There are similarities between building a sign and recruiting business and industry to an area: you make small improvement after improvement, brick by brick, until eventually, you have something big to show for it.
The latest addition in Gadsden is a new, handcrafted sign that marks the entrance to the Gadsden Airport Industrial Park, which is home to a number of the city’s manufacturing companies.
“It’s the little things that make a difference with everything happening in Gadsden, and this is part of that effort,” said Mayor Craig Ford. “We have a great industrial park here, and this new sign just shows that we’re committed to continuing to bring in new businesses and developing this area.”
The mayor and city council worked with the Airport Authority and the Gadsden-Etowah Industrial Development Authority on the sign, which was paid for by the Airport Authority.
When it came time to make the idea a reality, they turned to Jimmy Henderson.
Henderson has been a city employee in the Public Works Department for more than 30 years, and he has built a number of brick signs throughout the Gadsden area, including St. James Catholic Church, Rainbow Presbyterian Church, the Smeltzer Educational Center and more.
Henderson also built the sign farther down Airport Road that leads visitors to the Northeast Alabama Regional Airport itself, so he was the natural choice to make a matching sign at the Airport Industrial Park—even if it took a few requests.
“Jimmy Henderson did a fantastic job with this project, but when I asked him about it, he told me three times that he’d retired from building brick signs,” said Ford. “He told me the fourth time that he’d do it.”
“The sign is hand-sculpted into the brick, and when I tell people that, they typically think that I carve it out with a chisel, but I have to go to the plant where they manufacture the brick,” Henderson said.
At the plant, he builds the wall out of unfinished materials, numbers and catalogs each individual brick, then carves the artwork into the bricks.
In this case, the sign features the words “Gadsden Airport Industrial Park,” along with the city’s new logo.
“From there, the brick company takes it apart, fires it through the kilns, ships it to the job site, and then it’s a matter of putting a giant puzzle together,” Henderson said.
It can be a long process.
From idea to the finished product took more than nine months, which included finding a brick company that could accommodate custom work, designing the sign, staying out of town and working long hours at the Georgia brick plant, and then assembling it on site.
Henderson enlisted the help of brick masons Mark Tidmore, Mike Erwin and their crew to put that giant puzzle back together.
“There are a lot of hours that go into it, and you’re worn out, but at the end, the best part is the satisfaction of just seeing it,” Henderson said.
