-
Norman McMillian
When Norman McMillian was a teenager, he worked on and off for his father’s concrete business, Tim’s Concrete Products. The work ethic he learned from working with his dad has carried him into a successful career in occupational health, safety and environmental — and he still finds time to do a little concrete work on the side. “I like to make animal statues,” he said. “I make lions to put around a pool or in front of a house.”
McMillian graduated from Dublin High School in 1998, and immediately joined the Marines Reserve. After he completed his nine months of training, McMillian started college at Texas State Technical College in Waco.
He started off studying computer science, then switched to the school’s pilot program. “I started flying planes and decided to transfer to Southeastern Oklahoma State University in 2003 to their aviation program,” he said.
But he was only there one semester before he was called in for active duty with the Marines, and was stationed in Iraq.
In Iraq, he worked as an organizational maintenance mechanic. “That’s basically a mechanic on military vehicles such as humvees, seven-ton trucks, and five-ton trucks,” he said. “We had a base in Al Asad, Iraq, so we worked on trucks there. And there were times we did have to do security on resupply convoys that had to leave the base and drive around Iraq to supply different bases.”
When his deployment ended after 10 months, McMillian resumed his courses at Southeastern Oklahoma State University — but he was ready to be done with school, so instead of completing the longer aviation program, he switched to studying occupational health and safety.
He graduated in December of 2006, and took a job with BJ services, an oilfield service company in Tomball, Texas, outside of Houston. After two years in Tomball, he took a promotion and moved to Sweetwater, Texas for four years, and then came back to Tomball in 2014 as the occupational health, safety and environmental manager at the company’s ballistics facility.
“At this facility, we manufacture explosive charges for the oilfield,” he said. “On a typical day I come in, look at emails, look at reports, walk around the facility, talk to people, see what their concerns are. I’m doing risk assessments, sitting in on engineering meetings for new products and [making sure] they’re going to be safe enough, and figuring out how we control some of the risks and hazards and other things we need to put in place for production to make sure they’re safe to handle.”
McMillian likes that he gets to have a balance of office work and working directly with people. “I’m not physically working all the time, but I can get out and be out with the people and talk to the people and make sure that what we’re doing is safe and that nobody gets hurt.”
He plans to stay with his company in the future, and maybe move up to a higher level of manager, or even the safety director for the facility.
McMillian currently lives in Tomball with his wife of 15 years, Shanda, and their three children, Jace, 12, Ryleigh, 9, and Jett, 4. His parents, Tim and Liz McMillian, still own Tim’s Concrete Products in Dublin.
Watching his parents run their business has always been inspirational to McMillian. “I’ve seen them work to build a business from nothing,” he said.
He has fond memories of growing up outside of Dublin. “We lived on 14 acres, and we were always out in the country doing whatever we wanted,” he said. “My grandparents were a quarter mile from us, so we were always down at their house, or running around the countryside. There was a creek behind our house to swim and fish and hunt.”
McMillian’s advice to Dublin graduates is to work hard in school, because even if you don’t know what you want to do, it’s best to be prepared. “I was kind of a slacker in school,” he said. “I did the bare minimum to graduate, and I regret that now with trying to get into college and things like that. So I would say try to do as best you can in school because it definitely will help in the future. I never really thought I would go to college, but somehow I ended up there and it’s the best thing I ever did.”
Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen.com.