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At fourteen, his mom brought him to a city hundreds of miles from his home in Birmingham. Grand Rapids was the place where he’d build his empire.
“I started in ’53,” McClain said. “I must ve been 19 or 20.”
He founded Jim’s Asphalt and Paving, the first minority-owned asphalt company in Grand Rapids.
“Ain t too many streets around town I wasn’t on,” McClain said. “We were busy all the time… widening, putting them in, I did a lot of things.”
He literally paved the way for the city and county we know, now three-times the size.
“It came a long way.”