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Courtland-based Rawlings Mechanical Corporation has established for the past 67 years a legacy in the region of treating its customers and employees like family, delivering excellent heating and air conditioning service. That legacy will continue thanks to one of its former employees who learned the HVAC business with the company and then later started one of his own.

Franklin-based Air Mechanix LLC, co-owned by Tim Parrish, is acquiring the assets of Rawlings Mechanical. Parrish co-owns Air Mechanix with his wife Mary, and longtime employee Matthew McLain more recently joined the ownership group.

Most of Rawlings Mechanical’s employees reported to Air Mechanix for work on Monday, May 5.

Tim Parrish made a post on Air Mechanix’s Facebook page on Friday morning, May 2, describing his company’s acquisition of Rawlings Mechanical as a “full-circle journey rooted in legacy.”

“Many have heard the news that Air Mechanix is acquiring the assets of Rawlings Mechanical Corporation,” he stated in the post. “I’m confident this transaction would have met with the approval of Buck and Irma Rawlings, who founded a small furnace installation company in their Courtland home back in 1958.”

That company is what eventually became known as Rawlings Mechanical Corporation.

As noted on its website, Rawlings Mechanical specializes in home or business air conditioning and heating installation and repair for Courtland, Franklin and the surrounding areas.

“In the old days when (Buck) started out, he had plumbing, and he had electrical at one time as well, way back in the day,” Parrish said in a May 2 interview. “But they dropped the plumbing, and so it’s just commercial, residential air conditioning and heat pumps and all kinds of furnaces and every kind of HVAC stuff there is.”

As for what customers can expect now that Rawlings Mechanical is becoming part of Air Mechanix, Parrish said, “We’re pretty much quite a bit alike in what we do, so it should be business as usual.”

In his Facebook post, Parrish noted that six months after he and his wife Mary were married, they learned their first child was on the way. Soon after that, he enrolled in night school, looking to gain training that would help him provide for his family.

“The program was comprehensive, running four nights a week,” he stated. “Beyond HVAC training, it included vocational English, math, and business law and accounting. That was when I felt inspired to start my own company someday. 

“The real learning began when I started at Rawlings and Company, as it was called then,” he continued. 

He was in his mid-20s when his tenure with Rawlings began in 1983.

“I learned invaluable lessons from Buck and Irma Rawlings — not only about business management and customer relations, but also (about) going the extra mile to treat people fairly,” he stated. “I have many fond memories from those years. Buck’s remarkable patience and kindness toward salespeople, customers and young and not-so-wise employees like me left an impression on me. Those lessons were worth their weight in gold.”

When he followed through on his inspiration to start his own business, he remembered those lessons well.

“In 1993, my wife, Mary, and I also founded Air Mechanix in our home, modeling our business on the same commitment to quality and attention to detail we learned from Buck and Irma,” he stated in the May 2 Facebook post. “This acquisition today feels like coming full circle, back to where we began 42 years ago.”

Parrish noted in the Facebook post that after Irma’s passing, her son Glenn Rawlings and his wife Sarah took over as the owners of Rawlings Mechanical, guiding the company through many technical advancements in the HVAC industry. 

“They built a business on very loyal customers and a dedicated team of employees who genuinely enjoy working together, despite the challenging conditions of HVAC work,” Parrish stated.

He noted that he and Air Mechanix are thrilled to welcome the Rawlings crew to their team.

“Our goal is to enhance our service to customers with faster response times and next-day emergency equipment installations, all while keeping our passion for serving people,” he stated.

He invited people to post stories, love and well wishes for the Rawlings family on Facebook, and they were pouring in over the weekend.

Anna Hamilton, daughter to Glenn and Sarah Rawlings, spoke on behalf of the Rawlings family during a May 2 interview, and she highlighted how Tim Parrish and Air Mechanix have been such a blessing to Rawlings Mechanical, which had experienced some unfortunate circumstances that had put it in a position recently where it was facing closure.

“I know Tim and I have an incredibly strong faith, and God has been at the center of this story because essentially if Tim didn’t have a whisper to swing by Rawlings one day three or four weeks ago — he had a nudge to do that, and, to me, I know that nudge was from God — … the employees all would have had to, on their own, figure out their next path. And the customers would have, on their own, had to figure out who they were going to turn to.”

She said that Parrish is “offering continued employment for some people who have spent their careers at Rawlings, and he’s going to get some high-quality guys, and our customers are going to continue to get served, and to me that’s a win-win. … We intended for Rawlings to stay open for decades to come, but with that not being able to happen, this is like the second-best option, and we know God’s right in the center of it.”

Parrish said, “Everything’s falling into place like you wouldn’t believe, so we know that’s what’s happening.”

In terms of the message she wanted to convey during Air Mechanix’s acquisition of Rawlings Mechanical, Hamilton said, “I really wanted, more than anything, our customers to know they’re still going to be in good hands, and there’s still someone they can call, and not only is there someone they can call, there’s someone who learned the industry (with Rawlings) and who super-values the Rawlings family and will do right by the customers.

“My family treated their employees like family, they treated their customers like family, from Buck to my dad to my mom,” she said.

“Absolutely,” Parrish added.

“I think, to me, that that was really my desire was for our customers to know they’re still going to be taken care of,” Hamilton said.

Parrish highlighted how much Rawlings has been a backbone to the regional heating and air industry.

“Most of the people that’s in the HVAC business around here either worked at Rawlings or Rawls,” he said. “I can name quite a few.”

He said there are a lot of people who have been helped down through the years by Rawlings Mechanical and the Rawlings family.

“And we haven’t forgot it, the ones that had the opportunity to work there with the Rawlings family and being taken care of and like (Anna) said — family,” Parrish said.

He noted that in HVAC work, “you really have to care about what you do and you have to be invested in it and be invested in people, because that’s what we really do — we’re serving people, and that’s what we like to do.”

He said that the best thing he learned from Buck Rawlings was people skills.

“He would take time for people,” Parrish said. “He was a people person, and he cared about people, and it came through. And Mrs. Rawlings was (a people person) too.”