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As I sat in my living room last Sunday evening and watched the New Orleans Saints become the world football champions, I couldn’t help but think back to the days following Katrina. One of our customer relationships called right after the storm to tell us they weren’t sure what happened to their properties in New Orleans. They couldn’t make contact with the managers. Could we help? I immediately said yes. When a friend asks, you step in and do anything you can.
Two days after Katrina smashed into the Louisiana coast, I made a call to a friend at the FAA and he gave us clearance to fly. We rounded up a four passenger Bell Jet Ranger Helicopter and proceeded to New Orleans MSA. It was a relief to discover that, other than minor damage, the properties were not affected. They were even more fortunate that their entire team was accounted for and safe.
These images taken by Clinton Smith came from that uneasy helicopter tour. Revisiting them reminded me how tragedy can affect us all when we least expect it. Nine months after Katrina, I was back in New Orleans and cars remained stacked on top of cars underneath Interstate 10. Many of the shops on Canal Street were still not open.
But instead of being a defeat, the battering from the storm united the city and strengthened the ties that bound residents. The Crescent City has come a long way since the tragedy they endured four years ago. Today, New Orleans is back in business and home to a championship team. A new set of fans rallied around the Saints not because of their football skills, but because of what they represented—the American dream of rising above a challenge. Super Bowl XLIV became the most watched program in television history.
In the final few minutes of the game last Sunday evening, I e-mailed my customer in New Orleans to get his insight on the game. How did it feel? His response: “Who dat gonna beat ‘dem Saints?” What a great story of triumph over adversity.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
Last week we received a plaque from The Heart of America Foundation for the improvements we provided an inner city Atlanta elementary school. It’s a beautiful memento covered with pictures of students enjoying their new space. As I looked at all the smiling faces, it reminded me why we made the commitment last June.
Jim Gustafson and Patrick Davis, two of our strategic partners at Target, called to ask if we would be interested in teaming on the rebuild. I agreed, mainly because of the people who asked. When I got off the phone I started second guessing myself. With the Recession and our revenues down, what was I thinking? Fortunately, my conscience kicked in and helped me realize that it doesn’t matter. A friend asked for our partnership—they could help with supplies and we could help with the balance need—and children would benefit for years to come. We would figure out how to make it happen for these kids. Clinton Smith, who led the initiative from our end, did just that.
The library at Beecher Hills Elementary received a complete transformation including 2000 new books, updated technology and colorful interiors conducive to learning. “We know that pre-K through fifth grade is the period that sets the tone for reading,” said first-year Principal Crystal Jones. “Getting this done will go a long way toward making that happen.” Maybe the library can even provide a “tipping point” for these kids just like Malcolm Gladwell mentions in his book.
“You have not just changed the library, you have changed the lives of our children forever,” said Dr. Sharon Davis Williams, executive director of Atlanta Public Schools for southwest Atlanta schools.
I knew the children were thrilled, but looking at the pictures last week it made it all worthwhile. I called Jim and Patrick and asked them to sign us up for another school next summer. I couldn’t pass up the chance to help kids learn.
Check out more of the library renovation celebration on my flickr photostream.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
I’ve always been a believer in reading history, as it often repeats itself, or at least offers a case study for how to do (or not do) things. A recent trip to London seemed like a good time to pay tribute to a wise Brit, so I dropped into a local shop and purchased a small book on Winston Churchill.
As I read through Churchill’s sayings and speeches a couple of things occurred to me. First, while we are all struggling through these times, our parents and grandparents would gladly change places with us from their hard days in the Depression and a World War. Secondly, keeping the faith in our own abilities and ourselves will help get us through this rough patch. To use the wise words of Mr. Churchill, “Never, never, never give up.”
I’ve experienced hardship personally. Since leaving college, there have been two times that I’ve been financially broke. In a strange way, I’m glad I went through those periods. We learn a lot of lessons as we walk the trail. This week I was visiting a long time customer relationship in Minneapolis. During the course of conversation he said, “in life we all get educations and they all come with a price.” So wisely said. My “school of hard knocks” lessons were personally costly, but I’m convinced the trials made me a better person, someone capable of empathy.
This week I had dinner with a friend who I initially met as a business contact. Last spring, he called to let me know that he was in the same boat as millions of U.S. citizens. He had lost his job. He questioned his abilities and a lot of other things during that initial period of “why me?” but quickly recovered and reached out to friends. He did everything textbook. He got out of the house and volunteered every Saturday as a swim team coach for children with disabilities. He took business courses to better his managerial skills and most importantly, he networked and then networked some more. He refused to accept a misfortune as defeat.
Our recent dinner was celebratory. We toasted his new job as real estate director with an international Fortune 100 company. My friend had a new look. His face showed the confidence of someone who was faced with adversity, met the challege and is looking at a bright future. His new start came in our worst recession since the Depression. The best news of all…He doesn’t plan to quit his Saturday job at the swimming pool with his swim team.
My friend followed Mr. Churchill’s advice well. Never, never, never give up.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
Effective community service is an essential part of every company’s resume, and it has been an active portion of our extra-curricular efforts over the last 25 years. Community service does several different things simultaneously:
- Foremost, it helps whichever organization or charity we are supporting
- It helps bond my team in a setting outside of the office, and is often something that everyone can do together
- It gets the company name and message out there in a positive light
For the past three years during the last weekend in September, we as a company put down our computers and picked up a sauce mop to try our hand at grilling barbecue in the Pig Iron Barbecue competition, benefiting Children’s Harbor, a non-profit organization that provides social services, counseling and financial help to children with serious illnesses and their families.
Children’s Harbor maintains a 14,000 square foot Family Resource Center connected to Children’s Hospital in downtown Birmingham with a library, laundry, gym, basketball court, and nap room. It provides children and families who are long-term residents of the hospital with all the things the hospital can’t, and makes life just a little more tolerable for those in this unfortunate situation.
There are more than 40 companies and several thousand people that get together every year for the Pig Iron Barbecue who try to beat out everyone else for the title of best barbecue, while at the same time contributing to Children’s Harbor. This past year we had the honor of participating in the competition as well as taking home first place for best barbecue. Our employees were thrilled to win the trophy, but enjoyed time together and the chance to give back more than the prize. If your business makes a similar commitment to philanthropy, I can guarantee the charity won’t be the only benefactor. You’ll see a smile on every team member’s face.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
Every once in a while someone comes along in my life so inspiring and benevolent that it makes me ask the great introspective questions about who I am and what the real purposes of life are. The person motivates me to be a better individual, and when faced with a dilemma, I ask myself, “what would he do?”
This spring we lost one of the great sportsmen in the country, Mr. William R. Ireland, a long time friend and neighbor, at the age of 85. Born in Birmingham, he attended Auburn University and fought in World War II as a Navy man before returning home to work at Vulcan Materials, the family company, for 30 years.
He was president of the Alabama Wildlife Federation, and helped create and pass the Alabama Forever Wild constitutional amendment, legislature that set up a state-funded program to buy and set aside land for wildlife protection. He also supported Ducks Unlimited, the American Cancer Society, Boy Scouts of America, the Comprehensive Cancer Center at UAB, the Nature Conservancy, Freshwater Land Trust, and the Big Brothers of Greater Birmingham.
In his later years he founded a 5,000-acre hunting preserve in Alexander City, AL called Five Star Plantation,
a site that is frequently visited by the Boy Scouts and other local youth organizations. He was a true friend of mine and he will be severely missed. My son and I had the pleasure of joining Mr. Ireland in the inaugural duck hunt on the William R. Ireland Wildlife Preserve on the banks of Tennessee River in Scottsboro, AL in 1997. His dedication to community service, philanthropy and nature continue to serve as inspiration for me.
I’m forever searching for the ways to live up to the example Mr. Ireland gave me, hoping I might open a door for others to join me in continuing his work. What can you do to inspire someone?
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
Being prepared is something that I can never get too much of. In business this means always looking around the corner to find the next job or being careful not to spend foolishly, and at home it means having that rainy day fund for when the unexpected happens.
I’ve been involved with the Boy Scouts for years, and every spring the members of BSA Troop 28 in Birmingham take a trip down to Five Star hunting plantation in Alexander City, Alabama where they train for their wilderness survival merit badge. We hike to a lakeside camping spot and our scouts are tasked with providing themselves shelter and nourishment for the weekend using nothing but what they find around them or fishing from the lake.
The scouts are not allowed to bring tents, and instead each scout is given a small assortment of materials and tools. After a bit of confusion, task delegating, and gathering supplies, they start to work making individual shelters out of pine straw, tree limbs, and the occasional fallen trunk. The designs are sometimes less than successful–you often wonder how they envisioned such a construction–but if anything they are unique. After everyone has built a shelter, a demonstration is made on possible ways to improve each one. The idea is to be prepared if one day you are caught out in the woods by yourself in less forgiving circumstances.
The boys take to the lake for food, and spend all afternoon fishing for their dinner. To make it a little more difficult, they are only allowed to take out fish smaller than 2 pounds and the rest have to be put back. At the end of the day they learn how to clean and fillet them, and cook them over an open fire.
The second night each of the boys is given a steak and they learn how to cook meat “Tarzan style”(thrown directly on the coals). They also learn how to cook potatoes and onions buried underneath the fire and bake pies and biscuits between hot rocks.
It is an experience unlike any other: sleeping in pine straw den under a lean-to of tree branches, and catching and eating your own dinner. It’s a taste of self-reliance for these young boys that teaches confidence and vital survival skills. It’s also an annual reminder for me about the importance of teamwork, innovation and being prepared for the unexpected.
What can you do to be forward thinking and train your business for it’s next big challenge? Cut back on spending? Find new ways to connect with your employees? Whatever it is, hold up three fingers for a Boy Scout oath and pledge to be prepared.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.
While traveling to project sites, I like to take the side roads “the roads less traveled” instead of the interstate, so I can get a better feel for the communities we are impacting. Along the way, I have come to know and support many local craftsmen and artists. Their unique pieces give me a chance to talk about where we have worked, who we have met and what we stand for.
It seemed natural to integrate those treasures into our new corporate campus. Inside, there is a prominent alcove that sat empty for a long time because we could not find just the right piece of art to occupy the space. We thought a quilt might work, so we engaged the Birmingham Museum of Art, which has one of the largest collections of quilts in the U.S. The quilt needed to look nice, and speak to both the homegrown nature of our business and the environmentally friendly overtones of the new office. The quilt that is presently hanging was sewn by Mrs. Bettye Kimbrell who was a 2008 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.
We have two of Ms. Kimbrell’s quilts and another quilt from Mozell Benson who was also an NEA fellow as well, and the recipient of a home from the Rural Studio art/architecture program at Auburn University.
Our goal is to have 5-6 quilts in the collection and rotate them periodically. The quilts better the lives of the people in the building and also help support the our artists.
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Merrill Stewart is Founder and President of the Stewart Perry Company, a commercial building contractor based in Birmingham, Ala. Contact him via email.</h6
I’ve always encouraged our team members to be active participants in their communities. Well-rounded folks are happier when they come in our doors and that positive attitude spills over into everything they do, including work. I have volunteered with The Boy Scouts of America for years, and I’ve found that my experiences with the organization drive home principles that ring true on the trail and in the boardroom.
As part of a backpacking trek in the late summer, several of the SP team, their sons and other members of Troop 28 took to the trail at Fontana Dam in the Great Smokey Mountains. We hiked all day, culminating with an ascent up 5,000-foot Gregory Bald Mountain. We go out on trips like this all the time, and it is too easy to get lulled into thinking the woods are a safe harmless place. Occasionally we get vivid reminder to never drop your guard.
After hiking about 8-miles on the second day of the trek, we arrived at the top of the bald in the peak of blueberry season. We spent an hour picking blueberries, enjoying the views, and looking out for bears.
Walking back, I decided to walk along the edge of the road in the soft leaves – not in the middle of the road. Just past sight of the group, I rounded a bend and heard a bunch of screaming from behind. Thinking it was a bear, I spun around to try and figure out which way to jump when the bear rounded the bend, only to discover the cause of the stir was a four-foot long Timber Rattler poised to bite my friend and fellow scoutmaster Bill Cather.
Fortunately the snake decided he had enough of the commotion and backed away slowly. However, this did not stop everyone from giving me grief for stomping through the leaves along the side of the road and rousing the snake. It also gave me a chance to review with the boys what the best course of action was for snakebites so deep in the woods.
The moral of this story? Stay on guard, anticipate the unexpected and never pass up an opportunity to pass your knowledge on to willing ears. You might save a life or build a better leader, and chances are they’ll repeat the pattern later.
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