Forrest Hood James Jr. Forrest Hood "Fob" James Jr. In this respect he is an appropriate transitional figure in Alabama as state politics moved from being dominated by the Democratic Party to a competitive two-party system. James attended public schools in Lanett and West Point, Georgia, before transferring to the private Baylor Military Academy in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when he was a sophomore in high school.
Fob James at AU He received his bachelor of science degree in civil engineering in On August 20, , before he entered his senior year at Auburn, he eloped with the school's homecoming queen, Bobbie May Mooney of Decatur , with whom he later had four sons. Following his graduation, James played professional football for the Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League for one year during the season.
At the termination of his brief football career, the future governor served two years as a lieutenant in the U. Army Corp of Engineers. Late in , he and his family moved to Montgomery, where he worked as an earth-moving engineer. In , their second born, Greg, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. In need of additional money to pay Greg's medical bills, James left Montgomery in to take a job as construction superintendent with a road-paving company in Mobile.
He decided that he could earn a profitable living making plastic-coated barbells. With financial support from his father and a wealthy attorney friend, Jacob Walker Jr. Starting small, James worked the machines himself, and over the next 15 years the company experienced tremendous growth. James remained associated with the company until he was elected governor in Politically, James was a nonpartisan conservative who usually affiliated with the Republican Party.
Bobbie James was actually the first in the family to go on a ballot, running unsuccessfully on the Republican ticket in for a post on the Alabama State Board of Education. Her husband, after serving briefly as a member of the State Republican Executive Committee, switched to the Democratic Party in It was the expedient action of a man who had decided to run for governor in a state that had not elected a Republican in a century.
