Partly cloudy skies. Low 68F. Winds light and variable..
Partly cloudy skies. Low 68F. Winds light and variable.
J.B. Langley, who recently retired at the age of 88 as a master tool and die maker at Evans Tool & Die Inc., receives a company shirt and other company merchandise during a recent gathering.
Shown here are, l-r, are Rodney Barnes, vice president of operations at Evans Tool & Die; Dee Barnes, president and CEO and granddaughter of company founder Len Evans; recent retiree J.B. Langley; and Rick Kerbow, vice president of operations. The group is posed in front of a portrait of Len Evans, while a photo of his wife, Mary Alice Evans, hangs to the left.
J.B. Langley, who recently retired at the age of 88 as a master tool and die maker at Evans Tool & Die Inc., receives a company shirt and other company merchandise during a recent gathering.
Shown here are, l-r, are Rodney Barnes, vice president of operations at Evans Tool & Die; Dee Barnes, president and CEO and granddaughter of company founder Len Evans; recent retiree J.B. Langley; and Rick Kerbow, vice president of operations. The group is posed in front of a portrait of Len Evans, while a photo of his wife, Mary Alice Evans, hangs to the left.
CONYERS — He grew up during tough times. Born at the mid-point of the Great Depression, J.B. Langley learned early to work hard for a living, and it is a standard that has stayed with him all of his 88 years.
Langley spent most of his working life — which started in his early teens and included many long days and weeks — as a toolmaker. His dedication to his craft and his love for the work developed him into a skilled toolmaker who is regarded as a master of the trade by his former coworkers at Evans Tool & Die Inc. in Conyers. Langley’s years at Evans Tool & Die also forged a special relationship between him and the Evans family.
Langley, known at Evans as “Pop,” recently retired but still comes into the tool and die shop on a regular basis to visit with members of the Evans family and his former co-workers. He took a trip down memory lane recently, remembering the camaraderie working with Len Evans and the Evans family over the years. As Langley recalled, Len Evans started the company in 1948 in Decatur where Langley worked alongside Evans, his wife Mary Alice Evans, and Langley’s father Charles Langley to make the company a success.
“We worked many nights to get the jobs done,” he said.
A bit like a cat with nine lives, Langley recalled some scrapes he survived through the years. At the age of 11, while living in Dahlonega, he was out deer hunting and was shot twice by a man with a 12-gauge shotgun. Langley said he was taken to Emory Hospital in Atlanta for treatment. Luckily, penicillin had recently become widely available, and his life was saved by injections of the antibiotic. Langley recalled he was hospitalized for months and was still at Emory at the time of the Winecoff Hotel Fire in Atlanta in December 1946.
There were other mishaps — a go-kart wreck, car crashes, motorcycle accidents. Langley’s list of broken bones is long. At one point he broke both arms and his back and was in a body cast from his neck to his toes. It took him a year to recover. “I was a zombie,” he said, laughing at the memory.
Then there was a bout with appendicitis.
“My wife said I was drinking, but I laid there until I was about dead,” Langley said with a laugh.
At home after surgery, Langley again developed gangrene, and Evans came to his rescue, picking him up in a station wagon and taking him to the hospital.
Throughout these ups and downs, he said Len Evans, who he calls “Big Len,” continued to keep him on the payroll and brought him back to work when he had recovered.
“He was good to me, always has been,” said Langley of the company founder who died in 2013.
Along the way Langley married his wife Cleo, and they had two sons: Rob still lives in the area, but Thomas was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.
Langley, who lives in Social Circle, retired a few months ago due to health issues — two strokes and failing eyesight. He says it was the vision trouble that ruled out his continued employment.
“I was going to retire when I was 90 years old,” he said. “I would have made it, too.”
Although he’s not in the shop every day now, Langley’s influence at Evans Tool & Die abides.
Rick Kerbow, who is now vice president of engineering at Evans, started out at the age of 19 as an apprentice under Langley. He has a special respect and affection for his former boss.
“J.B. was a master if there ever was a master tool and die maker — machinist, fabricator, tool and die maker. He could build anything. Any type of machine,” said Kerbow. “If we ever had anything we took apart that we took to J.B. and said ‘hey, can we make this,’ I don’t ever remember him coming to anybody and saying ‘no.’ And he can improve any process. In his later years that is what he was so good at was taking a process and making it better, making it more efficient, making the company more money.”
“And he helped everybody … if J.B. liked you, he’d help you do anything,” Kerbow said, recalling how Langley once helped him wire a house.
Langley said he’s enjoyed teaching the tool and die craft over the years — but there was a limit to his patience.
“If a fella come to me and listened to me, I’d help him,” Langley said. “If somebody come to me now, and I tell ‘em how to do something and they tell me I’m wrong, I cut ‘em off because I’ve done been there. I ain’t saying I’m the best in the world, but I’ve been there.”
Langley said his own skill in the trade came down to him in the same way.
“I just like to make stuff. It come through from Big Len and my father. That was two of the best people that knowed everything. I just worked with them and Mary Alice.”
And it’s the satisfaction he gained working with close friends to get the job done — in spite of hard times — that resonates with him now.
“I enjoyed it here way back in the old times,” he said. “Didn’t nobody have nothing, we all just worked together.”
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