Flotte's Notes on Mobile and Baldwin Alabama Citizens

Mobile and Baldwin Citizens

Persons whose names are followed by as asterisk (*) were listed as “Movers & Shakers” in the Mobile Register, 1999. Biographies are primarily from the same.

Politics

· Frank Boykin*. Boykin was one of the most influential men in Mobile for more than three decades, but he left his greatest mark during the 1940s.

o Primary Source: Press-Register series 12/01 Everything’s Made for Love: A Frank Boykin Retrospective by Sam Hodges.

o Boykin's family gave up sharecropping in Choctaw County when he was a small boy, moving in 1893 to southeast Washington County. His father, James, ran a store, and his mother, Glo, took in boarders.

o His tales of his early business life, still told around Mobile and faithfully recorded in the 1973 biography of him that his family had published, merit skepticism.

o Frank Boykin often spoke of how he dropped out of school at age 8 to carry water for a construction crew on the Alabama, Tennessee and Northern Railroad. He told people that at age 16 he went to Washington, D.C., where Alabama Sen. John Hollis Bankhead helped him get a huge contract to supply the Southern Railway with crossties. But books on early Alabama railroads show that the A,T&N didn't form until after 1905, when Boykin was 20. And Bankhead, though a U.S. House member earlier, didn't get to the Senate until 1907, when Boykin was 22.

o John Everett, 20 years older and a Washington County "Cajan", took Boykin on as partner around 1905. In the 1890s, Everett had been buying land and making money through timber, turpentine and oil and gas leases. Boykin almost never mentioned Everett but they were partners for 22 years in the firm was called "Everett and Boykin". Everett and Boykin operated sawmills and commissaries, and had a real estate company in Chickasaw. They appear to have tried their hands at fruit orchards, tung oil, castor beans, cattle, hogs and real estate. They invested in local shipbuilding companies during World War I and later sold war surplus goods. They survived Boykin's 1925 conviction (overturned on appeal) for violating Prohibition laws. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, the two men were buying southwest Alabama land. Local oral history has it, they would let a landowner run up a bill at the commissary, then offer to settle the account by taking title to his property. Everett died unexpectedly in 1927. Boykin got himself appointed administrator of Everett's estate. In 1939 Boykin bought out family members' interest for $8,800. Boykin's brother Matt was the probate judge who approved the deal.

o After Everett's death, Boykin took on other partners, most importantly T.J. Rester, a fellow timberman. Boykin also helped organize a number of other land-related companies. The list includes Bilbo Livestock and Land Co., Washington Lumber and Turpentine Co., Gulf Beach Land and Development Co., Lillian Realty Corp. and Gulf Properties Corp.

o In 1930, Gulf Properties -- led by Birmingham lawyer Forney Johnston -- bought almost all of Dauphin Island for an unknown sum. Boykin had a 20 percent interest in the partnership. Boykin helped organize the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo. In 1953, Boykin and his Dauphin Island partners (Gulf Properties) sold out to the Mobile Chamber of Commerce for about $1 million.

o Boykin was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1934 and re-elected thirteen times. A group of Mobile businessmen and officeholders drafted Boykin to replace McDuffie in Congress. He used the campaign slogan, "Everything's made for love."

o In 1935 he won funds to build the Bankhead Tunnel beneath the Mobile River, which opened in 1941.

o In 1941, he persuaded Congress and the Air Force to build Brookley Field Air Force Base.

o He promoted the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway and other legislation that benefited paper mills, in which he owned stock.

o He aggressively pursued other local and special interests: A bridge to Dauphin Island, where he owned property. Raising the wartime cap on turpentine prices. Finding federal money to protect agriculture from fire ants and white-fringed beetles. Protecting peanut subsidies. Securing an oil-depletion allowance to spur oil production.

o "There was a Captain (Willie) Oswalt of the Oswalt family, and they had a towing company," Cane said. "Frank went by to see him and ask for his support. Captain Oswalt said, 'Frank, I've been knowing you all my life. If we send you to Washington, you're liable to steal the Capitol.' Frank said, 'That's right, but if I steal it I'll bring it back to Mobile.'”

o Because of his floor votes (sporadic though they might have been), Boykin is properly understood as pro-business, anti-organized labor, an isolationist on foreign affairs, and a reliable foe (as were almost all his Southern colleagues) of legislation guaranteeing civil rights for black Americans.

o In his office he had on display a wolf hide, five mounted deer heads, two six-shooters once owned by Jesse James, a German cuckoo clock, an egg from the extinct Great Auk, a 16th-century Italian chastity belt and a preserved whale penis.

o In the early 1940s he acquired a large part of 92,000 acres owned by the United States Lumber and Cotton Co., a failed English land syndicate.

o Boykin brought chemical companies to Washington County in the late 1940s and early 1950s. When a salt dome was discovered on his land in McIntosh, Boykin Boykin formed the Alabama Salt Corp. under his children's names and had business associates, including son-in-law Riley Smith, to buy additional mineral rights in the area of the dome. He persuaded the Mathieson Chemical Co. to put in a plant nearby. The plant purchased salt from Boykin for the production of chlorine and caustic soda. Mathieson, Geigy Chemical Co. and Courtaulds Ltd. Followed, as well as for Alabama Power Co.'s nearby Barry Steam Plant built to service the new companies., allowing Boykin to claim credit for establishing a "chemical kingdom".

o In the late 1940s, Boykin befriended Alabama Gov. "Big Jim" Folsom, who enjoyed hunting on the Boykin property. Folsom had control over Fort Morgan. Boykin and Rester owned about 3,000 acres on the Fort Morgan Peninsula, and Boykin persuaded Folsom to give them a long-term, low-cost lease (under Rester's name) to the fort itself and about 400 surrounding acres. Boykin and Rester opened a hotel and restaurant close to the fort and sold lots up and down the peninsula. The state helped by black-topping the main peninsula road and by building an airstrip nearby. Boykin's role was applauded at first by Hatchett Chandler, the eccentric historian and caretaker of Fort Morgan. Later, Chandler turned on him, devoting one of his many published essays -- "Little Gems" he called them -- to "Old Greedy," his name for the congressman. Ultimately, the hotel and restaurant lost money, and Boykin and Rester let the fort go back to the state.

o It is thought that he knew that the state was going to change the planned route for a new Highway 90 from Mobile to Theodore and bought land where the road was going to go. In late 1948, newspaper clippings show, the state highway department abandoned plans to reroute Highway 90 south along the L&N Railroad tracks. Another Boykin friend and hunting mate, Ward McFarland, Folsom's state highway director, announced the change in mid-December of that year. Rester was buying land there in early December, after the controversy over the route hit the newspapers, but before a final decision had been announced. By the early 1950s, Rester had sold acreage in the area to Skyland Development Corp., which created subdivisions in the area. Boykin son-in-law Riley Smith was an officer in Skyland. Exactly what Boykin knew and when can't be said for sure.

o Boykin, who befriended such oilmen as H.L. Hunt, leased mineral rights on about 150,000 acres, according to son Dick. Boykin got modest amounts for the leases and much more in royalties if there was actual oil and gas production.

o He signed long-term timber leases on100,000 acres in the mid-1950s with St. Regis Paper Co. In a 1965 letter, Frank Boykin said the family was getting $150,000 a year from St. Regis, but he added that the figure was about to double.

o Boykin eventually amassed more than 160,000 acres in Washington and Mobile counties as the Tensaw Land and Timber Co., making him the wealthiest man in Mobile. Through the later 1940s, he and T.J. Rester were selling lots from acreage they owned in south Mobile County, in the old Carol Plantation area. He had timber leases as far away as Mexico, and bought land in Maryland and Virginia. At his death in 1969, he owned about 120,000 acres, and mineral rights on more than that. His worth was estimated anywhere from $60 million to $200 million, and he had set his family up for much greater wealth through minerals and lucrative timber rights deals.

o The Mobile Paper Co. asked the Reconstruction Finance Corporation for a $750,000 loan. To get it, said Papermaker Reuben Hartman, he had to turn over 40% of the company's stock, with a par value of $640,000, to children, brothers and friends of Congressman Boykin for $36,000. Boykin's cousin, Frank Prince, who worked for the RFC. Prince was subsequently fired from the RFC. Stone Container Co., a Chicago-based paper manufacturer, stepped in and offered to buy Mobile Paper's asset's for $1.36 million." Frank's son Bob Boykin "would have a long career with Stone Container," which kept him on to run the Mobile mill. Hartman's family says the mill was stolen from them. Boykin also helped secure a $450,000 for Stutts Lumber Industries of Thomasville to which Boykin sells timber.

o Defeated in 1962, he was convicted of racketeering the next year at age seventy-eight, and sentenced to the federal penitentiary. But Boykin still had friends in the Justice Department. Attorney General Robert Kennedy requested that President Lyndon B. Johnson grant a full pardon to Boykin, and it was done. He was fined $40,000 for influence peddling in a federal tax investigation. Boykin died a year later.

o Boykin's hunting lodge on 10,000 acres, with tracts on either side of Highway 43, just north of McIntosh remain in use by those heirs who wound up with them after bitter family litigation in the 1980s. Each year, a few days after Thanksgiving, they have a hunt attended by local and statewide elected officials. Gov. Don Siegelman, Lt. Gov. Steve Windom and Sen. Richard Shelby are among those who have come. Frank Boykin would invite leaders in government, the military and business.

o In 2001 a group of local oystermen staged a protest by tonging for oysters in beds that the state has declared off-limits to the public. The oystermen say that the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources is illegally allowing private property owners in the Heron Bay area to lease the rights to the oyster beds. Some of the oystermen say they have been arrested this year by state officials for harvesting oysters in the same beds. The oystermen say that they are particularly bothered that one of the private landowners is Riley Boykin Smith, the state commissioner of conservation. Smith is president of Tensaw Land and Timber, and Victor Lott Jr., an attorney for the company, agreed that Tensaw has leased "a large number of areas for oyster reefs for a long time," but he denied that Smith had done anything inappropriate. Riley Boykin Smith is president of the Alabama Wildlife Federation.

· Pat Lyons*. Lyons served on the City Council, then was elected mayor in 1904. He is credited with helping establish a municipal water system, reducing some taxes and paying off a large debt the city owed. He also planted the first azaleas in Bienville Square, a tradition that soon spread across the city. He also helped establish the Michael and Lyons Grocery Co., which became one of the largest in the South, and was a bank executive and owner of steamships.

· Jack Edwards*. Edwards served 20 years in the U.S. Congress, retiring in 1984. He was instrumental in establishing federal funding the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, the Theodore Ship Canal, and the Interstate 10 tunnel downtown. As a private citizen, he also worked to support the Mobile Convention Center, built on the waterfront, and for improving public education in Mobile County. He is semi-retired from law practice now.

o “Jack Edwards said that I had made him rethink what he was doing in Washington on some issues and [that he didn't want to wonder] when his grandson got around to reading his public record, what he may think. Jack did try very hard to help MBAS and Tom Davis of Sunshine Canoes to place the Escatawpa River in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Designation“ – Myrt Jones

· Jeremiah Andrew Denton Jr., born in Mobile, is a retired U.S. Navy admiral and a former U.S. senator of the Republican party. He spent almost eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and later wrote a book about his experiences - When Hell Was in Session (which was made into a TV movie in 1979). Denton attended McGill Institute and Spring Hill College and graduated from the US Naval Academy. Denton is best known for the 1966 North Vietnamese television interview he gave, as a prisoner, in Hanoi. During the interview he blinked his eyes in morse code to spell out the word "torture" to communicate that his captors were torturing him. For his continuous resistance and leadership, even in the face of torture and inhumane conditions, he would be awarded the Navy Cross.

· Alfred L. Staples.* He was known as ``Mr. Mardi Gras'' because he was so involved in Mobile's annual celebration and helped give it financial security. He was considered a leading businessman and banker for several decades and served in the state House of Representatives from 1935 to 1939. He was one of the few people to serve political interests in two states: In 1965, he was on the staff of Mississippi Gov. Paul Johnson. Staples was the father of Emily Staples, who married William J. Hearin.

· John T. Cochrane Sr.* made his first impact on Alabama by constructing short-line railroads statewide, including the Alabama, Tennessee, & Northern, opening rural areas to commerce. He built banks and served as president of the Mobile City and County School Board, where he was instrumental in building Murphy High School. He also founded the state's first oil refinery, built on Blakeley Island. In 1925, as president of the Chamber of Commerce, he organized the effort to erect the bridge that was ultimately named after him, the Cochrane-Africatown Bridge. He was instrumental in building the Mobile Bay Causeway in 1927. Cochrane remained at the helm of the AT&N until his death in 1938. At that point his son, John Jr., assumed the position and held it until 1946. He disposed of his holdings in the line to a syndicate of investors. Cochrane lived at 1028 Government Street on the northwest corner of Government and Espejo streets, where a branch of AmSouth Bank now stands.

· Joe Langan*. Langan was state representative from 1939 to 1947, state senator until 1953, then city commissioner and then mayor until 1969. Langan is credited with expanding the city limits. He also built fire stations and Municipal Park (now named for him) and the Mobile Museum of Art. He also helped change a city spoils system to a merit system that reduced corruption. Langan worked behind the scenes to promote racial equality. His work led to the hiring of the first black policemen and firemen, and he encouraged banks and other businesses to hire more blacks. While some racist whites criticized him as doing too much to promote integration, some blacks complained he did too little. In 1969, he was caught in the middle and was voted out of office.

· Wiley Bolden*. In 1944 Bolden helped form the Voters League, which registered blacks to vote and involved people in politics. He and John LeFlore organized the local branch of the NAACP, and fought for years for civil rights advancements for blacks. But he is perhaps best remembered for being the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that forced the City of Mobile to change its form of government. Because of Bolden and others, Mobile now has seven council members, elected from districts that ensure at least three black members. Until 1985, three commissioners were elected at-large, virtually guaranteeing a black member would never have been elected. Bolden died in 1987 at the age of 94.

· John LeFlore*. He was Mobile's foremost civil rights leader for more than three decades. His was the voice of nonviolence and quiet moderation, and working with Mayor Joe Langan, helped achieve many integration gains without demonstrations and violence. He was executive secretary of the local NAACP for 38 years, and kept working toward goals even after shots were fired at his house in 1965 and his home was burned in 1967. In the 1930s and `40s, he was credited with helping to open Pullman dining car service to blacks, and helped open employment opportunities for blacks in the U.S. Postal Service in this area. He was instrumental in filing the Birdie Mae Davis lawsuit in 1963 that forced the integration of Mobile County Schools, as well as the Bolden et al vs. City of Mobile suit that forced a change in Mobile's form of government that was more democratic and representative of the city's population. He died in 1976.

· Michael W. Figures*. In 1972, Figures was one of the first four blacks to graduate from the University of Alabama School of Law. Three years later, he was one of the lawyers who filed the landmark lawsuit that forced Mobile to change its government from three commissioners elected at large, to a more democratic and representative council, with members elected from districts. Five of the seven members must approve anything before it can pass, and this insures that at least one black member has a say-so in everything. In 1978, he became the first black state senator from Mobile County, and was later elected the Senate's first black pro-tempore, second-in-command. In the Legislature, he worked for education reform. In the 1980s, he helped the family of a black teen-ager who was lynched by two Ku Klux Klansmen win a $7 million judgment that mortally wounded what was left of the Klan. In 1988, he was arrested with 23 other black legislators in an effort to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds. In 1996, Figures, at the height of his power in the Senate, suffered a brain aneurysm and died at the age of 49. His wife, Vivian Figures, was elected to succeed him.

· Vernon Crawford (1919-86) founded Mobile's first African-American law firm in 1956. He also founded Gulf Federal Saving and Loan. Crawford worked on many important civil right's cases, including L. B. Sullivan v. New York Times, Bolden v. City of Mobile, and Birdie Mae Davis, et. al. v. Mobile County School Board.

· Arthur Outlaw*. Outlaw’s father, George, was one of the founding fathers of Morrison’s Cafeteria in 1920. Outlaw joined the Morrison organization, eventually becoming secretary-treasurer and vice-chairman of the board. Outlaw was elected Mobile’s mayor in 1985. As mayor until 1989, Outlaw is credited with initiating the Convention Center, laying the groundwork for downtown rejuvenation, boosting tourism, hiring more police officers and attracting new industry to the city.

o George Cabell Outlaw, Sr., an attorney, advanced J. A. Morrison $800. In 1928, serving as secretary-treasurer, Outlaw orchestrated the sale of public stock brought outside capital into the enterprise and enabled Morrison’s Cafeteria to continue to grow. During the 1940s, he continued serving as secretary-treasurer after Morrison retired. In 1952, Outlaw was instrumental in the formation of Morrison Food Services, a division which today is contracted to serve more than 300 institutions. For a number of years Outlaw served as president of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce.

· Mike Dow was Mayor of Mobile from 1989 to 2005. He served three-tours in Vietnam as a helicopter door gunner. He joined his brother-in-law Jim Busby’s laser printer company QMS in 1977. QMS was eventually taken public. Dow left QMS to run for mayor in 1988, when he won over Arthur Outlaw. Among Dow’s accomplishments as mayor is the downtown “String of Pearls” initiative. After deciding not to run for reelection in 2005, Dow joined Jim Busby’s new company CentraLite as Executive Vice-President of Sales and Marketing.

· Mary Zoghby* served in the Alabama House from 1978 to 1994 and was considered one of the most influential people in the Legislature. She was chairwoman of the House Banking Committee and she successfully guided legislation that changed Mobile's form of government to a more democratic one, made historic preservation easier through tax-free bonding authority, allowed women to obtain court orders forcing their abusers out of the house, and other measures. After failing to win re-election in 1994, Mrs. Zoghby stepped right in as resource director for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Mobile, where she works to find funding to keep youth active and off the streets. In 1996, she was honored as Mobilian of the Year.

· Ann Smith Bedsole is a native of Selma and grew up in Jackson, AL. Mrs. Bedsole is the owner and operator of Bedsole Farms and President and Chairman of the Board of White Smith Land Co. She also chairs the distribution committee of the Sybil H. Smith Charitable Trust. In 1978 Ann Bedsole became the first Republican woman ever to be elected to the Alabama House of Representatives and subsequently Alabama State Senator. Bedsole credits her father, the late lumberman M. White Smith for her interest in politics as a youngster. White Smith owned a sawmill and timberland in the county and was an early Alabama Republican.

· Ethan Allen Hitchcock (1835–1909), born in Mobile, served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

· Alexis Herman served as the Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton. The daughter of politician Alex Herman and Gloria Caponis, a school teacher, Alexis grew up in Mobile and earned her high school diploma from the Heart of Mary High School. She briefly attended Spring Hill College, and graduated from Xavier University. Herman serves on the boards of several major companies, including Coca Cola, Toyota, Cummins, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, and Prudential.

· William H. (Bill) Pryor was born in Mobile and attended McGill-Toolen Catholic High School. From 1997 to 2004, he served as Alabama attorney general. Pryor received national attention in 2003 when he called for the removal of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore; he said although he agreed with the propriety of displaying the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, he was bound to follow the court order and uphold the rule of law. Pryor was nominated to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush in 2003 and, after his nomination stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition, he was installed as judge via recess appointment in 2004. He was confirmed to the Eleventh Circuit and sworn in to the lifetime judicial position in 2005. Pryor's father, Holcombe, is a Roman Catholic deacon who teaches at McGill-Toolen.

Business

Maritime

· John P. Waterman*. Waterman came to Mobile in 1902 as a manager for a British steamship line. In 1919, he joined in organizing a steamship line that became the Waterman Steamship Corp. By World War II, the company owned more than 125 ships. As the late newspaperman John Will put it, "From that date until his death in Mobile in 1937, Mr. Waterman's heart was set on the development of Mobile as a major port in its own right." Waterman led the fight for more deepwater facilities to expand Mobile's seagoing possibilities. He also fought for the development of interior waterways coming to Mobile, and worked to equalize Mobile's rates for railroad and barge line service. – PR 6/7/06

· Ed Roberts*, also known as E.A. Roberts, was chairman of the Waterman Steamship Corp. Beginning as a cargo clerk, Roberts won promotions that led to becoming president of the company in 1936. During World War II, Roberts headed the largest privately owned steamship line in the nation, operating a fleet of 125 ships. Roberts personally served as an advisor to the director general of the War Shipping Administration, a position for which he was awarded a Certificate of Merit from President Harry Truman.

o He was chairman of the city's first planning commission from 1944-1950, which produced a master plan for the city's growth, a new police headquarters, expanded sanitary sewer service, and laid the groundwork for Ladd Stadium. Roberts also started a youth sports program, worked to expand the State Docks, and raised money for a new UMS-Wright campus on Mobile Street.

o He started Southern Industries, which capitalized and managed fledgling businesses in the city and grew from $1.9 million in total assets in 1946 to more than $28 million in 1964.

o He also purchased and restored the Grand Hotel, and spurred the construction of the Waterman Building in downtown Mobile.

· Malcom McLean bought Waterman Steamship in 1955 He is known as the “father of containerization.” - New Zealand Shipping and Marine Society, PR 9/19/99

o He was born in 1913 in North Carolina. He worked as a trucker and at the age of 21 he began the McLean Trucking Co. which, by his 40th birthday, he had made into the second biggest road haulage operation in the US.

o McLean conceived the idea of using ships to carry demountable truck bodies from semi-trailers on board ship. It is said that in 1937, while waiting for long hours in his truck cab for his cargo of cotton to be loaded aboard a ship in Hoboken, he asked himself why the whole truck could not be loaded at once. Moreover, his developing vision embraced rather more than mere cargo handling, extending to a concept of coordinating both sea and land transport around these portable units.

o In 1955, after selling his trucking company, he bought Pan Atlantic Steamship and its small fleet of war-built T-2 tankers from Waterman. The tankers, with minimum modifications, were converted for the carriage of van bodies. Four months later in 1955, McLean bought Waterman Steamship. Six of the Waterman vessels were converted at the Mobile Ship Repair Co to carry 226 35-ft. vans, and in 1957 the first of these ships, the Gateway City, entered service. McLean borrowed $57 million to buy Mobile-based Waterman and the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Co.

o In 1959 Pan-Atlantic became Sea-Land Service, still predominantly a Gulf and east coast operation. Sea-Land established a reputation for the conversion of tankers, cargoships and other military surplus vessels. Waterman continued operating under that name while Pan-Atlantic became Sea-Land Service Inc.

o In 1969, McLean sold both companies to R.J. Reynolds Industries for $157 million worth of RJR stock. He also took a seat on the Reynolds board of directors. McLean turned his attention to real estate, life assurance and farming; he bought a gigantic peat harvesting operation and developed modular housing and applied his expertise in materials handling to the development of a device that would help transfer patients from hospital beds to stretchers. In 1977, McLean resigned his Reynolds board post to buy a shipping competitor, U.S. Lines, for $111 million.

o Ironically Mobile did not take advantage of containerization, although Waterman was headquartered there and McLean lived there.

o In 1955 McLean bought an estate in Point Clear which he used as a summer residence while residing much of the year in New York City. He was a majority stockholder in Mobile-based Loyal American Insurance Co. and in Diamondhead Corp., which developed Lake Forest in Daphne and other real estate ventures in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. McLean died in 2001. In 2007 the McLean family donated $1 million to the Mobile Maritime Museum.

o Despite McLean's connection to South Alabama, containerization did not become a major factor in the Port of Mobile because of its emphasis on bulk cargo and forest products.

· Angus R. Cooper*. Angus R. Cooper started in the stevedoring business on the Mobile docks in 1905. Today, its descendant corporation is known as Cooper/T. Smith Stevedoring Inc., located on Royal Street. Cooper/T. Smith now has operations in thirty-eight US ports, and has foreign operations in Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Canada and Mexico.

o The Coopers were drawn to the waterfront by producing resin for naval stores from their Baldwin County pine plantations. In 1925, Angus Cooper and his family moved to New Orleans where he would expand his stevedoring business and manage the Munson Line’s gulf-wide operations. The Munson Line prospered so well that Munson built one of the first true skyscrapers in New York City; however, Munson hit hard times in 1929. Angus Cooper continued handling stevedoring for one of Munson’s allies, Alcoa Steamship Company, and as a result the Munson Line surrendered all of their equipment in lieu of pay.

o Angus Cooper’s son, Ervin S. Cooper, joined his family's business and had two sons (Angus II and David). He directed the firm's expansion to ports throughout the U.S. Today, at the foot of Government Street, Cooper Riverside Park honors him. Angus Cooper II is a member of the board of trustees for the University of Alabama system, and serves on an array of boards across the Gulf Coast and in Mobile, including UMS-Wright Preparatory School, Kaiser International Corp., Whitney National Bank and the D-Day Museum in New Orleans.