Longtime Atlanta resident, civic leader, volunteer and businessman Bradley Norton Currey, Jr., died January 6, 2022, at home in Atlanta, Georgia. He was 91.
Currey
Throughout his life, Brad loved civic and business work but also activities outside of work, such as playing with children and grandchildren, swimming, hiking, gardening and listening to music. He used to say he was the “luckiest guy that ever lived.” Since the early 1980s, he has spent time with family in the north Georgia mountains, where he walked the woods; read Jack Tales and Pogo to beloved grandchildren, nieces and nephews; built roaring fires in the winter, and in summertime took very long swims. He loved people, eschewed extravagance, cared about community and was generous with his time and resources.
Brad graduated from Princeton University in 1951 with an A.B. degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He then enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving as an infantry soldier and armor officer during the Korean War. He saw no combat, his service spent going to and teaching in Army Schools. He declared infantry basic training and infantry leaders’ courses in the recently-integrated Army the “best possible antidote to four years at Princeton University.”
He loved his work from boyhood on. His first management job was head busboy in the dining halls at Princeton University. He joined Trust Company of Georgia in late 1953 as a trainee, rising from teller to credit analyst, securities analyst, commercial lender, bond portfolio manager, head of Atlanta commercial banking, head of marketing, controller, strategic planner, chief financial officer and member of the board of directors of the bank and bank holding company – in short, a wonderful and productive banking career. In 1976, he joined Rock-Tenn Company, of which he had been an outside director for nine years. He and A. Worley Brown led the company until Brown became disabled in the late 1980’s, after which Brad served as CEO until retiring in 2000. The company grew from $12 million sales in 1967 to $1.3 billion in 2000. He and Worley Brown built the Rock-Tenn Team and, by his report, “had more fun than the law allowed.” Throughout his remarkable career, he led by example, listened, mentored and cultivated talent. The list of people who are grateful that Brad Currey coached, encouraged, motivated, cajoled and inspired them to give their best may be as long as the Atlanta phone book in 1953, the year he arrived in Atlanta.
From the mid-1950s through 2000, Brad was an active and influential volunteer. He helped lead Community Chest and United Way campaigns, headed the Graduate School of Banking of the South at Louisiana State University from 1971-74; and chaired the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce in 1974, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra board in 1976-78, and the Woodruff Arts Center board in 1983-85. From 1983-88 he served the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta as deputy chairman, then chairman of the board. He was an outside director of Genuine Parts Company and Brown & Brown, Inc., Standard-Coosa-Thatcher Company, Dempster Brothers, Inc., and Enzymatic Deinking Technologies, LLC. He also served on the boards of American Paper Institute, the American Forest and Paper Association and the Paperboard Packaging Council, and was a founder of the Paper Recycling Coalition. In education, he was a trustee of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, The Lovett School, and Emory University, where he served as chair from 1994-2000.
Immediately following “retirement,” he went to work on water policy in Georgia and the so-called water war between Georgia, Florida and Alabama that started in 1990. Three governors appointed him to committees and councils charged with problem solving related to water supply and conservation. He was particularly proud of contributing to the accomplishments of the ACF (Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint) Stakeholders, a board of 56 people from three states. He recruited key board members, helped raise the money for engineering studies and computer modeling and worked to keep the economic development interests and environmental interests all in the same tent. After five years of hard work, all 56 people on that board agreed that they “could live with” a Sustainable Water Management Plan for the ACF basin. The plan did not stop the litigation which reached the U.S. Supreme Court, but it did show that stakeholders who depend on the river basin from all three states and all four sub-basins could agree on a practical solution to the 26-year-old water war.
As much as he valued his work, Brad was most proud of his big family: his brothers and sisters, his wife and children, nieces, nephews and grandchildren. Beyond work and family, the things that mattered the most to him were the following: First, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church’s acquisition of the full two blocks of land on which the church is located. Second, working with L. L. Gellerstedt, Jr., Ivan Allen, III, George Goodwin and others to roll out the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce slogan “Atlanta, the World’s Next Great City” in the early 1970’s. This same group traveled the world securing foreign consulates and persuading international airlines to initiate service to Atlanta. Third, his work with Mrs. Betty Sands Fuller to keep Robert Shaw as the genius leading the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus when he was at risk of being fired. Fourth, establishing the Paper Recycling Coalition as the voice for paper recycling in the USA. And lastly, the Sustainable Water Management Plan completed in 2015 by the ACF Stakeholders which proved that intractable differences can be resolved by stakeholders using facts, science, engineering and the willingness of the participants to recognize that, as Brad would say, “nobody gets everything they want!”
Born June 21, 1930, in Chattanooga, Tenn., he was the second child of Bradley Norton Currey and Louise Sevier Giddings Currey. He is predeceased by his wife Sally McClellan Currey, and survived by their four children Bradley N. Currey III (Julie Farrar), of Clayton, Mo., Anne C. Bucey (David R. Bucey) of Atlanta, L. Louise Currey Wilson (Clifford C. Wilson Jr.) of Princeton, N.J. and Russell M. Currey (Amy Durrell) of Atlanta; ten grandchildren, Nicholas O. Currey, Tonya M. Currey, Sarah M. Bucey, Rachel A. Bucey, Richard C. Bucey, Hannah L. Wilson Rebrovick, Bradley M. Goren-Wilson, Anna B. Currey, Alexander M. Currey and William D. Currey; three brothers, Frederick G. Currey of Dallas, Tex., Hal Sevier Currey of Sullivan’s Island, S.C., and Robert B. Currey of Atlanta and Sparta, Ga.; and many nieces, nephews and cousins. His sisters were Louise Currey Nicholls (1928-1990), Rose Giddings Currey (1934-1935) and Elizabeth Currey Foster (1943-1984).
He and his wife Sally joined St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in 1956, where they sang in the choir. He served several terms on the vestry and as senior warden and was finance chair from 1968-1988. Services will be held at the church on Saturday, February 19, 2022, at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers or other memorials, gifts to St. Luke’s Endowment Fund, The United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, The Nature Conservancy, The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, The James T. Laney Scholars Fund at Emory University, or whatever charitable enterprise he roped you into, would have been appreciated by Mr. Currey.
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