Refining the times

The blue-black pre-dawn at the ExxonMobil refinery is eerie at 4:30 a.m.

But security guard Cavalle Baker knows her walk to the check-in office will be illuminated by a familiar set of headlights. They belong to the car of 82-year-old Tiger Durr. After 56 years at the plant, he’s still first in line every weekday morning waiting for the gates to open.

“He’s a legend,” Baker says, her eyes widening at the mention if his name. “Everybody here knows him. He’s just Tiger.”

Born David Durr in 1925, he earned the nickname “Tiger” for his ferocity in the ring as a member of the Istrouma High School boxing team. After graduation, Durr served two years under Gen. Douglass MacArthur on a Naval landing craft near New Guinea and the Philippines. After his tours in the Pacific, Durr returned to Baton Rouge to work in the booming post-war construction business.

But as Durr tells it, the outbreak of the Korean Conflict doubled the cost of lumber and put the new housing industry in a tailspin. He still remembers his first day on the job at Exxon. On May 28, 1951, with only two years of college credit, Tiger Durr became a mechanical helper at the North Baton Rouge refinery. Living in the Fairfield area, Durr would carpool to work with neighbors.

“We used to pile six of us into one car,” he says of the days before widespread automobile use. “We became real close.”

These days Durr wakes up at 3:15 a.m. and drives himself. He waits patiently at the gate, the first employee to be let into the facility to begin his eight-hour shift.

Now a first-class instrument technician, Durr has carved out a surprisingly intimate life for himself at the refinery. He refers to his daily work as “chores,” and his firecracker wit constantly keeps co-workers on their toes, like a protective firstborn cracking jokes on his little brothers and sisters. He treats those he’s just met like old friends, and according to supervisor Mike Staid, Durr gives away all the gift certificates he receives as rewards for safety.

“He’s a character,” Staid says. “Most importantly, he’s never had an accident and he’s a good influence on the younger people.”

Durr dismisses the idea that he’s become a celebrity at the refinery, though his co-workers disagree. Durr does, however, relish in his role as judge of the annual ExxonMobil jambalaya cook-off. He walks with a slight limp, but otherwise looks about 65. He remains a lot funnier and thinks a lot faster than just about anyone. Durr must have been a riot in his 20s.

He was 26 when he started at Exxon, and through six decades, six plant managers, and 11 U.S. presidents, he has seen it all from his world at that refinery: The replacement of pollutant mercury with electronic calibrators, the introduction of computers, equal opportunity employment for women and minorities, and the increased security after 9/11, the likes of which Durr had not witnessed since the height of the Cold War.

Durr thinks about retiring everyday, just not until 2011. “I’m down the road,” he says. “I’ll have 60 years [with the company] by then.”

Lately, Durr has taken to scribbling his “2011” retirement date with a paint stick in obscure locations across the refinery. A few co-workers are in on the meaning, but those numbers mystify many.

He doesn’t plan on spending his retirement traveling, and he doesn’t fish much anymore.

“I guess I’ll sit in front of that ol’ TV and keel over,” Durr says with a laugh. He’s joking, like always. If Durr has one quality, it is steadfast perseverance. Four years from now he’ll probably be expanding his love for historical nonfiction and gearing up to judge some more jambalaya.