Ruckersville’s Lee Estes still gives it his very all

Ruckersville’s Lee Estes believes that no matter what job you have, you do it.
That belief has carried him from assembly lines to seats on the boards of the Central Virginia Regional Jail, Jefferson Area Board for Aging, and the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.
And more: Estes, 84, has held a seat on the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative’s board of directors since 1975, has been its chairman, and is preparing to run again.
“I don’t know that I’ll be opposed,“ he smiles. “I haven’t been for a long time.“
Estes is not one to brag about his successes, but neither is he one to deny them: he attributes them to healthy doses of motivation coupled with the ability to organize and work well with people.
“At 17,“ says the Albemarle native, “I was a young country boy thrown into the city, and I can tell you, I learned the value of working well with people mighty fast.“
Estes, an only child, was born in 1924 on the family’s 200-acre farm that straddled the Albemarle and Greene County lines near Advance Mills.
He learned responsibility early: his father died when he was five weeks old and his mother never remarried. As he grew, he assumed responsibility for both his mother and his aging grandmother, and payment for his family’s “home place.“
Estes’ father’s two brothers had paid off the mortgage, and Estes paid them for doing so - when he graduated from high school in 1941, he went to work on a General Motors assembly line in Baltimore.
During the five years he worked for General Motors - interrupted only by wartime military service - Estes took on a part-time job, making tin cans for American Can Company. He was sending weekly checks to his mother, as well as regular checks to his uncles who had paid off the family farm.
With his debts paid, Estes came home to the Piedmont in 1946.  He got a job, met a young beautician from Free Union named Nora Ward, married her, and helped her open the Glamour Beauty Shop on Main Street in downtown Charlottesville.
Now, the Estes’ have been married for 64 years, and, says Glenn Aylor, superintendent of the Central Virginia Regional Jail, are still “like two teenagers in love.“
Aylor tells a tale that had its beginnings over a business lunch: He says Estes “ordered a Reuben sandwich, ate half of it and asked for a doggie bag. I was with him when he took the bag home to his wife. When he presented it to her, he was grinning from ear to ear, looking at her like she was the love of his life, and she was looking at him the same way,“ he says. “That’s what it’s all about … he gave her half a sandwich he didn’t eat and she acted like he’d given her a million dollars.“
Estes says his happiness is also responsible for his success.
While his wife ran her shop, Estes went to work for State Farm Insurance in Charlottesville, working his way up from supply and communications supervisor to assistant manager.
In 1968 the Estes’ picked up stakes in Albemarle and moved to Ruckersville - where Estes would soon come to be known as a man who has “the community in his heart.“
So says Greene County Circuit Court Clerk Marie Durrer. “He wanted the best for the county,“ Durrer adds. “He always has. He always came to court to see what was going on and he always came to the Clerk’s Office every election night (to join others waiting for the results).“
It was due to Estes’ involvement in the community, Durrer supposes, that the late Judge David F. Berry appointed him what was, to the best of her knowledge, Greene’s first, last and only tie-breaker.
At the time, there were only three supervisors. As tiebreaker, it was Estes’ job to cast the deciding vote on issues that came before the Board if one supervisor was absent and the other two couldn’t agree.
Estes refused monetary compensation for the responsibility, but learned some lessons.
“When you are a tiebreaker, a lot of people try to influence you,“ he says. “I had people who liked me and people who didn’t like me, and still do.“
In the late 1980s, at a time that Greene was without a jail, he was part of a group of area men that proposed the regional jail that now serves this county, along with the counties of Fluvanna, Louisa, Madison and Orange.
Aylor says that as one of the Central Regional Jail’s “founding fathers” Estes took “a lot of negativity on the chin. Nobody wanted it in their back yard and political parties tried to use influence,“ but Estes and the others “stood their ground as a team.“
Today, Estes maintains his seat on the Jail board, and his position on the executive committee of the Albemarle Baptist Association. He has also been treasurer, deacon and chairman of the board of trustees and the cemetery committee at Spring Hill Baptist Church - a church steeped in Estes family history.
Spring Hill Baptist Church was built on Estes family land by his grandfather and his great-uncles. His father gave an additional acre of land for the church cemetery, and Estes gave another.
Estes is “what I classify as a gentleman’s gentleman,“ says Aylor, and then tells another tale.
“I’m 45 years old,“ Aylor begins.  “I was raised to respect my elders. Whenever I saw Mr. or Mrs. Estes, I’d call them Mr. and Mrs. Estes. One day Mr. Estes came to me and said, ‘Call me Lee. Don’t call me Mr. Estes.‘ I said, ‘Okay, Mr. Estes.‘
“It’s taken me a right good while to say ‘Lee’ because I have so much respect, but whenever I see him, I work on saying, ‘How’s it going, Lee?‘“