Barbara Russell Drake didn’t realize until much later that as she tagged along with her dad to haul trash, she was discovering a professional treasure.
She grew up poor in Indiana, and her father had less than two years of education in a one-room school. He supplemented his full-time factory work with odd jobs, including using his pickup truck to haul trash for customers in a wealthy neighborhood.
“As he unloaded, he pulled out items he thought he could sell, we could use or that might have value at a scrap recycler,” said Drake, who was about 6 years old when she helped unload the truck.
“It was many years before I related it to what I have done in my career,” she said.
Drake was in her 40s, and owner of Southland Recycling & Shredding Services when she made the connection.
“My cousin visited and said, ‘your Daddy would have loved this business,’” Drake recalled.
Her career has spanned 40 years in most facets of the recycling business, primarily in Jacksonville.
Drake, 72, has a knack for identifying opportunities for advancement and making them work.
As a child, Drake knew her dad picked up scrap and took it to a metals recycler, but she did not know it’s potential as an industry.
Her mother had a high school education, and her father didn’t think girls should be educated.
“The only vision I ever had was I would marry and be a mother,” Drake said.
In high school in Evansville, Indiana, a recruiter sent postcards to the students. She took the test and enlisted in the U.S. Air Force two weeks after high school graduation, “knowing absolutely nothing about the military.”
There, Drake met and married her husband in 1965, but she was discharged upon becoming pregnant.
Her husband was transferred by the Air Force to the Florida Panhandle, where Drake took a civil service job and used the GI Bill to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration at the University of West Florida.
Military policies changed and she was allowed to apply for officer training class while retaining custody of her child. Before that, women had to give up custody if they were officers.
She served as an officer from 1972-77 and then was a captain in the Air Force reserves. She divorced during that time.
“When I left the Air Force, I sent applications to many companies, and I chose a paper manufacturing company,” she said.
In 1977, Drake joined Container Corp. of America in Wabash, Indiana, as controller and she trained in every part of the paper mill.
“Over time, everyone complained about our recycling division, said it was a real problem,” Drake said. That division was responsible for supplying all of the paper for the paper manufacturing process.
“When it was time for me to be promoted, I asked to go to the recycling division because I thought there would be an opportunity for advancement,” she said.
The company soon sent her to Philadelphia as a regional controller and a few years later, in 1981, to Jacksonville.
Here she stayed, working for, buying and running companies.
Upon coming to Jacksonville, she operated Container Corp.’s recycling center on Beaver Street as regional manager.
She had three jobs – to operate the plant and make it as productive as possible; to supply the Fernandina Beach paper mill with 12,000 tons of cardboard a month bought from across the Southeast; and to market the company’s products from their other plants to recyclers looking for raw materials.
Container since has been sold several times and now is WestRock.
In 1986, Drake started what has become Republic Recycling & Shredding Services. It began as Covenant Paper Stock, then merged with Southland Waste and was sold to Republic Services in 1995. She left in 1997.
Drake soon began consulting with Main Recycling Co., a small metals recycler. She bought half the business and grew it into a significant recycling plant, leaving when her partner bought out her interest.
In 2006, she thought she would retire, but people would call, so she began Barbara Drake Trading LLC to broker paper, plastic and metals from South Florida and Puerto Rico to buyers in South America and Asia.
During her career, she found that running her own business was quite different from working for the military or in corporate America.
“In great big bold letters, cash flow,” Drake said. “I had to learn how to buy what I absolutely needed and what I knew I could sell, immediately process it so I could sell it, ship it out as fast as I could and collect the money.”
She distilled the lesson: “You have to be focused on what needs to be done and get it done fast and turn that inventory as fast as you can.”
Asked about her leadership style, Drake refers to her military, educational and corporate training and provides a bottom line.
Numbers “speak to me,” she said.
“I know that when I look at a balance sheet or an income statement, I can catch the problems.”
She’s also hands-on. “I knew how to operate all of our equipment except drive the semitrucks. I baled a lot of tons of paper in my life.”
As of this year, Drake is “sort of” retired.
“When someone calls, I’m always there to try to help.”
The two years between Republic Services and Main Recycling utilized Drake’s leadership abilities in another helpful way.
She served as the interim executive director for Leadership Jacksonville in 1998 and for the Mental Health Association in 1999.
Drake was nominated to join Leadership Jacksonville in 1991-92.
“It changed my life. I got to learn about what was going on in Jacksonville, where needs were and challenges, what we were doing right, and I couldn’t stay away from it. I got very involved,” she said.
The Mental Health Association post came when nonprofit consultants Dorcas Tanner and Lizanne Bomhard asked if she would do the job and help recruit a new director.
Drake began developing her leadership skills in the Air Force, especially at the age of 29 when she was made commander of a squadron of 350 women.
Their average age was 19 and they needed her guidance.
“I was shocked at the amount of counseling I needed to do. It was a very difficult job and one that I never felt I did as well as I needed to do,” she said.
She was surprised at the challenges some of the young women faced in their home lives with the lack of security, violence and drugs.
Drake responded by connecting the women with the resources at the base that could help. “It worked out as well as I could manage. I wish I’d done more,” she said.
Through her years in Jacksonville, Drake has donated time to help the United Way of Northeast Florida, having served as the chair of its board of directors and on the board of trustees; as a chair of the Leadership Jacksonville board; and as the board treasurer of JASMYN, the Jacksonville Sexual Minority Youth Network.
She also finds that Jacksonville is a networked community.
“There’s an old saying that there’s only six degrees of separation, and I say in Jacksonville, there’s only two. You know somebody, you can find some connection.”
Drake had been reluctant to move her 14-year-old son to Jacksonville when she was sent here 36 years ago.
“I knew the challenges with racism and I was concerned about bringing a teenager to Jacksonville and introducing him to that attitude,” she said.
She believes the city has come a long way, but still has a long way to go.
Nonetheless, “I’ve been very, very pleased I moved here, and I love the city.”
Her son, David, who just turned 51, remains in Jacksonville, too.
