A Publication of the Daily Mountain Eagle
Trent Mummey
volume 8 • issue 4 • summer 2020
JIM CANNON
ABE CANNON
TOMMY FOWLER
GREG WILLIAMS
JR MINSHALL
BUTCH FOSTER
JOAN HANDLEY
BOOGIE FRANKLIN
RYAN MORTIMER
TOMMY PARRISH
KEITH RICE
JOSH SALTER
JOHN SOFTLEY
JOWAINE DUNCAN
STEVE MASON
GRAYSON SHADINGER
HOLLY KURIGER
NICK BARNETT
BRIAN BURGETT
TIM DODD
CHESSY DOMINO
CURT BALLARD
TYLER HERRON
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VOLUME 8 • ISSUE 4 • SUMMER 2020
FromTheStaff... MAGAZINE Established October 2012
PUBLISHER James Phillips EDITOR Jennifer Cohron ART DIRECTOR Malarie Brakefield CONTRIBUTORS Jake Aaron, Johnathan Bentley Scott Eric Day Photography, Ron Harris, Ed Howell, Rick Watson ADVERTISING Jake Aaron, Brenda Anthony, Zach Baker, Renee Holly, Liz Steffan, Megan Winkles DISTRIBUTION Michael Keeton
Walker Magazine is a publication of and distributed seasonally by the Daily Mountain Eagle, a division of Cleveland Newspapers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored for retrieval by any means without written consent from the publisher. Walker Magazine is not responsible for unsolicited materials and the publisher accepts no responsibility for the contents or accuracy of claims in any advertisement in any issue. Walker Magazine is not responsible for errors, omissions or changes in information. The opinions of contributing writers do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the magazine and its publisher. Our mission is to promote Walker County and to showcase its many attributes as a quality place in which to live, to work and to play. We welcome ideas and suggestions for future editions of the magazine. Just send us a brief note via email. © 2020 Daily Mountain Eagle WALKER MAGAZINE P.O. Box 1469 Jasper, AL 35502 (205) 221-2840 email: walkermagazine@mountaineagle.com
This is the space where publisher James Phillips or I normally provide a preview of what can be found in the latest issue of Walker Magazine. Well, 2020 has not been normal. We lost two special guys while this issue was in production — my dad, Rocky Williams, and his uncle, Rick Watson. A list of our latest stories can be found a couple of pages over on the table of contents. As always, we hope you enjoy them. But in this space, at this time, I want to remember two guys, both full of life, who were taken from us too soon. Many of you know Rick Watson as a longtime Lifestyles columnist and a singer-songwriter. In recent years, he also covered stories in the east Walker area for us, and he has contributed stories to Walker Magazine for most of its existence. His final story appears in this issue. ::: SUBSCRIBE to Though our writing styles were our own, Rick Walker Magazine! If you’re and I had several things in common. I have rarely an out-of-towner, get a received a compliment about any column of mine year of great stories right over the years that didn’t include “I like to read you at your doorstep. and Rick Watson.” Call: A paper’s opinion page should challenge its (205) 221-2840 readers, which means stepping into controversial Email: territory. Rick and I rarely went in that direction editor@mountaineagle.com with our writing, not because we didn’t have strong opinions of our own but because we genuinely enjoyed sharing those slice of life pieces that were ::: FOLLOW the Daily Mountain Eagle and Walker relatable to so many people. Magazine on Facebook, We also had the connection of being defined by Twitter and Instagram for a sense of place. Just as I am “that Cordova girl,” Rick the latest community news! was similarly a product of the Dora-Sumiton area. He didn’t just write about his community; he supported it in numerous ways throughout his life. ::: SUBMIT AN IDEA I started working with Rick more closely when I We are always eager to receive suggestions from became editor of the magazine. our readers. Please email In one recent issue, a story that Rick submitted your ideas to just didn’t work. I was to blame not only for not walkermagazine@ explaining myself well but also for not reading it when mountaineagle.com. he sent it, which put him in the unenviable position of having to do major rewrites at the last minute. ::: ADVERTISE True to form, Rick not only came through for us For any information needed but also sent me an email saying, “it’s ok to tell me I on how to promote your need to lick my calf over...I’m a big boy and I want the products and services, call best for our team.” (205) 221-2840 or send The team isn’t going to be the same without Rick. an email to advertising@ Daddy never worked at a newspaper. mountaineagle.com. Throughout his life, he was a logger, an excavator and a coal miner. However, he read the paper every day, and he expected it to be waiting by his chair when he got ready for it. Daddy wasn’t the type to make the front pages (or to want to), but I always made sure that any story about a promotion or an award I received included the fact that I am the daughter of Rocky and Gloria Williams because I could not have done the things I have without them. Like Rick, Daddy was taken from us rather suddenly this summer. I wish I could write a different ending to his story, but the ending doesn’t change the fact that he was a wonderful man for 56 years, a wonderful husband to my mother for 35 years and a wonderful daddy to me and my brother for 34 years. I just wish we had gotten more time. I’m sure many of our readers have lost loved ones for various reasons during this difficult year. Know that we are grieving with you. To Rick and Daddy, you will always be a part of our story.
Jennifer Cohron, Editor
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What’sInside
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26
36
42
FROM THE VAULT
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Fun With Furry Friends
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FATHER OF CORRIDOR X Tom Bevill
Randy Jackson
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THE JOURNEY HOME Trent Mummey
PORTRAIT OF A PANDEMIC
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Photo Essay
WE ARE WALKER COUNTY Max Russell
OnTheCover
GetHooked! For your entertainment we have placed this fishing hook (actual size) within the pages of Walker Magazine. This will be a permanent feature for our readers. We hope you enjoy searching for the fishing hook in each issue.
Trent Mummey talks about his love of baseball that took him all the way to the minor leagues. (SIGNATURE ON FRONT COVER IS NOT AN ACTUAL SIGNATURE.)
HINT:
Invert this page to reveal the page number. Find the hook hiding on page 39. 6 / WALKER MAGAZINE
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GONE FISHIN’
A PUBLICATION OF THE DAILY MOUNTAIN EAGLE SUMMER 2020
Photo by Scott Eric Day Photography
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Vault From The
This collection of photos showcases some of the many good days and lovable pets from years past at the Walker County Humane Society.
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F un with F urry F riends Compiled by Jennifer Cohron Photos courtesy of the Daily Mountain Eagle
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Randy Jackson (far right) with his son Brandon and daughter-in-law Mary Carole.
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Gone Fishin’ Text and Photographs by RICK WATSON
R
ANDY JACKSON OF BREMEN grew up in Prentiss County, Mississippi. He went to the grist mill in town with his dad one Saturday with $20 in his pocket that he had earned hoeing cotton. Something in the window of the Western Auto caught his eye. He put down $17 and change on the counter for a Shakespeare fly fishing kit. That’s when his love of fly fishing began. At 14, Jackson started fly fishing in local ponds for bass, bream and crappie. “I didn’t catch a trout until I was nearly 20 years old,” he said. He quickly wore out his welcome at the ponds and creeks of his neighbors when they saw how many fish he was catching. He was too young to drive, but he had a friend that had a license. “I got him hooked on fly fishing, and then I had wheels,” Jackson said. After high school he enrolled in college at North Mississippi State. While in college, he’d gotten two deferments that kept him out of the military. When he went to get a third deferment, the draft board denied his request even though he was still in school. It seemed they needed recruits. Jackson didn’t want to waste any time, so he stopped at the recruiter’s office and volunteered for the draft. The recruiter tried to dissuade Jackson from volunteering because it took away some career options. “I told him I owed the country two years of service, they called me, so I want to go do it right now,” Jackson said. Two days later, he was on the bus headed for Memphis, and that night he was in the Army. Jackson went fly fishing every chance he got while in the Army. He entered night school at North Carolina State while he was still active military. “In the winter, spring, and early summer, I’d be in the Smoky Mountains fishing,” Jackson claimed.
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Randy Jackson at his desk at Riverside Fly Shop.
When he got out of the military after his two years of service, a colonel he knew offered him a scholarship to attend graduate school at Delta State University in Mississippi. After earning his M.B.A., he fielded offers from I.B.M. and the Burroughs Corporation. Jackson preferred Burroughs more because he had an opportunity to work on computer systems and applications. He spent the next 14 months in engineering school. His career migrated towards the communications end of computing. “I guess I had an aptitude for that. I enjoyed connecting things together on high-speed networks,” he said. He worked on networks for FedEx as their business got off the ground. Based out of Memphis, Jackson traveled all around the world with Burroughs, and later for Bell Labs. Bell Labs in New Jersey had about 500 PhDs, and they filed about five patents a week. “Once they got through with the technology, they handed it off to people like us (his team at Bell Labs) who took the technology to the market,” Jackson said. “We had labs and technologies across the 12 / WALKER MAGAZINE
country and overseas. Whenever I had to go, I always told my people to call and find somebody who could take me fly fishing.” One of the best places that Jackson fished was in Northern Ontario. “I don’t think those fish up there have ever seen a human or a hook,” he said. “I could catch two fish at one time on one hook.” He would catch a walleye that was about 17 inches long, and while he was reeling it in, a larger northern pike would hit the walleye. “You just fought ‘em and wore ‘em down and let the guy in the front of the boat take a dip net and haul them into the boat,” he said. This wasn’t a freak occurrence; it happened many times when he fished there. Just before Jackson retired, he worked for a while on XM and Sirius Radio. Every time he had work in the area, he came through Alabama to fish in the Sipsey Fork of the Black Warrior River below Lewis Smith Dam. This was before all the improvements to the area that helped make it a trout fishing hotspot. There were a lot of times when Jackson would have business in the area. He would fish a few hours before the meeting. “I’ve
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crawled down that bank with a suit and tie under my waders,” Jackson said. “I’ve ruined a couple of suits down there.” When Jackson’s son Brandon finished seminary school in Memphis, he landed a job in Jasper and moved to the area with his young wife, Mary Carole. “I stopped by just after they moved here and I said, ‘Let’s go trout fishing.’” Brandon thought the nearest places to trout fish were in Tennessee or North Carolina, so he was surprised to learn that he could catch trout a few miles from Jasper up Hwy. 69. Brandon started fly fishing when he was young. He spent hours catching crickets and digging worms only to have the fish steal them all in the snap of a finger. “I wanted to fish, not cut bait,” Brandon said. When he figured out that you could use a fly all day long, he got “hooked” on fly fishing. Mary Carole started fly fishing to spend more time with Brandon, who was her boyfriend at the time. Brandon and his wife loved having a fly fishing spot so close to home. They began spending a lot of time at the fly
shop. Later, when the couple (John and Elizabeth Eisenbarth) who owned the fly shop decided to sell it, the Jacksons bought it. “They called me when they were thinking about buying the fly shop, and I told them, ‘Well, you’re not going to make any money with a fly shop in Alabama, so you can forget that, but this would be an ideal environment to raise a family and kids,” Jackson said. The decision to buy the fly shop wasn’t easy because there was no comparison. “It’s not like you could look at a business plan and say ‘This is a good model,’ Brandon said. There was no paperwork to evaluate past sales. “We bought a building and a piece of land. But it was in a really good location for what we wanted to do.” Once Brandon and Mary Carole bought the property, Jackson signed on to work and helped his son for the long haul. When the Jacksons took over the fly shop, some people had fished there for years and wanted to see the unique business succeed. They started a local chapter of Trout Unlimited and got active trying to get the state to do some things to manage it.
they wanted for the river. The committee got most of what they requested. The power company built seven access points and made needed improvements to the flow of water coming from the dam to make the water better for the trout and fly fishers. “One of the things we wanted was more and bigger fish stocked more often,” Jackson said. Alabama Power stocks the river with rainbow trout every other month, according to Jackson. To get more and bigger fish, the local group had to raise money to offset the costs. The trout fishing group started raising money with events and fundraisers. “When we raise enough money, we stock the river with three to five-pound fish to crank it up some,” he said.
of money, but there’s no reason Alabama couldn’t bring in $12 million to $18 million, according to Jackson. The Riverside Fly Shop offers guide trips, both wading and drift boats. The drift boat option is perfect for someone with mobility issues. “If you’re just looking for a fun, relaxing way to spend four hours sitting in a drift boat drifting over pretty water, it’s hard to beat,” Brandon said. “People call and make a reservation. When they show up, we furnish everything they need but a fishing license,” Jackson said. About 65 percent of the people have never fished before. If someone comes into the fly shop to buy a new fly rod, it’s not uncommon for Jackson to rig it up, take them out back and let the customer see how the rod feels and casts.
The improvements began paying off. For a few years, Jackson kept a record of people from other parts of the country and the world who came to the area to fly fish for rainbow trout. Represented were people
Those who enjoy the experience can buy everything they need to fly fish at the shop. By doing this, the customer gets the equipment they need, and everything fits as it should.
from all across the U.S., China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Katmandu, and the list goes on.
If the fisherman (or woman) wants to take the experience further, Riverside Fly Shop offers kits that have the tools and natural materials needed for tying flies. One customer said, “There’s nothing like the thrill of catching a trout on a fly that you’ve tied yourself.”
The fly shop and the river were run down, according to Jackson, so one of the first things they did was help start a movement for changes to upgrade the river access to help make it more appealing for fly fishing. Before improvements, the river was just a ditch with a few holes, Jackson claims. Trout were stocked every three months. “They’d put the fish in those holes where they could live, and people would come the next morning and afternoon with buckets and catch them. Pretty soon, there were no fish left,” he said. Area people interested in fly fishing saw an opportunity when Alabama Power had to relicense the dam. The license expired in 2007. Five years before that, they had to start taking input from stakeholders. The Jacksons joined together with others and came up with a list of improvements
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Another offering is primitive camping. For someone who wants to get on the water, they rent and sell kayaks. “People can float down to Sipsey, to Lynn’s Park if they want to. They can go all the way to the coast if they want to, but they’ll have to buy the canoe,” Jackson said with a smile. One group of young people did that in the past, and it took 19 days to reach the coast.
register as well.
Riverside Fly Shop guides offer fly fishing for stripe bass on Smith Lake and excursions to the Gulf of Mexico.
What is it about fly fishing that is so appealing? “Catching the fish is kind of the cream on the top. To me, it’s not about catching fish,” Jackson said. Pound for pound, trout put up the biggest fight of any freshwater fish, according to Jackson. “Even a small fish will give you a big fight. Being in the environment, understanding it, and being in tune with it so that you see
Brandon and Mary Carole have two children who are 11 and 13. They tie some of the flies sold in the shop to earn money. The children help take care of a lot of the property, and they both run the cash 14 / WALKER MAGAZINE
The children see the value in the transactions they do, according to Brandon. “The customers get something that helps them catch fish, which brings them joy, makes them happy, and we get to eat.” That’s three generations of Jacksons that are helping the Riverside Fly Shop succeed.
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the kinds of bugs and then sitting down and making something that you can cast in the water to fool a fish – that’s what it’s all about to me. “If you decided to fly fish and you concentrate on trout, it takes you to the most beautiful places in the world because trout can’t live in polluted water.” Jackson is quick to point out that he catches a lot of fish, but he always releases them back into the water. “I think they are way too valuable to catch just once. I don’t know how you can catch something like that, look at the beauty of it, and realize what it has to go through to survive and then take it home and put it in the frying pan.” •
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District 2 Danny Gambrell
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Text by JOHNATHAN BENTLEY | Photographs by SCOTT ERIC DAY PHOTOGRAPHY
Actually, it’s more complicated than that. Jasper native Trent Mummey spent the better part of his 30 years dedicated to just one sport — baseball. Mummey experienced plenty of highs in the sport, from being named first team All-State as a senior at Pinson Valley High School to becoming an All-SEC player at Auburn University and getting selected in the fourth round of the MLB draft by the Baltimore Orioles. Then there were the lows, including a litany of injuries that eventually derailed his career in the minor leagues, leading to his retirement at just 24 years old. “I do love the game, but I’ve had a tough relationship with it,” said Mummey, 30. “Being able to do it every day was pretty cool. I know a lot about the game. From the age of 7 to 25 years old, that’s what I did. I dedicated 18 years of my life to one thing. For me to dedicate my life to it and for how things ended, it was pretty tough for me. So that’s where I am with it. I feel like I’ve been taught so many valuable lessons.”
LOVE OF BASEBALL Current Auburn head baseball coach Butch Thompson had an influence on Mummey when he was just starting out. “When I was about 10 years old I was at the Birmingham Southern baseball camp. Butch Thompson was the coach there at the time and he saw me playing. He came up to me and said, ‘If you keep working, you can play for me one day.’ I took that to heart. When I was young I really wanted to play college baseball. I really loved the game. We would go to college games on the weekend. I didn’t think about Major League Baseball.” Mummey was never the biggest kid on the field. It was usually the opposite. “I was always really undersized. I had the tools, but my body hadn’t matured. I always played up a division growing up, but I was always smaller. I finally caught up with everybody as a senior in high school,” he said. Mummey made his goal of playing college baseball a reality after a stellar high school career.
He played at Sumiton Christian until the 10th grade, then transferred to Pinson Valley, a Class 6A power, in his junior year. Mummey replaced Desmond Jennings at centerfield at Pinson Valley. Jennings went on to play seven years for the Tampa Bay Rays. Mummey held his own, being named Birmingham’s 6A Player of the Year and making first-team All-State. AUBURN Mummey was essentially an immediate contributor at Auburn. He started 47 games as a freshman, hitting .305 with 49 runs scored, four home runs and 23 RBIs. He shined as a sophomore as well, hitting .289 with 15 home runs and 42 RBIs alone with 18 stolen bases. He was even better in the field, making just one error and earning a Rawlings Gold Glove. Mummey’s injuries started the following season. A week before the first game, he was injured at practice. “It had rained and they had the tarp out. They took it off and dumped the water in the outfield. (During practice)
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I was in centerfield and a shallow ball was hit. My whole body slid and my foot caught. I had a broken fibula and a high-ankle sprain. I missed seven weeks of games. You work your whole career to get drafted and that happening a week before the season was a gut punch. I had a fire in me for those seven weeks.”
Mummey said.
Mummey exploded once he returned to the lineup, just as the Tigers opened the SEC season.
“We just ran out of pitching. We led the country in home runs. If we would have had any kind of pitching staff we probably would’ve won the College World Series,” Mummey said. His spectacular season also earned Mummey a spot on Auburn’s AllDecade Team (2010-19), which was released in May.
“One of the first games back was against LSU. I had to DH (designated hitter) because I could still hardly run. I think I hit a home run in that first game back,” Mummey said. That was just the beginning. In 36 games that season, Mummey hit 17 home runs with 54 RBIs and 46 runs scored while hitting .366 while making just one error on the season, earning All-SEC honors. Auburn went into the final weekend of the season needing a series win at Ole Miss to win the regular season SEC title. The Tigers not only won — they swept the Rebels, clinching the league with an 18-1 win in the Saturday game. “I’ve never heard Swayze Field (in Oxford) that quiet, to the point where we didn’t even dog pile because we beat them so bad,” Mummey said. Though Auburn was eliminated from the SEC Tournament by that same Ole Miss team, Mummey got a gamewinning hit against South Carolina — the eventual national champion — in their SEC Tournament game. Next up came the regional tournament, and another setback. “I strained my quad right before the regional. I pretty much tore it so I played with a very badly sprained quad. I don’t regret playing at the regional though, because I knew this was it,”
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The injury didn’t affect his play as the junior hit .333 with three doubles, two home runs and seven RBIs. He reached base 11 times in Auburn’s five games. Clemson won the regional at Plainsman Park, beating Auburn 13-7 in the final game.
MINOR LEAGUES In the MLB draft, Mummey was the first Auburn player taken off the board. “I got taken in the fourth round with the 118th pick overall by the Orioles. It was exciting. I had just played the last game of my Auburn career the day before,” he said. Mummey spent that first professional season at both Delmarva and Aberdeen — two Class A ball teams in Baltimore’s minor league system. “After I was drafted I went straight to Aberdeen, Maryland, which is the short season A ball. It’s a split season for people that get drafted. I was playing against guys drafted out of high school and college. I played with a bad quad. It was just a grind every day. I played through it and ended up tearing my quad. Even though I made the All-Star team, the Orioles didn’t get a good image of me. I wasn’t running at 100 percent.” Mummey opened his second minor league season in Delmarva and was quickly moved up to Frederick after a hot start. “I got called up to High A ball and was
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lighting it up there. I had a lot of stolen bases, but ended up diving head first into the centerfield wall. They had to take me off the field in an ambulance. I had a severe concussion and had to wear a neck brace. I missed about a month,” Mummey said. He couldn’t have known, but it was a sign of things to come. “I had to go down to the spring training complex (for rehab) and I had been back with the team for a week or so and I tore my hamstring — I was done for the year. I didn’t have surgery. I didn’t have someone to call and say, ‘Hey what’s a torn hamstring feel like?’ I rehabbed it a couple of months and tore it again doing therapy.” After an impressive 2011 season, which included a .292 batting average, 19 stolen bases and 30 runs scored, Mummey hit just .228 the following season with 15 steals and 40 runs scored while dealing with injuries, which included two more concussions when he was able to play. By the start of the 2013 season, Mummey was hoping to make up for lost time. “I did lots of rehab and got ready to go for the next season. I was playing decent but still wasn’t myself. I played about 20 games and tore (the hamstring) again,” Mummey said. After having surgery on his hamstring, Mummey entered the 2014 season with a clean bill of health and hopeful for a turnaround. “I got healthy, but I hadn’t played in basically two years and I was going back to same high A team. A couple of weeks in, I got called in the office and got released. I still remember the date. It was May 14th, 2014. It was very mixed emotions. I gave it my all. I was at the point to where I never wanted to quit. I didn’t want that on
“
I know a lot about the game. From the age of 7 to 25 years old, that’s what I did. I dedicated 18 years of my life to one thing.
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my conscience. That’s why I kept going. I told myself I’m going to make them release me. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life wondering. I was a good player, but when you are injured as much as I was throughout my career — you can’t make it to the major leagues when you aren’t playing.” Mummey coached a year after his playing days were over, joining the Auburn coaching staff as an assistant in 2015. It was an opportunity to be on the staff while finishing his degree. “Once I was done playing I got an offer to be a student assistant coach and finish up my school (at Auburn). So I went down there and was part of (Sunny) Galloway’s coaching
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staff. I ended up coaching Anfernee Greir who was a first-round draft pick (by the Arizona Diamondbacks). I taught him all he knows about center field. He was recruited as an infielder,” Mummey said. “We went to the regional in Tallahassee that year and lost to College of Charleston. After the season the whole coaching staff got canned. Coach Thompson came in, but I didn’t coach with him. That was the end of my baseball career — pretty much fired by Auburn.” LIFE AFTER BASEBALL Mummey is now a family man, working at his family business. He is married to Autumn Mummey, a nurse
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“
I learned a lot of valuable lessons. Those are the lessons I can teach my son.
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practitioner in Jasper. They have a 20-month old son Drew and daughter Aubrey is due in August. He has enjoyed the time away from baseball. “I work with my dad and help run my dad’s company —Mummey Builders Inc. I didn’t grow up around it. He worked hard for me to practice. They sacrificed a lot for me to get to where I got. When I first got home I was still doing baseball full time (as an
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instructor). After a year or two, it just got to the point where I had to make a financial decision,” Mummey said. “My resume is built for coaching baseball. If I hand my resume to somebody at a corporate job, my experience in baseball doesn’t translate to that. I wanted to learn something new. I’m out building every day now. I may not build houses forever, but at the end of the day it’s still a trait I’ve learned and I think it’s a good trait. I didn’t want to be 50 years old and all I knew to talk about was how to hit a curve ball.”
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Though he’s away from baseball now, Mummey admits that could — and probably will — change. “I was very blessed to get to play baseball. Even though I had some bad years and didn’t make it to the big leagues — that’s the ultimate goal. I never got that chance, but it’s not the end of the world. I learned a lot of valuable lessons. Those are lessons I can teach my son. I don’t think I’m done with baseball. It’s what I know best,” Mummey said. •
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Father of Corridor X Text by JENNIFER COHRON | Drone Photography by JAKE AARON
T
HE TENNESSEE-TOMBIGBEE WATERWAY was the big news when Congressman Tom Bevill spoke with reporter Skip Tucker in early 1979 for “Impact,” the Daily Mountain Eagle’s annual edition on progress in the area. Sandwiched between his extensive comments on the Tenn-Tom and other Alabama water projects was one of the earliest references to the highway that would become part of Bevill’s legacy. “We’re going to budget a nice four-lane road from Memphis to Birmingham by way of Jasper which will probably cost $100 million,” Bevill said. The highway, soon to be dubbed Corridor X, would take more than 35 years to become reality, and the actual price tag would be more than $1 billion. Though Bevill would not live to see it completed, it was his unique blend of popularity, power and political savvy that kept the dream of a Memphis-toBirmingham route alive for two decades. “Had he not been in the position he was in, it would have sat on somebody’s shelf somewhere as an idea,” said Edd Nolen, who served as Bevill’s House
Appropriations Committee staffer from 1976 to 1993. “There was nobody on the scene, nobody who had that kind of interest. Alabama was in such a need of an enhanced transportation system.” Bevill had been elected to the Alabama Legislature in 1958, just two years after the interstate system had been created. “I went to the state Highway Department and asked why northwest Alabama was left out of the interstate highway system, and the only answer I was given was that Mississippi could not afford to pay the matching portions of the funds. I’ve been working on this ever since,” Bevill said when Walker County’s first section of Corridor X opened in 1996.
to get behind them and push it. That’s where Bevill was such an important part of this whole thing,” Nolen said. As Tucker noted in 1979, Bevill was “right in the thick of it, and that means good things for Walker County and north Alabama” as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. From 1965 to 1998, the committee approved an annual appropriation for the Appalachian Development Highway Program. Separate from the interstate system, this program was created in the mid-1960s to help revitalize the economies of depressed, isolated areas in 13 states, including Alabama.
The vision for Corridor X was not Bevill’s alone.
Corridor X, added in 1978, is the southernmost corridor in the system.
Nolen credits Thomas Espy and Riley Lucas, both of whom worked in the Alabama Highway Department, with proposing a four-lane highway between Memphis and Birmingham.
“In the last Congress, I managed to get authorization in the public works committee for another 100 miles of Appalachian highway,” Bevill told Tucker. “There’s 125 miles authorized in the annual bill and 100 of it is mine.”
“They had always felt like this was needed. They just needed somebody
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From its inception, Bevill was already
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promising that the Memphis-to-Birmingham highway would be “like an interstate” to make up for the injustice of the nation’s interstate system bypassing his area of Alabama.
remained high in the region and welfare critics were quick to point out that the people of Appalachia were receiving more federal assistance than average Americans.
Bevill’s insistence that Corridor X be built to the latest interstate standards would make it possible for the highway to receive its Future Interstate 22 designation in 2004.
Each year that he was in office, President Ronald Reagan tried to shut down the Appalachian Regional Commission — and by extension the highway program. During Reagan’s first term, the Commission’s budget was slashed and the number of staff was cut in half.
Bevill’s support for the project was key to its survival in the 1980s. For the first three decades of its existence, the Appalachian Development Highway Program was dependent on an annual appropriation from the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act. This meant that funding could vary wildly from year to year and put the whole program at risk in the 1980s, when the return on a multibillion-dollar investment in Appalachia seemed questionable. Many highways weren’t finished, poverty and unemployment
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President Nixon and President Carter weren’t fans either, with Carter, whose native Georgia was part of the Commission’s 13-state service region, once saying that it was “a waste of time.” In 1985, the Washington Post reported that the various activities of the commission were being phased out. The highway program was set to shut down by 1990. The Post article noted that the retirements of former West
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Dignitaries including Bevill’s successor, Rep. Robert Aderholt, and Gov. Robert Bentley celebrate the opening of Corridor X in 2016.
Virginia Sen. Jennings Randolph and Senate majority leader Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee had been a blow because they were strong supporters of the Commission’s work. Ultimately, the wide swath that the program cut across the country proved to be its strength. Elected officials from New York to Mississippi had a vested interest in its work. Bevill’s counterpart in the Senate was West Virginia’s Robert Byrd, who was legendary for keeping federal dollars flowing to his state. “It had the political clout to sustain itself,” Nolen said. In 1988, the last year of the Reagan administration, Bevill secured $5.6 million for a highway bypass in Jasper. Bevill also struck a deal with Reagan that resulted in the famed fiscal conservative agreeing to fund most of the project with federal funds.
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Current day Cooridor X near Cordova 30 / WALKER MAGAZINE
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Congressman Tom Bevill and former Jasper mayor Don Goetz cutting the ribbon on the completed link in November 1996. (Photo by Ron Harris)
“The bill for funding the construction of Corridor X was originally set up for a 10 percent match by the state, but President Reagan wanted it to be a 50-50 split,” Bevill told the Eagle. “I told him that Alabama was a poor state and that this was a very, very expensive highway. So, we settled on an 80-20 split.” Following 30 years of Congressional service, Bevill’s retirement was at hand by the time that Walker County’s first section of Corridor X opened in 1996. The first three miles of Corridor X stretched from Alabama 69 South to Alabama 269. At the time, it was reported that about 50 miles of Corridor X was either completed or under construction in Alabama. The interstate, which had been under construction for 13 years, was completed in sections that were often separated by long stretches of undeveloped highway. By the time the interstate was completed, 1,164 tracts of property had been acquired to accommodate its construction. Don Smith, Bevill’s former press secretary and chief of staff, said the Congressman was characteristically savvy in funding certain portions first and others later.
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“He started it in several locations so that it had to be tied together rather than one location and went forward and it could be stopped without too much trouble...So if he had waited and started from Birmingham out, he’d still be waiting because it took a long time.” The final segment of the Jasper Bypass section of Corridor X officially opened to traffic in March 2002. Bevill was again present. “I knew Corridor X was far enough along when I left Congress that it would be finished. If I hadn’t felt that way, I probably wouldn’t have retired,” Bevill said. “I still drive out toward Carbon Hill and keep an eye on the construction.” Bevill died in March 2005. After his exit from the political stage, a new generation of Alabamians would take up the cause of Corridor X. Though Bevill didn’t live to see it finished, he never doubted that one day it would be. “He was ever the optimist. There were times when things weren’t going the way he would like them to go either, but I don’t think he ever gave up on the idea that it would eventually one day become a reality,” Nolen said. •
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SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY
WE DO IT BECAUSE WE CARE.
From Your Jasper Main Strrt Busineees 34 / WALKER MAGAZINE
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Your home is a big investment. Protect it. If you need home coverage, I can help. I live and work right here in our community. I know what the homes are like in the area. So I can offer advice you can trust to help you get the protection that fits your needs. If you’re ready to talk home insurance or need some advice about protecting all that’s important to you, call me today.
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PORTRAIT OF A PANDEMIC The world found itself facing a deadly virus that seemed to put everything on hold in early spring. While schools and school functions were halting early, businesses scrambled to continue serving the community and essential workers were being publicly revered across the nation. This is a look at how our very own communities approached the novel COVID-19 pandemic in its early stages, from high school graduation to feeding neighbors to showing support for our medical workers and nursing home residents.
A tribute flyover to medical personnel took place at Walker Baptist Medical Center on the morning of April 30. A KC135R Stratotanker aircraft from the 117th Air Refueiling Wing flew over the hospital before heading to the Huntsville metro area to fly over hospitals there. The aircraft was from the Sumpter Smith Air National Guard Base in Birmingham.
SENIOR HOMECARE By Angels®
SENIOR HOMECARE By Angels®
www.VisitingAngels.com | 205.388-9353 36 / WALKER MAGAZINE
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Bathing Assistance • Dressing Assistance Grooming • Medication Reminders • Errands Shopping • Light Housekeeping Friendly Companionship • Flexible Hourly Care Respite Care for Families • Live-in Care
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Carbon Hill Community Center Cordova City Hall Sumiton Senior Center Jasper Housing Authority
T.R. Simmons Elementary Curry High School Oakman Senior Center Sipsey Community Center
Monetary donations accepted @ myraisingarrows.com SUMMER 2020
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Sisters of Savings! Calva Cooner & Gwinna Boyd
Visit the “Sisters of Savings” and make SMART choices that could save you money! 205.384.4159 2905 Hwy. 78 W., Jasper, AL FreedomHomesOfJasper.com COME BY OR C ALL TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR ENERGY SMART HOMES SUMMER 2020
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WeAreWalkerCounty with
Max Russell
I like living on our farm because it’s fun. I like to grow vegetables and play with the animals. I ride horses, gather eggs and wrestle with our boxer dogs. We have space to hit golf balls, ride the Polaris and play basketball. Life on the farm is a little laid back and we kinda like it.
Nine-year-old Max Russell is showing signs of having a green thumb. He brought home a wilting cabbage plant from school just before his third grade year ended prematurely in March. By mid-summer, he had a three-headed cabbage. Max is the son of Kathy and David Russell.
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DOUG0312 Registered representative. Securities offered through MWA Financial Services Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Modern Woodmen of America. Member: FINRA, SIPC.