Photo by Madoline Markham.
A lifetime of public service
Mayor Terry Oden looks over plans for the city’s new municipal complex from the temporary city hall building. The mayor will begin his fifth four-year term in office in November.
Long before Terry Oden took the reins as mayor of Mountain Brook, he handled a very critical government assignment: Protecting former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in New York.
That sensitive job the year after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated came in Oden’s first year working for the U.S. Secret Service. He later joined the White House team, protecting presidents and fulfilling assignments that sent him to all corners of the globe in a career that spanned the years from 1964 to 1989.
Almost 50 years since that first government assignment, Oden is continuing his lifelong commitment to public service. With no challenger in the upcoming election, he will begin his fifth term as mayor of Mountain Brook in November. He has held the mayoral role since 1996, and the new term will see him reach the 20-year mark in the mayor’s chair.
Looking back on his tenure as Mountain Brook’s mayor, he cited developing the Birmingham Zoo as a key project. “Several years ago, the old Shades Valley property came up for sale,” he said. “I’d heard a developer wanted to bring a K-Mart in there.”
Oden got the City of Mountain Brook involved, and lined up support with the City of Homewood and Jefferson County. They approached the mayor of Birmingham about joining in, but his support was contingent upon acquiring all the property.The landowner insisted on holding a plot of land for personal use, so Birmingham backed out of the deal.
The end result was that Mountain Brook bought the property, leased it back to the group running the zoo and used the remaining property as green space. This also allowed the zoo to remain private and build success on that. The zoo draws almost a half million visitors a year, and Oden is proud of that success.
Oden is also looking forward to completion of a major ongoing project. The new City Hall municipal complex is scheduled to open in December. The new facility will house Fire Station #1, administrative offices for the fire department, the jail, the police department, the city manager and all administrative personnel. “For the first time, the mayor will have an office at city hall,” Oden said.
Other big issues on the horizon are the recently approved Lane Parke development. The economic impact of this project will hopefully be huge for the city, according to Oden. The Mountain Brook Shopping Center and the old apartments will have to go to make room for the new construction, but the shopping center is neither beautiful nor historical, he said.
Highway 280 issues are also looming. Oden said the mess was created by years of over-building and under-planning. He’s not sure of a solution, but he feels an elevated highway is not the answer.
He said the hardest part of being mayor of Mountain Brook is a schedule full of meetings. He also is the chairman of the Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency. Fortunately, most of the complaints and other day-to-day issues are handled by Sam Gaston, the city manager. This allows Oden to focus on bigger issues.
Not all of Oden’s career has been in the public sector. After the Secret Service, Oden served ten years as senior vice president and director of corporate security for AmSouth. He also started a security firm specializing in securing America’s infrastructure against terrorists.
His beginning in politics began when former Mountain Brook Mayor Billy Gibbons approached Oden to see if he had an interest. Oden got his feet wet by working with the planning commission, and then in 1992, a group of citizens asked him to run for city councilman.
Oden is looking forward to another term serving the city, but he said whenever he does retire he plans to spend more time with the hobbies he loves: woodworking and restoring old fire trucks. He’s a member of the Southern Vintage Fire Apparatus Association, which currently has 15 restored or semi-restored fire engines and 10 that need restoration. Oden’s father was a firefighter, which is where his love of these vehicles began. The group does some body and mechanical work on the vehicles, but they send them out for major repairs. Most of the engines are stored in downtown Birmingham in a building owned by George Barber, owner of Barber Motorsports. “[Barber] likes old fire engines almost as much as he loves old motorcycles,” Oden said.
Oden said his long, successful career of public service was made possible by his wife, Sandra. When he worked with the Secret Service, he spent a great deal of time away from home, so his wife became proficient at managing a household and raising their two daughters, Christie and Mary. “I give the credit for any successes I might have to her,” he said.
How does Mayor Oden wish to be remembered? “I’d like to be remembered as somebody who was competent, who was not carried away by the office of mayor,” he said. “Somebody who did a good job in a low-key and professional manner and left the city better off as a result of his term in office.”
