Retirement brings end of ‘Alston era’ at Oxford Construction | PHOTO GALLERY

ALBANY — When King Alston decided to hang up his hardhat at the end of 2014, not only was it the end of a 53-year career, it marked the end of a six-decade-plus era that began when King’s brother Garfield Alston, went to work for Oxford Construction Company in 1952.

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Five years after Garfield Alston joined Oxford, working at the company became a family affair for the Alstons. Brother Richard Alston came on board, followed two years later by brother Willie J. Alston. King Alston joined the fold two years later in 1961, and just two years after that, brother Marvin Alston followed suit, creating what could be called the “Alston Era” at the company.

According to Oxford President J. Bruce Melton, the Alstons were a fixture at the company from the time he arrived until the day King retired. He views their contribution to the company, which was started by brothers Tillman and Dixon Oxford in 1948, as a critical part of Oxford’s history.

Melton quipped that for a long time he felt that when the last Alston retired he might have to follow suit.

“I’m a little younger than these guys,” Melton says. “I came to work in 1980 and, of course, they were already all here, and of course Garfield was still here, so they were all working here. They had all been here 10 or more years when I got here.

“As I went through my career and they got on up in age, I knew one day this day was going to come. I told them more than one time, ‘When all the Alstons are gone, I’m just going to pack up and go with them.’”

Melton’s reason for feeling that way comes not only from the brothers’ longevity with the company, but because of the type of employees and people they are.

“They were so dependable, always here and you knew they were going to do the work right without being prompted,” Melton said. “You just laid the work out for them, got the materials there and got the job set up, and you could forget it; you knew they were just going to do it. They did first-class work and they worked hard. They just did a great job. And they are great people.”

Melton says that the great job the Alston brothers did also coincided with the rise of the company during a time of great growth and expansion in south Georgia and Albany.

“We (Oxford) were fortunate to be here when there was a lot of growth in this area,” Melton said. “We had a hand in building all the signature projects here, Procter & Gamble, Miller Brewing, Firestone, Delco, M&M Mars, all of those that were built. We did the Albany Mall. And, of course, these guys were instrumental in all of that.”

252 YEARS

All told, the five Alston brothers logged a combined 252 years with Oxford, and, like Melton, those who are still living (Garfield Alston passed in 2013) all look back fondly on that time.

“I loved working there,” King Alston said. “It’s a good company to work for, no matter who you are. I worked here 53 years and missed five days. Four of them I was in the hospital; I don’t know what that other one was for. I don’t know if it was a doctor’s appointment or what, but some kind of way I missed that other day. I just enjoyed coming to work.”

Willie J. Alston, who retired in 2008 because of balky hips, echoed his brother’s sentiments, saying that he never had any regrets working at Oxford.

“I did what I liked and I liked what I did,” Willie J. Alston said. “Anybody looking for a job, I recommend Oxford Construction. I worked here 49 years and I never did have to ask for an increase in pay. They would always see that I was working and they’d give me what I deserved.

“I thought I was treated right. They made a life for me. If I had to do it over I’d do the same thing.”

Though the brothers admittedly don’t agree on everything — for example both Willie J. Alston and Richard Alston said they liked a stiff drink at the end of a long week, while King Alston never drank a drop — they all agree that their time at Oxford was time well spent. And they all miss it.

“Everybody was good to me,” says Richard Alston. “Nobody ever gave me no trouble. I liked what I was doing. And they let me know when I did a good day’s work. I miss it. I miss working out here, I sure enough do.

“I think about it a lot. But that’s all I can do is think about it. I can’t come back.”

Like Richard Alston, who retired in 2007 because of dizziness brought on by vertigo, Willie J. Alston had to call it quits before he wanted to.

“The reason I retired is my son. He had a problem with his health and mine was going down, too,” Willie J. Alston said. “I was having a hip problem. I couldn’t get in and out of those ditches like I wanted to. I wasn’t able to work like I wanted to.”

SOME TOUGH DAYS

That drive to work hard is a trait shared by all of the Alston brothers, a trait they inherited from their parents, who were farmers in Terrell County. All five brothers, along with two other brothers and three sisters, were the children of Richard Sr. and Bobbi Lee Alston, and were born into farming in Bronwood.

“We grew up farming, came up working,” says Richard Alston. “All of us like working, too.”

“Our daddy worked hard until he retired and we just followed in his footsteps,” Willie J. Alston concurred.

All that hard work, though, also brought a few moments during their careers when a couple of the brothers questioned what they had gotten themselves into.

Willie J. Alston, for instance, likes to tell the story of when he was “bear caught” while working on a road project in Southwest Georgia near the Florida/Georgia line, not long after he started working for Oxford.

“In 1960, we were four-laning Highway 84 through Donalsonville,” he recalled. “It was summertime, June. I was running a jackhammer and that thing about whipped me; I didn’t know how to run it. (The other workers) called it ‘bear caught’ when it got too hot and that thing was beating you up, like a bear’s about to catch you or something. They’d say, ‘He done got too hot, a bear caught him.’

“I had to go find some shade somewhere and get out of the heat. You had to get out of the heat when running a jackhammer. That thing had liked to kill me. I had second thoughts then about coming back.”

Of course, those thoughts didn’t last long as his upbringing came back to him and he remembered why it was he was running a jackhammer during a sweltering south Georgia summer.

“I thought about leaving the same day I got too hot, when the bear got me,” Willie J. Alston said. “But I had a family and a baby. I couldn’t afford to leave. I had to stay.”

Just like his younger brother, Richard Alston also had some tough days at work, like the time he and his crew were working on a project to build a maximum security prison in Macon County. It’s a story Melton likes to tell on his behalf.

“Sometime in the ’80s, the state built five new maximum-security prisons and (a crew) was up in Macon County,” Melton Alston recalled. “It was July and we were doing base work for that new prison. We had a crew cab pickup and there were about five or six (workers) there and up came a big thunderstorm.

“Well, this part is after the fact, but (Richard Alston) came in my office carrying this stump about as a big as a pen, and he looked kind of shook and I said, ‘What is that Richard?’ He said, ‘That’s all that’s left of my antenna.’ They had gotten in the truck cause it was a big thunderstorm and lightning had struck the truck and that was the radio antenna from the top of the truck (he was holding). Lightning had struck the truck and knocked all the hubcaps off of it.

“They were in the truck and nobody was touching the ground, so it didn’t hurt anybody. If anybody had been touching the ground, it would’ve killed them.”

Although he didn’t share any stories as wild as being “bear caught” or being in a vehicle struck by lightning, King Alston is quick to share his frustrations over having to keep a length of pipe cleaned out during construction during inclement weather, such as rain.

“That’s the hardest thing in the world, to clean out a pipe,” he said. “Keeping them clean, getting the dirt out of them, that’s the hardest thing to do. It ain’t no fun at all.

“When it rained, we’d try to keep the pipes wrapped up. Sometimes we’d get a sure enough big rain that would come along and wash it off. Then when you got dirt in there you had to get it out. Boss couldn’t get his money if the pipe was full of dirt.”

STAYING CLOSE

Despite the constant battle to keep the pipes cleaned, King Alston always looked forward to coming to work and is still having a slightly difficult time adjusting to not coming to work every day. He also says that he didn’t retire for any specific reason, just that he wanted to keep a promise to himself.

“I get up at 5 o’clock every morning thinking about Bruce (Melton) and them (the folks at Oxford),” King Alston quipped. “I miss them bad. I retired cause I said if I live to be 72 I was going to quit. And I got 72 last year, the next birthday I’ll be 73.

“There wasn’t any problems or anything. I enjoyed being here. In fact, I might fill out a job application (next time he’s in the Oxford office).”

While nearly all of the brothers — Marvin Alston said he “worked as long as I wanted to” — would come back to work if their health allowed, one thing they are glad of is that they get to see each other as much, if not more, today than they did when they were all working.

The four brothers live on the same street in Bronwood and see each other almost daily. Not content to simply sit around the house, they all have gardens and enlist each other to help tend them. They also help each other with other small projects.

“We just stay about a block from each other and we all have gardens now,” says Willie J. Alston. “We all get along really well. We have family reunions once a year, too. We also get all the bosses (wives) together.”

Even though the brothers see each other regularly now and worked together the better part of 50 years, their paths didn’t cross as much during their working days as one might think. Aside from the time King Alston ran an excavator on Willie J. Alton’s pipe crew for roughly 10 years, the brothers were, for the most part, on different crews performing different jobs.

Garfield Alston, who was the oldest, spent most of his time as the company’s primary CDL lowboy truck driver for 47 of his 57 years with Oxford. According to Melton, Garfield Alston logged so many miles hauling heavy equipment to job sites all over Southwest Georgia that he wore out eight Mack trucks and accumulated more than 3 million road miles on his way to earning the distinction as one of Mack Truck’s “Million Mile Men.”

After seeing his brother run a motor grader early during his tenure with Oxford, Richard Alston ultimately became a finish motor grader operator on a base crew, placing soil cement bases on hundreds of projects, such as the Miller Brewing project, on his way to becoming base superintendent.

“One time I saw him running a motor grader and I liked that, so I got on that thing and learned how to run it,” Richard Alston said. “He let me run it a little bit. We had two of them on the job and, after a while, I wound up on the motor grader. I got pretty good with it, so he got off his motor grader and I got on it.”

Willie J. Alston spent most of his time with Oxford as a pipe superintendent, placing some of the largest storm and sanitary sewer systems in Southwest Georgia, including the 108-inch diameter Holloway Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Storm Drainage Project for the city of Albany.

After spending time on Willie J. Alston’s crew, King Alston also became a pipe superintendent, laying storm and sanitary sewer systems across Southwest Georgia, including placing the new storm drainage piping for Albany State University’s Flood Recovery and Campus Reconstruction Project following the Flood of ‘94.

Marvin Alston, the most reserved of the four brothers, spent his time as Oxford’s primary rubber tire loader operator for two hot mix asphalt plants, where he ran the company’s largest wheel loader.

In fact Marvin Alston’s feelings about his specific duties at Oxford perfectly sum up the brothers’ shared sentiment about their time with the company.

“I liked my job,” Marvin Alston said. “Whatever they told me to do I liked it. I liked to work.”

For those at Oxford, like Melton, who have watched the Alston era come to end, it’s easy to see why the brothers’ story is such an important one to an organization that prides itself on being the kind of place where people want to spend a career.

“You just don’t see too many guys like the Alstons anymore,” says Melton. “They were so dependable and so good.”