Leadership Alabama’s Barbara Larson Retiring, But Not Disappearing

By Bob Blalock

Mike Jenkins and Bill Smith had known each other a quarter century, ever since the early 1960s as fraternity brothers at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

The two businessmen – Jenkins at Jenkins Brick in Montgomery and Smith at Royal Cup Coffee in Birmingham – were plotting a bold sales job. Their task was to persuade someone who had a great job and real prospects for advancing in a respected organization to go to work for an entity that didn’t yet exist.

Both had helped create leadership groups in their respective towns: Leadership Montgomery for Jenkins, and Leadership Birmingham for Smith. Now, in 1989 they were starting a statewide group, Leadership Alabama. Jenkins had gone through the first Leadership Montgomery class with Barbara Larson, the development director of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.“She had a good job and a secure one. I went to see her. Here she is with this great job, and I gave her this scheme, what Bill and I were thinking about,” Jenkins says. “Had she been a country girl, she would have had a look on her face that communicated, ‘Do what?’”

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