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This year Tommy Battle joined a very elite club that has inducted only seven members in the last 82 years – that happens to be the number of Mayors that Huntsville has elected since 1926. Mayor Battle was elected on October 7th, 2008 with nearly 60% of the vote.
Mayor Battle was born in Birmingham in 1956.
He moved here in 1980 at the age of 24, not long after receiving a business degree from the University of Alabama. While he was in Tuscaloosa attending the University, he was a member of Alabama’s outstanding debate team.
Mayor Battle has been a successful businessman since moving here. It was the food service industry that first brought him to Huntsville as the manager of Britling's Buffet. Mayor Battle eventually bought the cafeteria and then sold it in 1989. Today he maintains an interest in several retail and commercial real estate businesses.
A short four years after moving to Huntsville he was elected to the Huntsville City Council, where he served for one term before falling short in a run-off Mayoral election in 1988.
His interest and involvement in our community continued as chairman of the Early Works board of directors.
He has been a volunteer on a number of important local boards, including the solid waste disposal authority and HEMSI – and has been active in the leadership of the Trinity United Methodist Church .
In Mayor Battle's first year in office, the City of Huntsville was named the #1 city in America by Kiplinger's Personal Finance for 2009 and received a historic AAA bond rating by Standard and Poor's (S&P) - the highest bond rating given and the first in Alabama state history.
The Mayor has been married to the former Eula Sammons for nineteen years. Eula is a retired Kindergarten teacher from the county schools; she was Madison County Teacher of the Year in 2000. They have one son Andrew Joseph (Drew) who is a banker with Regions Bank in Birmingham.
