Celebrating civic servants

Chamber to honor Terry Oden, Penny Page at in-person outdoor Annual Luncheon

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce has been forced to cancel or reschedule numerous events.

One of those events is the Mountain Brook Chamber Annual Luncheon, which was scheduled to be held at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Mountain Brook Village in January.

The event had to be postponed, but the chamber will still be able to hold the luncheon — one of its largest and most eagerly anticipated annual events — in person, despite the pandemic.

“With COVID-19, we had to make a decision whether to cancel or postpone, and the decision by the board of directors was to have it in the spring in hopes that the pandemic would be under control,” said Suzan Doidge, the chamber’s long-time executive director.

The event will be held in person at The Birmingham Zoo on April 27 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. It will take place outdoors under a tent and be as socially distanced as possible.

“We’re praying for no rain, and we’re excited to do something in person again,” said Molly Wallace, the chamber’s project manager.

“The Birmingham Zoo has been great to work with,” Doidge said. 

The event will be set up so that everyone feels safe, she said, with tables six feet apart, a mask requirement and sanitizer available at stations.

As usual, several major awards will be presented.

The winner of the Jemison Visionary Award is former Mountain Brook Mayor Terry Oden.

Penny Page will receive the William Tynes Award from the O’Neal Library.

The city of Mountain Brook’s employee of the year is Det. Drew Moore from the Mountain Brook Police Department.

“The winners are always such great people who’ve done great things for the community, and it’s always fun to celebrate them,” Wallace said.

It will be a thrill to finally hold an in-person event and get over some of the isolation of the pandemic and quarantines, Doidge said.

“Most of us have been working from home or spending more time away from the general public,” she said.

This will be the first time that the luncheon has been hosted outside, Doidge said.

“The look and feel of the event will make it more festive because it is taking place under a large tent,” she said. “Of course, it’s the people that make the event special.”

MAYOR, VISIONARY, DEDICATED SERVANT

Former Mountain Brook Mayor Terry Oden had a long career in city politics.

When that career ended in November 2016 at the end of his fifth term as mayor of the city, he was the longest-serving mayor in Mountain Brook history and was widely praised by other local officials.

City Manager Sam Gaston said the thing he would miss most was Oden’s “love and dedication” to the community.

Council President Virginia Smith said she would miss working with Oden.

“Mayor Oden is very straightforward and levelheaded,” she said. “He enjoys serving as spokesperson of the city.”

Oden was always “willing to listen to others and explore new ideas,” Smith said.

Oden was always a “pleasure to work with,” Doidge said.

“He is someone I have learned a lot from,” Doidge said. “As an analytical thinker he always approaches an issue with a lot of research and is very thorough. He is a passionate person and a very loyal friend.”

In November 2016, at one of the first City Council meetings after he left office, Oden was honored by his successor, Stewart Welch III.

Welch read a resolution thanking Oden for his “outstanding and unparalleled service” to the city.

Not only that, but Gaston told Oden that the new police and fire training building the city was building would be called the Mayor Terry Oden Police and Fire Training Facility.

“This is a great honor,” Oden said. “It’s a silver dollar.”

Despite the fact that he was not a native of Mountain Brook, he came to love the city and become an everlasting part of it.

He and his family have lived in Mountain Brook since about 1970, Oden said.

The city has a feel that Oden — who grew up in Birmingham’s East Lake neighborhood in the 1950s — adores.

“I called it Mayberry U.S.A.,” he said. “It’s a quaint place, and it’s still nice and clean and safe and beautiful, and it reminds me of the 50s. And the city keeps it that way. The best I can determine in my time here, most of the people here like it like that.”

In fact, part of Oden’s vision while in office was to help the stay remain as it is.

“That’s what I tried to do in my 20 years as mayor and five years on the City Council, to maintain that same ambience about the place,” he said.

A proud 1955 graduate of Woodlawn High School, Oden attended Auburn University before working in the oil fields of New Mexico.

He then served three years stationed in Japan with the U.S. Army.

He finished his degree in history and political science at Auburn in 1964 and joined the U.S. Secret Service.

Oden was detailed with the Kennedy family and later with President Lyndon Johnson and his family in Washington and Austin, Texas.

In his long career with the Secret Service, he also served in Birmingham, Montgomery, Kansas City and San Francisco.

In 1984, he was appointed U. S. Attaché and Special Agent in Charge of Overseas Operations, stationed in Paris.

He retired from the Secret Service in 1988.

After returning to Birmingham. Oden worked for about a decade as director of corporate security for AmSouth Bank before starting his own security consulting firm.

Oden entered politics in the city when he was appointed to the Planning Commission in the early 1980s, serving on the commission for about 10 years.

Oden became a member of the Mountain Brook City Council in 1992.

He ran unopposed for mayor of Mountain Brook in 1996 and was re-elected without opposition in 2000. In 2004 he was re-elected over two challengers. Oden was again unopposed for his fourth and fifth terms in 2008 and 2012.

Oden helped steer the city Mountain Brook through some big changes.

These included the construction of the new City Hall, the beginnings of the Lane Parke development and the opening of the Grand Bohemian Hotel.

He had numerous other elements in his legacy, Gaston said in 2016.

While Oden was mayor, “the city strengthened its financial base and standing, renovated the commercial villages, … added many additional miles of sidewalks in the community, built a new municipal complex and several other municipal buildings,” Gaston said.

Oden also successfully led an effort by Mountain Brook, Homewood and Jefferson County to buy the old Shades Valley High School property from a developer for public use by the Birmingham Zoo.

He enjoyed being mayor because of the unique nature of Mountain Brook government.

“We don’t have any politics over here,” he said. “It’s a pleasant-type thing. It’s not like fighting city hall all the time, and it’s quite an honor to be the mayor of Mountain Brook.”

“Everybody that is involved does it for the good of the city,” Oden said. “Nobody gets paid, so there is no money incentive to run for any office over here. We don’t have wards or districts, so nobody is trying to take care of Cherokee Bend or Crestline. They are doing everything for the whole city.”

The job of the mayor in Mountain Brook, primarily, is “bringing it all together, kind of looking out for everybody.”

He also appreciated the fact that most people in Mountain Brook — including the city employees, office holders and volunteers for boards and agencies — are intelligent and well-educated.

“All of the people are very well-qualified to do whatever they do,” he said.

In terms of the vision he brought to the job, Oden said it came from his wide variety of life experience.

“I had lived in my former life in 10 different cities, and I was not born and raised in Mountain Brook, so I looked at things with kind of a bigger global look,” he said.

For example, in the U.S. Army and Secret Service, he lived in Marin County, California; Austin, Texas; Paris; Hokkaido, Japan; Kansas City, Missouri; New York City; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta and Montgomery.

“I see how things were done in other places,” he said. “I just used my worldly knowledge to look at things locally — just using things in my life experience that were outside the city of Mountain Brook … ”

Oden is a great choice for the Jemison Award, said Doidge, who worked closely with Oden for several years.

“Terry has spent his entire life in public service,” she said.

She calls him “a man of honor and a servant leader” with “too many accomplishments to list.”

Oden and his wife Sandra have two daughters, Christie, who works in the Division of Preventive Medicine at UAB, and Mary Elliott, who lives in Virginia with her husband and three children.

PAGE ‘EXEMPLIFIES COMMITMENT’

Penny Page, a long-time lover and supporter of the O’Neal Library, is the recipient of the 2021 William Tynes Award.

The Tynes Award is an honor bestowed upon an individual or group who is recognized for service to the city and, especially, O’Neal Library.

William “Bill” Tynes Jr. was instrumental in the establishment of the Mountain Brook Library Foundation and served as president from 2003-08.

He also served on the Mountain Brook City Council from 1988-96, during which time he advocated strongly for the library.

It seems appropriate that the library’s Board of Trustees and the Mountain Brook Library Foundation will give the award to Page.

Page’s grandfather, Kirkman O’Neal, donated the seed money to start the library over 50 years ago.

She eventually became a member of the Junior Women’s Committee of 100, an organization which raises money for the library’s children’s area.

For many years, she volunteered by shelving books and helping with the annual Summer Reading Carnival.

She joined the O’Neal Library Board of Trustees in 2008, serving until 2020. During her tenure, the library began offering digital materials, expanded public computer use, hired a new library director, and completed many landscaping and building maintenance projects.

In fact, Page generously shared her extensive knowledge of gardening to enhance the beautiful grounds of the library.

“Penny Page exemplifies commitment to the O’Neal Library and to providing exceptional library services to Mountain Brook,” according to a statement from library director Lindsy Gardner, “Penny is unfailingly kind and gracious to her colleagues, library staff, patrons and city leaders.”

The library has meant so much to me over the years... and I am so proud to be associated with this wonderful place,” Page said in a statement.

Page called the library “a happy place with something for the old and the young and everyone in between.”

Page, who rolled off the library board in September 2020, said she looks “forward to bringing my grandchildren to storytime when we can finally get back to normal,” she said, referring to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Past recipients of the Tynes Award include Lee Gewin, Forsyth Donald, Dr. John Poynor, Larry Faulkner, Western Supermarkets, Sue DeBrecht, Alice McSpadden Williams, and Tom Carruthers.

EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR

Each year, the city of Mountain Brook names employees of the year in each of five departments before.

Then a five-person committee including Doidge and some city officials name an overall city Employee of the Year who is honored at the annual luncheon.

The recipient this year is Drew Moore, a detective with the Mountain Brook Police Department.

Moore has been with the department for nine years and was involved in “numerous high-profile cases” in 2020, Police Chief Ted Cook told Village Living.

The detective did exemplary work on all his cases, but was especially instrumental in solving several very intricate and sensitive cases, Cook said.

Moore, who is part of the department’s Criminal Investigations Division, also works “tirelessly and selflessly” until a task is complete, the chief said.

The honoree said that he “felt very appreciative” when he was told that he had been chosen.

He also said that he gets “a great deal of satisfaction working with the consummate professionals” at the MBPD.

Moore also gave his motivation for becoming a police officer.

“I wanted to be able to make a quantifiable difference in the lives of others,” he said.

Annual Luncheon

Admission to the Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce Annual Luncheon is $100 per person. A table sponsorship with eight seats is $1,000.

For more information, including other sponsorships, call the chamber at 205-871-3779 or go to mtnbrookchamber.org/events.