On October 4, 2000 Alabama lost one of its most extraordinary citizens, and the world lost a tower of a man. Born in April 1919 in Loachapoka (Lee County) Alabama, Harry Heard moved to Heflin with his family when he was 11 years old. He went on to work at the Planter Mill for 60 years. I can still remember him walking back across the highway and eating a lunch that my grandmother had prepared, and then walking back to his job. He had said he wasn’t paid much, but that a man had to work.