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Al Churchill graduated from Southwestern Michigan College in 1978 as one of the first music majors to earn an associate degree.

Since then, his professional career has unspooled in three distinct acts, saving the best for last — the one inspired by a required SMC science course.

Churchill, father of Business Professor Andrew Churchill, worked in the housing industry, as a middle manager in automotive supply and, for the last 22 years, in renewable energy.

Forbes’ cover on his former employer, DTE Biomass Energy, dubbed it “Creating Cash from Trash.”

DTE hired him as a plant operator processing landfill gas and making it pipeline-quality. He was the senior lead plant operator when he left last August for his current job.

Churchill, a 1976 Marcellus High School graduate, now works for Novilla RNG as a technical procurement manager from his Jones home.

A Novilla subsidiary, Red Leaf, in September 2022 announced construction of its first dairy renewable natural gas (RNG) project at Maple Row Dairy in Saranac.

Churchill has visited three times a second project in Unity, Wis.

The partnership uses biogas from the dairy’s anaerobic digester to generate low-carbon-density RNG, a pipeline-quality gas that is fully interchangeable with conventional natural gas vehicles. RNG is essentially biogas, the gaseous product of the decomposition of organic matter, that has been processed to purity standards.

Capturing methane for energy

“We are constructing new facilities on dairy farms to capture methane from cow manure,” he said. “My third career job is the best. Joining Novilla is a continuation of capturing methane and using it for energy and reducing methane emissions into the atmosphere. My previous job was doing this for 21 years, eight months, for DTE Biomass Energy, a division of DTE Vantage.”

Churchill was pictured in the Three Rivers Commercial-News for a story, “Turning Trash into Energy.”

The article traced how a few uneaten French fries thrown into a St. Joseph County garbage can could someday do their part heating a state office building in Lansing.

Once those fries entered the garbage stream, they were transported to Waste Management’s Westside Recycling for deposit in the Fabius Township landfill.

Over time they were compressed under layer after layer of refuse and decomposed, producing large quantities of gas captured, processed and transported by pipeline to energy users across Michigan.

Coral Energy, a Shell Oil Co. subsidiary, contracted with Waste Management to build an on-site energy recovery plant. Two years after the Coral facility was built it was sold to DTE Energy. Its subsidiary, DTE Biomass Energy, assumed control of operating the 1998 plant.

The fortuitous proximity of a 24-inch Consumers Power gas line crossing Westside’s property between Chicago and Detroit, made for an easy connection to transmit natural gas.

The 2006 article said enough gas was processed and distributed daily to provide fuel for the natural gas needs of 3,200 homes — enough for Three Rivers.

Biomass had a total of 38 landfill gas recovery operations nationwide and was one of two DTE plants in the United States with this particular process.

Churchill’s first “career-changing job was Sterling Corp. in White Pigeon. I started in production and was promoted to service manager. A year later I became a district marketing manager and had a seven-state marketing area.

“I then went to Holly Park Homes and worked as a production manager in the floor department. From there, I left Holly Park when they were closing down and became a part owner in a park model business, Renaissance Homes.”

His second career found Churchill at CMI as a production worker, promoted to a shift supervisors within six weeks.

“Later, I was moved to the night shift maintenance supervisor and finished a 10-year career as a machine line supervisor. CMI was a tier one supplier for automotive companies such as Ford, Chrysler/Dodge, Mitsubishi and Nissan,” Churchill said.

SMC class exposed him to renewable energy

“My first enlightenment to reducing pollution was Dr. McKinstry at SMC who taught a science class, Environmental Impact, before DEQ was established,” Churchill said. “He had solar panels and a windmill at his home (on Marcellus Highway) and demonstrated how they worked to his classes. I was fascinated. That one class got me thinking. Thanks to Dr. McKinstry, I had the drive to make our world a better place.”

(Dr. David McKinstry, a retired physics professor at Eastern Washington University, died Feb. 24, 2020, his obituary noting his interest in promoting sustainable energy.)

Churchill started out in the manufactured home industry. In 1992, he began his 10-year career in the automotive industry manufacturing aluminum castings for CMI Precision Mold. He joined DTE Biomass Energy in 2002, finding “green gas energy so rewarding.”

In 1995, “ I remember driving by the Waste Management site in Three Rivers. I said to my wife, ‘What a waste of gas.’ I checked with a friend of mine at Michigan Gas, and he said, ‘They can't do anything with dirty gas.’ Little did I know what my part in making that methane useful and profitable for DTE would mean for me and the community.”

Growing up, the son of dairy farmers attended school in both Dowagiac and Marcellus. He attended Sister Lakes, Lincoln and McKinley and seventh grade at Central before his family moved to Jones.

“My parents owned a dairy farm on C.R. 687 near Seven-Mile Corner,” Churchill said. “My grandfather owned a farm on Phillips Road near Midway Engineering by Mosier’s and Franz’s farms. My family was also related to the Moultons, who lived across the road from my Grandpa Wilkinson. My folks sold the farm in ’69 and we moved into Dowagiac. In 1971, they bought a farm near Swiss Valley in Jones. That is when I transferred to Marcellus.”

“Dave (Purcell, SMC band and choir director) kept me from joining the Navy when I was 17,” Churchill said. “He came to my high school band room, met with me and offered a full-tuition scholarship at SMC. He was just starting the music program and I was one of the lucky ones who benefited for the rest of my life. I spent 1976-78 with him and learned a lot.”

He reconnected last fall with Purcell, who lives in northern Michigan. Like Churchill, Purcell attended Western Michigan University after 9 ½ years in a Navy band.

“I enjoyed every minute of my time at SMC,” Churchill said. “It had a family feel. I felt like a big fish in a small pond at SMC versus a guppy in the ocean” at WMU.

Churchill keeps in contact with Purcell, who lives in Hubbell on the Keweenaw Peninsula at the top of the Upper Peninsula.

“While we were on vacation at Eagle Harbor, I arranged to have lunch with David and Sharee in Copper Harbor,” Churchill said. “I hadn’t seen him since he left Niles to move to Hubbell.”

Churchill was primarily a brass player — tuba, baritone, trumpet — but also played saxophone and percussion. He has done substitute teaching with the Marcellus band.

When Churchill came to SMC, he planned to teach music. When he got to Western Michigan University, doing both singing and instrumental music proved “too much,” so he dropped his horn to stick with choral music.

It’s not like he threw his music studies away, they just transitioned to a labor of love. “I have enjoyed an unpaid job” as music director and worship leader at First Baptist Church of Newberg for the last 35 years.

He married Tammy (Simmons) in 1983.

“We met in Elkhart,” Churchill said. “She was on break from Purdue, working at Judy’s Burger Dairy, and I was working at a local van conversion company. A friend encouraged me to ask her out and she said yes. We were married 13 months later and celebrated our 40^th anniversary last May. When we married, we lived in Edwardsburg.”

Their other son, Matthew, is an audiobook narrator and musician in Grand Rapids.

Churchill’s extended family includes two daughters-in-law and six grandchildren, from infant to teen.