Jason Wilson

Jason Wilson, entrepreneur, civic leader, proud Auburn man, champion of his hometown, loyal friend, devoted husband, beloved son, brother and uncle, completed his earthly journey at UAB Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, surrounded by his family and those who loved him, and was reunited with the family who had gone before him. He was 46 years old.

Jason is survived by his wife, Jessica Wilson, and their beloved dogs, Ringo II and Daisy Mae; his beloved mother, Carol Bradford Brodeur, and stepfather, Bill Brodeur; his father, Gilbert Anthony Wilson, and stepmother, Beth Wilson; his brother, Brad Wilson, and Brad’s wife, Janet, and their children, Keller and Miles Wilson; and his sister, Kara Wilson Scheller, her husband, Zach Scheller, and their sons, Graham and Callan Scheller, affectionately and accurately considered “Brad and Jason 2.0.”

Jason shared a particularly close relationship with Jessica’s family, whom he loved dearly and embraced completely as his own: Jessica’s mother, Candy White; her brothers and sisters-in-law, Grady and Casey White, and their children, Lynleigh and Jack; Jonathan White and his daughter, Olivia; and DJ and Maren Burch and their children, Sophia, Marcello and Gracie. Jason treasured the time he spent with them and the family they all built together. Jason was reunited with his beloved grandparents, Grady Lavear and Dorothy Bradford and Miles Gilbert and Johnnie Lou Wilson, along with other cherished family and friends who went before him. No doubt, there were stories already waiting to be told and a fire waiting to be gathered around.

Serving as honorary pallbearers will be Jason’s nieces and nephews, Keller and Miles Wilson, Graham and Callan Scheller, Lynleigh and Jack White, Olivia White, Sophia, Marcello and Gracie Burch; his honorary nieces and nephews, Jillian, Ellis “Birdie,” Bennett, Asher, Jade and Kennedy; his host of close friends, fraternity brothers, colleagues, and current and former staff of Back Forty Beer Company, Current, and Coldwater Mountain Brewpub; the doctors, nurses and caregivers at UAB Hospital, RMC and Riverview Regional Medical Center; and the entire Legacy of Hope team who cared for Jason and his family with compassion and dignity.

Celebration of Life Jason’s family invites everyone whose life was touched by him to gather for a Celebration of Life on Saturday, August 29, from 1:00–3:00 p.m. at 210 at the Tracks in Gadsden. Following the celebration, a traditional New Orleans Second Line will lead Jason’s family, friends and community through the hometown he loved to Back Forty Beer Company, 200 N. 6th Street.

Casual dress. Come as yourself, and feel free to wear your favorite hat for Jason.

Jason was born January 14, 1980, in Gadsden, Alabama, to Carol Bradford Wilson and Gilbert Anthony Wilson. Fifteen months earlier, his older brother Brad had arrived and, by all accounts, was perfectly satisfied with the existing family arrangement. Brad strongly protested the addition of another child and saw little reason to complicate what had been, until then, a pretty good run as an only child. Then his parents brought Jason home to Hoke Street in East Gadsden. Jason smiled, Brad relented, and the family could keep him. From that point forward, it was a package deal: Brad and Jason. The Wilson boys.

That infectious smile, and Jason’s almost inexplicable ability to immediately win people over, would become one of the defining characteristics of his life.

Jason attended preschool at The Tabernacle on South 11th Street before attending W.E. Striplin Elementary School. His family grew to include his stepfather, Bill Brodeur, and his stepmother, Beth Wilson, and Jason spent his childhood moving between two sides of the same deeply Gadsden family. At his mother and Bill’s home on Cansler Avenue on Gadsden’s West Side, his grandparents Grady Lavear and Dorothy Bradford lived next door. At his father and Beth’s home on Crestview Drive, his grandparents Miles Gilbert and Johnnie Lou Wilson were just across the vacant lot. It was, in almost every imaginable way, the most Gadsden of childhoods.

In 1988, the family welcomed Jason’s younger sister, Kara. He adored her and was immensely proud of her, especially of her own entrepreneurial accomplishments. Family would remain at the center of Jason’s world for the rest of his life.

Despite his protestations, his maternal family eventually moved “to the county,” where Jason attended John S. Jones Elementary and Rainbow Middle School. The geography changed, but the important things did not: family, friends, sports, competition, laughter and the outdoors.

Jason loved sports with an intensity that remained with him throughout his life. He and Brad would scale the fence at Goodyear Golf Course to play heated matches that lasted until sundown. Jason once pitched a no-hitter in farm-team baseball with Brad playing first base. Their backyard basketball games sometimes operated under the entirely reasonable childhood rule that the first player to 1,000 points won. Backyard football games featured their father as “all-time quarterback,” while Brad and Jason fought over who got to be Bo Jackson or Lawyer Tillman. These were not casual games; to the Wilson boys, championships were at stake. Jason Wilson was an Auburn Man. He developed a lifelong love for Auburn University and possessed an encyclopedic memory for Auburn football, basketball and baseball players, coaches, seasons, games and statistics. Auburn wasn’t simply a team Jason pulled for; it became part of his identity.

More importantly, the Auburn Creed became an expression of the principles by which Jason tried to live: hard work, education, honesty, compassion, family, community, respect for others and the belief that a person’s own efforts could make the world around him better.

Jason also spent countless days hunting and fishing with his Paw Paw. They rarely returned with much that could be considered evidence of a successful hunt or fishing trip. They did, however, come home with new stories, an increasingly colorful vocabulary and Jason’s lifelong appreciation for biscuits cooked with love over an open flame. The outdoors, and especially the stories told around a fire, never left him.

Jason and Brad also grew up surrounded by a large extended family, and Jason maintained special relationships with his aunts, uncles and cousins throughout his life. The Wilson boys spent two weeks every summer in Campbellsville, Kentucky, with Aunt Regina and Uncle Ben Cox and cousins Amory, Taylor and Grant. Back home in Gadsden, they lived across the street from Aunt Cynthia Garmon and cousins Chris, Clay and Daphne. Auburn football Saturdays meant family tailgates with Aunt Sissy and Uncle Andy Brown, Emily and Andrew—Andrew, Chris and Clay all fellow Sigma Nus at Auburn.

Christmas meant crossing the vacant lot to Nanny’s house—Johnnie Lou and Gil Wilson’s—where the family gathered and exchanged gifts with Uncle Ken and Aunt Kathy and cousins Whitney and Ashley. Jason also had a particularly special affection for his Uncle Lavear Bradford, who became one of his mentors, and Aunt Deborah. Visits to their home in Duck Springs, Alabama, were another important part of the family life that shaped him. As their parents remarried and their family grew, Jason embraced the people who came into his life with the same loyalty and affection. Through Bill, the family expanded to include Bill’s children, Jeff Brodeur and Darlene, and Jeff’s son Terry and his wife, Liz. Years later, Jason and Terry’s relationship would become part of Jason’s professional life as well, with Terry serving as facilities manager at Coldwater Mountain Brewpub.

Through Beth, Jason and Brad gained another extended family that included her brothers and sister, Jeff Hudgins, Scott Hudgins and Paige, each becoming part of the larger family that surrounded Jason throughout his life. Jason was immensely proud of his cousins and their accomplishments, just as he was proud of his brother and sister. As Jason grew older, he extended his sense of family far beyond blood relatives, building businesses, friendships and communities that often became families of their own.

Jason graduated from Southside High School in 1998, where he participated in the school’s young soccer and tennis programs. But no single group could ever quite contain him. Jason was a social chameleon in the very best sense of the term. He was equally comfortable with the cool grunge kids and sitting around a fire in the woods with the Smokenecks and country boys. He didn’t merely move between different groups of people; he genuinely belonged among them. Jason possessed the rare ability to accept people exactly as they were, and in return, people accepted and loved him.

That gift followed him to Gadsden State Community College and eventually to Auburn University, where he continued a proud family tradition established by, among others, Aunt Regina, Miss Auburn 1981, and Aunt Sissy, an Auburn majorette. Jason joined Brad at Auburn, followed eventually by Kara, and at one remarkable point the three siblings and six cousins were all attending Auburn at the same time.

At Auburn, Jason became a member of Sigma Nu fraternity and formed friendships that lasted the rest of his life. To Jason, “friend” was never a casual designation. He loved his friends enormously, loudly, loyally and hilariously. If Jason loved you, you knew it.

Jason graduated from Auburn in 2005 with a degree in Logistics and Supply Chain Management and began his career with Georgia-Pacific. He quickly demonstrated the intelligence, drive and leadership that would characterize his professional life. His work took him across the South, including Baton Rouge and Montgomery, before eventually bringing him to Georgia-Pacific’s corporate headquarters in Midtown Atlanta. Jason was being fast-tracked up the corporate ladder, and by every conventional measure, a long and successful career at Georgia-Pacific seemed almost certain.

And then he walked away from it.

During visits with Brad in Crested Butte, Colorado, Jason became fascinated by the state’s burgeoning craft beer culture. He saw breweries that were more than manufacturing facilities; they were gathering places that reflected their communities and brought together agriculture, entrepreneurship, food, music, art and friendship. Jason asked a characteristically simple but consequential question: Why couldn’t Alabama have this? Most people would have accepted the obvious answer: Alabama’s alcohol laws made it extraordinarily difficult. Jason saw a different answer: change the laws.

He chose the uncertainty of an idea he believed in over the security of a career whose path had already been laid out for him. That willingness to bet on an idea—and on himself—would define much of the rest of Jason’s life. He called Brad and their close friend Tripp Collins, both then living in Colorado, and convinced them to come home and help him build what would become Alabama’s first packaging craft brewery. It was classic Jason Wilson. He saw something that did not exist, believed that it should exist, convinced other people to believe it too, and then worked relentlessly until it became real.

Jason worked day and night alongside others in Alabama’s emerging craft beer movement, lobbying legislators, working with beer distributors and pushing to modernize the state’s antiquated alcohol laws. Those efforts helped produce sweeping changes, including the Gourmet Beer Act in 2009 and subsequent brewery modernization legislation that helped make a viable Alabama craft beer industry possible. Jason continued that advocacy throughout his career, including multiple terms as president of the Alabama Brewers Guild and service on the Government Affairs Committee of the national Brewers Association. Jason helped create more than a brewery; he helped create an industry.

Then he made another decision that revealed as much about him as starting the brewery itself. There were larger cities, offers of tax incentives and rent-free facilities, and places where the safer business decision might have been obvious. Jason chose his hometown anyway.

In 2009, he founded Back Forty Beer Company and began renovating a 27,000-square-foot former Sears and Roebuck repair and distribution facility in a largely forgotten corner of historic downtown Gadsden. Where others saw an abandoned industrial building and a struggling downtown, Jason saw what could be. That ability—to look at something as it was while simultaneously seeing what it could become—was perhaps Jason’s greatest gift. Over the following decade, Back Forty’s Gadsden facility underwent three major expansions representing more than $15 million in economic impact for the City of Gadsden, but its impact could never be measured in dollars alone. Jason’s decision to build Back Forty in Gadsden helped change the trajectory and perception of both his hometown and craft beer in Alabama.

The original Back Forty team was built less like a traditional company than a group of people willing to take a chance together. Tripp Collins, Jamie Rae, Efe Orgen, David Carn, Carrie Machen, Kate Wilson, Tim Blevins and Michael Blevins came from different places and brought different talents, but they all had one important thing in common: they believed in Jason. They believed in his vision, his enormous drive and his conviction that this crazy idea could actually work. Jason believed just as strongly in them, and together they helped build Back Forty from an idea into something none of them could have fully imagined at the beginning.

In 2010, Back Forty’s flagship Truck Stop Honey Brown Ale earned a medal at the Great American Beer Festival, helping establish Back Forty—and Southern craft beer—as something that deserved to be taken seriously. In the years that followed, Back Forty and Jason’s work appeared on the Today Show and in Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast publications and at the James Beard House in New York.

Jason never believed beer was really just about beer; he believed it was about the table. He loved the intersection of good beer, great food, agriculture and Southern culture and worked alongside some of Alabama’s most celebrated chefs, including Frank Stitt, Chris Hastings, Rob McDaniel, Leo Maurelli, David Bancroft and Bill Briand. To Jason, the “Back Forty” was not simply a brand. It represented a place—literal or otherwise—where lives get lived: a table surrounded by friends, a fire in the woods, a meal shared with family, a cold beer after a long day’s work, and stories that get better every time they’re told.

Jason’s business accomplishments were numerous. Back Forty was named Alabama’s Small Manufacturer of the Year in 2014. In 2015, the company was named to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies and recognized as one of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Top 100 Blue Ribbon Small Businesses. In 2016, the Business Council of Alabama named Back Forty its “Game Changer” Small Business of the Year. In 2015, Auburn University named Jason its Young Entrepreneur of the Year, an honor that meant something special to him. But Jason’s relationship with Auburn eventually became about something much larger than receiving awards from the university he loved. It became about giving back.

Jason proudly served on the advisory board of Auburn University’s College of Business, on the board supporting the Horst Schulze School of Hospitality Management, and, perhaps closest to his heart, with Auburn’s entrepreneurship program. There, Jason found another calling: helping young people believe their ideas could become real. He served as a judge and mentor for Auburn’s entrepreneurial competitions, including the Tiger Cage program, giving young entrepreneurs the benefit of lessons he had learned the hard way—encouragement when they needed encouragement, hard truths when they needed hard truths, and, most importantly, the confidence that somebody who had actually done it believed they could do it too. Jason helped counsel and inspire countless young entrepreneurs, some of whom have already begun changing the world themselves.

Jason’s leadership extended throughout Alabama. He served as Chairman of the Etowah County Chamber of Commerce, President of the Gadsden Commercial Development Authority, on the Board of Directors of the Business Council of Alabama, the Alabama Workforce Development Council and the Gadsden Industrial Development Board, among numerous other civic and professional organizations.

Eventually, service to the hometown he loved led Jason to elected office. Jason was elected to the Gadsden City Council representing District 5, was re-elected in 2022 and was serving his second term. He chaired the Council’s Public Safety Committee.

Even there, Jason found a way to make something as simple as a baseball hat say something about who he was, where he came from and who he believed he worked for. Jason regularly wore a baseball hat to City Council meetings. To some, particularly those raised in an older Southern tradition in which a gentleman removed his hat indoors, wearing one on the council dais was controversial. Jason understood the tradition; he just saw the hat differently.

In the homes Jason and Brad grew up in, the last thing the men did before leaving for work was put on their hats. Their Paw Paw put on his hat and headed to the steel plant, part of the industrial backbone that built Gadsden’s economy. Their Grandaddy and their Dad put on theirs and went to work at Goodyear Tire & Rubber, the kind of good, hard jobs that helped build a middle class in Gadsden and made it possible for so many children and grandchildren in families like theirs to become the first generations to go away to college.

As boys, Brad and Jason watched those men put on their hats and walk out the door to do what working people had always done: go to work, protect their families and provide for them. That, Jason explained, was why he put his hat on when he took his seat on the council dais. He was going to work, and now his job was to work for the people of Gadsden—to protect them, provide for their community and try to leave their hometown better than he found it. But Jason was also a profound believer in democracy. After passionately explaining why the hat mattered to him, he put it to a vote and asked the people of his district to decide: hat or no hat? As happened so many times in Jason’s life, once people understood the passion and purpose behind what he was doing, many who had disagreed with him changed their minds and joined him. The hat won in a landslide. Wear the hat. Go to work.

Jason was a fifth-generation Alabamian and a Gadsden native in the deepest sense. He and Jessica made their home in Gadsden’s historic residential district, where they spent countless hours restoring their century-old Greek Revival home. It suited Jason perfectly: preserve what matters, respect what came before, then build something for the future. Jason later founded Coldwater Mountain Brewpub, bringing the same philosophy to another venture. Like nearly every organization Jason built, Coldwater quickly became something more than a business; it became a family. That was Jason’s way. People did not simply work for Jason. They joined him.

There were times when he made sure his employees were paid while foregoing paying himself. He believed a business had obligations beyond its balance sheet—to its employees, its neighborhood, its city and its community. That belief extended naturally into philanthropy.

Jason supported innumerable charities, organizations, events and individual causes throughout his life. “No” was rarely Jason’s answer when someone came asking for help. More typically, Jason would figure out how to help and then start thinking about how to make the event bigger, better and more successful than the person asking had originally imagined.

Beneath the awards, businesses, politics and accomplishments was a remarkably simple truth: Jason’s greatest source of happiness was helping other people. For all his accomplishments as an entrepreneur, businessman and civic leader, understanding that is the key to understanding Jason.

He loved people. He believed in people regardless of race, color, economic circumstance or background. He could talk to governors, CEOs and nationally celebrated chefs and then spend just as much time—and often have considerably more fun—talking with the person sitting on the barstool beside him. Titles didn’t impress Jason nearly as much as stories did. He loved his friends in a big, loud, funny and occasionally completely ridiculous way. He loved his employees. He loved Auburn. He loved the Grateful Dead and Jason Isbell, alongside an eclectic soundtrack that could move without warning from country to hip-hop to DJ-driven electronic music. He loved being outdoors, a fire and the stories told around it. He fiercely loved his dogs—Ringo, and later Ringo II, Harvey and Daisy Mae. He loved his family, and he fought for them with everything he had.

And he loved Gadsden. Jason didn’t love Gadsden sentimentally or passively; he loved it actively. He believed in what it had been, understood the people and history that shaped it, and possessed an almost stubborn belief in what it could become. He brought big ideas to his hometown because he believed his hometown deserved big ideas. Of all the people who followed Jason on all those adventures, none mattered more to him than his wife, Jessica Wilson. Jason told his family that marrying Jessica was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and in so many ways they completed one another as fully as two people possibly could.

Jason encouraged Jessica to step outside her comfort zone, trust her own instincts and build a business of her own. He believed fiercely in her abilities and took enormous pride in watching her grow into an entrepreneur in her own right. Jessica gave Jason something just as important: she was the one person who could tell him he was wrong, tell him to slow down, think a little longer, reconsider and listen.

For a man whose natural state was forward motion, Jessica could steady him without diminishing him. She never took away his fire; she gave it direction. She brought love, grace, beauty and heart to his immense drive, passion and indomitable spirit. Where Jason charged ahead, Jessica could soften the edges. Where he dreamed bigger, she helped make room for the life around the dream. They were different in all the ways that mattered and alike in all the ways that made them inseparable.

They traveled the world together and, just as importantly, traveled thousands of miles across America in their RV chasing the childhood dreams they had both carried with them. They visited national parks and iconic landmarks but were just as delighted by the ridiculous roadside attractions in between. They could watch a space shuttle launch and be awestruck by the enormity of it, then happily drive a hundred miles out of the way to see the world’s largest ball of twine.

That was Jason and Jessica: curious about everything, ready to take the long way and always willing to make the detour. Jason shared with Jessica his endlessly curious mind, and Jessica was always willing to go along for the adventure. In the end, the destination was never really the point. All that mattered was that they were together. Two peas in a pod. Them.

The measure of Jason Wilson’s life cannot be found in a list of accomplishments. It is found in the people who believed more was possible because Jason believed it first.

It is found in employees who became family, friendships that lasted decades, young entrepreneurs he encouraged, an Alabama craft beer industry he helped create, an old Sears building he brought back to life, charities and people he helped, a university he loved and gave back to, a hometown he refused to give up on, and a family that cannot imagine its story without him.

Jason Wilson changed laws. He helped create an industry, built businesses, helped transform his hometown, created jobs and opportunities, mentored young entrepreneurs, served his community and gave generously. He made people laugh, gathered people around tables and fires, told stories, loved his friends and fiercely loved his family. Somewhere along the way, that little brother whom Brad reluctantly agreed to let the family keep became a man his big brother could not have been prouder to call his brother. For nearly their entire lives, it was a package deal: Brad and Jason. The Wilson boys. And what a life they got to live together.

Jason believed we could change the world, and in his own unmistakable, irrepressible and uniquely Jason way, he did.