mills in fixed, permanent locations. In the peckerwood phase, operators took their mills to the timber. This new phase reversed that, putting mills in a fixed base and bringing timber to the mill. In late 1956, Dean married Jean McDaniel, a pretty young woman from Aliceville who was also a student at UA. They will celebrate their 60th anniversary this December. The couple have five grown children; sons, Rusty, Mike, Jeff and Joe (Jeff and Joe are twins) and daughter Paige. Dean received his B.S. degree in May 1958, along with a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and a six-month tour of active duty at Ft. Monmouth, N.J. He served 22 years in the U.S. Army Reserve and retired a lieutenant colonel in 1979. “While I was still in the Army (in 1958) my father invited me to return to Aliceville to help him run the mill. Our banker had a house for sale and Dad had made the down payment on it for Jean and me. It was an offer we couldn’t refuse. So I started back at the mill full-time in August 1959,” Dean recalled. Dean’s main job was wood procurement. He also bought logs delivered to the mill by outside contractors and individual loggers and oversaw the mill’s yard operations. Dean also managed the company’s timberland holdings, something he enjoyed because, “it got me out into the woods. “I worked at the mill for six to eight years, and we decided to get a logging crew. We started a logging crew and we cut
ALABAMA FORESTS | Summer 2016
Standing in front of some prime hardwood logs is Dean Lewis at the Lewis Brothers mill in Aliceville.
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