POWERGRAMS

22 The Yella Fella, longtime Auburn University Board of Trustees member, founder of a rags-to-riches business, Jimmy Rane is a lot of things to a lot of people. But nowhere on Earth does he mean as much to folks as he does in Abbeville. Trying to find a naysayer in Ranesville, er, Abbeville, is like trying to find a bug in a Yella board. Without prompting, citizens routinely sing Rane's praises. At lunch in a private dining room, he is repeatedly interrupted by people who seem genuinely awed. It's easy to understand Rane's popularity in his hometown. He has bought and restored much of the downtown. Behind many of the storefronts are corporate offices of Great Southern Wood Preserving Inc., which he founded 51 years ago. He is the brains behind Huggin' Molly's, his almost-authentic 1950s restaurant. He restored the circa- 1890s railroad depot. He revived the outside of 73-year-old Archie Theater and is working to open the interior for concerts, plays, lectures and movies. Rane's fingerprints are all over downtown. But drive beyond Doswell and Kirkland streets and you'll run into some of the businesses where he employs hundreds. Look outside of town, across Alabama, the South, Midwest and Northeast, and his businesses employ hundreds more. "I travel through a lot of small towns that, back in the day, were vibrant, but not so much anymore," says Fred Arnold of Arnold's Furniture. "Jimmy Rane is absolutely the reason for this town being what it is today. He's been very loyal and, of course, he loves our town." Rane hadn't expected to make Abbeville his home for life. He planned to work with a prestigious law firm in Birmingham. He was already clerking there and had accepted a job offer, pending his graduation from Samford University's Cumberland School of Law and getting past the bar exam. However, in June 1970, Rane's first wife's parents were killed in an automobile accident. They were owners of a large farm in Abbeville, and the property included a small wood- treating plant that Rane's father-in-law used to treat fence posts for his farm and others nearby. Rane set up a one- room law practice on the square in downtown Abbeville and split his time between practicing law and treating wood. By 1973, the company had its first profitable year, earning $18,796.97. Rane's brother, Greg, came in as a full partner after he graduated from Auburn University in 1974. That's also the year the company bought its first truck. In 1976, Great Southern opened a second plant in Mobile. "Even though we kept growing, we never seemed to have any money," Rane says. "We always had to wait for payments to come in before we could pay our bills." An unexpected offer from Harvard University in 1983 changed Rane's life, and the future of Abbeville and Alabama. "At that time, I had a degree in business administration, a law degree, had been in business 13 years but to my disappointment I still didn't understand why we never had any money," he says. "When I got to Harvard, we were doing a case study on Browning Lumber Co., and the fellow that owned it had the same problems we were having. It was like someone flipped a switch and a light came on. We couldn't make good business decisions because every decision we made was based on us not having money." In 1984, Rane secured a $1 million line of credit through Birmingham Trust National Bank and Great Southern Wood "took off like a Saturn 5 rocket." Today his company has annual sales of more than $1.5 billion, with employees, offices and plants in 11 states, while conducting business in 28 states and 38 countries. Rane downplays it all. He simply wants a ticket into heaven, if it hasn't already been punched. "I just try to play my part and do my role," he says. "I'm a firm believer in the biblical teachings of Jesus Christ. He says the road is wide but the gate is narrow. It's wide for getting into hell. The road is real narrow to heaven." Rane says life is all about abiding a servant's role, doing every good thing possible. That's what pushes him at 74 to keep running the company. His younger brother and former RANE CONSIDERS IT A COMPLIMENT by Chuck Chandler o you calling Yella? PHOTO COURTESY GREAT SOUTHERN WOOD PRESERVING

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