The Man Behind The Badge

Images by Al Blanton 

“And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.” - Matthew 20:27

Robert Justice stands in front of a mirror and jams on a black baseball cap. His matching black short-sleeve shirt and slacks are neatly pressed, his black shoes buffed to a new-dime shine. Pinned above his breast pocket is a pale yellow egg-shaped name badge, where stenciled below the familiar red Chick-Fil-A logo are the words “MR. ROBERT, TEAM MEMBER.”You may have seen him around while eating a chicken sandwich or nuggets. Smiling, offering to refill your drink. Wiping down a table. Being helpful. Serving others. You may have even dismissed him, because in a fast-moving world, sometimes we tend to neglect the people who wear a nametag. But behind every badge, there is a story waiting to be told.You see, fifty-two years ago Mr. Robert wore another uniform, olive green with gold buttons. The pale blue eyes staring back in the mirror were brighter then, the hair under the cap was darker. Much water has flowed beneath the bridge since that young man left the frigid air of Alaska for the warm and often humid climate of Alabama. Time has moved on.Robert Justice was born in Birmingham, Alabama on April 16, 1943, but soon moved to the small community of Townley, where his dad’s family lived. He remembers growing up with his two older brothers and six sisters (the seventh—and firstborn—lived only two days) as idyllic and Walton-esque. “There was always a clean plate at the table,” he says with a sly grin. “There wasn’t anything thrown away.”The roads out at Townley were mostly unpaved, dirt roads. He remembers barefooted summers, running up and down those roads. Robert’s house was structured such that his father’s parents lived in one side, and Robert and his family lived in the other.Robert’s father had his own delivery business for several years, requiring him to travel. “My dad, for most of his life was self-employed as a coal hauler,” he says. “Every year he would haul coal, kind of like the old rolling stores.”Robert entered the first grade at the old Central School. The next year he went to Boldo; the next year, Thach. After completing junior high at Redmill, his family moved back closer to Townley and Robert finished at Walker County High School. Some of his fondest memories of those days are of rabbit hunting at night with his best friend.When Robert was seventeen, he worked part-time so he drove to school. One morning when he dropped his sisters off at Townley School, a young girl of about fourteen came out to his car to chat with his sister Elizabeth. He later found out that the girl was Elizabeth’s best friend, Doris. “Have you ever heard the statement, ‘I knew when I first saw her I wanted to marry her’?” Robert says. “Well, something told me that was the woman I was to live the rest of my life with.”Determined to ask Doris for a date, Robert drove to her house in his sky blue 1953 V-8 Ford. “Anybody who had one of those cars knew that after it got some mileage on it, it was hard to crank when the motor got hot. I always parked on a hill so I could roll it off and start it,” Robert says. “I got out of the car and walked down to her house. Her dad was sitting on the porch in a metal chair. He started getting up out of the chair, and he was about seven feet tall. I thought that man would never stop getting up out of that chair! I said, ‘Is Doris home?’ He said, (in a slow, flat tone) ‘No, she ain’t, and I don’t allow her to date anyhow.’ I said, ‘Thank you, sir!’ and I turned around and left. On the way back to the car I thought to myself, ‘God, let this car crank, I don’t want to have to sit here and this car not crank.’ ” Fortunately his car started up with no problems.Robert didn’t see Doris for about a year after that, but finally they went on a double date with a friend named Jerry Pate and another friend named Bernice. Their first date was to see a movie at the old Jasper Theater, though neither recalls what movie they saw that night. “I was more interested in him,” Doris laughs.When his brother Joe received his draft notice in 1962, Robert volunteered immediately. “Back then you couldn’t hardly get a job in Walker County without having a military background,” he says. After completing three months of basic training at Fort Gordon, Georgia, Joe was stationed at a base in California. Robert stayed a few months longer for signal communications training, and was sent to a small post on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, where temperatures were often well below zero. “Everybody had to go through a winter indoctrination course,” Robert explains. “We went out to do what they call bivouac, setting up tents and spending the night outdoors. We went in six-man teams and we had to put on our full battle equipment, winter parkas, backpacks, our rifles—and we had to go out on skis. Can you imagine a guy from Jasper, Alabama getting on a set of skis?” he says incredulously.Even with its magnificent postcard perfect scenery, life in Kenai had its drawbacks. “The big thing up there was hunting and fishing,” Robert says. “The little town adjoining our base was about the size of Carbon Hill. It had one traffic light in it. Sometimes when we’d be off duty, we’d go down there and watch the traffic light change. There wasn’t nothing to do for some of us. It was right on the peninsula that separates the United States and Siberia.”Robert finished his tour as an Army Specialist E-4 and came home in February 1964, two months before his twenty-first birthday. He and Doris had corresponded during his time away, and, with hearts grown much fonder in the absence, they were married that June.After living in Birmingham for a year, Robert was offered another job with a finance company in Bessemer, so the Justices moved there in 1965, around the same time their first daughter, Linda, was born. Five years later, Linda had a new baby sister named Donna.In 1974 Robert moved the family back to Jasper, where he worked for Finance America by day, taking business and finance courses at Jeff State by night, finishing with a two year associates degree. After a brief time working back in Bessemer, Robert returned to Jasper, working in consumer finance at G. May and Sons.Weary of the finance business, Robert worked in Winston County building mobile homes and later worked for Classroom Direct in Birmingham distributing educational supplies. When that company closed down, he performed inspections for Transportation Services Incorporated, a company that completed maintenance work on coal cars from Miller Steam Plant.“One winter I fell and got my leg hung in a car. I messed up my right knee and tore some ligaments,” Robert recalls. He was put on light duty but soon discovered that pushing a broom all day was more strenuous on his knee than expected. “I said, ‘I’m gonna have to have a hard job, I can't stand this easy job.’” He was trained as a backup locomotive operator, which later evolved into an engineering job for TSI’s main engine 305. “People ask me, ‘How did you get a job doing work like that?’ and I just say, ‘I fell into it,’” he quips.By the time Robert retired from TSI in 2006, he had been approached with another job offer. Ruth Grace, who then managed the Jasper Mall location of Chick-Fil-A where their daughter Linda worked, had attempted to recruit Robert to come work for her. Initially Robert declined but finally agreed, provided he wouldn’t work more than fifteen or twenty hours a week.Now at the Chick-Fil-A location on Highway 78, Robert says he normally does not bring up his faith while on the job, but there are exceptions. “When people bring up the situation, I witness to them,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons I enjoy working there. I do what I think the Lord wants me to do, and that’s a place to be able to witness to people if they want it. There’s a lot of things I could say about working for Chick-Fil-A and how it goes along with my philosophy of life and me trying to live as a Christian and do the right thing. I think it goes hand in hand.”Robert recently had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff in his shoulder and is waiting to be released by his doctor to return to work. “It’s a lot better than it was as far as movement, but there is still pain with it,” he says.You may see only a man in his early seventies in a black uniform, approaching the midnight of his life, but there is more to him than what can be discerned by a perfunctory glance. The true Robert Justice is more than a team member, more than a retiree, more than a name on an employee badge.He is a chief among us all. 78