Name/Title: Lester Black, TARCOG Treasurer
How long have you been on the TARCOG Board? Seven years. I’m in my first year on the executive board.
What has been your biggest professional achievement? Owning my own businesses and being elected to the DeKalb County Commission. I owned Rainsville Tire for 12 years and before that I had an electronics repair business. I’m in my eighth year as county commissioner eighth year and if reelected this year, within the next two years there will be no more dirt roads in District 4. We’ve paved about 130 miles in the district. and when I started it was my goal to have all of them paved. If the economy holds up, it will get done.
What career advice do you live by? Who gave it to you? That would be to never stand still and always be looking forward. I actually put it together from two or three different things I’ve read about people who were successful business people.
What would be the theme song of your life right now? Taking Care of Business by Randy Bachman.
Who is someone who’s made a big impact on your life? Why? My dad, Curtis Black, because he signed with me to get me started in my first business. I was very fortunate with both of my parents.
What is a fun fact that people probably don’t know about you. When I was 4 years old, I outran the DeKalb County sheriff — on foot.
It may have been 68 years ago, but I still remember it like yesterday. I had a gigantic—I mean gigantic—whistle. We were at my grandpa’s birthday dinner, and my uncle got tired of me blowing it. He told me if I didn’t stop, he was going to call the police to take me to jail.
Lo and behold, he hadn’t said it more than a minute when the sheriff came driving by real slow. Being a 4-year-old boy, I laid down on that whistle. The sheriff stopped and backed into Grandpa’s driveway. I didn’t know he was just asking for directions — I took off running.
My sister saw me and tried to stop me, but we got in a scuffle and I broke loose.
I ran and hid, and everybody at the party — about 100 people — started looking for me. Grandpa turned on the vacuum pumps at his dairy to flush me out. It sounded like gunfire when it started up and I thought they were shooting at me, so I took off again. I crossed the creek—it was about dry — and ran for my life.
Two men run me down in a cotton field about two miles away in another community. I was fighting them because I thought they were taking me to the sheriff. They put me in the floorboard of their 1940s car as they drove around house to house asking if anyone knew me. I was huddled under the dash, scared to death—like a little puppy. It was two to three hours before I got back to my grandpa’s.
One thing I’ll always remember is that the sheriff was running for re-election. His opponent went around telling everybody he couldn’t even catch a 4-year-old boy. And I felt sorry for the sheriff because he got beat.
Where are you from? Where did you go to/graduate high school? I’ve lived in Rainsville my whole life and graduated from Plainview High School.
Do you have any hobbies? I like collecting coins and fishing and gardening
Favorite place you’ve traveled? I’ve got three. Israel, Jordan and Turkey.
What’s one item you can’t live without? Friends. Food also comes to mind, but I’ll go with friends.
DeKalb County Commissioner and TARCOG Board Treasurer Lester Black