POWERGRAMS

26 – housed in an old horse carriage shop – to get them back on the road. Local celebrities include former Alabama and NFL defensive end Wallace Gilberry, who played 10 seasons with the Giants, Chiefs, Buccaneers, Bengals and Lions before retiring. He returned home in 2016 to host a celebrity fundraising basketball game, annual Easter egg hunts and flag football league for kids. Award-winning broadcaster Chasity Byrd is a Fox 10 television meteorologist in Mobile who still lives in Bay Minee. Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Lyn Stewart's legal office is here in her hometown. Nine-year-old cancer survivor Starla Chapman has nearly 30,000 followers on her Facebook page. She is on the first IHOP Kid Culinary Team and was a Children's Miracle Network Champion Child in 2014. But residents who were around in 1976 are still talking about when Steven Spielberg came to town to film a cast of stars and 2,000 local extras for the evacuation scene of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." The Hollywood director chose Bay Minee because of its abandoned L&N Railroad station, and the movie went on to be one of the most successful ever. A decade later, a community effort paid for the station built in 1904 to be moved several miles to the main beach route where it is now the headquarters of the North Baldwin Chamber of Commerce. "I've just fallen in love with this lile town," says Kristina Angelone, a Miami native and coordinator of special projects and operations for the chamber. "I'm used to living in a metropolis but Bay Minee has become my adopted hometown." Standard Furniture Three years ago, the hosts of HGTV's popular "Fixer Upper" joined hands with Bay Minee's largest employer, launching the Magnolia Home line. Despite selling bed frames, dressers, night stands and chests nationwide for more than 70 years, Standard Furniture became something of an overnight sensation. "It's been great," says Chief Financial Officer Karmen Still, siing in a conference room of the company that builds or distributes 4.5 million units annually and ranks among the top 13 furniture manufacturers. "That's the brand that everyone recognizes." Chip and Joanna Gaines have brought widespread notoriety, but Macy's, American Freight, Badcock, Aaron's and other major retailers have sold Standard furniture for many years. Recently, Wayfair and e-commerce sites have become big buyers of Standard products. In 2016, Standard opened its Asia headquarters in Vietnam. More than 500 local employees build the bedroom furniture from parts received at the Port of Mobile, with the finished products being transported across the U.S. and Canada by a fleet of trucks pulling 53-foot-long, 3,000-cubic- foot trailers. Standard has independent sales representatives throughout the country. The Standard plant is one of the most well- known faces of Bay Minee business, running along Highway 31 for block aer city block. The current facility is the fruit of frequent expansions aer fire destroyed the plant in Chamber offices are in former L&N Railroad Depot; at right, leukemia survivor Chapman is an IHOP Celebrity Chef, serving pancakes to raise funds for medical research. Standard Furniture showroom displays Chip and Joanna Gaines Magnolia Home furniture.

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