March 12, 2021 By Frank McCormack
On a cold February evening frigid by New Orleans’ standards the mv. Jared Phillips, the newest vessel in Parker Towing Company’s fleet, motored through the Harvey Canal, down the Mississippi River past the city’s French Quarter, and through the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal, bound for the Intracoastal Waterway. The 4,200 hp. towboat, built at FMT Shipyard on the Harvey Canal, made its way east to Mobile, Ala., then north to Parker Towing’s headquarters in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where it quickly entered service on the Black Warrior-Tombigbee Waterway (BWT).
The vessel is named for Parker Towing Company’s director of business operations, Jared Phillips, who has been with the company for 10 years. Phillips, a native of Huntsville, Ala., began attending the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 2002. While in college, he met the former Alison Parker Haun, daughter of Parker Towing V
Though the image of businesspeople can suffer tarnish at the holidays, it s important to remember Kris Kringle won that trial against Macy s, moneylender Scrooge changed his evil ways, and in It s a Wonderful Life, the symbol of charity and decency played by small-town banker Jimmy Stewart defeated greed and rancor, by virtue of his relationships becoming the richest man in town.
James Benjamin Flemming, Jr., known as Jim, died Thursday Dec. 31, 2020 at DCH Regional Medical Center, after a lifetime successfully blending business and civic engagement, seeing professional and charitable work as inextricably intertwined. He was definitely more George Bailey than Old Man Potter, laughed Mark Sullivan, who succeeded Flemming as president and CEO of Bank of Tuscaloosa.