BENJAMIN BARNET SPRATLING Jr.

SPRATLING, Benjamin Barnet, Jr., age 82, of Roba, Alabama, died on January 9, 2006. The national presi-dent of the American Soybean As-sociation in 1983, he was recently selected to be inducted into the Alabama Agricultural Hall of Honor in February 2006. Born on August 30, 1923 in Roba, he was the son and only child of Ben-jamin Barnett Spratling and Sarah Elizabeth Whitaker. Although his parents were both Georgia natives - his mother a descendent of 18th-Century Georgia Governor Jared Ir-win and his father a descendent of a 19th-Century U.S. Congressman from Georgia, Julius C. Alford - Spratling was a lifelong resident of Alabama. Even though Roba was located in Macon County, the family farm straddled the Macon-Bullock Coun-ty line, allowing him to attended Union Springs High School in Bul-lock County. In 1940 he graduated and then entered Alabama Poly-technic Institute (now Auburn Uni-versity), whose official seal had been designed by a cousin, Wil-liam Spratling of Taxco, Mexico sil-ver fame. On December 7 of 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he lost interest in college and began to contribute to the war effort by helping to construct air-ports in Montgomery, Tuskegee, Mobile and Warner Robbins (Geo-rgia). After 1943, he had decided to be-come a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces (now the U.S. Air Force). While an aviation cadet at the Uni-versity of Tennessee, he met Ruth El-meria McCallum, whom he mar-ried in Jackson, Tennessee on March 23, 1944, after he had earned his wings and received an Army Air Forces commission as a Second Lieutenant at Moody Field, Valdosta, Georgia. He proved to be an outstanding pi-lot and, upon completion of ad-vanced training and qualifying to fly multiple-engine planes - the B-26 ""Marauder"" and the B-24 ""Liberator"" - was selected to be a pilot instruc-tor. So, although he had expected to be flying bombing missions over-seas, for the rest of the war, he taught new pilots at places like Cochran Field, Macon, Georgia, where thousands of pilots were trained, and Tuskegee, where the much publicized Tuskegee Airmen were trained. At the end of World War II, he left the Army Air Forces as a First Lieu-tenant. By then he and his wife had their first child - a son. Rather than resume his education at Auburn, he chose to return home and begin farming in partnership with his fa-ther. In 1950 his first daughter was born. That same year, he purchased a 460-acre tract of land that his grandfather (Eugene Whitaker) had owned in 1921 when he retired from Atlanta to the quiet rural set-ting of Roba. In 1954, Spratling and his wife had their second daughter. The 460-acre tract grew to 1,800 acres, and, before 1967, he was running two beef cattle herds, cut-ting hay, and harvesting seed for pasture crops. Always looking for ways to apply the latest scientific in-formation, he soon became known in his community as a forward-thinking farmer and a person whose recommendation was great-ly valued. In 1967, after observing farmers coming into the Black Belt from the Midwest to grow soy-beans, Spratling picked a 50-acre pasture for his first soybean crop and harvested 25 bushels per acre. From then on it was an uphill climb into soybeans. Soon after Spratling began raising soybeans, he bought an airplane, renewed his pilot's license and built an airstrip across the road from his house at Roba, which he got li-censed as a private airport (Spr-atling Field) by the state Aeronau-tics Bureau. Having his own plane made it possible for him to fly to many Soybean Association meet-ings. By the time his soybean acre-age peaked at near 1,100, he had become a national soybean indus-try ""celebrity."" After serving a term as president of the Alabama Soy-bean Association, as a member of the national board of the American Soybean Association for six years, as well as a national vice president for three years, Spratling was elect-ed national president of the Ameri-can Soybean Association in 1982 and served as president in 1983 and chairman of the board in 1984. As president and chairman, he trav-eled the world promoting open markets for American soybeans in such places as China, Pakistan, Ja-pan, Europe, Latin America and Af-rica, and became a well-known soybean advocate to congress-men and the Reagan administra-tion in Washington, D.C., testifying before Congress at least three times to encourage the free mar-keting of soybeans worldwide. In 1985 he received the American Soybean Association's highest hon-or: the ""Honorary Life Membership Award,"" which is awarded each year to an outstanding soybean in-dustry leader. The presenter of the 1985 award at the SOYBEAN EXPO in San Antonio said: ""B.B. Spratling has contributed unselfishly over many years to serve in numerous leader-ship capacities for both the Ala-bama and American Soybean As-sociations, and the soybean indus-try in general. In fact, his leader-ship helped build the Alabama Soybean Association to one of the most respected state associations in all of agriculture. B.B. is a leader in soybean production in his native state [of Alabama] and he serves on several advisory boards and or-ganizations. He has sacrificed many hours from his farming op-eration in Roba to serve soybean farmers nationwide."" In addition to his achievements in the soybean industry, Spratling was actively involved in rural electrifica-tion for many years. His father, B. B. Spratling, Sr., had been a founder of Dixie Electric, a member-owned electric utility serving more than 18,000 members in eight Alabama counties (Barbour, Bullock, Lee, Lowndes, Macon, Montgomery, Pike and Tallapoosa) in 1936, and had served on the cooperative's board of trustees in Union Springs from its inception until his death in 1979. Upon his father's death, B. B. was elected to his father's seat on the board and has continued to serve as a member of that board and, since 1985, as secretary-treas-urer of the cooperative. He was also a director of the statewide Ala-bama Rural Electric Association for many years. In 1985 Spratling was elected to the board of trustees of Alabama Electric Cooperative, An-dalusia, a generation and transmis-sion cooperative that provides wholesale power to twenty-one electric cooperatives in Alabama and Florida. In 2004 he received the Jeffcoat Outstanding Service Award from Alabama Electric Co-operative in recognition of his many contributions to that orga-nization. He was a member and deacon at First Baptist Church of Union Springs. He also served terms as director of the American National Bank of Union Springs (now AmeriFirst Bank), trustee of Macon Academy, president of the Macon County Cattlemen's Association, president on three separate occasions of the Macon County Farm Bureau (now Macon County Farmers Federation-), and chairman of the Alabama Farmers Federation State Soybean Committee and was a member of the Alabama Crop Improvement Association. In 2001 Spratling remarried, and he is survived by his second wife, Doro-thy Reynolds Spratling. He is also survived by Mrs. Ruth Elmeria McCallum Spratling of Montgom-ery, their son, Benjamin Barnett Spratling III (Susan Foy) of Mountain Brook; their two daughters, Dr. Ruth Elizabeth Spratling Nabors (Guy Dennis Nabors) of Alexander City and Sarah Marie Spratling of Mont-gomery; their five grandchildren, Patricia Camille Spratling, Benjamin Barnett Spratling IV, both of Moun-tain Brook, and Sarah Caroline Na-bors, Guy Dennis Nabors, Jr. and Ross Spratling Nabors, all of Alexan-der City; a first cousin, Mrs. Annie Lou Whitaker Lauler; and a first cousin, once removed, William C. Lauler. Graveside service will be con-ducted at the Tuskegee City Ceme-tery, Tuskegee, Alabama, by Reve-rend Tom Randall and Reverend Jeff Wilson on Wednesday, January 11, 2006 at 2:00 o'clock p. m., under the direction of Corbitt's Funeral Home of Tuskegee. Visitation will be from 12:30 p. m. until 1:30 p.m. at Corbitt's Funeral Home. Pallbearers will be Charles Agerton, Dr. Andrew Callaway, William C. Lauler, Archie Moot, Ray Talley and Walter Vail.Members of the board of trustees of Dixie Electric Cooperative, Parker Gray Mount, I. D. McClurkin, James Sikes, Irvin Wells, R. E. Adams, Sara T. Boykin, Albert J. Perry and Aaron Ellis, will be honorary pallbearers. In lieu of flowers, the family sug-gests memorials be made to Chil-dren's Harbor, Inc., 1 Our Children's Highway, Children's Harbor, AL 35010-9534 or Alabama Children's Hospital Foundation, 1600 7th Ave-nue South, Birmingham, AL 35233.