Huebner came here in 1968 as an urban planner for the Greenville County Planning Commission. From 1968 through 1973, he and his fellow workers accomplished projects that have left an imprint. They helped find a suitable site for Greenville's law enforcement building and initiated a study that led to the elimination of 100 illegal dump sites throughout the county.
“We were really trying to create a better community,” Huebner said.
One of those who worked with Huebner was Coleman Shouse, now a partner in the real estate and building firm Lazarus-Shouse Communities.
“Every time I see him we reminisce about the work we did in the 1970s and the plans we did for solid waste,” Shouse said. “He would always go the extra mile on research. Once we wanted to demonstrate that the amount of garbage the county produced was equivalent to the Daniel Building, so he did a graphic.”
Shouse said Huebner was driven by curiosity and had a knack for teaching himself as he went.
“He attacks everything with a passion whether it's sailing, reports or having dinner,” Shouse said.
Huebner left the planning commission in 1973 to become the director of planning and research at J.E. Sirrine Co. With the company being sold and possible downsizing on the horizon, Huebner started his own consulting firm 10 years later.
It was during this time that Huebner became active in community causes and politics.
His list of activities include chairman of the Greenville City Beautification Commission, president of the Greenville Community Warehouse Theatre and manager of numerous state and local political campaigns, including those of former lieutenant governors Nancy Stevenson and Mike Daniel.
But one of his most publicized community works was leading the campaign to save Sirrine Stadium in Greenville.
In 1981, a group of parents didn't want to see the 13,000-seat stadium, near Cleveland Street and University Ridge, sold by Furman University.
It had been the home for the Greenville High School football team for years. Many thought selling the field would mean no more high school games there. A group of parents went to Huebner who agreed to start a fundraising campaign.
Through bumper stickers, barbecues, stadium seat sales and rock concerts, the campaign generated $546,000 and the stadium was saved. It still remains the home of the football team.
Despite his success, Huebner did some soul searching and found he was discontent with his life.
Huebner left Greenville in 1983 to pursue his love of sailing. He moved to Charleston where he took a job on a sailboat.
He was among five crew members who wanted to sail the LaTara around the world. The group made it 400 miles out to sea before disagreements between the captain and crew broke up the voyage.
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It was then Huebner began the hard work of building Mor-Lite. It's a subject that he often compares with sailing since he says the experiences of trying to meet a payroll have been far worse than facing 30-foot waves.
But Huebner has faced challenging situations for most of his life.
He was born the son of a successful business inventor and investor who lived in Grosse Pointe, a Detroit subdivision.
In fact, it was only about six months ago that he discovered his father had received a patent in January 1956 for a lighting fixture he had designed.
“I never knew about this,” Huebner said as he held the aging document bearing a large red-patent seal. “My mother found these papers in the attic about six months ago and sent them to me. What would he think now?”
Huebner never had much time with his father. Edgar J. Huebner died of complications from gall bladder surgery when his son was eight.
Without a source of income. Huebner's mother, Edna, was forced to take a job as an elementary school secretary. To help, Huebner and his sister worked after school.
He began cutting neighbors' lawns and then delivered The Detroit News at the age of 11.
On his newspaper route, Huebner faced his first test of handling a growing customer base. In a couple of years, his paper route grew from 32 to 164 subscribers.
He attended the local Catholic school through high school, but there was no time for after-school activities or sports. He had to work.
As a teenager, Huebner sold encyclopedias door-to-door and worked at a local car wash, where he was befriended by many of the ex-convicts who worked there.
He was 18 and had graduated from high school. Yet, a car-wash job paying 75 cents an hour wouldn't support a college education.
That changed when a car-wash regular, who owned “a great big Lincoln,” offered Huebner a job. It turned out the man was vice president of steel production for Ford Motor Co.
Huebner worked rolling steel in the hot Rouge auto plant in Dearborn, Mich.
With barely enough money in his pocket and everything he could carry in a foot locker, Huebner then enrolled in business and philosophy at St. Bernard College near Birmingham, Ala.
“A lot of guys I knew had gone there and it was the only place I could afford,” Huebner said.
After graduating in 1966, he enrolled in the masters of business administration program at the University of Mississippi. He would later change his mind, study urban and regional planning and land his first job in Greenville.
With work so much a part of his life, Huebner, who is divorced, hopes he can now enjoy some of the success while he continues to build.
That would include moving his business into an office instead of the lower level of his downtown apartment.
“There are guys like me all over the country trying to do the same thing,” he said of those pursuing small-business success. “This is what the American dream is all about and I just happen to be in it.”
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Delta Woodside tried a better idea for lighting
By JEFF BENNETT
Business Writer
It was definitely a new approach in an industry built largely on tradition.
For years, textile plants had always been designed, operated and lit a certain way.
“In 1962 we thought the more light the better,” said William Smith, manager of the Delta Woodside Beattie textile plant. “We had twice as many light fixtures than we needed, we were lighting empty space and energy was inexpensive.”
But in the 1980s, plants began facing more pressure from their companies to cut costs. Lower costs meant the companies could trim prices on their products and compete in price-sensitive markets. John Hall, director of energy for Delta Mills Marketing Co., was aware of the pressure.
So in 1987, when two men introduced an idea on how the company could save money on lighting all of its plants, Hall listened. John Huebner and Bob DeGarmo owned Mor-Lite Inc. The company wanted to install, on a trial basis, reflective fluorescent lighting.
The computer-designed reflectors would allow the plant to re-direct light where it would do the most good. The technique gave the plant a way to boost and concentrate lighting while reducing the number of fixtures, fluorescent bulbs and energy needed.
“We evaluated what they had done and found that it saved money,” Hall said. “We have been able to eliminate half of our energy costs. We were able to aim the lights so we weren't lighting aisles or empty spaces.”
Mor-Lite recently retrofitted the lighting system for the 400,000-square-foot Delta Woodside Beattie plant.
The plant's 4,421 two-lamp fluorescent fixtures were replaced with 2,665 single-lamp fluorescent fixtures.
With the new lighting fixtures, Hall said electrical use was reduced by two-thirds. Operating costs dropped from $240,493 to $78,441 for an annual savings of $162,052.
Overall, Hall said light levels increased from 10 to 55 foot-candles to 30 to 70 foot-candles (a foot-candle is a unit equivalent to the illumination produced by a source of one candle at a distance of one foot). The project cost $315,000 and was paid off in two years.
Today, Huebner's lighting fixtures hang in about 250 plants in the United States, Mexico and several South American countries.
Mor-Lite operates almost as a one-man company.
Huebner has three marketing firms that find plants that are upgrading their operations.
Once a customer is identified and Mor-Lite is hired, Huebner will receive a plant's machine layout which helps him identify the lighting needs.
He then designs the reflectors on a computer in his downtown Greenville office.
The information is passed to X-Tra Light in Houston, which makes the reflectors and sends them to the job site.
Huebner has between four and 20 workers on his payroll who can go to a plant and handle the installment under the direction of an electrical contractor.
The company also assists and advises those plants that want to handle the job on their own.
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