Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson shares life turning points at Hoover prayer breakfast
God uses circumstances, people and His Word to get people’s attention, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson told a crowd of about 400 people at the Hoover Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday morning.
Stimpson, speaking in the main banquet room at the Hyatt Regency Birmingham — The Wynfrey Hotel, shared with the crowd several turning points for his life and for the city of Mobile that he believes were the result of God answering prayers by him and others.
Personally, one of the biggest turning points for his life was when, at the age of 21, he met Jean Miller in 1973. The first night he met her, he knew he would marry her and told her best friend that, he said. Her best friend gave a belly laugh and said she had a boyfriend and would never go out with him. Two and a half years later, they said their wedding vows.
Another big turning point for him was when his wife organized a family retreat to a Christian camp and he chose not to go. While at the retreat, a counselor challenged his oldest son, Billy, telling him that he was a leader and that he needed to make up his mind if he would lead other people to God or lead them astray.
His son was greatly impacted by that intervention, and Stimpson said he realized that he had neglected being the spiritual leader his family needed and that this counselor had done the job he should have been doing. That put him on a path of change, Stimpson said.
He worked with his family to create a family mission statement that they would “rise each day to love, serve and glorify God, to live by the highest standards of moral character, to cherish, respect and defend one another at all times and to be noble stewards of the gifts and resources and responsibilities entrusted to us,” he said.
That mission statement had a great impact on all of his children and their family life, he said.
Another turning point was in 1995, when during a Bible study with three other men, Stimpson was challenged to give God the first seven minutes of each day. He learned that doing that would somehow help him better manage his time throughout the day, he said.
Then in 2004, his younger brother Richard challenged him and another 10 or so men to get outside of their Bible study group and claim the city of Mobile for Jesus Christ. The group started having weekend retreats called Outback retreats, and those retreats, now held twice a year, have changed the community in immeasurable ways, spreading love and reconciliation, Stimpson said.
In 2010, when Stimpson was chairman of the Business Council of Alabama and finished giving a speech to a large group, someone came up to him after the speech and asked him when he would run for governor. Stimpson replied he wasn’t planning to run for anything.
But over the next couple of years, with the help of family and friends, Stimpson said he realized God was calling him to run for mayor of Mobile, and in November 2013, he was sworn in as the city’s 108th mayor.
“Early on, I started praying … that God would continue to send the people and resources to Mobile to transform it into the city He wanted it to be in His timeline,” Stimpson said.
From 2005 to 2009, Mobile fought hard to be the place where Northrup Grumman would build refueling planes for the U.S. Air Force, he said. The city won that competition twice but had the deal stripped away politically, which spread an attitude of malaise across the city, he said.
In 2010, at the prompting of a friend, he and other men drafted a decree about the injustice of the lost air tanker contract, had it signed by the mayor at that time and buried it along the runway of the Mobile airport.
Two years later, Airbus won a contract to start building planes in Mobile, and in 2½ years, Airbus will have expanded to building 20 planes a month in Mobile, Stimpson said.
Also, for two decades, people in Mobile who wanted to build a new commercial airport in downtown Mobile were told by the Mobile Airport Authority that it couldn’t be done, Stimpson said. Members of the Airport Authority told him he needed to run the city and let them run the Airport Authority, but he had authority to appoint all five members of that board, he said.
Now, he has received word from the Federal Aviation Administration that a downtown airport is possible, and a newly appointed Airport Authority has secured about $210 million of an expected $300 million needed to build it, he said.
Further, when Stimpson took office, the city was consumed with debt and unfunded liabilities, and city employees had not received a raise in seven years, he said.
In the past 10 years, the city has been able to pay down about two-thirds of its debt and release about $200 million in liabilities, Stimpson said. In four years, the city’s police and fire pension fund should be fully funded, and in five years, the city could be debt-free if it doesn’t borrow more money, Stimpson said. Additionally, city employees have received eight raises in the past 10 years, he said.
The city’s economic development has been greatly boosted by having two former Congressmen in key roles in the city, Stimpson said. Former U.S. Rep. Josiah Bonner is president of the University of South Alabama, and former U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne is president and CEO of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce.
God has provided both the people and the resources for Mobile to become what He wants it to be, Stimpson said.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stimpson said he was encouraged to start a weekday newsletter, and at the bottom of each newsletter is something spiritual or inspirational, he said. He has gotten a lot of feedback from residents who appreciate the newsletter, and so many of them say they like the end of it the best, he said.
“People are so hungry for leadership, for people to step out and talk about their faith and inspire them in their faith,” Stimpson said.
Stimpson encouraged people in the Hoover audience Tuesday to pray that their leaders will finish strong and guard themselves from pride. He quoted author Steve Farrar as saying that people who fail to finish strong usually fall in the areas of sex, money, neglecting their family or substance abuse. But all of those stem from pride — people thinking they know better than God what they need in their lives, he said.
“There are traps out there for every one of us,” Stimpson said. He encouraged those in attendance to pray Psalm 31:4 — that God would free them from the traps that are set for them and that they would rely on God as their redeemer.
The Hoover Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast was organized by the Hoover Beautification Board. Ministers who led prayers during the breakfast were the Rev. Tony Johnson of Riverchase United Methodist Church and the Rev. Vernon Huguley of St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church.