A Publication of the Daily Mountain Eagle
volume 7 • issue 2 • winter 2019
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How Drones Are Changing Walker County
Cordova’s Impressive High School Band
Keeping Up And Working Out with Peggy Keebler
Nauvoo Native’s Popular Church Cartoons
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church Spreads Love
2019 Tournaments:
Alabama Bass Trail - Feb. 23 | Alabama High School Team Trail - March 9 T-H Marine BFL 2019 April 6 | AL Bass Nation April 13 2019 Basspro.com Central Open - April 25–27
“Thank You, Chamber Investors, For Making These Events Possible.”
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VOLUME 7 • ISSUE 2 • WINTER 2019
FromTheStaff... MAGAZINE Established October 2012
PUBLISHER James Phillips EDITOR Jennifer Cohron ART DIRECTOR Malarie Brakefield CONTRIBUTORS Jonathan Bentley, Scott Day, Ron Harris, Nicole Smith, ADVERTISING Jake Aaron, Brenda Anthony, Zach Baker, Renee Holly, Liz Steffan BUSINESS MANAGER Charlette Caterson 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. © 2019 Daily Mountain Eagle WALKER MAGAZINE P.O. Box 1469 Jasper, AL 35502 (205) 221-2840 email: walkermagazine@mountaineagle.com
Finding interesting stories related to Walker County has not been a problem since the magazine launched in 2012. Making room for them all is the real challenge. We had hoped to have a story on Peggy Keebler shortly after she was inducted into the Walker County Sports Hall of Fame in 2016. Keebler, a Walker High School graduate, played on the boys junior high basketball team since there was not a team for girls at the time. She went on to set the points record at the University of Montevallo. Scheduling conflicts kept Keebler out of the magazine two years ago, but we have never taken her name off of our list of ideas. Our staff recently sat down with her at Lakeside Fitness, where she operates PK Fitness, in Birmingham to discuss her journey from player to coach, educator and certified personal trainer. We have also wanted to write an article on the number of drones buzzing over Walker County since we acquired one of our own almost two years ago. When the topic was first discussed, we knew of only two or three other groups who were using drones in their work. Now there are so many businesses or agencies using drones in so many different ways that we had no trouble finding enough sources and interesting photos for a story. Our interview with Joe McKeever, a Nauvoo native and retired Southern Baptist pastor, was moved from the fall to the winter issue due to space constraints. McKeever’s humorous cartoons about the Christian life are distributed by the Baptist Press and appear weekly in The Alabama Baptist. One reason that it takes time to get to some new ideas is that the magazine is also the place where we revisit stories from the Daily Mountain Eagle and tell them from a new angle. For example, we have written several newspaper articles on the food bank at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. However, after seeing how many people were served at the December giveaway, we decided to learn more about how a relatively small church has turned a simple ministry into such a blessing for our community. Also in this issue, we put the recent resurgence of Cordova High School’s band into perspective by discussing the challenges that band director Sara Lipscomb and her students had to overcome when she took over the program in 2016. We hope you enjoy spending time with the people featured within these pages, and we welcome feedback at walkermagazine@mountaineagle.com.
Jennifer Cohron, Editor
OnTheCover Jasper native Peggy Keebler curling a dumbbell at Lakeview
Personal Fitness in Birmingham, where she is a personal trainer. Photo by Malarie Brakefield
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New Year. New Improvements. A PROSPECTIVE LOOKING INTO 2019 Thanks to Jasper’s rock solid financial management, 2019 is looking incredibly promising.
• Fund Balance increased from $1,419,000 to $ 3,870,000 in only two years. • Utilized local street department on projects rather than outsourcing jobs. • Expenses controlled by shopping locally. • Reduced legal fees for city by 50% by utilizing Alabama League of Municipalities membership. • Revenue enhanced measures adopted with use of Compliance Officer. • Sales tax revenue for first quarter Fiscal 2019 was up 5%. • $1.4 million available for projects. “The work of the past two years has laid a solid foundation for our City to have a very good 2019.”
• Creating downtown Wi-Fi and a recharging station.
- Mayor David O’Mary
Mayor David O’Mary District 1 Sonny Posey Inc. 1887
District 2 Danny Gambrell
District 3 Gary Cowen
District 4 Jennifer W. Smith
District 5 Willie Moore
(205) 221-2100 | 400 19th St. W, Jasper, AL 35501 | www.jaspercity.com WINTER 2019
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What’sInside 08 | From The Vault Snow Days 1977 & 1987 10 | Eye in the Sky The many uses of recreation drones in our county 16 | On The March Cordova High School marching band 22 | Iron Sharpens Iron Peggy Keebler
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22 30 | Ministry of Mirth Joe McKeever 36 | Bread Upon The Waters St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
44 | Community Calendar What’s going on in the county 46 | Snapshots Past events in Walker County
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50 | We Are Walker County Dr. Martin Roberts
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From The
Snow Day 1977 & 1987 Compiled by Jennifer Cohron Photos courtesy of the Daily Mountain Eagle
1977
Snow days are the best days for capturing Walker County’s natural beauty. Memorial Park pond looked serene after it got a dusting of snow in January 1977. The Daily Mountain Eagle ran a full page of snow pictures from around the county in January 1987. Four months later, the county received one inch of snow — the first time that the state received a significant snowfall during the month of April.
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E Y E Y K S
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AVID KNIGHT, executive director of the Walker County Development Authority, says a drone that he purchased in 2016 is one of his biggest assets in showing what the area has to offer to prospective industrial and manufacturing companies. Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are rapidly becoming indispensable tools in a variety of industries, with many groups in Walker County finding unique uses for the mechanical aerial assistants. Knight was first exposed to drones through an economic development official in another area of the state during a conference in 2015. “Prior to the drone, we would have to rely on pilot friends to take us up to get photos,” Knight said. “It was hard to schedule, difficult to get good consistent shots and we were lucky if we were able to do it once a year. Now all we have to do is change our batteries.” Knight said the Development Authority purchased a DJI Phantom 3 in 2016 to help in photographing industrial buildings and sites for marketing purposes. “It enables us to take HD photos and videos that we then use to create marketing flyers, e-mails and websites,” Knight said. “When we first purchased the drone, my primary purpose was to photograph industrial buildings and
sites, but after a few months, we realized we could also use it to photograph and video things like fishing tournaments on Smith Lake, music festivals and other functions, events and quality of life features that help us showcase the positive things that make Walker County great.” One of the most interesting uses Knight has had with the drone was documenting the construction of the new Yorozu Automotive facility in Jasper. Knight said he was able to update site construction photos every few weeks to create a visual timeline showing the progress. “Every time we flew the site we would upload our new photos and videos to a web hosting site so executives with Yorozu in Japan could see how the project was moving forward,” he said. During the grand opening ceremony for Yorozu in January 2018, the Development Authority presented company executives with a photo book documenting the entire construction project. Captain David Lockhart of the Jasper Fire Department said Knight’s experience with a drone was helpful when his organization starting shopping for one. The fire department bought a Phantom 3 two years ago and have found multiple uses for the technology since that time. “We had seen what some other fire departments in the
Text by JAMES PHILLIPS
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state has done with drones, and we thought it would be beneficial for us,” Lockhart said. “We used it so much that we bought a new one and the city is going to use our old one for some surveys and things like that.” The fire department now has a DJI Mavic Pro. Lockhart said it’s used most often on pre-fire planning. It allows the department to get an aerial view of the property instead of putting firefighters on the roof with a ladder. “We use those drone shots to edit our plans for possible fires by determining things such as where the sprinkler system is on a building,” Lockhart said. Much like a football team studies film to prepare for a game, the Jasper Fire Department uses drone footage and photographs to study how well they performed while fighting a fire. “We use the drone to determine if things could have been done better,” Lockhart said. “We look at where trucks were parked, hoses ran, how the fire was fought. It is a tool that we can use to improve our performance.” A football team in Jasper is using a drone to break down film, as the high school program purchased a DJI Phantom 4 Pro during the Vikings’ 2018 season. Bryan Moore, the first-year head coach at Jasper High School, said it has been a “game-changer” as far as getting the best possible footage of practices. “That is the absolute best view,” Moore said. “It allows us to see the entire field. It gives us every angle in one shot, and that’s something that we cannot do from the sideline or even from the end zone.” The Jasper Fire Department has owned a drone for two years and use it for pre-fire planning and to determine ways to improve their performance. Photo submitted by the Jasper Fire Department.
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Top photos: A look at the development of the Yorozu Automotive facility. Photos submitted by David Knight. Bottom photo: A look at a Jasper High School football game as seen from a drone. Photo submitted by Jasper High School.
The high school has a film team made up of students, with a few who have learned how to fly the drone. “They have done an outstanding job for us,” Moore said. “Our film crew gets into what they do, and they are a huge part of how we prepare each week during the season.” Moore said the football program has looked into purchasing a second drone, so coaches can capture every play. “The battery time is only about 20 minutes. We have three batteries, but you have to take it up and bring it down
to change the battery,” Moore said. “We usually miss about 15 to 20 plays per practice. A second drone would allow them to take one up as the other one comes down. We wouldn’t miss anything.” The football program also uses the drone to put together short films for marketing and branding purposes for the Vikings. Professional photographers in the area have also started using drones in recent years. The Daily Mountain Eagle purchased a DJI Mavic Pro in 2017. It has been used to film everything from the annual
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Scott Eric Day Photography and Videography
Foothills Festival to Christmas and homecoming parades. It was also used in a recent edition of Walker Magazine to highlight football stadiums across Walker County. Scott Day, owner of Scott Eric Day Photography and Videography, said he had looked into purchasing a drone for a while, finally settling a few months back on the DJI Mavic 2 Pro.
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“I have been wanting to add a drone to my camera bag so I would be able to be more versatile and have additional options for videography and photography,” said Day, who is also a contributor for the Daily Mountain Eagle and Walker Magazine. “I am now able to get shots that I otherwise would not be able to achieve without a drone.” •
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March On The
Text by JENNIFER COHRON | Photos by RON HARRIS
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CC
ORDOVA HIGH SCHOOL’S BAND was in need of a rebuilding year when Sara Lipscomb was hired as director in 2016. The band had only 20 students who played instruments. Its size grew to 50 with the inclusion of the color guard, dance line and majorettes. “At competitions, we were classified as 1A instead of 4A because the rating system goes by the size of the band and not the size of the school,” Lipscomb said. The band also lacked experience. Upperclassmen made up only 20 percent of its membership. Lipscomb’s biggest initial challenge, however, was boosting morale. For the second time in her career, she found herself taking over for a director who had left under difficult circumstances. Lipscomb was the third band director in as many years for students like Hannah and Gracie Hiott, twin sisters who had joined beginner’s band in sixth grade. “She (Lipscomb) had a challenge when she walked in,” said Laura Hiott, mother of Hannah and Gracie and current band booster president. “Most of these kids had been through change twice already, so they were a little jaded. It took her a little bit to win them over.” Lipscomb knew from her own high school band experience how difficult it can be to find joy in music when a program is underperforming. “My plan from the beginning was to give them a
quality program that they can be proud of. I tell the kids all the time that my band was not good in high school, and there was a lot of toxic attitudes, which is so destructive. My vision is to create the best program we can with the resources that we have so that they can enjoy their time here and experience success,” Lipscomb said. The Hiott sisters, now 10th graders, have embraced that vision and thrived under Lipscomb’s leadership. Hannah served as drum major this season, and Gracie was a trumpet section leader. Both have been involved in honor band at the county and district level. “They’ve had to step up at an early age because the band is growing so rapidly, and there weren’t that many older students to be leaders,” Hiott said. In Lipscomb’s third year, the band has nearly tripled in size, thanks in part to her decision to establish a beginner band at Valley Jr. High School. While a music program for sixth through eighth grade students at Bankhead Middle School has been in place for years, their peers at Valley have had no opportunity to join a band until they transferred in ninth grade. Valley’s students march with the band during football season and participate in all other activities, including a trip to Walt Disney World planned for March. “Inclusion is important to her. She has gone out of her way to include kids. If someone comes in on a Wednesday and asks to join the band, she is texting
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me to see about having them fitted for a uniform so they could be a part of the marching band on Friday night,” Hiott said. Lipscomb has had no trouble convincing the Cordova community to support the band. The CHS band was the envy of the state under John Armstrong, who served as director from 1965 to 1975. The band won so many awards during those years that a local reporter wrote that its collection of metal rivaled that of Fort Knox. “I hear a lot about bands of the past. There is pride in that tradition. I have a lot of parents whose kids join beginner band, and they say, ‘Being in band was my favorite time.’ It’s harder to sell a program to parents who have never had that experience,” she said. The band’s new sound and newfound success was a much-needed bright spot for Blue Devil supporters during a 1-9 football season in 2018. The band received all 1’s, the highest score possible, at the Mud Creek Marching Festival in October, and the band and color guard each earned a best in class award. Also in October, the band earned best in class drum major, color guard and percussion for Class 3A and was named best in class for Class 1A through 3A at the Pride of Hayden Marching Festival. The Jasper High marching band, which is under the direction of Lipscomb’s husband, Jason, had a banner year in 2018 as well, capped off by bringing home the Class 5A state championship in November. Husband and wife work with band students at the other school in their spare time. Cordova’s students joke about being a sibling program to Jasper since they share “parents.” “Lots of his kids will come to ballgames when they have a bye week, and my kids will go to their games. They’re different programs — different funding, different teachers, different setups, different age groups — but it’s nice that they root for each other,” Lipscomb said. The two bands stood side by side on the 50-yard line at two competitions last year, and photographers captured a member of Cordova’s dance line holding hands with a member of Cordova High School’s band performing at the Mud Creek Marching Festival in Hanceville, Alabama in October 2018.
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Top photo: The Cordova High band earned best in class drum major, color guard and percussion for Class 3A and was named best in class for Class 1A through 3A at the Pride of Hayden Marching Festival in October 2018. Bottom left: Cordova band director Sara Lipscomb stands with her husband, Jason, the director of the Jasper High School marching band. Bottom right: The band earned best in class for the band and for color guard at the Mud Creek Marching Festival in October 2018.
Jasper’s color guard as they waited for the results to be announced. Though there is mutual admiration between the two programs, there is also plenty of sibling rivalry. “My kids love to trash talk, and it’s all in good fun, but sometimes I have to remind them, ‘Guys, we are married. I want his band to be great.’ And of course, he wants that for us as well,” she said. The band, which has far more eighth graders than seniors, will only get better as the members mature. Lipscomb detected a new level of confidence among
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students during the second week of band camp last year but saw the band really hit its stride in the middle of marching season. “Things that I had to worry about in that first year, I don’t have to worry about anymore. Our upperclassmen are taking care of things and showing real leadership,” she said. These emerging leaders are taking their cues from Lipscomb. “She’s a great influence on them. They know that they can expect to work hard, but she kids around with them too. It’s a nice balance, and they really respect her,” Hiott said. •
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IRON sharpens IRON PP
EGGY KEEBLER isn’t one to be held down by labels. She has been an All-American basketball player, a college head coach, an elementary school teacher and a fitness trainer. These days, the 1985 Walker High School graduate can be found in the gym as a fitness trainer at Lakeview Personal Fitness in Birmingham where she operates PK Fitness and as a volunteer assistant girls basketball coach at Mountain Brook High School. It’s been one interesting turn after another for Keebler, but she will be the first to admit this was never her idea. “My whole plan was not to do this. My plan wasn’t to coach. My plan wasn’t to teach. When I graduated high school, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a physical therapist, that’s it,” said Keebler, who now lives in Alabaster. “When I graduated college, my thoughts were still to be a physical therapist, but I got a call from Talladega College. They needed a woman’s basketball coach.” Just like that, Keebler was a 22-year-old head coach. “Sometimes I regretted that, but it helped me in more ways than just coaching. It helped me be able to deal with people better. It helped me set some different goals for myself. I thought, ‘(Being a physical therapist) might be what you want to do, but this is what God
Text by JONATHON BENTLEY Photos by MALARIE BRAKEFIELD
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University of Montevallo
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Opposite page, top left: : Keebler after winning the regional title for 12-13 year olds by hitting 21-25 free throws in the Elk National Hoop Shot free throw competition. She represented Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Florida according an article published by the Daily Mountain Eagle in 1981. Top right: Keebler going to the goal her junior year at the University of Montevallo (1987–88), where she played on a full scholarship for four years. At bottom: Keebler (second row, second from the left) and her teammates, the Jasper Middle School boy’s 7th grade basketball team. This page, left side: Keebler with volleyball and track teammates in 1984. Top Right: Peggy was named to the Region 8 All-Tournament Volleyball Team in 1984.
wants you to do,’” she said. Since retiring as a teacher in 2017, Keebler has turned her attention to fitness. “I love what I do,” Keebler said. “I have so many gifts and talents. I wasn’t always (a people person), but dealing with people and playing sports brought me out of my shyness. Helping people, that’s what it’s all about. People think with personal training that you do all the work. That’s not necessarily true. You have to have somebody meet you halfway to make it happen.” Keebler’s talents haven’t gone unnoticed. She has been inducted into the Walker/Jasper High School Hall of Fame, the Montevallo Hall of Fame and the Walker County Sports Hall of Fame. From early on, Keebler was an athlete who stood
apart from the rest. At Walker High School, she was a stellar track athlete and volleyball player, but her first love was basketball. “I played in junior high with the boys. I actually started. It was really fun,” Keebler said. Unfortunately, Walker had no girls basketball program when she reached high school. The only option was to play for the varsity boys team. “My dad was OK with me playing in high school with the boys, but my mom said no, and mom called the shots. I couldn’t play with the boys, so I did volleyball and track,” she said. Though she never played a minute of high school basketball, her love of the sport persisted. “I had a great high school experience, but I missed
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Keebler in 1985
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At Lakeview Personal Fitness in downtown Birmingham, Keebler spends her time helping others reach their goals.
basketball. Dad made sure that I kept playing. We would travel with AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) in the summer and compete in free-throw shooting contests. I just kept playing ball,” Keebler said. The exposure paid off with Keebler getting college scholarship offers. “I had several offers — Montevallo, VCU, the University of Tampa, Austin Peay. Montevallo was a better opportunity because it was a full scholarship,” Keebler said. Keebler was a stand-out at Montevallo. She was the team captain her junior and senior seasons and the National Association of Collegiate Athletics (NAIA) District Player of the Year as a senior. She set the school record for career points and earned All-American status. The school has since retired her jersey number. After her stellar career at Montevallo, Keebler
accepted the head coaching job at Talladega. “Here I am at 22 years old as a head coach, so I had some students my age and I’m going there telling them what to do,” she said. Keebler had a lengthy coaching career. After two years at Monetvallo, she was on the staff at Alabama State, including one year as the interim head coach. From there, she returned to Montevallo as the head coach for five years. “I left Montevallo and started teaching K-through-5th PE,” she said. “I was all over the place, but I loved every journey I was on. “There were so many times when I thought, I don’t want to coach anymore. Every time I went somewhere different — like teaching students — things changed for me because I was helping somebody. It was like ‘You’ve helped the adults; now we want you to help the kids.’ Then it was, ‘You’ve
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helped the kids; now we want you to help in a different way, with training.’ It wasn’t orchestrated by me because this wasn’t my plan.” Keebler retired from teaching two years ago. Since then she has turned her attention into fitness. “I got into this during times of working out in college. I was always the type of person who would ask people to come work out with me. I just started showing people how to do it — how to develop this and how to develop that,” she said. “It carried over
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to family, then it carried over to friends. I eventually got certification in it and started just growing it, that’s how I ended up at this point. “The moral of the story is sometimes we have to follow His plan and not what we want to do — just be obedient. Everything I’m doing now, I know the purpose of why I’m doing it, and I like doing it. I guess you could say I have the best of both worlds because I get to help adults and I get to help students.” •
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Ministry of
A
MIRTH
FTER SARAH GAVE BIRTH TO ISAAC in her old age, she proclaimed, “God has made laughter for me.” “Sometimes I tell churches, ‘God has made laughter for you too, and some of you are not getting your daily minimum requirement,’” said Joe McKeever, a Nauvoo native whose religious cartoons provide a remedy for Christians suffering from chronic humorlessness. Forty-two years as a Southern Baptist pastor and five more as a director of missions in New Orleans have given McKeever plenty of material regarding the human foibles that complicate church life. One recent cartoon shows a man preparing for his morning devotions with a cup of coffee and a prayer: “Dear Lord, it’s too early for anything heavy like Romans or Revelations. Do you have something light and airy in the Psalms, something just right for a Monday?” Another shows a sheriff placing a pastor under arrest for “rustling,” or wooing members away from a neighboring congregation. A frequent theme is church members offering unsolicited advice to their pastor, such as “You ought to grow some facial hair so you’ll look cool like us.” The cartoons, which are distributed by the Baptist Press and appear weekly in The Alabama Baptist, are not meant to be meanspirited but rather to encourage pastors and laity alike to laugh at themselves. “Laughter is a vote of confidence in God. It shows that we’re not taking ourselves too seriously and that we know the Lord has all of this stuff in hand. He’s in charge, so it’s okay to
laugh,” McKeever said. McKeever took up drawing at the insistence of his mother, Lois. On a dreary day, Mrs. McKeever sat her son, then 5, and his 3-year-old sister, Carolyn, at the kitchen table, placed paper and pens in front of them and said, “Now sit there and draw.” Mrs. McKeever had only been trying to keep the youngsters out of her way, but the rainy day assignment helped McKeever realize that he loved to draw. Long after he became an adult, his mother kept his work on her refrigerator. As a first grader, McKeever’s classmates gathered around his desk to watch him work and were amazed by his crude early sketches. “And to this day I can outdraw any group of first graders you’ll ever meet,” he jokes. When he was 16, his sister Patricia offered to pay for a correspondence course in cartooning from the Art Instruction Co. of Minneapolis — the same company where famed “Peanuts” cartoonist Charles Schulz got his start. McKeever let the three-year, $10-a-month course lapse halfway through when he was sent lessons about designing draperies. However, he credits the course with teaching him some important techniques, and he has thanked Patricia for investing in him by endorsing several royalty checks to her over the years. McKeever’s father, Carl, also encouraged him when he was a child by sometimes asking his son to draw him as he relaxed in the evenings. The elder McKeever, a coal miner at Gorgas, could not draw himself but had an eye for it and offered helpful criticism. “My mother started it. My dad encouraged
Text by JENNIFER COHRON Drawings submitted by JOE McKEEVER
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it. My sister paid for it, and my other sister was there when it all started. I’m a family project,” McKeever said. McKeever received the call to preach during his senior year at Birmingham-Southern College. After getting some experience at a small Baptist church in Kimberly, McKeever and his wife moved to Louisiana, where he enrolled in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. In his 20s, McKeever began writing devotionals for a weekly newspaper distributed in his parish. He later began submitting religious cartoons as well. The cartoons drew visitors to the small Cajun church he was pastoring at the time. “I stayed there for two and a half years, and the attendance went from 40 to 120. It wasn’t just the cartoons, but it was the exposure through those articles also,” McKeever said. In 1970, a family friend who worked as the secretary of Alabama Baptist editor Hudson Baggett encouraged McKeever to submit samples of his cartoons. The paper became the
first to make his cartoons available to a statewide audience. Some were more well-received than others. In the 1970s, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Sunday School Board attempted to change the name of its Sunday evening discipleship class from Training Union to The Quest. Messengers to the annual convention objected. Southern Baptists were not on a quest; they had already found the object of their search, Jesus Christ. The new name, which was voted down, was also deemed unsuitable because Quest was a brand of feminine hygiene product. McKeever referenced the incident in a cartoon that showed a man walking into a drug store and approaching a counter where Quest was advertised on a placard. The clerk said, “No, sir, we’re out, but you might try the Baptists down the street.” Baggett later told McKeever that it was
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the most controversial item that had been published during his tenure and confessed that he might not have run it if he had better understood it. In an article McKeever wrote for Preaching Magazine several years ago, he listed the similarities between preachers and cartoonists. One is that both can expect to offend someone if they do their work well. The editor of the statewide Baptist paper in Oklahoma was once asked by a pastor, “What does this McKeever guy have against preachers?” The editor replied, “Nothing, he is one!” McKeever and his wife now live in Ridgeland, Mississippi. His sister Carolyn lives in Jasper and owns the farmhouse in Nauvoo where they were raised. Though he is retired from pastoring, McKeever stays busy with retreats, revivals and speaking engagements. He also draws columns for the Baptist Press, writes a series on “My Favorite Deacon” for Lifeway’s Deacon Magazine, blogs daily for church leaders at www.joemckeever. com and is in the process of writing his third book. “I’m as busy as I’ve ever been in my life,” the 78-year-old said. •
McKeever with his wife, Bertha, at their home in Ridgeland, Mississippi. According to McKeever’s website, Joe is a father to three children and has eight grandchildren, while Bertha, a career teacher, is a mother to two children and grandmother to six. They were married in 2017, two years after McKeever’s wife passed away. His favorite verse in the Bible is Job 4:4, “Your words have stood men on their feet.”
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B read Waters UPON THE
T T
HE MEMBERSHIP of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church cannot be understood through a list of names or a tally taken on a Sunday morning. Some of the people who consider it their faith home come to the church only once a month to receive groceries from the food bank. Those who take part in the giveaways are welcomed as friends, not clients. They share a hot breakfast with their children, chat with the Rev. Robin Hinkle about their lives and go home with not only canned goods but enough meat, produce, snacks and staples to feed their families for a week. If they have small children, St. Mary’s offers diapers along with the groceries. “Our people who volunteer with the food bank are very kind. People tell us all the time how much they love coming here,” Hinkle said. “The best compliment I get is when I’m out somewhere and someone who doesn’t come on Sundays but does come to our food bank will hug me and introduce me to whoever they are with as their pastor. I love that. They may not know what Episcopalians are, but it doesn’t matter. We love them and they love us.” The number of local families served by the food bank has grown exponentially in the past five years. After the 2017 Christmas giveaway caused a traffic jam on The Trace, St. Mary’s relocated to Woodland Trace Church of Christ.
Text by JENNIFER COHRON Photos by JENNIFER COHRON and MALARIE BRAKEFIELD
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Members of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church unload groceries in the rain at a Christmas food and toy giveaway held at Woodland Trace Church of Christ in December 2018.
The two churches collaborated to provide over 400 bags of groceries as well as toys to over 800 children in December. St. Mary’s food bank served nearly 12,000 individuals in 2018, which qualifies it as the largest food bank operated at an Episcopal church in Alabama. Mike McClendon, the head of the food bank, has tried and failed several times to project the ministry’s growth accurately. Understanding why demand has spiked is somewhat easier than explaining how a church that averages an attendance of around 60 each Sunday never runs out of the resources needed to meet it. Like the Biblical account of the widow’s jar of flour and jug of oil, God seems to be continually refreshing St. Mary’s financial reserves. The ministry began around 2003 as a food closet operated out of a single small room in the church. Fifteen families leaving with 30 bags of groceries was considered a busy week. As the numbers began to increase in 2014, the Episcopal Church Women turned their annual
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Valentine’s Coffee and Luncheon into a fundraiser for the food bank. Partnerships with the Walker Area Community Foundation, which has provided grant funding for the food bank since 2015, and the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama, which provides food at a reduced cost, also supported the ministry’s growth. Other area agencies began referring people who did not meet their qualifications for food assistance to St. Mary’s. After the church purchased two commercial freezers from Mission of Hope in Dora, the food bank expanded its offerings to include frozen vegetables. As demand rose, word spread that St. Mary’s was increasing not only how much food was going to each family but the variety and quality of the food as well. In 2016, the church hosted its first Christmas meal giveaway. When the idea was first proposed in October, McClendon worried that there was not enough funding. His concerns only grew as the number of families the church expected to serve quickly multiplied from 50 to more than 100.
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St. Mary’s Episcopal Church provided over 400 bags of groceries as well as toys to over 800 children at a giveaway held in December at Woodland Trace Church of Christ. In addition to providing the space, members of Woodland Trace collected toys and volunteered during the giveaway.
“It went up finally to 150, and the money was just there. It just appeared over about a three week period. It was really a little scary how it worked out, but it was great. We ended up with money left over,” McClendon said. Proceeds from St. Mary’s Valentine’s Coffee and Luncheon, which were around $14,000 in 2018, are now set aside for the Christmas giveaway. In 2017, the food bank’s output doubled from 50 bags of groceries a week to over 100 bags. By the end of 2018, the food bank was averaging 170 bags of groceries — the equivalent of approximately 100 families. Volunteers were caught off guard when over 290 bags of groceries went out the door on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving because the food bank does not provide a special Thanksgiving meal as it does for Christmas. November’s total exceeded 700 bags. Hinkle has two possible explanations for the exponential growth — a reduction in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits that began in spring 2017 and the ongoing opioid crisis that has
hit Walker County especially hard. Some of the recipients are living on fixed incomes and raising children whose parents are in active addiction. Though the financial situation of these individuals is unlikely to change, food bank records suggest that most families only turn to St. Mary’s in emergency situations. “About one third will come here once and that’s it. Two thirds come less than five times. The other third is mostly disabled people or senior citizens living on fixed incomes, less than $1,000 a month, many of them raising their grandkids or other children because the parents have drug issues,” McClendon said. Though volunteers go out of their way to make food recipients feel welcome, many individuals still express regret that they must rely on the generosity of St. Mary’s members and other supporters not associated with the church. “We tell them, ‘Everybody goes through tough times. We’re glad that we’re here to be here with you and go through it with you,’” Hinkle said. •
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Woodland Trace Church of Christ members and St. Mary’s Episcopal members worked side-by-side at December’s food and toy giveaway. Woodland Trace wore purple and St. Mary’s wore red.
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january–march
CommunityCalendar To submit major community events for consideration in the next issue, send them to walkermagazine@mountaineagle.com.
January 29 CELEBRATING OUR COMMUNITIES An opening reception for “Celebrating Our Communities: Chapter 3” will be held at the Bankhead House and Heritage Center on Jan. 29 from 2 to 4 p.m. The exhibit will feature artifacts from Farmstead, Jasper, Manchester, Thach and Saragossa. February 6 GRAND OPENING: WALKER COUNTY COMMUNITY ARCHERY PARK The grand opening of the Walker County Community Archery Park will be Feb. 6 at 1 p.m. at Walker County Lake. February 7 READ ALABAMA Civil rights activist Sheyann WebbChristburg will be the guest at READ Alabama on Feb. 7. An opening reception will be held at 12 p.m. at the Wade Math and Science Building on Bevill State’s Jasper campus. The program will begin at 12:15 p.m. February 7 DADDY AND ME DANCE The Literacy Council of Walker County’s Daddy and Me Dance will be held Feb. 7 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Jasper Area Family Services Center (formerly West Jasper Elementary School). Tickets are $5 per person.
February 7 DINNER THEATER Walker County Arts Alliance’s Dinner Theater players will present “I Love Lucy” Feb. 7 at 5:30 p.m. at Jasper Civic Center. Tickets are no longer available. February 15 FUR BALL Rescuers United for FurBabies will host a Second Chance Fur Ball on Feb. 15 from 6 to 9 p.m. at Memorial Park Natatorium. February 22 TRIVIA NIGHT The Rotary Club of Jasper will host its annual Trivia Night fundraiser at the Jasper Civic Center on Feb. 22. Doors open at 6 p.m. Questions start at 7 p.m. February 23 PANCAKE BREAKFAST The Kiwanis Club’s Pancake Breakfast will be Feb. 23 from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at Bevill State Community College’s cafeteria on the Jasper campus. March 8 CELEBRATING THE GIFT OF LIFE The Pregnancy Test and Resource Center’s Celebrating the Gift of Life Fundraising Gala will be held March 8. The guest speaker will be former Clemson University Coach Tommy Bowden.
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Snapshots BEVILL STATE COMMUNITY COLLEGE BASKETBALL GAME January 19, 2019 | Glen Clem Gymnasium
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WeAreWalkerCounty with
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Dr. Martin Roberts opened his own veterinar y clinic in Jasper last November. Roberts has been working with animals in Walker County since he was a vet tech at 16 years old. After receiving his undergraduate degree, he attended vet school at the University College of Dublin in Ireland and later returned to Jasper to work at an area vet clinic for a number of years. He is actively involved in Walker County’s animal rescue community and ser ves on the Rescuers United for FurBabies board of directors. Roberts said opening Jasper Veterinar y Clinic on Oak Hill Road is a dream come true.
“Jasper is where my roots are, where I want to raise a family. I enjoy being a part of such a close-knit community, where you seldom enter a business without knowing at least one person there. When I traveled abroad for schooling, I always planned to return to my hometown and eventually open my own practice. I want to focus on high-quality medicine, while, at the same time, nurture a close client/doctor relationship. I also discovered that I enjoy working with local rescues and shelters to make a difference in our area.”
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