The Rise and Fall of a Construction Giant: The History, People, and Stories of CFW Construction

By Dick Farrar, Jr.

Determined to bring utilities and small-building construction to rural areas, William R. Carter joined with Dick Farrar and John Williams to form the CFW Construction Company in Fayetteville, Tennessee, 1952. Named for the partners, CFW expanded into building plants, roads, tunnels, bridges, and more. Within forty years the company grew to five offices, 14 subsidiaries, a thousand pieces of equipment, and a proud workforce of more than 1,500 across a dozen states.

Then came the scandals.

By the end of the 20thcentury, CFW was gone, and the lives of everybody had changed. Dick Farrar’s son was there for the best and the worst. Now he’s written the definitive history, not just about a company, but a region and its people. With nearly a hundred restored photos, most in color, Farrar, Jr., tells the true story, naming names and documenting the details. The Rise and Fall of a Construction Giantis a keepsake, a historical record, the chronicle of an era, a compelling story told by the man at its center in the end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fresh Ink Group
• Release date: Mar 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781947867437

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CHAPTER 1

On the Job

The first big-time venture for the two partnerships that became CFW Construction Company, Inc., was the General Shoe Corporation Processing Terminal in Fayetteville, Tennessee, in 1951. That project also brought me my first paying job. It was summertime, and I was eleven years old.

Young as I was, I was no stranger to work. But plowing fields on the family’s Mimosa Road farm, milking the cows, and feeding the livestock was not a paying job—unless you consider room, board, and clothing as pay.

My father, Dick Farrar, Sr., and William Robert Bill Carter, his business partner in Carter-Farrar Construction Co., Inc., hired me at five dollars per week as water-boy. They purchased a five-gallon aluminum canteen wrapped in an insulated canvas jacket with straps that could be carried on your back—similar to the backpacks used today by students. Even insulated, the canteen filled with ice water was freezing cold. Fitted to the canteen was a Solo cup dispenser.

The shoe plant was three football fields long and two football fields wide. Each time they poured and finished the concrete for an area of the floor, workers spread a layer of sand over the concrete as a curing aid and to keep the concrete buggies from scaring the fresh concrete.

For an eleven-year-old kid, it seemed like child-labor torture to hike from one end of that huge structure to the other and cross back and forth from side to side carrying water to the workmen.

Hey, water-boy, over here, rang in my ears all day long.

The shirtless workmen, sweat rolling off their faces, chests, and backs, would get their two or three Solo cups of water. Then they’d reach down, pick up a handful of sand and throw it on my back as I departed for the next stop. The sand running down my shoulders behind the icy insulated cooler was another form of torture. Two or three times a day, I would seek out a water hose, remove the backpack, and hose myself down.

One evening after work, I reported to my mother, Robbie:

Mother, those workmen get hungry around ten o’clock and again around two thirty. I think I could make extra money selling sandwiches.

We started with peanut butter and jelly, then pimento cheese for a quarter each, but the summer heat was not ideal for such.

Mother then said, Let’s try country ham.

That evening I took a country ham from the smokehouse. (Dad was still killing a dozen hogs or so during the winter.) Mother boiled the ham, and I hit payday! Those county ham sandwiches for fifty cents each were the talk of the workforce. Nobody threw sand on my back as long as I had country ham sandwiches in my basket.

It wasn’t long until Dad went to the smokehouse one evening to check on how his pork was curing. Seeing some hams missing from their hooks, he questioned the chief cook.

Mother replied, Dick, I thought you knew Buddy was selling sandwiches to the workers at the shoe plant.

My supplemental income came to a screeching halt. Dad was buying or furnishing the food for the sandwiches; Mother was preparing and wrapping the sandwiches, and I was pocketing the money. As they say, all good things eventually come to an end.

The same could be said of CFW itself. From 1949 until 1978 no one would have imagined the end that eventually came for a stable and profitable construction company. By providing superior service in the construction of utility, industrial, commercial, and residential buildings in cities and towns primarily across the southeastern and southwestern United States, CFW built an excellent reputation with corporations, municipalities, governments, agencies, and individual clients.

I began my research for this book in April 2017 by writing to former CFW employees whose address information I could locate. I asked them to submit their CFW memories in writing, pictures, newspaper articles, old newsletters, etc. I soon discovered that, out of the 18,000 (plus or minus) employees who once worked for the company, their remaining numbers are small, especially those who held an executive position.

The Rise and Fall of a Construction Giant: The History, People, and Stories of CFW Construction is the story of a group of builders who grew their company from small-town roots in Fayetteville, Tennessee, and saw it expand across seventeen states and three countries before it all crashed in a political and economic tangle.

My goal in this book is to capture a bit of small-town history that started with a Bantam backhoe, a two-ton dump truck, a 105 Schramm air compressor, and a Chevrolet pickup truck in 1950. These good ol’ country boys knew not what the next day, month, or year would bring, but with the watchful eye of the Good Lord, they persevered and built a corporate giant.

Why risk forming a construction company in 1950 Fayetteville? It was a rural community in southern Middle Tennessee with a city population of 5,447 in a county with a population of 25,624. Why not the big cities of Nashville or Knoxville? The answer is primarily because the C, the F, and the W were home-grown men ready and eager to gamble on building a better tomorrow, not only for Fayetteville and Lincoln County but also for the whole state of Tennessee and the United States of America, too.

The time was certainly ripe for a construction company to succeed. The national mood was optimistic in the years after World War II ended in September 1945. Millions of veterans returned home, and the G.I. Bill of Rights, also called Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, passed by Congress in 1944, helped them reintegrate into civilian life. This bill encouraged home-ownership and investment in higher education through the distribution of loans at low or no interest rates to veterans.

President Harry S Truman presented his program for domestic reform in 1949. The Fair Deal included proposals for expanded public housing, increased aid to public education, a higher minimum wage, federal protection for civil rights, and national health insurance.

As veterans married, started families, pursued higher education, and bought their first homes, many of these twenty-somethings found new homes in planned communities on the fringes of American cities. This group, whose formative years covered the Great Depression, was a generation hardened by poverty and deprived of the security of a home or a job. Now thriving on the American Dream, life was simple, jobs were plentiful, and a record number of babies were born. The baby boom triggered a housing boom, consumption boom, and a boom in the labor force.

As the Cold War unfolded in the decade and a half after World War II, the United States experienced phenomenal economic growth. The war brought the return of prosperity, and in the postwar period, the United States consolidated its position as the world’s richest country. Gross national product (GNP), a measure of all goods and services produced in the United States, jumped from about $103 billion in 1940 to $301 billion in 1950 to more than $545.4 billion in 1960. More and more Americans now considered themselves part of the middle class.

It was a good time to be a builder.

CHAPTER 2

Post-War Development

The irons in Bill Carter’s fire were hot in 1950. His friendship with Ambedigo Thomas Mr. Beddy Williams and John Nelson J.N. Williams deepened. Bill and John Nelson partnered to form Carter-Williams Construction Co., purchased land from D.A. Templeton on the west boundary of the Town of Fayetteville, and commenced building affordable homes in the 1,000-square-foot to 1,500-square-foot range.

There was one small matter that Bill, a University of Tennessee civil engineering teacher and sewer plant project manager, had overlooked: the installation of the water-sewer utilities for Radio City subdivision.

I got to thinking about the utilities soon after Carter-Williams completed the second home, Bill told me. So, I went to the City Municipal Building and sought out my friend Ed Payne, the city clerk. I said to Ed, ‘When does the city plan to start installing the water-sewer lines?’ The reply I received from Ed was, ‘What do you mean we? That is your responsibility.’

Short on cash and already working twelve-to-fourteen-hour days, Bill faced a dilemma. Do I do the utility installation myself? Hire a utility contractor to install the lines? What about cash? Do I find a partner and form a utility construction company?

Bill and J.A. Stewart, the surveyor, were close friends. J.A. was aware of plans to develop other properties and knew what was on his drawing board. Having knowledge of future development, Bill decided to seek out a partner for utility construction.

Friendships are to be cherished, whether business or personal. From 1945 to 1960, you begin to see the development picture for Fayetteville-Lincoln County. Mack Hamilton, A.T. Williams and son John Nelson, J.A. Stewart, D.A. Templeton, the Hatcher and Bagley families, P.D. Massey, Fred Womack, Ed Payne, Bill Carter, Bob Mason, Tom Bagley, Bob Hamilton, the utility managers, and many others were working together shoulder-to-shoulder, not worrying about who got the credit, to make things happen.

Our City of Fayetteville mayors and our Lincoln County executives (now county mayors) steered us from the World War II and Korean War years, through the ups and downs of the economy, heading industrial recruitment efforts, gaining new manufacturing operations, building new schools, updating building codes and regulations, upgrading utilities, dealing with planning and zoning issues, appointing boards and commissions, building a new airport, and more.

P.D. Massey, owner of Massey Furniture Company, was elected mayor of Fayetteville in 1948 and served until 1956. J.A. Stewart was a well-known character and an excellent surveyor; subdivision developers looked to him to obtain the highest and best use of a proposed development. Fayetteville’s West End began to develop during Mayor Massey’s tenure. The A.H. Hatcher family owned considerable acreage west of town, and their property was excellently situated for development.

The first Hatcher Addition was presented for plating in 1909. This Addition is platted from a portion of the tract of land conveyed to us, A.H. Hatcher, by deed of J.D. Stone and wife, Mae A. Stone, dated January 14, 1904, and registered in the Register Office of Lincoln County, TENNESSEE in volume LL, Page 453, et. seg. this Sept. 14th, 1909.—A.H. Hatcher. This was a twenty-seven-lot subdivision from the west side of Swanson Boulevard east to what is now Bellview Avenue and north along Bellview Avenue to US 431/Bright Avenue. The southern border of this development was school property—Robert E. Lee School.

Stewart Surveying drew the New Hatcher Addition subdivision plat on November 30, 1949, and it was submitted to the Fayetteville Planning Commission for approval. This fifty-lot plan from Northview Avenue, now Bell-view Avenue, offered building lots platted along each side of Hatcher Drive to First Avenue. The plan extended First Avenue from Swanson Boulevard north approximately 350 feet with six lots on each side of First.

On May 25, 1950, a plat for Radio City Park Subdivision No. 1 was submitted to the City Planning Commission for approval. This drawing indicated thirty-five lots to be developed on property owned by D.A. Templeton, which was purchased in phases by Carter-Williams Construction Co., one of the partnerships that ultimately became CFW. The development encompassed Parkway Drive, Radio Drive, West Swanson Boulevard, and West Washington Street or Highway 64 West.

More Hatcher Property development was happening farther west and north of these areas. Scenic Hills Addition No. 1, plat dated September 27, 1950, was a forty-lot subdivision which extended Fourth and Fifth avenues from Scenic Drive north to Skyview Drive. Next came Scenic Hills Addition No. 2, a sixty-two-lot development extending First, Second, and Third avenues. Central Boulevard from Orchard Drive to Third Avenue intersected these avenues where the Tennessee Valley Authority power lines traversed the proposed subdivision.

Between Scenic Hills Addition two and three, Stewart Surveying submitted a plat to the Town of Fayetteville indicating a thirty-seven-lot plan for Radio City Park Subdivision No. 2. This plat was drawn on September 29, 1950. This subdivision is across Highway 64 (West Washington Street) from what is now Fayetteville Lumber Co. Streets within the development at the time were Templeton Drive, Cove Avenue, Rutledge Drive, Parkway Drive, and West Swanson Boulevard.

On May 25, 1954, Stewart Surveying submitted Scenic Hills Addition No. 3, another Hatcher development, which called for the extension of First, Second, and Third avenues from Central Boulevard to Shady Lane, a thirty-five-lot development. Next came Scenic Hills Addition No. 4, an eighty-three-lot development west of the Lewisburg Highway to First Avenue, north to Skyview Drive, south to Hatcher Drive. Streets in the development included Orchard Drive, Morningside Drive, Central Boulevard, and East Skyview. Commercial lots were included in the addition from Bellview Avenue along the Lewisburg Highway to Skyview Drive. Except for scattered acreage, the Hatcher property in Fayetteville’s West End had built out.

(Author’s note: The Hatcher home stands today as a showplace and as a Fayetteville anchor, well maintained, on a hill just north of Bellview Avenue where the Divisions all started in 1949.)

North of Shady Lane was Bagley property waiting to be developed. Fred I. Womack, a colorful, jovial, character/politician, was elected Fayetteville mayor in 1956. Mayor Womack’s board pushed hard for community industrial development. David Sloan was the county executive at the time, and the Womack-Sloan Board of Aldermen and County Commission worked in concert to whet the appetite of industrial prospects that were slowly, very slowly, moving south from the North and Northwest.

Notwithstanding this push for growth, Fayetteville-Lincoln County saw a decline in population of approximately 1,800 residents from 1950 through 1960. However, this didn’t seem to hurt residential development. As soon as a Hatcher subdivision opened, the lots sold quickly, and new homes were built, thus adding new property taxes to city and county coffers.

Thomas O. Bagley and Odell Wallace Bagley and the Charles Bagley and Jimmie Higgins Bagley families owned developable land bounded on the north by Shady Lane, the east by US 431, north to the Fayetteville Country Club, and west to Highland Drive. Stewart Surveying drafted Scenic Hills Addition No. 5 and submitted it for approval on Oct. 22, 1958. The forty-lot subdivision extended First and Second avenues from Shady Lane to Bagley Drive but stayed within the confines of Bagley property on the north and west, stopping short of developing all of their prime property.

Scenic Drive Addition 6, submitted December 26, 1960, saw Bagley Drive extended just past Glenwood Drive. Scenic Drive Addition 7, June 25, 1963, extended Bagley Subdivision to just beyond what is now Brookmeade Drive. Addition 8, March 5, 1964, saw the development of both sides of Highland Drive. From 1949 to 1964, during which time the Templetons, Hatchers, and Bagleys developed their properties, approximately 535 lots and homes were placed onto the property tax rolls in Fayetteville-Lincoln County, Tennessee.

This community growth benefited a variety of businesses and professions: Williams Lumber Co., Builders Supply, Hamilton Concrete, realtors, lawyers, landscapers, carpenters, roofers, associated contractors, brick and block masons, sewer-water contractors, Pendergrass Block Co., hardware stores, moving firms, appliance dealers, furniture stores, and more. Fayetteville Sewer-Water saw a big increase in tap fees.

Bill Carter’s fire was just getting started.

CHAPTER 3

C for Carter

William Robert Carter was known by many names. Close friends called him Billy Bob. That name seems to have stuck the longest because that’s what his mother, Mary Lou Hayes Carter, named him, except she spelled it Billie Bob. Young associates referred to him as Mr. Carter; he was Bill to older associates. Brothers, sisters, in-laws, and other relatives usually addressed him as W.R. He had other names over the years, including Lurkin, Little Buddy, Lucky Bill, and Willie.

During my early association with CFW, I called him Mr. Carter or Mr. Bill, and he would refer to me as Dickie. I began working full-time for CFW in 1962 when I was 22 years old. I don’t recall my exact age when Mr. Carter put us on a first-name basis, but I do remember the conversation.

It is time you stopped calling me Mr. Carter or Mr. Bill, and time I stopped calling you Dickie, he told me. From now on I’m Bill and you are Dick. We will never grow closer together in age, but we have grown closer together in maturity. Fair enough?

That agreement held, as did the respect for one another over the years.

Bill Carter’s journey from the family farm in Coldwater, Tennessee, is well chronicled in his biography Unto These Hills, published in 2005. He was honorably discharged from the US Navy on June 6, 1946, his twenty-fifth birthday. Bill had been helping his father on the family farm for six months or so when Mack Hamilton, owner of Hamilton Construction Company, offered him a job, which let him use his civil engineering degree from the University of Tennessee.

The summer of 1946 also found Bill renewing his friendship with Jane Strong, a resident of Mulberry Avenue in Fayetteville. They pursued their courtship to the sound of big band music at Cross’s in Cornersville, during dances in Pulaski, and at local parties all summer long. With marriage plans in the works, it was high time for Bill to get serious about a real job and making a living.

Then his alma mater made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Armour Townsend Grainger, a professor of engineering who later became the dean of the School of Engineering at UT, asked Bill to return to UT to teach engineering. The pay was not phenomenal, but Bill could not say no to Dean Grainger. Besides, teaching would be a good opportunity to polish his engineering skills he’d practiced while working for Hamilton Construction Company. And since he’d told Professor Grainger he didn’t want to teach permanently, the temporary job would buy him some time to think about his future.

January 1947 saw significant milestones in Bill’s personal and professional life. Bill and Jane were married on January 19. Then he began teaching at UT in the winter quarter.

His new wife was not the only important connection Bill made during the summer of 1946. He bought a car from Joe Wiley Templeton, a friend and a car salesman who worked for his father, D.A. Templeton, owner of Templeton Pontiac Company. Also, while employed by Hamilton Construction Company, Bill ordered building material from Williams Lumber Company, owned by Ambedigo Thomas Williams and his son, John Nelson Williams.

As Bill’s UT engineering professorship began, the bride and groom set up housekeeping in an upstairs apartment owned by construction machinery executive Tom Osborn, owner of Power Equipment Company. Bill’s ties to A.T. and J.N. Williams, D.A. Templeton, and Tom Osborne would serve CFW well in the company’s formative years.

After two years of teaching at UT, Bill Carter returned to Fayetteville in 1949. He felt a burning desire to get his mind and hands wrapped around a construction project and put to use his nine years of college education, which included co-op work with the Tennessee Valley Authority and teaching.

Bill’s chance came when Mack Hamilton called to say, The City of Fayetteville Water-Sewer Department is going to build a new Sewerage Treatment Plant, and bids are to be submitted soon. Would you be interested in helping me bid the project, and if we are successful, would you be interested in building it?

Daylight was burning, and the timing could not have been any better. The answer was, I would welcome the opportunity.

Mack Hamilton Construction was the low bidder for the project, which was accepted by the City of Fayetteville Water-Sewerage Department in 1949. Work commenced with Bill Carter as construction superintendent.

Bill was doing the work he’d studied and prepared to do; however, days on the job were not always pleasant. Four years after the end of World War II, building supplies were still difficult to procure. Mack Hamilton was hard to understand, and Bill found it difficult to work with him. Yes, Mack was brilliant, but he also possessed old-fashioned ideas.

Unfortunately for Bill—and for Mack—Mack was an alcoholic. Bill told me about one occasion when Mack was drinking and came to the sewer plant project. Mack, Bill said, was chewing me out for no justifiable rea son. I picked up a pipe wrench and took out after him, halting short of any harm or mayhem, allowing cooler heads to prevail. Notwithstanding Mack’s weaknesses, he taught me valuable things about construction that I would need later.

During the construction of the plant project, Bill developed a friendship with A.T. Williams and John Nelson Williams of Williams Lumber Company. One conversation lead to another, and they soon formed a partnership to build houses and small commercial and industrial buildings, assuming all fell into place. The name of the partnership was to be Carter-Williams Construction Company with Bill and John Nelson as the partners.

The sewer plant project was completed in 1950. During the think-through phase of the Carter-Williams partnership, John Ed Red Underwood was serving as chairman of the Fayetteville Gas Board. One day, Red and Bill ran into each other, and Red made Bill an offer.

Bill, our Gas Board is looking for a manager, and we would very much like to discuss with you the possibility of becoming our manager.

Red, I appreciate your asking, Bill replied, but I have an iron or two in the fire that I’m considering. If you will give me ten days to think it through, I will get back to you.

Bill called Red after carefully considering the possibility and declined to further the conversation. Bill was firmly resolved to follow through with the Carter-Williams opportunity to construct.

Bill described the formation of CFW Construction Co. in 1983:

In late 1950, while building supplies were still difficult to procure, we started the Carter-Williams partnership to build houses and small commercial and industrial buildings. Williams was the Williams Lumber & Supply Company and furnished the building materials. We purchased a pickup for which I traded my car and a one-and-a-half ton stake truck plus saws, etc.

Soon Dick Farrar, who was a good farmer friend and whose wife was a favorite first cousin, and I decided to start another partnership, Farrar and Carter, to do utility construction. We purchased a Bantam backhoe mounted on a surplus army six-by-six from Mr. Tom Osborne in whose guesthouse Jane and I had lived while in Knoxville. We also purchased Dick’s farm pickup, a two-ton flatbed dump truck, a used 105 CFM air compressor and air tools, and a rubber-tired, two-wheel-drive used Hough front-end loader, and soon followed this spread with a second dump, a second Bantam, a 955 Cat. track loader and another used air compressor, etc. The chase was on.

During the war and teaching, I had saved some money, and Jane received a small inheritance, which both amounted to approximately $7,000—all of which was used to start the business. My two partners each put up approximately $3,500 in cash or kind. In effect we started the two companies with a total of about $14,000. Of course much of the equipment was purchased on a lease-purchase basis.

We merged the two companies into a newly formed corporation named CFW Construction Company, Inc., and it commenced business in January 1952. During this period, we had learned a bit of how business was carried on, bookkeeping, organization, legal necessities, and necessary government requirements such as licenses, taxes, etc.

After making the initial decision and during the two-and-a half years thinking and planning period and during the startup years, I can remember no particular qualms about whether to do it or not. There was the constant thought of fear of failure after commitment and commencement, but it was intermingled with the necessary 100-hour workweek and the daily problems. Throughout the life of our construction company, we have lived very close to financial disaster nearly every day. This does take its toll in such ways as high blood pressure, stomach resections for ulcers, etc., but like an old fire horse, one is always ready to go again when the bell rings.

CHAPTER 4

W for Williams

Abednego Thomas Mr. Beddy Williams was the original W in CFW Construction. His son, John Nelson J.N. Williams, later assumed Mr. Beddy’s interest in CFW.

Williams Lumber Company and Williams Lumber and Supply Company, Inc. have a long and rich history. Williams Lumber and Supply Co. was incorporated in January 1961. However, the company dates back to the late 1800s.

The Fayetteville Observer reported in 1900 that the Fayetteville business operations of John Knight Williams, father of Abednego Thomas Williams, could be traced back to 1872. J.K. Williams partnered with C.S. Swainson to charter Williams and Swainson, dealers in poplar and hardwoods. In 1889, they built a planing mill, which was damaged when a tornado hit Fayetteville on March 20, 1890. According to court records, Williams and Swain-son bought the land where the business was located in 1891. In 1895, the partnership divided the land into two lots; Swainson bought the northern lot, and the partnership of Williams and B.A. Lewis bought the southern lot, which contained the planing mill and saw mill. On the morning of July 29, 1897, the Lewis and Williams band saw and planing mill burned, but the partners vowed to rebuild. The Lewis and Williams firm dissolved in 1898, and Williams took sole