McTyeire receives Jemison Award
Katherine McTyeire was a woman in a man’s world.
Entering adulthood in the 1940s, she opened her own business at age 29. She was the first woman director of First National Bank (which later became AmSouth) and the first woman director of the Birmingham Area Chamber of Commerce and of the Better Business Bureau of Alabama. She was also the first woman to join the Rotary Club of Birmingham and the first woman to be inducted into the Kiwanis Club of Birmingham’s Hall of Fame.
The Robert Jemison Visionary Award was presented to her family in honor of her service at the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce Luncheon on Jan. 16.
Until her death at age 93, McTyeire maintained the spunk and drive that propelled her as a leader in business and civic involvement for decades. Her family’s thick folder full of news clippings testifies to her manifold investment in the community.
“It was so much fun to be in a man’s world,” she said “I would offer my opinion, and they would be startled. I told them not to put me on a board if I couldn’t express myself.”
In 1949, the mother of three boys borrowed money from her mother to open Iron Art.
Her father wouldn’t give her a job at his iron furniture manufacturing business, and at the news of her starting one of her own, he told her mother it wouldn’t last a year. It lasted 60.
Recalling how friends had called her to place orders for furniture from father’s Birmingham Ornamental Iron Co., she opened a retail store to sell a line of its furniture.
She soon expanded the business to feature antiques and accessories and grew it from a Southside storefront to a second in Mountain Brook Village, which finally closed in 2007.
McTyeire and her husband, William Jr., would add two daughters to their family after Iron Art opened. One, Kate Millhouse, would go on to study interior design and join her mother’s business for nearly 30 years.
McTyeire talked to students at Auburn University about how “little acorns can grow into big oak trees” just as her business started as a “little operation with a big dream.”
She decorated homes as far away as Florida and New York and traveled to Europe to buy items for the shop.
Still, her family always came first, she said, and her life’s work didn’t end there.
“It’s important for everyone to set aside their own affairs to give to the community,” she said.
At one time she served on 14 different boards, and her husband served on 10. According to a news article in the Shades Valley Sun in 1982, friends described her as “jet-propelled.”
As the first chairman of the board of the Emmet O’Neal Library, she helped spur on its growth and place the only two library directors on staff since its opening.
As a business owner, she helped organized the Merchants Association for the City of Mountain Brook. The small group would meet over coffee to discuss improvements to the village and how to get more traffic for merchants.
She served as president of many civic organizations including the Women’s Committee of 100 and Junior League of Birmingham. For her alma mater, Birmingham-Southern College, she was a trustee.
In 1969, Alabama Governor Albert Brewer appointed her to travel around Alabama as chair of the Alabama Sesquicentennial Commission in honor of the state’s 150th anniversary in 1969.
No matter what she did, Millhouse said her mother always put others first.
“Her employees never did anything she wouldn’t do herself,” she said.
McTyeire said her father not only taught her about business but also to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That’s what she has done, and continued to do for 93 years.
Editor’s Note: Katherine McTyeire was interviewed for this story shortly before she passed away in December 2013.