nod to spectators

then we sat down to do a contract.”

Although they weren’t told at the time which movie it was and who the star was, “we kind of figured it out since we knew they were shooting in Birmingham,” he said. They got official confirmation on Monday afternoon and learned that filming would be Wednesday, so they announced on Facebook that the restaurant would be closed. Bruce said he and his mother, Janice Spann, were the only employees allowed to be there the day of filming. “They were very strict, but they were very professional, every one of them,” he said. “It was a great experience.”

Tuesday night, “they came in and took everything down from the walls and redecorated,” he said. “It’s supposed to be a restaurant in Oklahoma, so they took down the business license and anything to do with Pell City.”

Bruce said the filming process was fascinating. In addition to the action happening in the main part of the restaurant, “my downstairs was slap full of people watching it on big screens,” he said. “They were looking at every little thing, and I don’t know how many times they would reshoot things. They worked very hard, and I have a whole different respect for what they do. They were busy people.”

He also learned that filming a movie requires a lot of silence. “You can’t have any noise whatsoever because their mikes are so sensitive,” he said. “I had to cut the ice machine and air conditioner off. We couldn’t cook anything because we couldn’t run the exhaust fans.”

As a result, he and Janice got an inside glimpse of Hollywood magic. Although McConaughey was only having a cup of coffee in the scene, the extras who portrayed the diners at tables around him had full plates. “It was plastic food,” Bruce said. “It looked so real.”

Although they got to see the whole experience unfold, they only had a brief encounter with McConaughey. “He was a super nice guy,” Bruce said. “He came back about 3 o’clock and asked if we wanted a picture with him and said he might not get another chance. He shook my hand and said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and went back to work.”

The next morning, the crew returned and put everything back just like they’d found it. “They had taken pictures of how we had everything, and they took their stuff down and put ours back up. We opened up that morning at 10:30, just like we always do,” Bruce said. “It was a cool experience and we enjoyed it.”

BRAVING THE ELEMENTS

Although things were nice and dry inside the restaurant, that wasn’t the case outside where a group of fans gathered, hoping to meet – or at least see – McConaughey.

Throughout the day, there was rain, heat, and even a few minutes of hail, but the storms are what led Sundi Hawkins to the Steak House, which is not far from her home. “Our power went out, so I looked at my youngest and said, ‘Hey we need to go get some exercise. Let’s go for a walk.’ He knew exactly where I was going,” she said. “I just couldn’t be this close to him and not try to see him.”

Throughout the day, fellow stargazers came and went as their schedules allowed. “I wasn’t planning on going at all and was just going to let them do their thing,” Lena said. “Turned out I had an hour to kill, so I decided to go by and see what was going on. That hour turned into a five-hour adventure. I almost left, but then I thought, “I’ve invested so much time here I may as well stay.’ ”

She also sacrificed a good bit of comfort – and her pride. “After the rain and hailstorm, I was soaked. And when I say soaked, I mean I was drenched,” Lena said. “I had on slides, and my socks were soaked, so I took them off, wringed them out, and put them in the pocket of my raincoat.”

A crew member later told her that McConaughey happened to look out the restaurant window and saw the whole thing. “He sees me out there wringing out my dadgum socks,” she said and laughed. “Could I have had a more Alabamian moment than that right there?”

Wet feet aside, Lena said she enjoyed watching everything unfold. “It was actually pretty neat to see how films are made,” she said. “The crew was going in and out and they all had walkie talkies. They were all labeled – one said ‘props.’ You could see all the different jobs because of the walkie talkies.”

Although the wait was long, the crowd was finally rewarded with a Matthew sighting and a little interaction. After filming, the actor went to the trailers parked across the street at First Baptist Church at Pell City. He emerged late afternoon and waved to the onlookers before driving off in a Lincoln Aviator and driving away, a chorus of squeals following him.

“When he was filming, he was very focused,” Lena said. “He came outside and went to the trailers, but he never waved or looked up or anything. When he was leaving, he was a little more friendly and talkative, and he interacted a little with the crowd.”

Although he didn’t sign autographs, the actor rolled down his window before leaving. “Can I get a ‘Roll Tide,’ Matthew?” someone shouted. “Not a chance,” the actor said with a grin. McConaughey, a graduate of the University of Texas and a

The weather did not always cooperate

huge Longhorns fan, flashed the “Hook ‘em Horns” sign at the crowd as he drove past.

It was a bittersweet moment for Sundi. “One of my favorite actors of all time is right here. He drove right in front of us, and I got so excited I forgot my camera was on zoom, so I missed the picture,” she said.

LIKEABILITY FACTOR

Although the lure of Hollywood is strong, it seems that Matthew Mania was fueled in part because so many people like the man behind the persona. McConaughey was named Philanthropist of the Year by The Hollywood Reporter in 2022 in part for his efforts in organizing the We’re Texas concert that raised $7.7 million for victims of Winter Storm Uri.

He was also recognized for the impact of the just keep livin’ Foundation, which he and his wife, Camila Alves McConaughey, started in 2008 to provide after-school fitness and wellness program in inner city high schools.

“I’m a big fan,” Kathy said. “I just love him, and I love his way. He seems like a kind person.”

Sundi agreed. “He’s always been one of my favorite actors and it’s not just because he’s good-looking,” she said of the star, who was named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2005. After hearing some podcasts he’s been on and listening to part of his audio books, she’s become a bigger fan. “He’s down to earth and very spiritual. He just seems like a cool guy,” she said.

Lena, who said she was a fan long before McConaughey came to town, said she hoped his experience in Pell City was a good one. “It was an experience I wouldn’t have gotten to have anywhere else,” she said. “Hopefully we didn’t annoy the man too much.” l

An avid Texas fan, McConaughey gives his fans the “Hook ‘em, Horns” sign

Waving to onlookers

Those who came before Searching for treasures in our past

Story by Roxann Edsall

Photos by Richard Rybka

Submitted photos

“It’s like finding a box of buried jewels,” says Tom Mottlau, describing the hunt that has become his happy obsession. He’s spent countless hours over the past three years researching his genealogy. For him, each discovery is a treasured connection to his family tree.

For Mottlau, it all started when he found himself cooped up at home during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. An executive with LG Electronics, Mottlau typically spent most of his time flying internationally, but suddenly found himself grounded at home with loads of time on his hands. He had always been interested in history, particularly his own family history. With time to work on it, he subscribed to the online ancestry database, ancestry.com, and began populating his family tree with things he already knew about his genealogy. Further research landed him in St. Clair County. Using

information found on billiongraves.com and findagrave.com, he found that he had family buried at Coosa Valley Baptist Church in Cropwell. So, he headed to the cemetery, where he found the graves of two sets of great-great-great-grandparents, John James and Purlina Abbott and Samuel Patton and Margaret McClellan. Along with many others originally laid to rest at Easonville Methodist Church, their caskets were moved to the Cropwell land before the flooding of Easonville when Alabama Power impounded the Coosa River in 1964 to create Logan Martin Lake.

He’s also located many of his ancestors’ graves at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham and has made it his mission to replace those grave markers that were broken or missing.

Locating information about ancestors can be a daunting process because America is truly a melting pot of nationalities. Going back several generations, many Americans find that, like Mottlau’s family, their ancestors immigrated from many different countries.

For him, those people came from Denmark, Ireland, Costa Rica, Portugal and Jamaica. He has discovered that some of his

Tom Mottlau visits the cemetery at Coosa Valley Baptist Church in Cropwell

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distant relatives worked to help build the Panama Canal. Others worked in the steel industry, which is what eventually led them to Birmingham.

Mottlau grew up in Miami, Florida, but now resides in Sugar Hill, Georgia. He has a son in school at Ole Miss, and the drive to visit him takes him over Logan Martin Lake. Each time he crosses over the water, he wonders about his ancestors who called this place their home.

On several such trips, he’s made a slight detour to Ashville, where he spent time at the St. Clair County Archives, digging deeper into information he’s found on ancestry websites. Originally an extension of the library in Ashville, the archives were moved to the current location in the former Ashville Savings Bank in 2007 and offer numerous resources for people researching their ancestry.

Archive director Robert Debter says the first step he always recommends in tracking down information on family histories is to check the heritage book for your county. “Every county has one,” he explains as he grabs a book off the shelf. “All the families that have connections to St. Clair County since it was established in 1818 are included in the St. Clair book.” These books include records on adoptions, wills, estates, as well as probate, civil and circuit court records.

After that, Debter recommends looking online in one of several ancestry databases, websites like ancestry.com, newspapers.com, or, for military records, fold3.com.

History buff and Ashville resident Billy Price has used these databases extensively to find out more about his own family. He spends at least one day a week at the archives and has learned that his family included two Revolutionary War veterans, two dozen Confederate soldiers and two Union solders.

Use of these databases on a personal computer requires a membership fee, but the St. Clair County archives and the Pell City library offer ancestry searches under their memberships for free. Patrons can get on one of the library computers and search their family histories on newspapers.com, which has information from American newspapers from as far back as the 1600s. Another available resource is familysearch.org.

“When I started fine-tuning my own family genealogy,” says Pell City Library Director Danny Stewart, “I started by asking my oldest family members to verify the stories that had been passed down. I would also search obituaries, deed records, titles and tax records.”

Mottlau has done all that. He can’t put a number on how many hours he’s spent on the computer running down leads. “My wife says I should have been a detective,” he says. “I’ve uncovered a lot, but just keep going deeper. I really want to find out enough to create an archive and make copies for all my other cousins.”

Mottlau also wants to find pictures of everyone in his direct line up to his great-great-greatgrandparents. Addressing that goal, Stewart recommends regular searches on newspapers. com. As a frequent visitor to that website himself,

T. Jones Abbott, Idora Abbott and Margaret Abbott

he has recently discovered a picture of his mother’s great-uncle from 1906 that had just been digitized and uploaded to the website.

Sometimes, though, the actual story behind the picture is not the one passed down from generation to generation. Mottlau tells the story his grandmother told him about a picture of her dad. The story was that he was an attorney and was shot on the courthouse steps in Birmingham. After extensive research, Mottlau learned that his great grandfather was, indeed, shot in 1912, but not on the courthouse steps. He died in a pistol duel across the street from the courthouse, on the steps of the Stag Saloon. That information has been one of the biggest surprises to date on Mottlau’s ancestry quest.

On a recent trip to Pell City, Mottlau again stopped by the familiar grave sites at the Coosa Valley Baptist Church cemetery. He questions whether the burial plot of John James and Purlina Abbott might also include the remains of their son and daughter-in-law, John Henry and Idora Abbott, beneath a marker that simply reads “Abbott.” There are no records that he has been able to find that list the events or location of their burial site. It’s just another mystery that he continues to work to unravel.

After more than three years of searching, Mottlau has made progress, confirming some things he knew about his family and dispelling some as fiction. It’s a painstaking process, but he says finding out more about the family who are part of his past has been a labor of love. “I just really want to know the people they were,” he says.

Every now and then he finds another jewel. Some are rough and take some polishing. In the end, they are all part of his treasured past. And they’ll become part of the legacy that he will, one day, pass down to his own children. l

Mottlau recommends using newspaper archives to find ancestors

New St. Clair County Jail Improving security and more through technology

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller

Photos by Richard Rybka

St. Clair County is about to open a brand new, state-of-the-art jail that will allow guards to control every valve, commode and door lock from second-floor hubs overlooking the cell blocks. The new jail will accommodate about the same number of prisoners as the current jail in Ashville and the former one in Pell City combined.

The $35 million, two-story facility, located across the street from the county courthouse in Pell City, can house 333 inmates in 54,000 square feet of space. Designed by CMH Architects of Birmingham and built by Goodgame and Company of Pell City, it is next door to where the old jail was. The old was torn

down to make room for the new.

“The jury is still out as to the fate of the Ashville jail and the building next to it,” Stan Batemon, chairman of the St. Clair County Commission, said in a telephone interview. Speaking at an Open House for the new facility, Batemon said it could not have been built in Ashville because the sewer system there can’t handle it.

He said the project was financed with a $24 million bond issue and $10 million in federal COVID monies. When the county commission agreed to build the jail, it earmarked court-cost fees attached to all criminal cases toward the payment of the bonds.

“With the control of the facility done from the second floor looking down, we’ll need fewer guards and less contact,” Batemon said. “Every

Main entrance to the new jail

valve, sink, commode, door lock and every piece of video equipment will be controlled electronically by panels the jailers can monitor.”

“This is what happens when elected officials from the city and county work together,” said St. Clair County Sheriff Bill Murray. “The architect and the builders made a great team. Soon it will be my job to make it safe and keep it safe and secure for our citizens.” He also thanked the St. Clair County Commission for making the project a reality.

Murray and the deputies who will be working at the new facility went through a month-long training program. They will be set to take the jail’s first inmates by the first week of August.

During the Open House, tours started in the large, secure intake area, where inmates will begin the process of getting booked. The male wing has five dorms with five cell blocks in each, and each dorm has a central commissary containing eating tables, a television and video visitation capabilities. The female side is similar but smaller, containing only two dorms with one cell block each. However, there is space to add more dorms on the female side, because the number of female prisoners is growing, according to Brody Bice, project coordinator for Goodgame and one of the Open House tour guides. “They expect to have to expand, and we have provided a place to expand the

Cutting the ribbon, from left, front row: Chairman Stan Batemon, Sheriff Billy Murray; back row, Commissioners Ricky Parker and Bob Mize

Commission Chairman Stan Batemon addresses open house crowd

female side, which is set up like the male side,” Bice .

He said the facility was built with concrete blocks that are filled with rebar and poured concrete, making it a very secure building. Cells were shipped in from Georgia, two at a time, attached together. They already contained bunks, stools, chairs and toilets, as well as the conduits for utilities, in place.

All of the dorms, cells and accommodations are located on the first floor. So is the public lobby, which has a machine for depositing money to a prisoner’s account and a video visitation area. There will be no in-person visitation allowed.

Other main-level amenities include:

• Arraignment Room

• Control Room, which allows control of all exterior doors

• Break room for officers and staff. One wall will have a kiosk with sandwich makings, where jail and county courthouse employees may eat.

• *Administration Office

• Training Room

• Laundry Room

• Kitchen, with walk-in freezer, commercial gas stove, and the capability of expansion

• Medical wing with four cells

The new kitchen area

CMH congratulates the St. Clair County Commission on the completion of a justice-system facility that will maximize public safety. We are honored to partner with the men and women of the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office to protect and serve the community.

room

“We have prisoners farmed out to three other counties, and we’re paying several thousand dollars a month for that,” Chairman Batemon said. “We have all we can put in the Ashville jail right now. We’re almost ready to move all inmates to the St. Clair County jail.”

Batemon said it costs $50,000 per year to house a prisoner in Alabama, and St. Clair County is doing what it can to reduce the number of inmates.

“We already have a drug court and a veterans court to help keep some out,” he said. (See“Saving Veterans,” October/November 2019 issue of Discover.) “About 20% of prisoners are veterans. We’re hoping to add a mental court, too. We’re proud of the jail, proud of our citizens for their support of this new facility.” l

Intake

Landscaping across the front of the building

Real People. Real Life Stories.

“When my mother had the beginnings of dementia, she was in Birmingham, and I was in Pell City. Working full time, I couldn’t be there. But Always There could, and they helped her with the things she needed to remain independent -- taking her grocery shopping, making sure she got the right medications at the right time, being a companion. Always There allowed her to stay in her own home and took the worries away from my siblings and I when we couldn’t be there for her.”

• Companionship

• Care Management

• Errands

-- Carol P.

• Bathing and Grooming

• Dressing

• Escorts for shopping

• Laundry and appointments

• Light Housekeeping

• Meal Preparation

When you can’t be there, Always There can.

Prescription for PROGRESS

Dr.

Rock Helms

continues focus on moving health care forward

Story by Roxann Edsall

Photos by Mackenzie Free

He’s written plenty of prescriptions in his 24 years as a physician. Perhaps none has been quite as wide-reaching as the plan Dr. Rock Helms wrote for Pell City residents outlining how he would alleviate the pain of having to drive to Birmingham to see a medical specialist.

Two years after beginning his family medical practice with Baptist Health Systems, Dr. Helms, along with Dr. Bill McClanahan and Dr. Carl Frosina, opened a new medical clinic they named Northside Medical Associates. Since their opening in 2001, the facility has grown from those three doctors to 25 primary care providers.

While the increased number of primary care providers has been helpful in keeping up with the city’s growth, what has made the clinic most impactful is their partnership with subspecialties and the access to advanced care imaging available right in Pell City. No longer does a patient have to see a doctor here, then be referred to a Birmingham doctor for further treatment by a specialist.

The expanded care has made a huge difference for those needing medical care in the area. “There were times as administrator for Northside that I had to stop seeing patients because there just wasn’t time to run the clinic and to see patients,” said Helms. “It was a very busy time.” The partnership sold Northside to Complete Health in 2020, allowing Helms to return to his patients.

Long-time patient and Pell City attorney John Rea appreciates Helms’ dedication and the vision he had in expanding the community’s healthcare options. “His vision has been transformative for the Pell City area,” says Rea. “He and the others grew a medical operation from a small primary care practice to now becoming a partner with other specialties. Now we can just go down the road to see a cardiologist or other specialist. It’s remarkable.”

Helms has been a part of the community since his parents, Ron and Joanne Helms, moved the family to Pell City when Rock was in second grade.

He graduated from Pell City High School in 1988 and

graduated from the University of Alabama. He earned his medical degree from the University of South Alabama. After a residency at the University of Alabama, Dr. Helms returned to Pell City to his extended family. “If I hadn’t,” he jokes, “they probably would have disowned me.”

Helms and his wife, Jennifer, are the parents of seven children, four of whom are adopted. They also have two grandchildren. Family is very important to him, so he makes a point to take time off to spend with them. He is very close to his parents, who still live in Pell City, and to his mother-in-law, Sarah Rhodes, also from Pell City.

While his parents inspired him in many ways, Helms’ inspiration in the medical field was and continues to be Dr. Bill McClanahan. “He inspired me to become a doctor and remains my mentor to this day,” says Helms.

Dr. Helms always looks forward to visits from patient Lizzie Jones

Helms describes himself as a “country doctor.” Living in a smaller town affords him the opportunity to really get to know his patients and to serve the community where he grew up. “The people in Pell City are the people who made me who I am today. I enjoy knowing my patients as completely as I can,” says Helms. “It’s a more personal relationship.”

“I know him as my doctor and as a client,” says Rea. “But I also consider him a friend. I think his strongest attribute as my physician is his willingness to take the time to listen to me.”

“Listening,” Helms agrees, “is an important part of the job, if you do it right.” Recently, he listened as a terminally ill patient confided that she did not have family to guide her through her end-of-life decision-making. “I was able to help guide her through parts of that process,” he said. “Being able to help people through life-altering events is a gift.”

Helms’ patients include many of the people he grew up with, including former teachers and classmates. “One patient I see I went to college with,” Helms says with a smile. “I still aggravate him about cheating us out of money at poker in college!”

“I think practicing medicine in your community makes you do a better job as a physician,” admits Helms. “When you’re serving the community you grew up in, and are still a part of, you know you’re going to give everything. You go the extra mile for people you are close to. I think it conditions you to try harder and makes you a better doctor.”

Lizzie Jones is one of those patients Helms credits with making him a better doctor. He looks forward to catching up with her during her appointment. “She comes with Fred, her husband of 63 years. She was a dedicated professional cook for

Formerly Northside, Complete Health is a major medical facility in Pell City

30 years at the nursing home in Cook Springs. She comes to her appointments dressed for church, complete with a fancy hat,” Helms says. “The whole office staff looks forward to her visits and her beautiful, warm smile. She always has a wonderful attitude, no matter what adversity she has faced.”

It’s a very gratifying job, Helms says, unlike some other jobs he has had. “I’ve worked in the corporate world, where you don’t always get that,” he says. He recalls being on call one night and receiving a call while eating dinner with his family. “An emergency room doctor calls me about help with a patient. I started to have him transfer her to Birmingham, but instead, I went in to see her. She had had a heart attack. I sent her by

Dr. Helms with longtime patient, Billy Golden, who carved the native doctor sculpture on his desk

Kenyetta Thomas

ST. CLAIR MEDICAL COMMUNITY

helicopter to Birmingham and she made it through. I got to see her for her six-month checkup, and she established me as her primary doctor. She’s been my patient ever since.”

When he’s not working at the clinic or hanging out with family in Pell City, he can be found on his bulldozer or tractor or hunting on his land in Lowndes County in South Alabama. “It’s where I go to destress. It’s definitely in the country,” Helms says. “You have to drive 17 miles for a bag of ice!”

Rea sums up Helms’ success as a combination of personality and commitment to both community and patient care. “He could have gone anywhere to practice medicine and probably had an easier path than the one he chose. But at his core is that commitment to community.” Pell City has benefited from that commitment to expanding the medical options locally.

Helms says his second-choice career was meteorology. Fortunately for the St. Clair County area, his first choice seems to be working out just fine.

Dr. Rock Helms and local attorney John Rea

Dr. Helms and his family

ST. CLAIR MEDICAL COMMUNITY

Director of Surgery

Services Stacey Wachs shows off a surgical suite

Ascension St. Vincent’s St. Clair

Same-day surgeries set standard for patient

care

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller

Photos by Graham Hadley and submitted by Ascension St.

Vincent’s

Ascension St. Vincent’s St. Clair may have begun life as an in-patient facility. But by keeping up with technology and the latest in surgical techniques, the Pell City hospital has built a reputation as a go-to place for outpatient surgeries, too.

“I would say that we are a leader in outpatient surgeries,” says Lisa Nichols, hospital administrator. “We have excellent patient satisfaction and quality scores. Our outpatient volume continues to grow. “

Ascension St. Vincent’s St. Clair’s surgical services department has provided care to more than 5,500 patients in the past 12 months, with that breaking down to 2,691 outpatient surgeries, 171 inpatient surgeries, 706 infusion treatments and 1,932 GI procedures.

Surgeons who use the hospital are able to perform total joint replacements as outpatient procedures. Patients come in five to seven days before surgery, to meet with a pre-admission testing nurse to make sure that all the patient’s needed resources are ready when they go home, Nichols says. “Before the total joint patients have surgery we want to make sure they have everything they need so they can successfully recover at home.”

Stacey Wachs, director of Surgery Services, says that in most cases, “We encourage patients to go home in one day.” Even total hip replacement and knee replacement surgeries no longer require overnight stays, unless the patient has other health concerns that the doctor wants monitored.

While physical therapists are lined up to make in-home visits the day after patients arrive back home, therapy actually starts before they leave the hospital. “We make sure they are up and walking the day of surgery,” Wachs says. “We have the patient’s caretaker come with them when they have their surgery, so they will know how to assist the patient when they get home.”

In the little moments and major milestones of childhood, we are here for our patients and their families – helping, healing, teaching and discovering.

ST. CLAIR MEDICAL COMMUNITY

Ascension St. Vincent’s main entrance

Same-day surgery involves many more operations than hip and knee replacements, though. Colonoscopies, cholecystectomies, appendectomies, mastectomies, thyroidectomies and colon resections are just a few examples. Many surgeries that used to require several days follow-up care in the hospital are often less invasive now. Some are handled through laparoscopy, which cuts down on recovery and healing time. “Patients themselves are wanting to go home as soon as possible,” says Nichols. “It’s better for them psychologically, too. Once they are home, we make follow-up calls to keep up with their progress.”

Having an outpatient surgical procedure can be a less expensive option than a surgical procedure that requires a hospital stay, Nichols says. “Of course, the patient’s insurance coverage determines the amount the patient is required to pay.”

Around 30 staff members are at work in the Same-Day Surgery (SDS) department on the high-volume days of Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. That number includes doctors, nurses and technicians who not only do surgeries but a whole lot more, such as infusion services and monitoring patients after their procedures.

“We have 10 SDS rooms that we use to get patients ready for their surgery, for those needing outpatient infusions and for the final stage of recovery prior to being discharged home,” Nichols says. “We also have one GI procedure room, three ORs (operating rooms) and a recovery room with eight bays.”

“We’re not a small-town hospital,” Wachs says. “We have the latest equipment and doctors who come here from Birmingham, Anniston and other cities for their procedures. We updated the systems in our GI lab recently, and doctors come to me daily about other possible upgrades they would like to see. We have a wish list.”

Recovery room

ST. CLAIR MEDICAL COMMUNITY

Robots that assist physicians with minimally-invasive surgeries are high on that list. “I think this facility has been kept up well,” Nichols says. “A lot of our employees live in this county and have pride in this facility.”

A NEW BEGINNING

Ascension St. Vincent’s St. Clair opened on Veterans Drive near the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home in December 2011. In its first incarnation, it was in a nowdemolished facility on the opposite side of I-20.

Nichols has been administrator there for eight years, while Stacey Wachs has spent her entire 25-year medical career at the hospital, including her time at its former location. Both Nichols and Wachs are registered nurses.

Contrary to what much of the public believes, Ascension did not buy out St. Vincent’s hospitals. Ascension has been the parent company to St. Vincent’s hospitals in Birmingham, Oneonta, Clanton, St. Clair County and throughout the U.S. since their inception, but only recently began branding them with the Ascension logo.

“Outpatient surgery at St. Vincent’s St. Clair bridges the gap between efficiency and patient care,” says Dr. George Crawford, a general surgeon who uses the hospital. “They have found a way to treat patients respectfully and how they deserve to be treated, while at the same time being efficient and effective in preparing them for their surgical procedure.”

Cutting-edge surgical room

Surgical scheduler Latasha Kidd at the check-in area for same-day surgeries

St. Clair, Alabama Business Review

Retail growing with T.J. Maxx already posting hiring event in Pell City

Looking five years ahead

EDC develops road map to St. Clair County’s future success

For some, talk of five-year plans conjures visions of a small gaggle of decision makers in a back room, setting a course for the masses.

But when St. Clair County’s Economic Development Council crafted the county’s growth blueprint for the next half decade, EDC Executive Director Don Smith made one thing plain: This is a countywide team effort. The council listened to hundreds of voices, folks from the incorporated areas to the farmlands, the lakefronts to the riverfront, corporations, small business owners and every entity in between.

“The EDC’s success is the result of the partnerships we create throughout the county,” Smith says. “That’s really the secret to our success. It’s not what the EDC does. It’s what we’re able to do by working with others.”

The recently approved new five-year plan was crafted after a series of public meetings across the county and input from hundreds of citizens.

“From that, we were able to create a vision of what we need to focus on achieving in the next five years,” Smith says, “The plan helps us to stay focused and to dedicate resources to make sure we achieve our goals.”

The wide-ranging plan focuses on six key areas – infrastructure development, marketing and communication, recruitment and retention, community development, leadership and tourism.

Some key areas include job creation, growing agritourism, including farm-to-table initiatives, and assisting municipalities in tapping into a deep pool of available state and federal grants through EDC’s Grant Resource Center.

“We had a lot of input from our smaller municipalities about the difficulty in knowing what grants are out there and being able to obtain those grants,” Smith says. “When you talk about a municipality that has a budget of $1 million, and they can get a grant for $200,000 for infrastructure or something else, that’s a major impact for them.”

The plan also envisions an industrial park to create more wealth along the county’s section of the burgeoning Interstate 59 corridor. Development along the vital transportation artery is a key component in the goal of creating 1,200 jobs over the life of the blueprint.

“That’s going to be a major priority for us over the next five years – to create more jobs along (I-

Big Canoe Creek illustrates county’s recreation, quality of life and tourism assets

Business Review Five-Year Plan

59),” Smith says. “I think we identified 300 acres as being part of our goals. Those goals are very important because over the last 15 years, since I’ve been head of the EDC, we’ve achieved all of our goals. We put all of our efforts in making sure those things take place.”

The EDC is also looking at reinvigorating hands-on workforce development in partnership with local schools and Jefferson State Community College. The COVID-19 pandemic stalled those efforts.

“There’s going to be a renewed focus on getting these programs – from K-12 to Jefferson State, to our employers – reconnected and utilized so that benefits our citizens, that benefits our employers, and it benefits our educators,” Smith says.

“We have a tremendous asset in Jefferson State Community College, and I don’t believe it’s being fully utilized by the citizens of St. Clair County,” Smith adds.

A heightened communications and marketing presence is also on the horizon. Competing counties, like Walker in northwest Alabama, have stepped up their advertising presence in the Birmingham TV market and beyond. Look for St. Clair County to do the same, along with a larger social media presence.

“One of the things we learned from the tourism initiative is there’s a desire to know what’s taking place in the community. So we’re going to take that focus and extend it on, not just

Workforce Development

Downtown Pell City revitalization

Business Cards

Grooming•Boarding•Daycare

Business Cards

Business Review Five-Year Plan

tourism events, but all the successes and opportunities that a fast-growing community like St. Clair County offers to not only the citizens of the county, but outside of our county as well.”

Industrial and small business growth, combined with an exodus from crowded big cities like Atlanta and Birmingham, fueled growth of nearly 10,000 residents between 2010 and 2022, according to the Census.

Here is a brief snapshot of some other highlights of the five-year plan.

• In infrastructure: As noted earlier, the development of the I-59 corridor is “absolutely a top priority,” Smith says. Obtaining more grants is near the top as well.

• Marketing and communications: Greater use of the EDC website is expected to be a priority moving forward, Smith says.

• Recruitment and retention has been the cornerstone of the EDC since 1999. A recent ribbon cutting for an industrial park in Moody illustrates that effort and will move the county toward such goals. “That’s going to continue, along with new manufacturing parks that are going to be identified and developed in the future,” Smith says.

• In the area of leadership, the 17-year-old Leadership St. Clair County has been an incredible success, Smith says, connecting governmental and business leaders to develop relationships and to solve common problems and foster cooperation. The EDC hopes to conduct four Leadership St. Clair County classes in the next five years.

Kelly Creek Commerce Park in Moody

Springville’s downtown drawing new businesses, visitors

Business Review Five-Year Plan

Smith praised county commissioners for supporting the EDC tourism initiative, which began in 2019. The county’s lodging tax revenue has increased by 87 percent since the push for more visitors began, an estimated $200,000 in additional revenue.

“With that, comes the opportunity for more hotels and more opportunities for short term rentals. Ultimately, it means that more folks are coming to the festivals we’re having and visiting the resources we have here.”

The county also gets a tourism bounce from nearby marquee events at Talladega Superspeedway and Barber Motorsports Park.

Ecotourism is also blossoming, as fly fishing, sailing, kayaking and other water sports grow on the Coosa River and Neely Henry and Logan Martin lakes and their accompanying tributaries.

A byproduct of the EDC roadmap to the future?

“Ultimately, as this county continues to grow, having cooperation between the County Commission and the municipalities is going to be paramount,” Smith says. “Otherwise, we’ll become fragmented and dysfunctional like many counties are in Alabama.”

Endeavors like the five-year plan help to build county unity, something much needed in a fractious

Fishing tournaments are big business on the Coosa River

LakeFest draws thousands to Lakeside Park

Business Review Five-Year Plan

national political and social climate.

“The EDC has trained specialists in different fields,” Smith says. “But we never want to be in a bubble, because then we’re not going to be focused on what’s important to the citizens and elected officials of St. Clair County.”

He adds, “The only way that we can know what’s important to people is to get them to tell us – to listen, to document it and then to publicize it and to hold ourselves accountable for meeting those goals.”

And those goals are crucial to St. Clair County’s success, keeping the main thing the main thing

“Just like any business, or any successful organization, when you write down your goals and you look at them every day, it helps keep you focused,” Smith says. “It helps best utilize your funds and ultimately, it helps bring you success in ways you don’t even dream of.”

For a complete list of ribbon-cutting dates, check out the online edition of Discover The Essence of St. Clair Magazine.

Retail’s big boost expected in September with opening of Pell City Square

EDC staff, from left: Executive Director Don Smith, Tourism Coordinator Blair Goodgame, Retail and Marketing Specialist Candice Hill and Director of Industry and Workforce Development Jason Roberts

Momma, is magic real?

Yes, magic is real … but it’s not always what you think.

It’s not make believe or in movies or manufactured by Disney. Magic isn’t manmade, bottled up and mass-produced.

It’s made in the heavens and sent down to earth … silently… subtly … secretly.

It’s sown into the soil and grows from the ground.

It’s hidden under the rocks in the riverbanks and swims in the sea.

It serenades us from the trees and the forest floor.

It blooms in every color and brings us the bees and butterflies.

It grazes on grass and hides in holes and sometimes, it’s so small it can only be seen in the dew of the early morning light.

Go outside, listen and pay close attention.

Magic is out there. It’s everywhere. But you have to want to see it

**The magic is all around us in St. Clair County – from mountains, valleys, lakes and creeks to wide open pastures and dense forests.

Discover and cherish the magic we have for yourself and generations to come.

- Mackenzie Free -

Wife, mother, photographer & current resident of the unassumingly magical town of Steele, Alabama

Life through the lens of Mackenzie Free