Weathers’ house

Character

built in years ago Livability added in due time

Story and photos By David Moore

You’ve heard it said as a compliment of things that are old: They don’t build ‘em like that anymore.

That, in part, is exactly why Bob and Kathy Weathers love the old house they bought back in 1981 on Emory Avenue in Boaz. On the flip side, because it was built like it was, is precisely why they’ve remodeled five times. The end result is a house with great bones and old charm that’s customized to their modern needs, taste and lifestyle.

The house was built in 1917 by G.M.E. Mann, whose fingerprints were all over Boaz even before it was named.

In the 1880s, the Albertville man was the first to pounce on an offer by early settler Billy Sparks, who was giving away free lots in his Sparkstown settlement – on what would become Ala. 205 and Main Street – to anyone who would build a business on it and live there. Mann built and opened a smooth-planked general store there.

He went on to establish a post office in his store and become the community’s first postmaster. The post office was licensed in 1886 as Boaz, a name which Mann had submitted to the federal postal agency.

The railroad came in 1892, and that same year he built what, for the day, was the lavish, two-story Mann Hotel across from the new depot. When his hotel burned in 1916, Mann salvaged what lumber he could, along with ornate porch posts and spindles, and used them in building a home on Emory Avenue, which remained in his family until 1936. G.M.E. Mann built the Weathers’ house in 1917. The porch posts and spindles were among the wood he salvaged from his hotel when it burned in 1916.

Among those living there before Bob and Kathy were Cecil Cole and Dr. Kermit Andrew Johnson, the latter a Boaz native who served from 1968-77 as president of the University of Montevallo.

The Weathers’ bought the house in 1980 from now-retired Marshall County Circuit Judge David Evans. David owned it briefly, thanks to his former real estate father-inlaw, who was Bob’s uncle.

Even before they moved in, it was necessary to remodel the outdated kitchen and bathroom downstairs. The major modernization required ripping off plaster from walls and pulling up old flooring.

“When they took off the original plaster to install Sheetrock, they found 4x4 beams instead of 2x4s,” Kathy says.

“When the workers started on that first remodeling project, they found that newspapers had been used as attic insulation,” Bob adds. “Some of those papers dated back to 1917.”

Today, the porch spindles and posts from the former Mann Hotel add character to the front porch. Beams in the attic still show scorch marks.

While its past certainly adds character, interest and charm, the house itself holds no special place in Boaz history. Bob grew up nearby and recalls the house from his days of biking and playing in the neighborhood. It was, he says, only special because its second floor made it look so big to a kid. Son of Chalmus and June Weathers, Bob worked as a teen doing whatever was needed at Roberts & Weathers Furniture and Hardware, owned by his father and his uncle Macon Roberts.

When Bob graduated from Boaz High in 1966 he attended Snead College for a year and then headed to Auburn University. The thing about his future he was sure of was that it didn’t include the family business at home.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I was always pretty good in math,” he says. “Then I realized my interest lay in business. I had visions of getting a job with IBM in Atlanta.”

So along with a math degree, he graduated from Auburn in 1970 with a minor in business. Look out, Big Blue! Look out, Hotlanta! Bob is coming!

But the job reality was quite different. The recession of 1969-70 still lingered like an ugly cold. He got no offers off the

bat, and though a year later Burroughs Corporation offered him a job, by then it was too late.

“With my tail tucked firmly between my legs, I went to work for $125 a week for my dad,” he laughs. “It was not what I envisioned.”

But the work began growing on him, and in 1972 his life suddenly lit up. That’s because he asked out Kathy Camp, a 1970 Albertville grad who was taking classes at Snead State Community College. And she said yes.

“I took her to a Boaz-Albertville basketball game.” The score escapes his mind, but he adds with a laugh, “I won by a big margin.”

They married in March of 1974.

Bob’s earlier feelings about the family business were overtaken by a growing sense of pride and the challenges the growing business offered him. And it didn’t hurt when Chalmus offered him a figurative horse in the race.

“Several months later he asked me to become a partner,” Bob says. He decided the family business was what he truly wanted to do, and Chalmus sold him half interest, financing the deal for him “over a bunch of years.”

Meanwhile, Kathy earned a degree in secondary education from Jacksonville State University in December 1973.

She taught seventh grade for two years and discovered putting up with young teens was not what she wanted to do.

“For years, I thought I was such a failure,” she says. “But when my girls got that age, I realized it wasn’t all me. I had to hang in there with my own kids – but not the public school kids.”

The Weathers lived in a small, twobedroom house on Horsley Avenue in Boaz, along with their still small daughters Amanda and Jennifer until 1981. Then they bought the old Mann house, remodeled the kitchen and downstairs bath and they settled in.

Initially, the girls lived in a small, downstairs bedroom. Before Jeff was born in 1984, they remodeled the two small upstairs bedrooms and converted a play area between them into a third bedroom with a six-window dormer.

Over time, all three kids would rotate into the dormer room. As the children grew at home on Emory Avenue, Bob’s business also grew – along with challenges of running it.

He likens his job to the circus performer who runs around trying to keep spinning plates balanced on poles. Kathy says his type A personality is perfect for him.

When Amanda was born in 1975, Kathy quit teaching. Then when Jennifer came along two years later Kathy, who was needed in the business, was lucky enough to find Mildred Spates of Boaz to help care for the two young daughters so she could work part time at the Albertville furniture store.

Their third major remodeling project at home was the construction of an attractive and complimentary stand-alone garage next to the house. 2001 was a big year for the Weathers and the house. Amanda and Jennifer both married in May and July, and both held their receptions in the backyard with bands on the deck.

Project four – done in 2007 – started out modestly enough, but soon grew in scope. Kathy told their contractor, Wayne Bankston she wanted the deck converted to a covered, screened-in porch.

“I could do that,” Wayne said, “but if I were you I would build a room off the back of the house.”

“I liked the idea, and talked him into it,” Kathy says with a nod to Bob.

“Which,” he laughs, “translates into, ‘I told him pretty quick ...’”

Marilyn Bass of Guntersville drew up general plans for the room, and Wayne took it from there.

“I wanted it as big as I could get it,” Kathy says. It ended up being about 26feet squared – much bigger than the old deck.

“It’s so much more livable now,” she says of their old house. “With three grown kids and their families, we were on top of each other at Christmas.”

The house’s fifth remodeling project targeted the Weathers’ bedroom. Until then, the downstairs had a small bedroom in addition to the master. When the sawdust settled and the paint dried, the Weathers had done away with the smaller bedroom, enlarged the master and added a walk-in closet.

Bob and Kathy enjoy the large addition they made to the back of their house, left and lower left. The kitchen, master bedroom and dining room have all been remodeled over the years. The spindles in the stair railing also came from the old hotel. The Weathers have three grown children: Amanda, married to Eric Walker with children Austin and Sarah, both in high school; Jennifer, married to Adam Pierce with children Jenna and Tyler, a freshman at JSU and Boaz High, respectively; and Jeff, married to Eleanor with kids Will, Sam and Abigail.

Though remodeled, the middle of the three upstairs bedrooms maintains a lot of the home’s old character with its six-window dormer. Below, during an early remodeling project, a visitor to Boaz stopped outside and asked one of the workers if she could sketch the house. He said yes, and she sat on the curb across the street and drew for an hour or two. A few days later, she came by and gave Kathy the water-colored pen and ink image, below, complete with dormers and the worker’s truck.

The sixth and last project, undertaken in 2018, targeted the kitchen again, along with the formal dining room and an eating area.

“For many years we have hosted the Weathers’ family Christmas here,” laughs Kathy, “and there’s usually forty to fifty people. We had no counter space. There were only three drawers in the old kitchen.”

They turned to Susan LeSueur of The Glenn Group in Arab for plans and Dan Smith, a contractor from Boaz handled the project. The last few years Cathy Morton of Boaz, a friend from church, has helped with the decorating.

“It’s just fabulous,” Kathy says – “now that the project is over.”

The Weathers didn’t move out during their earlier remodeling projects, but the latest kitchen job lasted several weeks and required taking out floors. So they moved a mattress into their son Jeff’s pool house and camped out there.

That, absolutely, was their final remodeling job on the old Mann house. Well, probably. Maybe.

“I think the house is done,” Kathy says. “We have finished the decorating. I still work and enjoy our seven grandchildren, so I don’t have lot of time for that.”

But that may change.

“Actually I am slowing down at little,” says the chief plate spinner. “I am learning to be lazy. The goal is to take off a week per month. Hopefully, in the near future, we will be able to increase that some.”

“I,” Kathy grins knowingly, “am not the hold up.”

The Weathers have certainly created a home that can comfortably accommodate them spending more time there. And barring severe disaster, the house isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“What’s interesting to me is that the guts of this house go back to 1892,” Bob says, “the backbone.”

“You have to love an old house just to live in it,” Kathy says. “Maybe some of the walls weren’t straight when they moved in, but remodeling has remedied much of that. “We do love it,” she adds.

What would G.M.E. Mann think of his old house? Would he even recognize it?

“He would not recognize some of the interior,” Bob says. “But he would recognize it from the outside.”

Probably so. He basically built it like that.

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Weathers’ family business – going and growing since 1917

The Weathers’ enterprise not only spans Marshall County from Boaz to Guntersville and beyond, it also spans four generations across a full century. What other business in Marshall County can stake that claim?

Back in 1917 – over a 100 years ago – Bob Weathers’ maternal grandfather, Jeff Roberts, went into a partnership in Boaz and began Roberts & Young Hardware.

Longevity was not yet in it.

“He sold his interest in the store and decided to move the family to California in 1923 or ’24,” says Bob. “He had a friend out there who had been successful growing cotton in what is now wine country. Mother told me he didn’t like it there because the women were wearing pants and smoked cigarettes in public. They moved back in less than a year.”

In 1925, Jeff Roberts went into business with Lon Williams, who owned a hardware store in Boaz. In 1945, Jeff bought out Lon’s interest and later sold the business to his son, Macon Roberts, and his son-in-law, Chalmus Weathers – who was married to Bob’s mother, June.

Thus, Weathers Hardware and Furniture was born.

In the late 1960s, Macon exited the business, selling his half to Chalmus, who had four children: • Glenn, the eldest, an Auburn grad and an electrical engineer in Huntsville. • Joyce Smart, who was retired from Snead State where she taught English and history; Joyce passed away in October of 2020. • Bob;

• John, youngest of the Weathers siblings, who went to Auburn like his brothers.

In 1971, Chalmus sold half interest in the business to Bob. Together, they bought Dee Isbell Hardware in Albertville and was also a GE appliance dealer.

After John graduated from Auburn in 1976, Chalmus sold him the other half of the family business.

“We had a good business and were pretty successful,” Bob says. “I saw the opportunity to do well if we worked hard. My dad didn’t push me to come back into the business, but I think he was very happy that I did.”

In 1978, Bob and John purchased Radious and Maxine Perkins’ furniture and appliance business in Guntersville.

Bob and John kept growing the business over the next 30 years, adding rental equipment and floor covering to their unique mix. In spring 2008, John sold his share of the businesses to Bob and Kathy’s son Jeff Weathers and their son-in-law Adam Pierce, who is married to their daughter Jennifer.

Since 2008 the three partners have added an Ace Hardware in Oneonta and Madison and a new Ace store coming this year to Jones Valley in Huntsville. This will bring the total of Weathers hardware stores to five. That’s in addition to three appliance and furniture stores and the equipment rental store. Running it all takes more than Bob spinning plates on a pole like a circus act (see related story) as he used to do, and more than all three G.M.E. Mann’s 1892 hotel in Boaz, pictured above on a latter-day postcard, burned of the partners in 1916. In 1917, Bob Weathers’ grandfather went into business in Boaz. That’s the working hard. same year Mann used salvaged porch posts and spindles in building his “We have been house – the same house Bob and his wife Kathy live in today. extremely fortunate in having excellent and dedicated employees, many of whom have been with us for a very long time and are all like family to us,” Bob says. “In addition we have many great multigenerational customers whose grandparents or great grandparents did business with our family. “

Today, the Weathers’ enterprise comprises eight stores (not counting the Jones Valley Ace) and employs 120 people. “Right now we have four grandchildren who are school age and work for us part time, as well as Kathy, who now works in the office along with our daughter Jennifer,” Bob says. “Amanda works with me at the Albertville furniture and appliance location. We are truly a family business.” Bob’s dad Chalmus did not live to see the full growth of the business he helped build. He died in 2003. “He’s proud of us I’m sure,” Bob says. “We have been pretty successful.” Good Life Magazine