Building a legacy

If you ask Miller Gorrie to tell you about his life, you’ll quickly realize you need to be a bit more specific.

“I can give you a book on it,” he said as he stood up from the round table in his Birmingham office to retrieve not one, but two books that have been written about him. 

“Oh,” he said with books in hand and a smile on his face, “you probably won’t have time to read all that. What do you want to know?”

Gorrie, founder and current chairman of the multibillion dollar Brasfield & Gorrie construction firm, opened up about his beginnings in construction on the heels of his firm’s 50th anniversary and right as the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce gears up to present him with the Jemison Visionary Award this month. 

Looking back, Gorrie said, his interest in building began out on a family farm in Trussville when he was just 14 years old. 

“My dad decided he wanted to build a cabin,” said Gorrie, staring out his office’s floor-to-ceiling windows and across the Birmingham skyline. 

And so, for nearly two years, Gorrie and his father would drive the 11 miles to Black Jack Farms and build late into the day. 

Though neither he nor his father had any real construction experience, the two figured it out on their own. 

“It was real, hard work,” Gorrie said. “We didn’t have any concrete or heavy equipment, no electricity. We used a pick, shovel and hammer to build.”

Despite the hard work, Gorrie said he never tired of the building process from that moment on.

“I couldn’t wait to do it again,” he said. 

In school, Gorrie began to study what he knew would further his interest in construction — math and science. Following the advice of his father, an electrical engineer at IBM, Gorrie also began investing, buying IBM stock. 

After graduating from high school, Gorrie attended Auburn University on scholarship and received a civil engineering degree. From there, he spent three years with the Civil Engineer Corps in the Navy. Upon his return to civilian life, Gorrie went on to work for companies such as Daniel Construction, Rust Engineering and J.F. Holley. 

As he gained more knowledge in the field, working at three companies in four years, Gorrie became dissatisfied with working for others and increasingly confident that he could branch out on his own. When a holiday bonus he had been promised turned out to be less than he expected — a mere $50 —  28-year-old Gorrie made up his mind.

 “If I had any doubts about getting out on my own,” he said, “that erased them.” 

Gorrie used the IBM stock he had invested in years earlier to get started. What had started as roughly $7,000 had grown to $100,000. 

By then familiar with the business, Gorrie said he knew in order to be successful right away, he needed to associate himself with a name that was already well known in the construction business. 

“I couldn’t afford a lot of false starts then,” Gorrie said, “and I knew that if I could get connected with a firm rather than start from scratch, I had a better chance.” 

Gorrie used $45,000 from the IBM stock and purchased the construction assets and name of the Thos. C. Brasfield company in 1964. 

“It was a grind,” Gorrie said about the company’s first year. “The company had 20 jobs that first year alone.”

Gorrie said it wasn’t any one big break that helped the company grow from one of its first repair projects, valued at $475, to a company with $2.3 billion in annual revenues. Along with the company’s fellow founders, Jim Anthony, John Darnall, Imogene Powell and James Harbison, Gorrie watched the company prosper.

“It took a lot of hard work and a lot of little breaks,” he said. “We started from nothing and every day, little by little, we started to become something.”

Staring out his window, Gorrie can point to several Birmingham buildings his company built from the ground up. There’s the Regions Harbert Tower that peeks above the downtown skyline, the McWane Science Center, the newly opened Grandview Medical Center and the Kirklin Clinic, among others. 

In Mountain Brook, Brasfield & Gorrie left its footprint in its renovation work at Mountain Brook High School and Fine Arts Center, the Mountain Brook Municipal Complex and Mountain Brook Community Church. 

Across the country, Brasfield & Gorrie has built some of the nation’s most recognizable buildings, including the Georgia Dome and Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta; the “Batman Building,” AT&T corporate headquarters and the Omni Nashville Hotel in Nashville; as well as the video board that was recently installed at Auburn University’s Jordan-Hare Stadium. 

Today, with Gorrie’s son Jim serving as the company’s CEO, Brasfield & Gorrie remains one of the nation’s largest privately held construction firms with approximately 2,600 employees in 19 states. 

Asked what he’d like 2016 to bring, Gorrie smiled.

“More of the same,” he said. “My son Jim is thoroughly accepting of my philosophy that you must surround yourself with excellent people, excellent workers, and reward them as the company succeeds.”

Now in his 80s, Gorrie says he has no plans to retire soon. 

“I want to be around the company until people start looking at me funny,” he said. “I know that if I become inactive I will be sorry.”