By BOB SHRALUKA
WZBD.com
(Commentary)
They didn’t break the mold when Allen Lee Fleming, best known as “Al,” was born. They just threw it away. No use keeping what would never work again.
Al Fleming has certainly earned the rest he now has coming, passing on after 90 years of a special life.
This is a guy who left Monmouth High School as a junior; you know, being destined to dig ditches and make little money the rest of his life. Well, he dug ditches alright; not with his hands but with the heavy equipment he loved to operate.
He did it so well and so often, in fact, that he built a prosperous company now known as Fleming Excavating.
Al (at right in photo with son Greg) probably made a little money, too. But that was never his goal, never something that occupied any significant amounts of his thoughts and time. Nope, he just wanted to get out in that open area and crank up the machinery.
As it was noted in his obituary, “he loved operating anything powered, be it construction equipment, planes, or boats.”
Even after finally giving up operating heavy equipment, Al still continued to visit jobsites – making sure things were done right, that things were done the “right way.”
We had an opportunity to talk to him back in mid-2019, as the new REV Complex was moving toward reality with a groundbreaking.
Fifty years earlier, in 1969, Al Fleming and the late Cal Yost, head of Yost Construction Co., brought in heavy equipment and cleared land for what would become Rube Wynn Field, the Little League diamond on the west end of the ball diamonds area.
The two men donated their time and equipment and their efforts launched the Hanna-Nuttman Park ball fields on which hundreds of boys and girls have spent their warm-weather days and nights.
“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t remember too much about it,” Al told us in 2019. “I know Cal Yost and I worked three or four days out there, moving dirt, clearing everything; there were some small trees, as I remember.
“I was in there to move the dirt, Cal was in charge. We donated our time; I had three or four guys with me to help.”
Someone had dug up a photo of Al and Cal, along with Cloise Reinhart, moving the dirt at that special time.
“Dad was always ready to help do projects with equipment,” his son, Greg – who took over for dad as operator of Fleming Excavating – said for the 2019 story which ran with the photo.
“The picture from the Decatur Democrat with the earth-movers from Yost Construction and dad’s (equipment) made dad proud of doing the work,” Greg noted.
Al attended the REV groundbreaking and, no surprise, thanked us for the story the first time we met him afterward.
A special life.
You simply have to figure that after his first two or three steps through the Pearly Gates that Al Fleming jumped on a piece of heavy equipment, cranked it up and was on his merry way!
