Bringing jobs to county, city

Published 10:10 am Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Editor’s note: This is the third story detailing Bert McGriff’s rise as a business leader in Cullman County.

By 1943, the first Cullman Chamber of Commerce had been formed. At that time there were few industries but people began to realize the need for a group, such as the Chamber, to centralize their efforts. Raymond Yost was the Chamber’s first president, and Emma Marie Edleman became the go-to person to get things done around Cullman. After the formation of the Chamber of Commerce as a central agency from which to concentrate their efforts, things began to fall into place. 1943 saw King Pharr (Canning) come to Cullman, and by 1945, Cullman Lingerie, Porter Mills and Deep South Creamery had all brought jobs to the area.

King Pharr was a food processing plant. The company contracted with local farmers who grew bell peppers and tomatoes. “Up until that time (1943) there was no one for them to sell to — they just bartered their crops for other things that they needed,” McGriff noted.

There was also Grief Brothers, who made barrels, and the lumber yards, a coal mine, the hosiery mill and farms that were scattered throughout the area.

Before the war, there had only been about 15 chicken houses in all of Cullman County. Bert McGriff helped to build one of them for Bill Drinkard.

Although those chicken houses and their predecessors would become a huge part of the state’s poultry business in later years, most people still had to drive outside the county or move up north to find decent wages.

Due to a pure coincidence that was all about to change…

Mrs. Betty Bledsoe picked up the phone one day to hear the voice of an old college classmate. He was just passing through town and thought he’d call to say “hello” before heading to Mississippi with a group of businessmen from Jacksonville, Florida, on their way to look at property for a cigar factory.

As soon as Mrs. Bledsoe hung up the phone she called some friends to give them the scoop. Due to her quick thinking, a group of enterprising local businessmen including the mayor, chamber president, sheriff, a mortician and many others, quickly arranged a trip to Jacksonville. They were there and waiting when the group returned from Mississippi. “We rented a ballroom, wined and dined them and sold them on coming to look at Cullman as a site for their plant,” recalled McGriff.

As a result of their speedy intercession, King Edward Cigars was built in Cullman. At its peak, the plant employed about 500 people. “Only two or three of them were outside management people, the rest were local,” McGriff was quick to point out.

An interesting side note to that story is “Operation Cigar Shack” which involved the grassroots effort to purchase the land for the King Edwards Cigar Plant. According to records, the goal was to raise $60,000. Due to the potential promise of such good paying jobs coming to Cullman, the residents, from housewives with egg money to tenant farmers and coal miners, small merchants, doctors and lawyers, everyone pitched in what they could spare. Operation Cigar Shack was a way of letting people share in bringing industry to their doorstep.

Gallon jars were placed in stores asking for donations. They ran ads in the paper and broadcast spots on the radio saying that no donation was too large or too small. Taxi cab drivers even volunteered to pick up and deliver the money. Booths were set up in the courthouse for donations. “We would often get calls from people out in the county who had no way into town to make a donation,” recalled McGriff. “One day I got a call to go out to Fairview. It turned out to be an elderly lady who gave me $20. It was all she had. She told me that if she’d had more, she would have been happy to give it because she didn’t want her children and grandchildren to have to go up North to work.”

People chipped in $5, $10 and $15 at a time, but it added up. Between the time of the kickoff of Operation Cigar Shack that Tuesday night, a total of $85,000 was raised by the following Thursday night.

In today’s economy that equals to about $821,000

Later, those same businessmen, some of whom belonged to the Chamber of Commerce, flew to Florida on a hunch and became known as the Flying 50. They paid out of their own pockets for airfare and lodging, and for meals both for themselves and the guests they were recruiting.

The Flying 50 were instrumental in recruiting several other businesses and industries, like Americold and Nicholson File, to Cullman. The Flying 50 could see the improvements in the infrastructure of the city and county. Big Jim Folsom was sitting in the governor’s seat, which was a plus for the Flying 50 and for Cullman. “He was instrumental in bringing in the ‘farm-to-market’ roads,” said McGriff.

Saint Bernard, which was a four-year college at the time, brought in many young people.

Seeing the willingness of the citizens of the city and county made the Flying 50 work just that much harder. They realized the importance of having the backing of the community and it inspired them to reach further afield to show that Cullman really meant “business”.

In addition to people like the first chamber president, Raymond Yost, Elbert Ponder, Bert Morgan, Rep. Bryce Davis and Bert McGriff, another member of the Flying 50 was Roy Drinkard. It was Drinkard who often spoke from behind the podium to the leaders of the target industry being recruited. “Roy could paint the prettiest pictures of Cullman,” smiled McGriff. “If you want to know who one of the most influential people in bringing industry and making Cullman what it is today, it was Roy Drinkard,” he said with emphasis. “He would always tell them that our biggest selling point was our great German-taught workforce.”

One of their greatest accomplishments was bringing the city and county together, “Everyone worked together for the good of all,” he pointed out. “And the residents were all good people who worked with the city and county governments.”

“As a county or city, we never gave a business any land,” said McGriff proudly. “It was always individuals who donated the land for a company.”

In this era of growth, area residents saw Highway 31 brought through town, and Highway 278 paved. President Dwight D. Eisenhower brought the interstate highway system into existence, and it just happened to run right through Cullman County. “The main purpose of that system was for defense,” Barry McGriff, Bert’s oldest son, commented. That may have been the case, but in the intervening years that highway became a calling card for Cullman.

Bert was steadily building up his business. He was still living at home with his parents. Then, on a blind date, he met a pretty little red-headed girl. She lived out in the Providence community near Eva. She was 20, and he was 23. She had just graduated from Cullman High, and found a job at the hosiery mill. Her name was Berta Mae Holmes.

  “She had long, curly red hair and was very, very conservative,” he recalled fondly.

The McGriffs attended Mt. Zion and Berta and her family were members of Flint Creek Baptist Church.

“I asked her dad if I could take her out. He said I’d better have her home by 11 p.m.,” he laughed. “I did, too.”

After dating for a couple of years, Berta and Bert were married on March 5, 1949. They set up housekeeping in a duplex house in downtown Cullman, near the high school. Later they moved into a rental house across the road from where his gas station was.

Their first child, Barry, was born in 1952. “He was delivered by Dr. Dotson at Cullman Hospital, and cost Bert a whopping $50. “That was $25 for the doctor, and $25 for the hospital,” he laughed.

Berta Mae was a stay-at-home mom, like most of the women of that era. Bert often walked across the street and got his son, took him to the station and showed him off to his buddies.

Barry recalls that from about the age of two he would be deposited into a playpen so that he could be near his dad. His sister, Cherri, came along in 1954.

One Christmas Eve when Cherri was still a toddler, Berta put the children to bed and she and Bert stepped next door for a quick visit with the neighbors. The phone rang and it was little Barry, calling to tell them that Santa had come. He woke Cherri, who was still in diapers at the time. Both children were standing near the tree in their footie pajamas when their parents walked back in the door. Memories like this built a stable and happy life for the McGriffs. Bert could see his business, the community and his family growing and thriving. Life was good for the young family.

By 1954, Bert’s business included tires. Ultimately, this move would prove to be one of the best business decisions he would ever make. Later, he started to repair tires, as well, which increased his business even more.

He purchased a new 1955 Oldsmobile and moved his family into a house at 810 Seventh Street, “We paid $7,000 for it,” he said.

That same year, McGriff incorporated the retail store to include retreading. He had four employees, who were still washing, greasing and changing tires from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Barry started school at St. Paul’s Kindergarten in 1957. He began to hang out at the store after school and in the summer. He can recall putting Big Jim Folsom bumper stickers on many a car for Folsom’s reelection campaign.

“Later George Wallace filled up the football field at CHS,” he reminisced. “We went to Woodall’s in Decatur and bought barbecue to feed everyone.”

In 1959, the McGriffs welcomed their third child, Jeff. Berta Mae pretty much raised the children while Bert worked in the store. “He was gone so much that he often woke us up in the middle of the night just so he could see us and give us a kiss,” recalled Cherri.

“I never got to do for my kids what other people did,” he reflected solemnly. “I never got to see them practice and I missed a lot of their growing up.”

McGriff was focused on helping to build this area so that his children would have a place here when the time came. If not for those three little ones in their footie pajamas who would cuddle sleepily in his tired arms at night, there might never have been so much thought, preparation, and determination put into those long trips.