It’s easy to get fed up with politics, even
when you live in a friendly town like Decatur, Alabama. For drycleaner
David Bolding, it was simply a matter of not liking the direction the
local government was heading in his hometown.
“Cities are getting into business
that’s none of their business,” he explained.
“They’re more interested now in buying property and selling
it to businesses — things that really shouldn’t occupy a
city’s time because they should be more interested in
infrastructure and the streets, and maintaining needs that are already
there.”
Though he had no political experience to fall back
on, David felt it was time for him to be more active in trying to make
a difference. In June, he opted to run for the District 2 seat on the
city council. His slogan, “a new voice for Decatur’s oldest
district,” struck a chord with the public.
“I didn’t really know if I’d
have a chance,” he confessed. “When you run for politics,
you go through a feeling like euphoria for a week or two. You feel like
you’ve got the momentum, and then you start to see your
opponents’ signs a lot or you hear this or that and you kind of
fall back a little bit. So, you try to drift back up ahead
again.”
As far as campaign strategies go, David kept
things fairly simple.
“Here, we just don’t have a way of
gaging whether or not you’re ahead or behind or in third place or
what,” he said. “But, people will tell you when you
actually get out there and go door to door. That’s what I did.
You don’t get all of the neighborhoods, but you get most of
them.”
David won over many of his constituents by simply
being straightforward with them.
“I’ve tried my hardest not to make any
promises because they are the hardest thing to do when you’re a
politician,” he noted. “You just want to tell them that you
want to be their voice. That’s the main thing.”
As a young man in Alabama, David really
didn’t want to have anything to do with politics, especially when
he was stunned to find out his father, Russell, did.
“My father sold life insurance for about 25
years and then he became the mayor of Decatur for a term,” he
recalled. “He was mayor from 1972 to 1976. Actually, I was riding
to school one day and heard that he was running on the
radio.”
Russell Bolding was the first full-time mayor in
the city’s history. David, though, wasn’t a big fan of
being the mayor’s son. “It’s kind of like being the
preacher’s kid,” he laughed.
One thing he did admire was his father’s
integrity. “He did a good job. He was real honest and that just
doesn’t get it done in politics.”
The elder Bolding’s term ended after David
finished high school. He was busy pursuing a B.S. in administrative
dietetics at Jacksonville State University.
“At first, I was kind of looking at being a
nurse and then I got a little turned off with it,” he said.
“I had taken a lot of nutritional courses, so the next thing I
knew, I was a dietician.”
In 1979, David went to work with a food management
group that shipped him off to various hospitals throughout the state of
Georgia.
He was in charge of all hospital meals —
making sure everything was purchased and quality was maintained. He
started off in a 50-bed facility but eventually worked his way up to
one that had close to 300 beds and served about 1,200 meals daily.
“A dietary department is not a moneymaker
for a hospital,” David noted. “Dietary is more like a
necessary evil or something. They got to have it, but they try not to
spend any money on it. That’s why people are never happy with the
food in a hospital.”
After spending four-and-a-half years as a hospital
dietician, David was ready for a change. Fortunately, he got a call one
day requesting him to come back to Decatur and run the town’s
country club. Unbeknownst to him, his first political challenge was
back there waiting for him.
“Decatur, at the time, was a town of about
50,000 people and it wasn’t wet. They didn’t sell
beverages,” he recalled. “We had to lobby in the state
house in Montgomery to get an option passed so just the city could vote
on going wet. Before, the city had voted to go wet, but the county had
kept it dry. So, we did a municipal option bill that allowed us to
proceed to go wet and the county didn’t have a say in it. Where
there’s a will, there’s a way.”
The process itself took about six months, leaving
David unimpressed with the political process.
“It was interesting getting a bill passed in
the capitol,” he explained. “You take a guy to lunch and he
tells you how great it is, but when he gets back there he starts
filibustering it. That was the first time I ever saw somebody
waffle.”
Prior to the bill passing, Decatur had been one of
the largest towns of its kind to still be dry. Now that the country
club could sell alcohol, it increased revenues dramatically under
David’s watch, but after five years at the post, he realized that
he had reached a professional apex.
“The only way to go up in the country club
business was to move to a bigger club. You’re just continually
moving from one town to another,” he said.
At that point, David knew he would rather be in
business on his own.
The drycleaning industry may seem like a strange
jump for a former dietician with country club management experience,
but David’s uncle, Ralph Agee, had successfully run Quality Model
Laundry for many years. He told his nephew about an opportunity in
Hartselle, which lies ten miles south of Decatur. In 1988, David bought
Nu Way Cleaners, which had already stayed open for over three decades.
The modest plant employs only seven workers, yet
it still processes almost all of its work on the premises.
“We do all of the alterations, drycleaning
and laundry here,” David said. “We do quality work. A lot
of cleaners don’t clean certain things anymore, like they
don’t clean wedding dresses. We do draperies. We clean
comforters. We’re still in the old school.”
As David sees it, being “old school”
also means taking responsibility, something he believes that many
cleaners really don’t do anymore.
“We’re one of the few left that
actually try to get a spot out,” he said. “Now, they have
discounters and everything else. There’s no spotting. They
don’t take risks anymore. People are so paranoid about not being
able to get spots out and having to pay for it. I think cleaning has
changed a lot. It’s now a world where it’s always somebody
else’s fault.”
David would love to be able to blame somebody
specific for the dramatic downturn in drycleaning volume he’s
witnessed in recent years. Instead, he chalks it up to a nationwide
trend of dressing down.
“We’re all just hanging on. They say
it’s a cycle, so we’re all waiting for it to get back on
the upswing. Hopefully, it will well before the bankers come get
us,” he laughed.
Instead of complaining about things he cannot
control, David would rather focus on problems that are within his power
to solve. In fact, that is one of the reasons he ran for the seat in
District 2, which houses most of Decatur’s small businesses. His
four-year term begins in October.
Prior to the campaign, he made sure his wife,
Carol, and two children (daughter Catherine, 9, and stepdaughter
Elizabeth, 19) didn’t find out about the decision on the radio.
He ran as an independent candidate, winning 55.3%
of the popular vote — largely because local citizens wanted a
change and felt he was the best of the three candidates on the ballot
that would initiate it.
“Before, the businesses in town really
didn’t have much of a voice,” he explained. “The
people who were on the boards weren’t in business. We have a lot
of industry so you have a few people on there that make their money
working for industry and didn’t have to answer to the public
really until they got into a government job.”
“Then, they get inundated with questions:
‘Why is this?’ and ‘Why is that?’ They usually
get defensive when it gets like that. They don’t understand
compromise. I’m one of the most compromising guys you’ll
find,” he laughed.
Having a cleaners certainly makes David an expert
on the art of diplomacy, but it also has taught him that he won’t
be able to initiate sweeping changes in the town overnight.
“In the drycleaning business, you
don’t lower the price of all of your garments and the next day
have a slew of customers come in,” he said.
David understands that he’ll have to tackle
one issue at a time, and though not fond of making reckless promises,
he does vow to perform the duties of his job without worrying about
whether or not he’ll still have it in four years.
In other words, he’ll serve his term under
his own terms.
“I’ve seen so many people, when they
make it into a position, the next day they start running for
re-election,” he stated. “It prohibits them from doing
anything or getting anything accomplished.”
“I’m probably only going to be around
for one term,” he chuckled. “But, if you don’t make a
difference, then you can’t just walk away from the job and say,
‘Well, I tried to change the way it was, but it’s just more
than one person can do.’”
