Few people in Cullman can remember a time when there wasn’t a car dealership at the midtown intersection of 1st Street and U.S. Highway 31. And for as long as most can recall, the car lot — along with numerous other car spots around town — was known as the place to get a deal from local businessman and community leader Harry Bivins.

“One of his favorite sayings he used to tell us growing up is ‘You can make it happen, watch it happen, or wonder what the heck happened,’ recalls Tracy Pylant, one of Bivins’ three daughters and a member of the management staff at Economy Motors — the flagship location of Bivins’ local auto network. “We actually have that saying up on the wall here at the dealership.”

The sign, along with the family-owned dealership itself, is just a small part of the big legacy that Bivins, who passed away this week at the age of 70, has left behind. In addition to his wife Mavolene, three adult daughters, and ten grandchildren, Bivins also endowed the business culture in Cullman with the kind of leadership and determination that’s cast a long shadow on those who learned their career ropes under his guidance.

Regarded by peers in North Alabama’s auto business — many of whom he mentored — as the kind of leader who took initiative when others were timidly talking about abstract ideas, Bivins got his start by launching his first used car dealership in Arab, before finding enough success to move his base of operations to its current Cullman home. Over the years, he’d go on to open three other car dealerships, each with a different clientele focus, around Cullman. A lot of longtime residents still refer to the current Highway 31 business — Economy Motors — by the name they’ll always remember best: Harry Bivins Used Cars.

A graduate of both Fairview High School and St. Bernard College, Bivins didn’t set out to become a local household name in the car business. At St. Bernard, he graduated with a degree in Education. But after doing an early stint with the Tennessee Valley Authority and eventually getting bitten by the car bug, he set out on his own with his first Arab dealership, never setting foot in the classroom.

“After he got laid off at TVA, he started dabbling in detailing and selling cars, just out of his garage,” says Tracy. “He developed a passion for cars, and so he just took a leap of faith and opened his own business in Arab. It was successful, and that allowed him to eventually come back and open up the dealership here in Cullman.”

That was in the early 1980s. In the ensuing decades, Bivins would end up hiring and mentoring a lot of people who cut their sales teeth while working on his staff, with many going on to bigger careers in the business that — to this day — they credit Bivins with nurturing.

“I was very fortunate to have come across him in my life, and I miss him like crazy,” says Michael Dean at Bill Smith Used Cars. “Ninety percent of the things I ever learned about the car business, I learned from him.

“My wife and I both were students at Fairview, and she went to work for him before I did, and ended up helping me get on the sales staff there. She grew up with him and went to church with him, and he was as great to work for as he was as a lifelong friend. She was a secretary and I was in sales — this is probably about 16 years ago — and over the years, he just ended up being one of those people you could turn to regardless of where your career had taken you. Up until he became sick just a few weeks ago, we still talked on the phone all the time.”

To his family, Bivins was a cornerstone figure who spared no opportunity to affectionately share his success and his genial personality. Granddaughter Alyssa Pylant, one of several kids and grandkids whose out-of-school childhood life revolved around the downtown car lot, remembers Harry as a warm and giving grandpa who relished every chance to dote on his family.

“We would clean up, pull the keys from cars at the end of the day, pick up cigarette butts left on the ground; things like that,” she says. “He had a golf cart that we’d use to get around the lot, and at the end of the day, he’d take us to the Dollar General around the corner and buy each of us a little prize.

“Every time before my grandfather left a family gathering or get-together, he would give each of us — my siblings and cousins and all the rest of the family — a hug, and tell us that he loved us and that he was always proud of us, no matter what,” she added. “Every single time. He didn’t have much of a good or loving life growing up, but he wanted to make sure that all of us in the family knew we were loved every single time we saw each other, so that we would never feel unloved.”

Harry Elzy Bivins was a member of Mt. Olive Baptist Church near Simcoe, and was laid to rest Wednesday at the church’s cemetery. He is survived by his wife Mavolene, daughters, Tracy (Jason) Pylant, Elizabeth (Derrick) Pylant, Hannah (Nic) Nunnelley, and their children.