The City of Andalusia this week began a "shop local" campaign which coincides with the reopening of most local retail businesses that were closed while Gov. Kay Ivey's pandemic "Stay at Home" order was in place.

That order expired at 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 30. As retailers opened their doors Friday morning, the City began pushing out a shop local message on local media. 

"The COVID-19 pandemic has changed each of our lives in dramatic ways, many of which may have lasting effects," Mayor Earl Johnson said. "We don't know exactly what our future looks like, but we do know that we need to work together to rebuild the new normal for our community. Now is the perfect time to start."

The mayor took time Friday afternoon to visit with several local merchants who reopened on Friday. Each reported busy days with good traffic in their stores. 

Local officials say they will continue to evaluate circumstances, but recreation programs must remain closed in Andalusia and all of Covington County for now. 

“We understand that parents are anxious for recreation and other activities to resume,” Mayor Earl Johnson said. “But based on Governor Ivey’s order, and the state’s statistics, it is too soon to do so. The price we are paying now enhances our chances of being able to reopen schools in the fall, and to have the football, volleyball, band and cheerleading activities that we all love, especially in Andalusia.”

Gov. Kay Ivey on Tuesday announced her current stay-at-home order will expire at 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 30, and Alabama will remain under a safer-at-home order at least until May 15. While the new guidelines loosen restrictions on retail, they still limit gatherings to 10 or fewer with people required to remain at least six feet apart, and prohibit the reopening of close-contact businesses like salons and gyms. The new order also prohibits the reopening of athletic facilities and activities that require use of shared sporting apparatus or activities on playground equipment.

In anticipation of the governor’s new order, leaders of recreation leagues in Andalusia, Opp, Florala and Covington County met in person on Monday and by teleconference on Tuesday to discuss if and how baseball and softball seasons might be resumed. Participants included Andalusia Mayor Earl Johnson, Opp Mayor Becky Bracke, Florala Mayor Terry Holley and Covington County Commission Chairman Greg White, along with league officials Tommie Agee, Willie Edwards, and Jed Blackwell. A licensed physician also met with the group.

On Tuesday, Gov. Ivey and state health officer Dr. Scott Harris said the COVID-19 threat is not over. 

“We’re still seeing the virus spread, and all our people are susceptible to the infection,” Ivey  said Tuesday. “The great disservice to people who may be listening to me today is that lifting the comprehensive health restrictions (may lead them to believe) that there is no threat of COVID-19. We must continue to be vigilant."

The White House guidelines for “Opening Up America Again” call for a phased-in approach for reopening. The guidelines recommend that states begin to reopen after 14 days of declining numbers of new cases of COVID-19. Ivey stopped just short of implementing The White House’s Phase I reopening, which would allow sit-down dining in restaurants, and corporate worship, so long as social distancing was observed. The White House plan states that youth sports and other recreation not be reopened until Phase 2, which requires an additional 14 days of declining numbers of new cases, or 28 total days of declining numbers. 

Local leaders said they will continue to monitor the situation, but a number of things must happen before any recreation programs can reopen. Those include future orders from the governor, as well as rates of COVID-19 cases and the availability to test for those cases.

Alabama’s State Parks, including Frank Jackson State Park in Opp, have remained open throughout the pandemic to encourage outdoor recreation. However, state parks closed playgrounds, beach areas, and dining operations. 

The City of Florala closed access to Lake Jackson in April, but Mayor Holley said Tuesday he will reopen the lake this weekend. However, the pier and playgrounds will remain closed. 

Before the rest of the United States even really began to worry about the possibility of a COVID-19 pandemic, Andalusia’s Frank Henderson, president and CEO at Henderson Sewing Machine Co., had a bit of a heads-up that a global crisis was coming. 

Henderson, who often travels internationally for his business, said he got his first whiff of the trouble ahead in Japan in January. He was supposed to meet two friends in the Osaka airport, but they never called up. He called them.

“I learned that they were in quarantine for 14 days after coming back from China,” he said. “They told me what was transpiring in Wuhan, and what China was experiencing. So that immediately threw up a red flag for me. I returned home and told my team, ‘folks, there is something that might be coming here that we need to be prepared for.’ ”

Soon, he began receiving numerous queries such as “where can I find nonwoven fabrics?” and “how do I make masks?” so Henderson said he began to see his company’s role in the fight as a channel of information as well as a provider of equipment and systems for PPE production.

“We brought our staff together and said, ‘team, we all need to work now, but in order to do that, we need to be safe here,’ ” he said. “So everyone who walks into our building in the last four weeks has their temperature taken before they can enter. And they wear gloves and N95 masks. I have N95 masks because I have friends in the rest of the world who sent them to us. A local nursing home here in town had no masks, so we sent about 240 of them to help.”

As of mid-April, Henderson Sewing had placed 27 automated face mask systems in 14 states – from Maine to California, as well as in Canada – to produce face masks in a vertically integrated supply chain, starting with fabric through the folding process to ultrasonically cut, seal and attach to products that are packed either in singles or fives and 10s up to 20s for shipment, he said.

“We're already looking at Version 2 of those supply chains now in changing those systems to servos, steppers, drives and those kind of things to make them even more productive and efficient,” Henderson said.

Like his fellow speakers during a recent webinar hosted jointly by SEAMS, The Association & Voice of the U.S. Sewn Products Industry, and SPESA, The Sewn Products Equipment & Suppliers of the Americas, Henderson said he is putting in more time now than he ever has in order to answer the nation’s call.

“I haven’t worked very many seven days and seven nights over the last 45 years, but I certainly have over the last three or four weeks,” he said. “I’m on about 20 regular calls a day and six or seven conference calls a day.”

But the reward has been enormous as he sees a lifelong dream becoming a reality, he added.

“For us, it’s a joy to see our industry activated in a completely vertical supply chain here in America, with everybody working together the way we have been,” Henderson said. “Some of us have been waiting most of our lives to see this happen. For me it’s been 45 years – 45 years of seeing our industry gutted and decimated and shipped all over the world, to now being able to say these are essential items needed in America. These are essential items for the health and wellbeing of our people. And I hope our government will tune in to see that these products are just as essential as a military uniform or ammunition. Why aren't these items Berry compliant also? I think it's a question we all have to ask going forward.

“I think for each of us, it’s a new day, a new time, and it's an opportunity for each one of us to share, one with the other, and also I hope it’s an opportunity for us to build this vertical supply chain for things that some of us have waited a long, long time to see come back here to America,” he continued. “We can do that and we can compete with the rest of the world if we're equally yoked – not unequally yoked. But it's hard to do that if a government is subsidizing an industry and trying to push many of us out of business and out of the speed-to-market-type of scenario.”

Henderson’s story was reported by Devin Steel of TextileCommunications.com. Read the entire article, ‘It’s a new day, a new time,’ here. 

Covington Casket will more than double its space and bring new equipment online, thanks in part to an agreement the Andalusia City Council approved on Tuesday.

Covington Casket, which has operated on North Cotton Street in downtown Andalusia since 1924, will move its operation to the Andalusia Industrial Park, leasing a building owned by the City of Andalusia and most recently occupied by Green Structures. Under the terms of the agreement, the city will become the owner of Covington Casket’s current 24,000 square-foot facility as soon as the company occupies their new building. The building is being expanded to provide 56,000 square feet of space, which Covington Casket will acquire in a 20-year, lease-to-own agreement valued at $1.25 million. 

“We have been working to put this agreement together for several months,” Mayor Earl Johnson said. “We are excited to work with Covington Casket as they expand in Andalusia.”

The company currently has 38 full-time and four part-time employees. With the expansion, they expect to add an additional six employees. 

Covington Casket owner Alan Williamson said that early in 2019, he was approached by a casket manufacturer in Georgia who was looking to sell his equipment. 

“That was a phone call I was totally not expecting,” Williamson said. “I had to give it some thought, but I looked at the numbers and decided to take a leap of faith and pull the trigger on it.”

Williamson had to find a place to store the four 18-wheeler loads of equipment. Then he began to look for a place to install it. 

“Basically, I bought a factory with nowhere to store it and nowhere to start another factory,” he said. “I made a few phone calls and reached out to Mayor (Earl) Johnson and John Thompson about any potential buildings. That’s when this building was brought to my attention.”

The city’s spec building is currently 40,000 square feet, and a 16,000 square-foot expansion is in the works. 

“That will more than double our current space,” Williamson said. “We’ll have 4,000 square feet of office space and 10,000 square-feet of warehouse space. We’re going from one loading dock to six loading docks. We’ll also have a selection room where when we have funeral directors come from out of town, they can see our products.”

Williamson told the council Tuesday that the company has in the past had to decline requests to have mortuary students tour the facility. The new building will include a large showroom that will allow that to happen. 

The new facility also will allow Covington Casket to expand its powder-coating business, he said.

Downtown, Covington Casket manufactures 30 to 35 caskets a day. In the new facility, Williamson said, that number can easily double. 

Covington Casket has warehouses in Albany, Ga., in Hattiesburg, Miss., and Hammond, La.

Williamson and his brother, Eddie Williamson, worked in the business with their father, Johnny, until his death. Afterward, Eddie Williamson managed manufacturing and Alan Williamson was on the road selling. In 2018, Eddie Williamson sold his interest to his brother and retired. 

Alan Williamson’s son, Andrew, then joined him in the business, taking over his father’s former sales role. The new facility, Alan Williamson said, will give them room to grow the company.  

“My daddy’d be proud of me,” Williamson said. “Once we get the facility built, we’re going to have a ribbon cutting with all of our former employees. They’re all part of it.”