Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Commitment to safety — along with a longstanding devotion to helping raise and encourage more than three dozen foster children — have given Gatesville resident Jimmy Knox some memorable experiences.
Knox said he was born and raised in Gatesville. He served on the Gatesville City Council for 12 years and worked for TTG Utilities for 19 and a half years before opening his own safety training and consulting company — Jimmy Knox Services.
He said that construction and industrial safety were not things he had originally planned to focus on, let alone build a business on.
"I hated safety training when I first got in," Knox said. "I did it for the prison system but I didn't want to be the safety guy. Everyone wants to be safe, but they don't want to focus on all the things that need to be done for safety."
Knox said he talked with coworkers at TTG about the need for a person to focus on safety for the company, but he did not intend to volunteer himself to fill that role. However, he was selected for the task and reluctantly accepted that challenge.
"At that point I wanted to do anything but focus on safety," he said. "People hate the safety guy because of the work involved. The biggest problem is not planning (for safety). It's important to get in on the ground floor when it comes to safety."
Knox specializes in 35 subjects relating to safety, including crane operations and a variety of other construction equipment procedures.
"There's just a whole lot involved," he said, adding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration have extensive safety manuals that must be followed.
"Much of my work has been at Fort Hood or other installations, and I've been as far as Wisconsin doing training. I've been asked to do that overseas, but I'm not interested in doing that.
"It's been a blessing. I only work 10 to 15 days a month and the rest of the time I spend with the boys."
Knox is referring to two boys he has adopted. He and his wife have helped raise and care for 39 foster children.
He said the children have blessed their lives.
"It's a reward for being obedient to God through fostering and wanting to give back," Knox said. "It changes your life. You can't have any type of chemical or weapon that could be accessed. We had to bring in trunks and a safe (to secure items). But I kid you not – those kids have changed our lives."
Knox said many people who do not deal directly with the foster care system or criminal justice do not realize the trauma that many children must endure at a young age.
"We in society don't even realize what many of these children have been through,": he said. "Some of them have been through awful experiences in their lives."
Being a foster parent can be difficult because relationships are formed and then the children move on, Knox said.
"It can be hard to let them go but you have to put it in the right state of mind," he said. "The kids want stability and to be loved for who they are."
Knox said he is thankful for a career that has allowed him extra time to devote to foster and adopted children, even though that's not the path he intended to follow.
"Once I got into (safety training and consultation), I was like a sponge," he said. "I wanted more. I still go to school every four years to stay on top of it. It's been a great journey, but I like it."
Knox was asked if there is sometimes resistance to the things that he tells clients are necessary for safety.
He talked about one incident involving a North Texas company with an owner who reminded him of the 1970s-1980s TV character George Jefferson – short but strutting around and no doubt in charge.
Knox said he cut a safety harness that wasn't properly secured, and the owner showed strong displeasure that was just short of force.
"He came at me and I thought, 'Surely he's not going to hit me - surely he hasn't lost his mind.' He had his fist clenched, but then turned around and walked out. I'm thinking he was going to get an equalizer (some type of weapon). He never came back for three days, but I watched that door for three days thinking he might come back (with a weapon)."
Knox returned to Gatesville from that job and was called to a work site at the Lake Belton Dam. When Knox arrived there, he said he saw the business owner who had confronted him in North Texas.
"He said he sized me up that day, that he wasn't happy with what I had told him, and I told him that I had gathered that," Knox said. "He then said he had done some soul-searching and that (without doing what Knox suggested) he would have risked his son and daughter.
"When you are doing what you are supposed to do, God will give you confidence."
