A Different Take

Article by Jessica Johnson, Senior Associate Editor, Timber Processing February 2018

When I started with Timber Processing, I was as green as they come. Fresh from the University of Alabama’s English department, I’d never heard of a sawmill, let alone been in one. I’ve come a long way in seven years—but, to this day, I still have a little chant I repeat thanks to Managing Editor Dan Shell: “side boards flow to the edger, side boards flow to the edger…”

Since I had no technical knowledge whatsoever, one of the series of articles that intrigued me most in my early days with Hatton-Brown was Man of the Year. I really enjoyed getting to know these special men in a different light than the more traditional mill-focused articles that are the bread and butter of Timber Processing.

When it became apparent that the frontrunner in 2016 was Snider Industries’ Jill Snider Brewer, I felt so fortunate to be the one selected to tell her story of serving her community and the industry as one of the only, if not the only, woman at the table.

All of the editors have written Man of the Year stories, and to have Jill be my first, and for her to be the first female so designated, felt extra special. In fact, it was because of Jill Snider Brewer that the TP Man of the Year title, awarded since 1989, was changed to Person of the Year, something long overdue in my opinion.

The following year I was also tapped to tell Tim Biewer’s story, our 2017 Person of the Year. Meeting him at Biewer Lumber headquarters in Michigan right before Christmas while snow blanketed his town by the river felt special in a different way; as he walked me through a history of family businesses dating back to pre-Prohibition and how a family of brewmeisters from Germany would transition to owning four sawmills with a combined capacity of 550MMBF.

This year, Tommy Battle gives a glimpse of himself as TP’s Person of the Year. This was my second visit to his operation in Wadley, Ga. The first time, in 2014, was in the meaty part of a Southern summer when Battle’s new timber mill had just started up. It was in the middle of a heat wave, and I was eight months pregnant with twin boys, finding myself clambering up catwalks to get the perfect shots of the mill in action.

This recent visit, in the middle of a freak cold snap in early January that brought snow and ice to Georgia, I sat with Tommy for the better part of two hours talking about life, his great love of the sawmill and how he got interested in taking machines designed for pine and making them work for hardwood, laughing along the way at the times someone told him he was out of his damned mind for trying this or that.

We, the editorial board, have had our eye on Tommy for several years as a possible Person of the Year. After calling around the industry and doing some research, we voted unanimously to pass the honor to him. And I once again found myself lucky enough to tell the story of another great person and his family making a difference not only in the industry but in their community.

Maybe our society is losing some traditions, but Timber Processing certainly isn’t losing its annual award—that’s why I am proud to say we’re adding the deserving name of Tommy Battle as number 30 on the list.