From the Editor’s Desk
I’m a bit of a wordsmith. You could say it’s a product of my profession, but I’ve had a love for verbiage for as long as I can remember. There’s always a new word to discover and add to the word bank. When reflecting on a past year, I like to check out the words that were trending. What words will be the key words for 2024? We have a couple of months to go, and I am not going to hazard a guess at this stage. There are words that I love to roll off the tongue and the ones that are a struggle. Gingham. Gingham! I don’t know…it just makes me laugh. Squirrel—I just can’t! Squirrel seems like a lot to handle. I think I might do better with an extra syllable thrown in there.
The articles in this issue make me think of another favorite word—ferment. It seems to align itself with the holiday season when you apply it in its proper context relating to food and wine. I like to think that it can also apply to dreams and ideas that grow. Yes, I’m stepping out of the Cambridge dictionary parameters here, but let’s just say it’s a play on words. Be it the children’s hospital that recently opened its doors to patients, a safe place to support your mental health, a spiritual sanctuary or our regions love of the nation’s favorite sport. They all, at some point, were dreams that were fermented. All the ingredients came together, and now we’re celebrating. The Bill and Olivia Amos Children’s Hospital is an amazing and beautiful health facility, The Pastoral Institute is celebrating 50 years, Trinity Episcopal Church has held steadfast for 190 years and we look at the journey that local baseball has woven through time.
Everybody has a pivotal moment when a change of direction is either forced, nudged or a thought begins to ferment and spurs you on. For Columbus State University’s President, Stuart Rayfield, her early years as a student struggling to land in one place was the source of her trajectory that led her to the position she is in today—to support and retain students under her tenure.
As always we’re shopping local with our holiday gift guide, and we hope you will too! It’s all here waiting to be gift wrapped, and you can source all the gifts out and about in the Chattahoochee Valley.
Our What’s Happening? section is full of fun and festive events. And of course, it wouldn’t be the season without the annual Nutcracker production. This year’s artistic team began working on the production back in January. Make this event a must do on your calendar.
Here’s to fermenting and the festive season!
Jodi Saunders Editor & Publisher
— Established 1991 —
EDITOR/PUBLISHER
Jodi Saunders
jodi@columbusandthevalley.com
ADVERTISING SALES
Becky Kenimer becky@columbusandthevalley.com
Margie Richardson margie@columbusandthevalley.com
Julie Lauzon, Sales Assistant salesassistant@columbusandthevalley.com
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Sixty Two Graphic Studio
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Brad Barnes
Brett Buckner
Pat Daniel
Natalie Downey
Frank Etheridge
Doug Gillett
Scott Phillips
Elliott Waddell
PHOTOGRAPHY
Ritchie White Photography
P.O. Box 229
214A 10th Street
Columbus, GA 31902
706-324-6214 • fax 706-324-6216
COLUMBUS AND THE VALLEY MAGAZINE is owned by Jodi and Gerald Saunders and is published monthly by Valley Life Ventures, LLC, dba COLUMBUS AND THE VALLEY MAGAZINE, P. O. Box 229, Columbus, GA 31902. The cover and contents are fully protected and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of COLUMBUS AND THE VALLEY MAGAZINE. We are not responsible for loss of unsolicited inquiries, manuscripts, photographs, or other materials. They will not be returned unless accompanied by return postage Editorial contributions and letters should be addressed to COLUMBUS AND THE VALLEY MAGAZINE, Post Office Box 229, Columbus, GA 31902. Copyright © 2024 by Valley Life Ventures, LLC trading as COLUMBUS AND THE VALLEY MAGAZINE. Postmaster: Please send address corrections to: Post Office Box 229, Columbus, GA 31902.
33
Stuart
39
Pastoral
Columbus
Trinity
by The Reverend Timothy H. Graham
What's Happening?
ONGOING
Now-February 2, 2025
The Columbus Museum will exhibit Reckonings and Reconstructions: Southern Photography from The Do Good Fund ColumbusMuseum.com
NOVEMBER
November 2
Steeplechase at Callaway Gardens celebrates its 40th year of “racing for the arts” in Pine Mountain. Steeplechase horse races highlight a day of hat contests, live music, food trucks and fun for all to benefit Columbus area art organizations. SteeplechaseAtCallaway.com
November 2-30
Each Saturday, four blocks along Broadway host over 200 local and regional vendors. Visitors can expect to find fresh and organic produce, home goods, jewelry, unique crafts and delicious baked goods. Market Days is the perfect Saturday activity for family, friends and visitors. Don’t forget to bring your furry pals to get in on the fun. AlwaysUptown.com
November 9
Come watch the 34th Annual Fountain City Classic where the Fort Valley State University Wildcats take on the Albany State University Golden Rams. This thrilling match will kick-off at 2 p.m. at the A.J. McClung Memorial Stadium. Be part of the excitement and witness this historic rivalry. FountainCityClassic.com
November 11
John P. Thayer YMCA in Uptown Columbus will be hosting their annual fall festival and chili cook off from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free. Expect games, hayrides, inflatables and yummy food and chili.
November 12
StartUP Columbus will host their annual BizPitch Columbus Pitch Competition at the CSU Riverside Theatre. Vendor market and networking opportunities begins at 5 p.m. and the competition begins at 6 p.m. This is free to attend. BizPitchColumbus.com
November 14
Hughston Clinic will host their Holiday Bazaar with vendors, food and music in the Hughston Foundation Auditorium, 6262 Veterans Parkway. The free event is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
November 14
The Columbus Museum presents an Artist Talk with Kira Nam Greene from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
November 15
Light Up Pine Mountain events begin at 6 p.m. with kid’s choir, three church choirs, Santa’s arrival, shop window decorating competition winner announced, 2024 Pine Mountain Citizen of the Year announced, food trucks and two Christmas trees. PineMountain.org
November 15 - December 28
Pine Mountain Night in Lights will be every Friday and Saturday night. Shops will be open from 5 to 8 p.m. PineMountain.org
November 15-17
The Columbus Convention and Trade Center will host the Columbus Home Expo. Whether you’re planning on upgrading your home or need a reliable contractor to fix your leaking roof, this is the place to find all local remodeling experts. The event will host local and national exhibitors offering exclusive deals and discounts. You’ll save both time and money when you attend!
November 16
The Coca-Cola Space Science Center will host a free astronomy night at Providence Canyon State Park. Look for them at
the picnic area with a small building. The evening will start at 6 p.m. with a brief presentation by Dr. Rosa Williams on notable celestial objects visible in the current sky. Then you’ll move to the telescopes set up around the field to view the night sky objects. As the night progresses, they will try to point telescopes at harder-to-see objects. This location is great for seeing the bend of the Milky Way Galaxy. Parking is $5. CCSSC.org
November 18
The Schwob School of Music will host their wind ensemble concert. Dr. Jamie Nix will direct this second concert of the fall semester. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. in Legacy Hall at RiverCenter. ColumbusState.edu/music
November 23
The Columbus Symphony presents Brahms & Shostakovich. Violinist Benjamin Baker performs Brahms’ epic violin concerto in a concert featuring two monumental pieces that serve as the pinnacles of their genres. Baker’s playing creates “a supernaturally beautiful atmosphere” and exudes “the fruit of serious readiness combined with cultured musicianship and flawless intonation” (The Arts Desk). Intermission is followed by a dramatic performance of one of the great symphonies of the 20th century— Shostakovich’s Fifth. CSOGA.org
DECEMBER
December 5-22
The Springer Opera House presents A Christmas Story: The Musical. Based on the 1983 classic film, A Christmas Story, this musical version captures the sentimental spirit of the holiday season. Set in 1940s Indiana, the story revolves around young Ralphie’s quest for his dream Christmas gift: an official Red Ryder Carbine Action 200 Shot Range Model Air Rifle. With a blend of humor, warmth and a touch of holiday magic, A Christmas Story: The Musical offers a festive and family-friendly experience that resonates with audiences of all ages. SpringerOperaHouse.org
December 6
Commemorate the holiday season with the Broadway Holiday Parade. The parade will be held throughout the 1000-1100 blocks of Broadway. The parade will begin at 6:30 p.m., followed by the lighting of the city Christmas tree at 7 p.m., CSU’s Tree Trail and ending with Christmas carolers, Santa Claus and hot chocolate.
December 6-27
Visit Columbus Botanical Garden’s Holiday light display at the annual SHINE: A Celebration of Nature and Wonder. The public is invited to remember or celebrate
your loved one this holiday season by purchasing a Shine Star to be featured on the Walk of Stars at Shine throughout December. Additional events include Santa, Kids’ Crafts, Holiday Market, Bioluminescence Maze, Live Entertainment and more! There are two time slots for visitors to Shine: 6-7:30 p.m. and 7:30-9:00 p.m. on the nights that the event is held. ColumbusBotanicalGarden.org
December 7-8
RiverCenter presents Christmas with C.S. Lewis. In the early years of his young adult life, C. S. Lewis believed the story of Christ’s birth was nothing more than feel-good myth. That all changed after a particular encounter with his great friend and fellow author, J.R.R. Tolkien. Although both men loved mythology in general, Tolkien was convinced that the Jesus myth was the one true myth. That was the start of Lewis’ journey from Atheism to Christianity. From that point on Christmas, for Lewis, took on an entirely different meaning. RiverCenter.org
December 7-8
The Columbus Ballet presents The Nutcracker. Join Clara and the Nutcracker Prince to the Land of Snow, an enchanted forest where they dance with all the other toys who have come to life. Perfect for all ages, this Holiday classic offers families a night to truly celebrate the season. Multiple show times available. RiverCenter.org
December 8
Historic Columbus’ Holiday Tour of Homes returns this holiday season. The Columbus community’s favorite holiday event is back by popular demand, and you’re invited. This year’s tour features 10 historic properties on Broadway and First Avenue in the Columbus Historic District with exquisite architecture, beautiful furnishings and gracious hospitality. HistoricColumbus.com
December 14
Join Uptown on Saturday, December 14 as the 1000-1100 Blocks of Broadway will host vendors for a holiday market. Visitors can expect anything from homemade and hand made festive goods to boutique items from all over the area. Kick start the month of December by stopping by and ringing in the holiday season anytime from 9 a.m. to noon.
December 14
At this delightful Teddy Bear Clinic at Columbus Public Library, student doctors from the Mercer University School of Medicine show your children what happens at the doctor’s office using a special teddy bear patient. To make a potentially scary experience less intimidating, they’ll demonstrate how gently they can check heartbeats, blood pressure and more. You are welcome to bring your own stuffed animals for a checkup. CVLGA.org
It’s always the right size.
Read and Relax!
It’s chock full of local stories and photos.
It’s always new and changing.
It’s like six unique gifts spread throughout this year.
It’s easy for you. No shopping or wrapping.
It saves you postage. We’ll send the gift card for you.
Your money stays right here in the Chattahoochee Valley.
It’s economical, just $18 for the whole year.
It’s easy. Order online, by phone or mail.
The Kids Are ALRIGHT
With the region’s first dedicated children’s hospital, Piedmont Columbus Regional enters a new era.
BY DOUG GILLETT • PHOTOS BY RITCHIE WHITE
“Kids grow up so fast these days,” we’ve all said to ourselves at one point or another. But nowhere is a child forced to grow up more quickly than at a hospital. All of a sudden, childhood joy and innocence are replaced by imposing equipment, painful injections and adults speaking the alien language of modern healthcare.
Children’s hospitals are designed to be an oasis from all that—places where children can get the care they need, in comforting surroundings, from specialized doctors who speak their language. With the opening of Piedmont Columbus Regional’s Bill and Olivia Amos Children’s Hospital on October 14, the Chattahoochee Valley region now has such a facility for the first time.
“With this dedicated space for children, we have the opportunity to send a message to kids that this doesn’t have to be scary,” says John Fellows, a senior communications specialist with Piedmont Columbus Regional. “Frankly, it’s just beautiful—it’s very artistic, very child-friendly, there’s plenty of activities for the children, it’s just a warm and welcoming environment overall. God forbid a child has to be in the hospital, but at least they’ll have that comfort—parents and children both will be able to take comfort in having a safe space.”
Each floor is represented by an animal. The fifth floor animal is a green squirrel (seen on the floor).
A “SAFE HAVEN” FOR YOUNG PATIENTS
Located in the former Doctors Hospital building on Talbotton Road, just steps from Piedmont Columbus Midtown, the Amos Children’s Hospital features 30 child-friendly inpatient rooms, four of which are designed for siblings being hospitalized together. There is a five-bed pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) for critically ill or injured children, and a sixbed intermediate care unit for patients who are stepping down from the PICU but still need to be monitored, as well as “behavioral safe rooms” for patients needing emotional support.
Piedmont has also tried to create an ambiance that’s reassuring to patients and welcoming to their families. Each inpatient room features warm colors, kid-friendly décor and sleeping accommodations for parents. The family accommodations continue with a lounge, laundry facilities, a food pantry stocked by donations from the community and an outdoor playground; the facility is connected to Piedmont Columbus Midtown by a handicappedaccessible garden walk where families can
“With this dedicated space for children, we have the opportunity to send a message to kids that this doesn’t have to be scary.”
— JOHN FELLOWS
Beautiful, colorful artwork is abundant throughout the hospital like this mural that greets visitors at the new corridor that connects the Amos Children’s Hospital to the Midtown Medical Center.
find a little serenity and decompress.
One key feature is a dedicated room, separate from any of the inpatient rooms, where blood tests, treatments and other “scary” procedures will take place. The distance between the child’s room and the procedure room, while short, can make a world of difference for young patients fearful of needles and scalpels.
“We want you to have the mindset that your hospital room is safe, everything’s fine there,” Fellows explains. “You can relax, watch cartoons, play a game or something. If you have to have a treatment or a procedure or get some blood drawn, you would go down the hallway, and then you would come back to your safe haven, where you know nothing’s going to happen to you.”
According to Fellows, the Amos Children’s Hospital will serve an area consisting of approximately 22 counties, from LaGrange on the north end to Albany and Cuthbert in the south, and even as far as Montgomery on the Alabama side.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
A dedicated children’s hospital has been a longtime dream for Piedmont Columbus Regional. There was a pediatric unit on the fifth floor of Piedmont Columbus Midtown, but “it’s very little, a confined space,” says Aline Lasseter, executive director of the Piedmont Columbus Regional Foundation. “It’s limited our ability to expand quite a bit.”
A number of ideas were floated over the years, but none of them were determined to be feasible, Fellows says. The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21, though, convinced Piedmont Columbus Regional that a children’s hospital had become a pressing need that could no longer go unfilled. “That was such a critical time for healthcare in this community,” Fellows remembers, “and at Piedmont, we realized that when something like this happens, children need their own space. They don’t mix well with adults, and vice versa, if we have to put them in the same wing or unit.”
The push was led by Cecil Cheves, a retired attorney then serving on Piedmont Columbus Regional’s board. As discussions progressed, the board decided that Doctors Hospital—which Piedmont had purchased in 2008, but struggled financially and was finally shuttered in 2015—would be the ideal place to house a dedicated children’s facility. With an initial donation from Cheves and his wife Bettye, Piedmont mounted a region-wide campaign—called “Let’s Dream Big,” a line from an open letter that the Cheves had written to the community—to raise the funds needed to renovate and reopen the hospital.
“The initial effort was kind of daunting,” Cheves recalls. “They said they really needed about $15 million to convert this building, which kind of took our breath away, but we embraced it and started calling on members of our community. And we reached the target within several months.”
With “Let’s Dream Big” having achieved such rapid success, Piedmont decided to dream even bigger, raising its goal to $20 million. Again, the community delivered—ultimately contributing $23 million to turn the longtime dream into reality.
“I talk to my colleagues at other hospitals across the country, and they’re just amazed at the outpouring of support,” Lasseter says. “During a time when so many people were just coming
out of a terrible situation for our country, they put the thought of having a place for our kids first—a place that will keep our children here so that families don’t have to go to Atlanta. We don’t want people to feel like they can’t get that level of care here in Columbus because they absolutely can. And we should all be very proud of [the people of Columbus] and what we have been able to accomplish.”
A TRIBUTE TO A “RISK TAKER” AND COLUMBUS ICON
The name for the new hospital was hardly decided on a whim. For almost as long as he’d been dreaming of having a children’s hospital in Columbus, Cheves says he’d been thinking of ways to honor his father-in-law, Bill Amos, eldest of the three brothers who founded Aflac in Columbus in 1955.
“We should all be very proud of [the people of Columbus] and what we have been able to accomplish.”
— ALINE LASSETER
“Bill Amos loved me like his own son,” Cheves says. “And he taught me so much by example—specifically, he taught me how to be a father, and he taught me how to love. And he was such a family man. Family was always first.”
Cheves says he also admired Amos as a businessman, one who was willing to move his family from the Florida panhandle to Columbus—“a city they’d never seen before”—to pursue an opportunity that held major promise. “They moved here to Columbus and set up this insurance
company, and struggled with it for years until they found the right formula, and that was supplemental insurance,” Cheves says. “They almost went broke in the interim, but they survived and then later prospered beyond their wildest hopes. All of that from a family that was willing to take a risk, and it worked out for them.
“My wife and I, we’re the beneficiaries of that, as I see it,” he explains. “So it’s only fitting that we pay tribute to that and honor them for their perseverance and their willingness to take a risk.”
The family of Bill and Olivia Amos stands by their painting by Garry Pound in the children’s hospital lobby. Pictured: Daughter Bettye Cheves (second from left) with her husband Cecil and their daughters Avery Wolff, Olivia Blanchard and Isa Meeks.
Beautiful, colorful artwork is abundant throughout the hospital like this mural that greets visitors at the new corridor that connects the Amos Children’s Hospital to the Midtown Medical Center.
CONTINUING TO “DREAM BIG”
Every parent has bought their children articles of clothing that are a size or two too big so that their kids can “grow into” them. Columbus’ new children’s hospital also has some growing room—Fellows says Piedmont made a deliberate decision not to occupy the entire Doctors Hospital space all at once, instead leaving room for specialty programs and office space that the hospital might want to add down the road.
Lasseter says they already have some ideas about new programs and capabilities the hospital might add in the near future, particularly pediatric rehab, an infusion facility for blood disorders and telemedicine. The new hospital’s director, Dr. Don Nakayama, is a respected pediatric surgeon (as well as senior associate dean of Mercer University School of Medicine’s Columbus campus), and Lasseter says he’s already working to recruit other surgeons to Columbus.
With that in mind, Piedmont’s biggest priority right now is recruiting specialists rather than immediately adding new facilities. “We don’t want to go and build out spaces where we don’t have the physician in place,” Lasseter says. “Basically we’re looking for people to come in and help us build that out, to say, ‘I need this widget and that widget and this wall here,’ so they’ll basically be on the ground level building up these programs.
“The last thing we want to do is build out a space and then bring them in, and they have no say in what that space looks like,” she explains. “It’s a very exciting opportunity for those pediatric specialists who are in the middle of their careers, or even relatively early in their careers, to be a part of something that’s being built, and we hope that that’s a draw.”
Cheves says the hospital will fill a local need while still working in concert with larger facilities such as Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. “We have a good relationship with CHOA—there’ll always be a need for children’s healthcare in Atlanta,” he says. “There’s a ‘pyramid of care,’ and CHOA will certainly handle the high end—
Bill and Olivia Amos’ great grandaughter, Dottie Meeks, meets Bo the Turtle who greets visitors as they enter the hospital lobby.
specialized treatments and transplants and so forth. Our hope is that [the Amos Children’s Hospital] will serve this area and serve maybe the next two or three tiers of that pyramid. We’ll just try to grow with the volume, using the John B. Amos Cancer Center as an example. JBACC now sees 600 patients a day—we had no idea when we built that cancer center that it would grow
so big. We don’t know what the needs will ultimately be for our children’s hospital, but we’re confident it will grow.”
Cecil and Bettye Cheves visited the hospital a couple weeks before its official opening and were delighted at how closely it matched the “big dreams” they’d had for it. Cecil says he took a few extra moments to admire a photo composition of Bill and
LOCALLY GROWN PECANS
Bill & Olivia Amos Children’s Hospital FIRST PATIENT
The first patient treated at the freestanding children’s hospital on October 14 was 4-yearold Nalani Lewis (pictured with R.N. Clair Parker), who was hospitalized for asthmarelated issues. She transferred from the fifth floor at Piedmont Columbus Midtown and had been in the hospital since the day before.
Olivia Amos that’s featured prominently in the hospital’s lobby.
“Looking at Mr. and Mrs. Amos and standing in that beautiful foyer, there just was a deep sense of fulfillment and happiness and satisfaction, knowing that they are being honored,” he says, “but also knowing that we are part of something that’s going to be very good for our community.” C
What we loved most about Gerald is that in our first meeting, he took the time to get to know us before discussing our housing needs and wants. We felt like we walked away from that meeting with a new friend, as well as our realtor. He truly listened to our needs and wants when helping us find our home.
Sanctuary on 1st Avenue
Trinity Episcopal Church Celebrates 190 Years
BY ELLIOTT WADDELL & FRANK ETHERIDGE PHOTOS COURTESY OF TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH
Avisit to Trinity Episcopal Church—a serene, sacred space amidst the hustle and bustle of Uptown Columbus—offers a trip back in time while also caring for our community’s present-day needs of mind, body and spirit.
Today as historic as it is vibrant, Trinity is one of four churches (along with First Baptist, First Presbyterian and St. Luke) granted property in the original charter for the City of Columbus in 1828, making it the fifth Episcopal church established in Georgia. A beautiful red-brick structure added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, the church stands directly across
First Avenue from its original home built in 1834. Its stunning Gothic Revival architecture, marked by its arched windows and passageways and square bell tower, connects it to the earliest Episcopal churches found in rural English villages. Inside, elaborate woodwork and transplendent stained-glass windows set a reverent tone for worship services illuminated by two large brass chandeliers that were originally gas but are now lit by electricity. The enchanting, cloistered courtyard features the wall fountain’s calming trickle and huge Japanese Magnolia trees that bloom bright and pink with the new promise of every spring season.
Old Trinity, the parish’s house of worship from 1837 to 1891. Easter recessional in 1958
This window honoring Leonora Epping Swift is one of many beautiful memorial stain glass windows throughout Trinity.
The cloister courtyard
Trinity Church photographed in 1926.
Columbus
Valley
Over the past 190 years, parishioners at Trinity have served with considerable influence and charity that carries lasting impact not just in the Chattahoochee Valley but across the entire South. It has been a place of refuge for soldiers seeking spiritual solace or a comforting sense of home during times of both war and peace. The hungry are invited in to be fed every Sunday morning during a brief prayer breakfast. Through its St. Francis Fund, the church has provided vital funds for civic organizations and nonprofits assisting those in need in our local community as well as across the globe. In the early 1950s, Trinity members were instrumental in the founding of Trinity School off Wynnton Road that eventually was renamed as Brookstone School.
The heavenly sounds of music at Trinity
Fort Benning soldiers enjoyed Sunday night suppers following vespers in 1943.
Trinity Church as it looks today from 2nd Avenue.
arrive courtesy of masterful pipe organ play mixed with the angelic voices of choir members from Columbus State University’s Schwob School of Music, which also provides for the talented accompanying instrumental soloists. Two services are held every Sunday morning: Rite 1 from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer at 8:30 a.m. in the chapel followed by Rite 2 at 10:30 a.m. in the
beautiful Nave. Trinity also hosts weekly Bible Study on Wednesday mornings and a Service of Healing on Thursday mornings. No matter if you’re searching for lessons from the past, help in the present or hope for the future, all are welcomed to come through the doors of Trinity Episcopal Church, a Holy Spirit-empowered community dedicated to sharing God’s love. C
The Trinity choir circa 1910
Hear the Trinity Choir & Pipe Organ
Sow It Grows
Is it boring, or is it cool? Birdwatching, I mean. Or just “birding” to those in the cool camp
It’s a hipster trend, championed by both writer Jonathan Franzen and Dakota Johnson’s lovable wreck in “Daddio.” A poll of women ranked it as an ideal hobby for a partner, not far below cooking, playing a guitar and hiking. But a social psychology journal’s findings disagreed, with its study finding it nearly as dull a pastime as watching television or smoking.
Me, I was just trying to grow food on our empty field.
And then there was a loud screech in the sky, and I looked up with wonder to see a hawk, not just flying but in flight from two measly little mockingbirds who were darting to and fro, fearlessly chasing it away, effectively shooting a middle talon at the big boy. It was a Cooper’s hawk, I would learn. There are two of them who frequent the fly zone above our little urban farm.
In truth, this wasn’t my first avian rodeo. My wife, Jenn, has been birding for years, and often I’m standing alongside her, trying to shoot pictures of the rare Flying Wallenda or whatnot that someone’s spotted at Oxbow’s north application field. But it was an eye-opening event for what I might see and hear while just at work in the field every day.
Accidental birdwatching has become a thing for me.
Cropduster
Listening and trying to identify a bird’s call, it turns out, is a great way to spend those extra brain cycles while I’m otherwise mindlessly pulling strands of weeds from among the vegetables. On a typical spring, pre-dawn day, my wife opened a phone app that tracks bird calls that the phone picks up. There were eight species in about 30 seconds, including likely suspects such as the mourning dove and the American robin, but also a red-eyed vireo and a great crested flycatcher.
Jenn would log them in her app, tagging the entries with the name of our place, Dew Point Farm. At one point, a moderator reached out: “Jenn, you’ve mistakenly tagged a farm in the middle of the city!” Yessir, she did.
For me the birding deal was sealed in the early days of the farm, when we had a semi-truckload of organic compost dropped on the land. We were using a wheelbarrow and two shovels to spread 61 cubic yards of new soil. It was slow going—shovel, shovel, shovel into the wheelbarrow, then plant the shovel in the pile and go dump the load. It was maybe not the recommended method, except for one thankful little winged friend.
I noticed, when I started steering the wheelbarrow away from the pile, a little gray bird with a fat head and light breast would fly in and survey the newly exposed dirt at the pile for bugs we’d revealed, quickly scurrying from the sunlight. Clever girl. When
I came back, the bird flitted off to the nearby chain link fence rail and squeaked a pretty little “feeeee-beeeee!”
“That’s a phoebe!” Jenn said. So named because, well, duh. Every time we’d leave the pile it would come over and do its survey. Then it figured out that it could land on the planted shovel handle for a literal bird’s-eye view of the soil, still flying away when we’d approach. But every time it got braver. I started approaching the shovel slowly, trying not to startle
the little one. But I needn’t have worried. Soon I actually had to shoo it off of my shovel just to keep working. And then it would simply fly over to the wheelbarrow handle and watch while we filled it with the compost.
By Jiminy, she was flirting with me.
Bird Brain
“Try and get a picture,” I told Jenn. “I’m going to try to pick up the shovel with it on there.”
But the phoebe was a little too coy for the photo op, always flying off a ways. For a minute I thought maybe the hat I was wearing was scaring it off. And then she proved that wasn’t the issue.
Out of nowhere, the bird flew right at me, darting just over my head like Tom Cruise’s Maverick buzzing the flight tower. I lost sight of it as it went over.
“Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” I asked,
slowly panning around looking for my new friend.
“Don’t move!” said Jenn. She was looking at me with a strange smile on her face. Her phone was out and she snapped a couple photos as quickly as she could.
The phoebe had perched on the top of my hat.
I’m sure there’s a greater lesson here, something about the joys of paying attention to the world around you, embracing the quiet, letting nature come to you, and all that. For me it was something different. While the rest of y’all can practice your guitar barre chords while simultaneously baking sourdough from grandmother’s starter, I’ve found a hobby that endears me to at least two girls: my wife and our new friend Phoebe.
No offense to hobby guitarists or bread bakers. I do both of those things too. Just not simultaneously. C
Freelance writer Brad Barnes was a journalist for 17 years and a marketing expert for 9 years before he and his wife, Jenn, started Dew Point Farm in MidTown Columbus in 2019. You can email him at info@dewpoint.farm, and he’ll get back to you after he’s washed his hands.
Can be found at:
Barnes & Noble
Columbus Museum
Dinglewood Pharmacy
Durham’s Pharmacy
Galleria Riverside
Judy Bug Books
Marriott
Midtown Medical
Center Gift Shop
Pierce Crossing
Convenience Store
Piggly Wiggly
Whitewater Express
The Present President
Motivated by her own experience, Stuart Rayfield wants to see more students get their degrees.
BY JIM LYNN PHOTOS COURTESY OF COLUMBUS STATE UNIVERSITY
Stuart Eddings felt lost. As a student at Rhodes College, then at the University of Alabama, then back at Rhodes, then dropping out, then not dropping out, she felt like she was the only young woman on the block of life who had no clue what she wanted to do. She “checked all the boxes” on college student ups and downs and ended up waitressing at a chicken wing restaurant with seemingly no prospects of a serious professional life.
Today, Stuart Eddings Rayfield is the first woman to lead Columbus State University (CSU). And while her experiences might differ in detail and degree from those of many CSU students, she sees the challenges that drag against both student success and the success of the college itself through the lens of someone who’s been there, done that.
“My personal experience was positive in the end, but tumultuous during it, with the going back and forth,” Rayfield said. “Everybody thought I was crazy, you know. I’m going to transfer, then no, I’m not. Then I’m going to drop out, and then I’m going to go back. And you know, it was… it was exhausting. I’m sure it was for everybody around me.”
Rayfield is the sixth president in CSU’s 66-year history. She’s been on the job for a year, and she appears popular with faculty and students and leaders of the local business and benefactor communities.
“I’d give her an ‘A’,” said Michelle Debruyn, a professor in the
Schwob School of Music and head of the university’s faculty senate. “I think that in the past year she has sat back and observed how things are functioning and how things are fitting together and how they’re not functioning and how they’re not fitting together. I think that she has … been patient and just kind of soaked it all in.”
The leading issue for professors is administrative red tape, a problem Rayfield agrees needs attention.
Rayfield previously held the Frank D. Brown Distinguished Chair in Servant Leadership, ran CSU’s Servant Leadership Program, helped design a Master’s program in Organizational Leadership and worked with accreditation renewal. She has been interim president of three Georgia colleges and has held staff positions with the University System of Georgia. And in addition to her gigs at the wings restaurant and a clothing boutique, she even spent a short time at TSYS.
To the search committee that recommended her to the Board of Regents, her time as interim president of Gordon State, Bainbridge State and Georgia Southwestern, plus a period as vice chancellor for leadership and institutional development, were a de facto endorsement by the university system itself. “It (the University System of Georgia) was making a loud statement about her,” Steve Butler said. “It was a huge endorsement on their part as to her capabilities.” Butler is the retired chairman of the WC Bradley Co. and was a member of the selection committee as well as the CSU Foundation Board.
Butler says it was her connection to Columbus and a strong cultural fit that endeared her to the committee. Attributes that were less pronounced in her predecessors.
“She has a servant leader’s heart, and also got the connection and the importance of work happening at CSU and how it relates to the needs of the community,” he said. “I hope she’ll retire here.” Rayfield has lived in Phenix City and Columbus for two decades
with her husband, David, an attorney, and daughters Celia, a student at Columbus High, and Vivian, at Georgia Tech.
Despite Rayfield’s adult bona fides in higher education, which include a doctorate from Vanderbilt, it was her agonizing student years that set her on an empathetic path to knowing what a majority of young people go through. It was a topsy-turvy time, discovering what her life should be about. Ultimately, it would be about just that—helping students figure out how to figure out life.
“It all informs how I ended up in higher education,” she said during a series of lengthy discussions late this summer.
Rayfield had a “picture perfect” childhood growing up in the middle-class Buena VIsta neighborhood in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She graduated from Central High in Tuscaloosa in 1991. Her mother was an interior decorator; her father owned an insurance company. In middle school, Ann Stuart Eddings decided to use her middle name because Ann Stuart was used as a double name, and that was just too much for school. She told her mom she wanted to shorten it, and mom said, “well, pick one.” So she picked the more interesting “Stuart.”
Being very tall (6 feet)—she played tennis, not basketball—and using a boy’s name caused her unending grief as a teenager. But as a grownup, she says her height and her name are two attributes she’s most fond of.
As a high school senior, she felt the urge to get out of Tuscaloosa. Both parents had attended schools outside their hometowns, and Stuart just felt like that was the thing to do. Still does, in fact, despite running a school where half the student body is from the Columbus area.
“It was kind of always like you need to go away to school,” she said. “I mean, I didn’t even apply to the University of Alabama for undergraduate. I think every person in high school, if they are given the opportunity to leave their hometown to go to college, most do if they can.”
“And it’s interesting because with my girls, I feel the same way,” she continued. “I don’t want them to go to CSU, and it’s not because it’s not a great institution. But there is a lot of growing that happens when you have to move out of your comfort zone and try something new. It wasn’t a smooth ride for me, but I think I’m the
The Rayfield family: David, Vivian, Stuart and Celia
person I am today because I went through that and because I left home and because I had to kind of start fresh.”
Rayfield applied and was accepted to Rhodes College, a prominent, 2,000-student liberal arts school in Memphis that counts Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas among its alumni. The 176-year-old college is a picturesque collection of Collegiate Gothic buildings that make it feel like a place to study the great philosophers, or perhaps the great sorcerers. “When you step on the campus, it’s pretty hard not to want to sign up to go there,” she said. “It’s beautiful. I mean, it feels kind of like Hogwarts.”
Easy to sign up. Not so easy to stay.
She was there to study political science, thinking she would go to law school as her next step. She had worked at a local law firm in high school, “so it just seemed like something good to do,” she said, in a tone that gives you the feeling not a lot of thought was put into it. And at some point early at Rhodes, she started hearing from friends in law school and decided it was actually not something she wanted to “give up three years of my life for.” Sticking with political science but without a defined goal, she felt marooned in a place where it seemed everyone else knew what they wanted to do with their lives.
And then there was, you know, the hometown University of Alabama. “All of my friends were in Tuscaloosa for the most part, going to football games. We won a national championship during that time, and so I thought, you know, I don’t love it at Rhodes. It’s expensive.” So she decided she’d transfer to Alabama for her sophomore year. But then…
A friend from Rhodes spent the summer with her in a Tuscaloosa apartment. “We had fun, and by the end of the summer, she had convinced me to come back to Rhodes.” But then…
“I went back, and I was there for probably about six to eight weeks…. I was just miserable. So I called my dad, and I said I can’t do this anymore.” Jimmy Eddings made the four-hour drive to Memphis to bring his daughter home. They loaded up the car first. Only then did they go to the registrar’s office, where they learned she was withdrawing too late in the semester for a refund.
“He said, ‘All right, well, we’re going to unpack the car!’ I mean, the car was packed. I can still see his Montero,” Rayfield recalled.
So she stayed… for a while.
Still struggling, Rayfield took the next semester off. It was the second semester of her second year. She moved back to Tuscaloosa and got a job as a cashier at a Baumhower’s chicken wing restaurant. We learn from every experience. “I learned I needed to re-enroll in college,” she said wryly.
So she did. Then her father died of a heart attack during junior year. But even with the circuitous route, plus grief over the sudden loss of her father, she somehow managed to finish her undergrad work in four years.
But …“I started looking for a job, and there was nobody beating down my door with my Bachelor of Arts in Political Science.” She was still feeling lost. A job at Canterbury Clothiers, a women’s apparel shop in Tuscaloosa, gave her time to think. Reflecting on her time at Rhodes, she thought about people who seemed to enjoy what they did. Her focus narrowed not to a fellow student, but instead to the student activities director, Cindy Pennington.
The two crossed paths when Rayfield worked as a student sorority rush advisor. “She was just this really cool, young professional who provided students a great experience,” Rayfield said. “And I will say
she always had fun at her job, and I was thinking that was going to be important to me.” Rayfield got Pennington on the phone and asked how she got her job. “‘I want to do what you do,’ I told her,” Rayfield recalled.
It was a simple telephone call, but it was enough of a discussion to set Rayfield on a path to getting her master’s degree in higher education administration at Alabama and later, after considerable nagging from her mother, a doctorate at Vanderbilt.
Pennington, now Cindy Cleveland, went on to a career in human resources, and is today the chief talent officer for Diversified Trust, a financial advising firm based in Memphis. She hasn’t spoken with Rayfield in the years since and doesn’t remember that particular conversation, now 29 years ago. “But I do remember her huge smile and great laugh,” she said of Rayfield in her student days. “She just exuded positivity and joy.”
Cleveland said she was humbled when told of Rayfield’s work in higher ed and about how whatever she told Rayfield back then had such a life-changing influence on the young woman. It is important, Cleveland said, that college administrators and faculty “are developing trust and being there intentionally invested in students’ lives, helping them think critically about their future and their careers.”
Which is essentially what Rayfield, in her first permanent university leadership position, hopes to engender at CSU.
Her two recent predecessors focused on boosting CSU’s enrollment, without dramatic effect. Tim Mescon came to the school hoping to grow enrollment to 10,000 students but never saw that fifth digit. Chris Markwood’s efforts were hampered by
pandemic-era enrollment drop-offs. Current enrollment is 7,640. Rayfield says her focus is not primarily on raising enrollment by bringing in new students, although that’s obviously part of it. Her primary strategy is reducing churn. Keeping the students she has. Solving issues that prevent entering freshmen from seeing it through to graduation.
CSU is, though not uniquely, beset with a significant retention problem. Nearly 30 percent of freshmen don’t return the next fall. A whopping 58 percent don’t make it to graduation. Rayfield sees tackling those issues as a key to raising enrollment and helping students get their college degrees and join the professional workforce. Her goal is an 85 percent retention rate and a 60 percent graduation rate by 2030. That’s an increase of roughly 15 percentage points in each metric.
Rachel Toor, a longtime college admissions guru and now a contributing editor with Inside Higher Ed, a resource site for university administrators, says retention is a tougher issue at schools like CSU that are less selective in admissions. Simply put, “The less selective the school, the more retention is an issue,” she said. Schools with tougher admission requirements attract more students who are prepared for college and more likely to stick with it. At Georgia Tech, a state school with highly selective admissions, the retention and graduation rates are 97 and 92 percent respectively, only slightly lower than the nation’s most exclusive private universities.
CSU is in a category of Georgia state universities that accept all who apply and meet minimum requirements (for example, a 2.50 high school grade-point average). There are exceptions in the
College of the Arts, where students audition for acceptance into Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) programs. A common refrain among local business leaders is that CSU has always existed “to help build a middle class” in Columbus.
But creating a middle class means getting students through four years of college. That means helping students gain clarity—clarity Rayfield struggled with—in their futures. It also means dealing with the hands students have been dealt in their personal lives. Fully half the student body (53 percent this graduation year) are the first in their families to go
to college, and half the student body come from low-income families (45 percent receive Pell grants).
The challenges are substantial, but Rayfield is resolute. She speaks unfalteringly on the importance of finding solutions.
What keeps those students from returning? Where is the friction? “Where are we getting in the way?” Rayfield asks rhetorically. “It doesn’t matter how glossy our brochures are or how connected people feel to our messaging if when they get here, they leave. It doesn’t matter. So, somebody needs to dig into what causes these kids to leave and that’s what we are focused on right now.”
Her approaches to leading CSU are unavoidably colored by her past. But she readily admits that what she went through “pales in comparison” to what many CSU students face. She says Stuart the struggling student would tell Stuart the college president to make sure there are people on campus who can guide those struggling students. “Make sure you can support them through (their challenges),” she says. “Because getting to the other side is awesome.” C
Rayfield at last year’s CSU homecoming parade.
BY NATALIE
On October 1, 1974, a dream that had been incubating in the minds of several concerned local leaders became reality. With an understanding of the need for mental health care in the Chattahoochee Valley, four men—a philanthropist, two reverends and a psychiatrist started the Pastoral Institute. William B. Turner, Rev. Herschel Allen, Rev. Richard Robertson and Dr. George Zubowicz envisioned a safe place for healing for people facing challenges in our
community. For several years, the Pastoral Institute operated out of the downtown YMCA serving as a bridge between psychiatry and religion. The union of these two concepts was a novel idea that represented an opportunity for healing the whole person. As their reach expanded, they began working with businesses and churches to provide services and benefits to a greater reach of community members.
The mental health statistics in the United States and specifically our local area show a significant imbalance in the ratio of mental health needs to mental health resources. Pastoral Institute CEO Laura
Cardin explains that in the United States, the ratio of Americans per mental health professional is 350:1; in Georgia that ratio is 640:1, and in our Chattahoochee Valley region, it is 2300:1. And yet, national statistics show that more than one in five adults in the U.S. live with a mental illness. “Our entire region is a mental health provider shortage area,” explains Director of Advancement Mary Johnson. “But we feel like we can shift the needle, and have an impact on the shortage in our region.”
Since its inception, the Pastoral Institute has remained committed to providing resources to bring wholeness and healing to individuals in our community, and as they celebrate their 50th year of service to our region, they have plans to continue to expand their reach and support the growth of up and coming mental health professionals in our area.
In the mental health field, finding opportunities to complete the requirements for licensure after earning a masters in therapy can be difficult. In fact, an astounding 57 percent of masters graduates nationally never complete the licensure process. The Pastoral Institute recognizes the challenges many up and coming therapists face and are building on their legacy to help graduates obtain licensure by providing clinical training with a diverse community experience.
“We have a legacy of helping clinicians find their heart’s passion,” says Johnson. “We hope their experience will encourage some of them to stay and work within our community. If we can help them find what they’re passionate about in our community, they can help fill in the gaps, and if we’re closing the gap in our community at all, we’re serving our community.”
Among the many hurdles that keep graduates from completing their licensure includes the requirement for them to complete 3000 hours of supervised counseling in two years. In many cases, it can be difficult to obtain a paid training position, and supervision is often an additional cost to the trainee. This can create a financial strain on would-be therapists, leading to an unfortunate loss of potential mental health professionals in a time when they are most needed.
With an understanding of this deterring factor, the Pastoral Institute has invested in a stipend to pay the training clinicians,
DOWNEY
and local donors support the supervision costs. “It’s a significant financial burden,” Johnson explains, “and yet not having licensure limits the scope of practice and thus how much they’re able to serve the community.”
In the next year, the Pastoral Institute plans to expand their existing training program. By 2025, they plan to hire a clinical training director, which will allow them to focus on giving their trainees a variety of experiences in different modalities of counseling and work through experiences that can’t be taught in school.
“For many clinicians, it’s one hour behind a closed door,” Cardin says. But for the Pastoral Institute clinicians, the experiences will be more diverse. For example, they will have opportunities such as working in homeless shelters, or working with a group of people going through drug treatment. “It broadens their experience level, so that when they are licensed, they have some experience to draw on to be able to move clients through the process of healing.”
The Pastoral Institute was grown from the seed of servant leadership, a seed that has grown into a full grown tree of healing for our community. “So much of what we focus on is restoring relationships and the healing of the whole person,” Johnson explains. As a result, the Pastoral Institute understands the importance of available resources to walk people through all types of life situations, and they emphasize that their clients are the ones doing the healing work, with the power of change coming from them. “We’re honored to walk beside them and provide a safe place where they can share their story.”
Relationships are like an intricate web woven throughout our community. From families to neighbors to coworkers, an
individual’s relationship with one person can affect other relationships, and the Pastoral Institute realizes that helping heal even one relationship can have a ripple effect on the entire community. “We can’t measure how other relationships change because one client did the work to reclaim a thriving lifestyle,” Johnson explains.
Recognizing that our state is ranked next to last in access to mental health care, the Pastoral Institute’s clinician training program meets the need for more licensed mental health providers at ground level. It’s a practical answer to a staggering statistic. The Pastoral Institute is also partnering with St. Francis’ psychiatry resident program to serve their year two and three residents to expand exposure for residents and allow them to provide supervised care to Pastoral Institute clients. In total, there will be the capacity for 22 people running through the training program at a time. The goal for the program residents is to obtain their license in professional counseling or marriage and family therapy within two years.
Grants and donor funding also help clinicians receive specialty training in modalities such as EMDR trauma therapy, youth-focused therapy, telehealth services to serve rural communities and digital media overuse and addiction training before they complete their licensure. “We’re really trying to pour into these residents as much as we can so that they’ll be comfortable and prepared to serve the biggest needs in our community once they become licensed,” Mary explains.
As the Pastoral Institute works to address our state’s mental health provider shortage, they’re partnering with other organizations such as Mercer Medical School who are thinking forward to create a better mental health environment for our state.
For many people, the cost of professional counseling prevents them from receiving help. In addition to clinical training, the Pastoral Institute offers a wealth of mental health services to the community. Their H.O.P.E. Fund (Helping Other People Endure) is a donor-supported financial direct service fund which allows costburdened community members access to mental health care and allows the Pastoral Institute to increase the availability of their resources. In 2023, 249 community members were able to access mental health care services thanks to H.O.P.E. Fund donations.
This year, the Pastoral Institute was able to work directly with United Way for funding for the H.O.P.E. program as part of the United Way’s mission to reduce poverty. Clients can apply for this program through the online scheduling request online at PastoralInstitute.org.
Working with the support of United Way, Aflac and private donors, the Pastoral Institute has been able allocate funding towards not only the H.O.P.E. Fund, but also to their agency
Director of Advancement, Mary Johnson
CEO, Laura Cardin
William B. Turner, Dr. George Zubowicz and Rev. Richard Robertson founded the Pastoral Institute with Rev. Herschel Allen in 1974.
Services offered at the Pastoral Institute:
• Individual and Family Counseling
• Employee Assistance Program
• Congregational Care Program
• Trauma and Crisis Response
• Clinical Training Program
• Telehealth Services
• Mental Wellness Education and Group Services
• H.O.P.E. (Helping Other People Endure) Fund Assistance
partners, making it easier for their partnered nonprofits to have a direct referral for their clients to receive care that can help them be more successful in the recovery programs they’re involved in. “That’s led to a really incredible expansion of partnership,” Johnson explains, “Because if we’re working with mental health, and other organizations around us have their own missions and goals they’re working on with their participants, and our mental health services can help those participants achieve more success, then it’s a wonderful win-win.”Through funded direct services, partnered agencies can access Pastoral Institute services for their participants without straining their budgets, and additionally, Pastoral Institute clinicians are gaining the diversity of experience that will allow them to benefit the community. “It’s been a wonderful growth in our collaborative partnerships,” Johnson says, “It’s been exciting to watch.”
In 2025, the Pastoral Institute will partner with Chattahoochee Valley libraries to offer, through their H.O.P.E. Fund, support groups and mental wellness education at various library branches, allowing the Pastoral Institute to make services more accessible by being able to meet people where they are.
Working with 120 regional businesses and organizations, the Pastoral Institute offers an Employee Assistance Program, which allows company employees to receive counseling services through their company benefits. A bridge of sorts, the EAP offers beneficiaries of the program benefits such as working through individual issues, group crisis assistance, wellness sessions and learning workplace coping skills that can be used at their desk throughout the workday.
“We couldn’t do all of this work without the incredible partnerships we have in our community,” Johnson explains. “What we’ve realized is that without their support way back in 2008, we wouldn’t have been able to continue thriving and serving through COVID. It was their investments way back then that allowed us to keep serving through such a difficult time.”
Moving forward, the Pastoral Institute has big aspirations. “We want to be known as the place to go to be licensed in the state, we want the best program in the state,,” Cardin says. For postmasters, pre-license training, the Pastoral Institute will bring 6,000 additional service hours to our community and about 50 percent of those hours will be specifically dedicated to highvulnerable, low-access populations.
A beacon of light in our community, the Pastoral Institute strives to be a safe place for people to go to when they need some help and a listening ear. “We all have times in life when we just need somebody,” says Laura. “It’s an honor to be able to walk with our clients through the healing process.” C
Generational Tradition
COLUMBUS BALLET TO HOST 28TH ANNUAL PRODUCTION OF THE NUTCRACKER
For audiences, The Columbus Ballet’s annual production of The Nutcracker signals the beginning of the Christmas season. However, for those responsible for bringing this holiday hallmark to the masses, it’s always “Nutcracker” season
“We start talking about Nutcracker in January, right after it ends,” said Bridget Adams, theatrical director for this year’s production. “As soon as we finish up in
December, we take the rest of December off, then come back in January and start figuring out what we did well and what we need to do better next year. Then we start preparing sets and backdrops and all that stuff.
“The Nutcracker is happening for the [Columbus] ballet all year long.”
This year’s production will take place Saturday, December 7th at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, December 8th at 2:30 p.m. at RiverCenter for the Performing Arts.
Joining Adams to help bring The Nutcracker to life are Angela Null, artistic director, and Laura Johnson, producing director.
“Working as part of a team of directors, we worked to create a unified vision for the show,” said Johnson, who has been a choreographer and director with the Columbus Ballet for 15 years. “It became clear early on that we all enjoyed a more traditional version of the story.
“There are ways to keep The Nutcracker fresh without having to revamp or modernize something that is cherished in its classic form.”
Guest artists for this year’s production include a pair of professional dancers who currently dance with Nevada Ballet Theatre. Mirella Costa Neto will dance the role of the Sugar Plum, and Sergio Alvarez will dance the role of the Cavalier.
“This couple is incredibly special because they are not only partners on stage, but they are also married and share a daughter together off stage,” said Null, who had a 10-year professional ballet career with top national companies such as The Washington Ballet, Richmond Ballet and The Sarasota Ballet. “Our audience is in for a real treat this year because the technical precision, artistry and chemistry of these dancers is on another level.”
The third guest artist, Luis Ocaranza, will take on the role of the Nutcracker
Prince and also gifts Clara with the iconic Russian Dance in the second act of the ballet. Ocaranza comes to Columbus from Ballet RI, where he is a
“It’s a great opportunity for the audience to see some professional-level dancing,” Adams said. “It’s also important for our students to dance alongside them and watch how professionals carry themselves, train and get ready for a show.”
In addition to the visiting professional dancers, features local community members. Barbara Gauthier and Ben Stanfield from WTVM will participate in the party scene, and local radio personality Wes Carroll will be reprising the role of Mother Ginger.
“This year’s production is going to take our audience on a journey through the traditional storyline many of us have grown to know and love,” Null said. “However, we do have a few surprises in terms of new ideas and interpretations.”
The Nutcracker is important because it gives local dancers a way to translate their
hard work in the classroom to a full-scale, professional-level ballet performance.
“Our dancers put in countless class hours to hone their craft, and then on top of that many rehearsal hours that occupy their weekends from the beginning of September until the show,” Johnson said. “When it all comes together, seeing how proud they all are of what they have accomplished is what makes me the happiest.
And it’s not just the dancers on stage who are inspired. “Come January, it never fails,” Adams said. “We have new students sign up at the conservatory, and I know other studios have new dancers come in, too—all because they’ve gone to see The Nutcracker, and they want to be a part of that beautiful magic.”
The Nutcracker is not only a holiday tradition, but a family tradition as well.
“I know of families who have brought their children to the ballet year after year, and audience members who came as children to watch the show and now are bringing their children to see the show,” Johnson said. “To have this longstanding tradition in our community is really quite amazing.” C
For more information about The Nutcracker and to purchase tickets, visit TheColumbusBallet.org.
CRUSH
BY PAT DANIEL
Great Wine Pairings for the Holidays
The holidays are just around the corner, and with them come so many grand opportunities to spend time with family, loved ones and good friends over a meal or at a party. It is also a very hectic season, so here are some ideas for wine pairings to make those occasions gentler with one less item to stress over.
Thanksgiving
This holiday exemplifies the meal Americans enjoy most with family and friends. This is a holiday that is entirely about the meal and the people with whom we share it. The turkey itself is rather bland, without strong flavor profiles, but the dressing, gravy and heavy side dishes and casseroles bring endless possibilities of flavors to this meal. Champagne is the most versatile of wines, and, in addition to being festive, is a great compliment to all the heavy components of the meal. The herbs and rich sauces will also pair well with a sauvignon blanc. If the turkey is smoked, you may want to consider a gewurztraminer, or if you prefer a red wine, a shiraz or a pinot noir.
If you are serving a ham that has a honey or maple glaze, a riesling or a gewurztraminer can be a good choice. Beaujolais, red zinfandel or tempranillo are good red wines to pair with a savorier, less sweet ham.
Christmas
With Christmas dinner comes the opportunity of a broader range of choices for the main course. Standing rib roast, crown pork roast and duckling are just a few of these choices. Standing rib roast screams for a bold, red wine. A strong red wine from Bordeaux or Burgundy from France, a Barbaresco or Barolo from Italy, a Tempranillo from Spain, a Lodi zinfandel, or a big California cabernet sauvignon are all excellent choices. Very few white wines can stand up to the flavors of this roast. A white burgundy is a notable exception, but these wines are often expensive!
Crown pork roast is often prepared with Italian herbs and root vegetables. Pair this dish with a Chianti or a bold white wine, such as a chardonnay. If the meat is prepared instead with fruits, such as apples and raisins, choose a pinot gris from Oregon or a pinot noir from Burgundy.
Duckling has a wonderful, fatty, gamey flavor that is sumptuous with a red wine from Burgundy or Bordeaux, if the duck is roasted or braised. If the duckling is smoked or grilled, it will pair well with a red wine from the Rhone Valley in the south of France. If the dish is served with a sauce that is heavy with fruit and fruit flavors, consider a riesling or a sauterne.
New Year’s Eve
Last, but not least—New Year’s Eve! Of course, Champagne is the drink of choice for New Year’s celebrations, but think beyond a cheap bottle of bubbles. Good Champagne is a fabulous complement to great party foods for the celebration. Pair it with caviar, oysters, shrimp, lobster and smoked salmon. Consider buying rosé Champagne, especially to pair with the smoked salmon and capers (rinse those capers to avoid the vinegar flavor.) These rosés are crisp and clean, not sweet. For reference, extra brut is the driest Champagne, followed by brut, extra dry (oddly not the driest choice,) and demi sec (semi sweet). Champagne is also a beautiful addition to a New Year’s Eve brunch. It pairs beautifully with buttery scrambled eggs and other heavy brunch foods, and can be added to peach purée, orange juice and flavored vodkas to create flavorful cocktails.
Regardless of the holiday, or the meal you prepare, remember the cardinal rule of wine, drink what you love. C
GoldenYears BASEBALL IN COLUMBUS PART 1:
BY FRANK ETHERIDGE PHOTOS COURTESY OF LEDGER-ENQUIRER COLLECTION, CSU ARCHIVES AND COLUMBUS SPORTS COUNCIL
A diamond in the rough nestled along the banks of the Chattahoochee River, Golden Park reflected the life and times of our community for nearly a century.
Once upon a time, baseball ruled the sports world.
The golden era for our national pastime spans much of the 20th century. It started with the dawn of radio, which proved to be the perfect medium for bringing the beloved “boys of summer” into America’s homes (and hearts), before TV changed the channel to show football as our most popular sport, and before the dizzying Digital Age of today, when the sport had to change its rules (time clocks, instant replay) to try and stay relevant among the Almighty Algorithm’s endless reels.
For local sports fans during this time, the Braves played ball well north of the MasonDixon Line, so their best option was to “root, root, root” for the home team. For almost a century, our team called Golden Park home.
The origin story of baseball here is told in fascinating detail by Dr. Virginia
Causey in her 2019 book, Red Clay, Whitewater and the Blues: A History of Columbus, Georgia. Organized baseball in the city dates back to just after the Civil War with the first professional franchise arriving in 1888, when Columbus Railroad Company President John F. Flournoy led a group of investors purchasing a team in the Southern League. “Flournoy likely hoped people would ride the streetcar to Wildwood Park to watch,” Causey, retired professor emeritus of history at Columbus State University, writes, “but lost a large amount of money and quit.” Twenty years later, Theodore Golden of Goldens’ Foundry raised $10,000 for a team in the Southern League. Named the Electrics (after the town’s original nickname of Electric City) but commonly called the Foxes for “charismatic” and “hardhitting” third-baseman/manager Jim Fox, the team won the pennant in 1910, 1911
and 1917 and led the league in attendance until it folded when America entered World War I.
When the Foxes reformed in 1926 as part of the South Atlantic League (the long-running Sally League, in which a Columbus team competed until the Catfish left in 2008), the Baseball Association rejected use of Driving Park, located inside the racetrack in South Commons, for games. Instead, league officials persuaded the city to build a stadium in Golden Park, a 125-acre space tucked into the northwest corner of South Commons, an area designated for public recreation in the city’s original 1828 charter, and named for Theodore Golden, then chair of the city’s recreation board. Work on the new stadium finished in just two weeks and featured a 1,000-seat grandstand with room for 1,500 more in the bleachers (including 300 reserved for “Colored”).
Golden Park hosted the Foxes until 1932 when the Great Depression forced the Sally League to suspend operations. In 1936, the St. Louis Cardinals put a farm team in Columbus and sparked two decades of success as the Red Birds won five pennants and smashed attendance records. “In those years after the war, enthusiasm was high when all the players came back from service,” Cecil Darby, traveling secretary for the Red Birds, recalled in 1988 when he was inducted into the Chattahoochee Valley Sports Hall of Fame. “We drew 124,000 in ‘46 and 136,000 in ‘47.”
Responding to the surge in ticket sales, Golden Park was renovated in 1951. Wood was out, metal was in, and capacity increased to 3,500 fans. However, poor attendance caused the team to leave town in 1955. In 1964, as the Civil Rights Movement heated up, the New York Yankees’ AA affiliate moved to town. Fearing fans’ rejection of the Yankees label, ownership painted a rebel flag above the stadium entrance and sewed the same onto the chest of player uniforms. After the so-called Confederate Yankees left in 1966, the Houston Astros’ AA team began play at Golden Park in 1970. The team was called the Astros until 1988 when new ownership changed the name to Mudcats as a marketing strategy. It worked. National media picked up the story about the new Deep South team using slang for a bullheaded, brown-bodied type of catfish. Mudcats merchandise was in high
demand thanks to its exclusivity (sold only at Golden Park) and to its logo featuring the patently ugly bottom-feeder slipping through a C in a red-and-black color scheme.
“Everybody is going to know where Columbus, Georgia is now,” Mudcats General Manager Joe Kremer said of the publicity blitz in the same April 1989 Ledger-Enquirer article where owner Steve Bryant explained, “We wanted a name that would give us a fresh beginning in
Columbus, one that was funny, but catchy.” After two seasons in Golden Park with the Mudcats, Bryant took the team (and the logo) to his native North Carolina. The RedStixx arrived in 1991, their name a reference to Red Sticks, a faction of Creek Indians known for red-painted war clubs who fiercely fought Euro-American expansion into their lands in the early 19th century. Popular owner Charlie Morrow, a Chicago transplant, seemed to have the team on the road to sustained success
Golden Park was home to the St. Louis Cardinals affiliate, the Columbus Red Birds, from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Mudcats General Manager Joe Kremer with popular Mudcats merchandise in April 1989.
before he died of cancer in 1998. When new owner Rita Cartagna of Cleveland moved the team to Ohio in 2002, she said the offer to play in a new $18 million stadium was too good to pass on, saying at the time, “What they’re finding in minorleague sports, it’s the perfect combination, a brand-new facility in a new market.”
The Columbus Catfish were next up to bat, but—after winning the Sally League in 2008 at home in Golden Park before a paltry crowd of just a few hundred—were promised a new stadium and became the Bowling Green Hot Rods in 2009.
With Golden Park then vacant for years, it seemed its days were numbered in 2016 when Columbus City Council moved to sell the property to developers. Virginia Causey is credited with saving the historic ballpark when she sent council members a document discovered in her research showing a long-forgotten city statute that required this public land be used solely for recreational purposes. So as it turns out, it was Columbus pro baseball’s historian who preserved it for the future, as the sacred site in South Commons comes back to life as Synovus Park, home of the
Atlanta Braves-affiliated AA team, the Columbus Clingstones, in spring 2025.
“It was a great feeling,” Causey recalls by phone from Montana, where she’s “loving life” in retirement, about the “serendipitous discovery” of the document she sent to council members. “The city attorney [Clifton Fay] looked at it and said, ‘She’s right. We didn’t go back far enough.”
“Minor league baseball was so woven into the life of the community that people hung on every game and knew everything about the players and team,” Causey explains. “But teams left because of poor attendance. I think it’s great that baseball is back in Columbus. I just hope people will go and watch the games and support it.”
During Jim Crow & Beyond
“Columbus is too big a city to not have professional baseball,” says Rev. Rudolph C. “Rudy” Allen, Sr., the revered longtime pastor of Revelation Missionary Baptist Church in East Columbus on a road named in his honor: RC Allen Drive. “Cities smaller than us have them. Savannah, Macon, Augusta, they all have one. We should, too.”
"MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL WAS SO WOVEN INTO THE LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY THAT PEOPLE HUNG ON EVERY GAME AND KNEW EVERYTHING ABOUT THE PLAYERS AND TEAM."
Allen certainly has a unique perspective on the subject. Now 88, he is hailed as the one who integrated Little League baseball (after a contentious attempt to register his son Rudy, Jr., who went on to be a football star at Kendrick High School and Georgia Tech). He grew up a stone’s throw from Golden Park at Second Street and Fifth Avenue in an area “that was rough back when BTW [Booker T. Washington housing project] was there but it’s nice now.”
Allen recalls how he and other neighborhood kids would wait outside for foul balls to fly over the fence at Golden Park and chase them down in exchange for free admission into the game. “We children would be out behind the old fence at the back of the ballpark doing this and police would come and chase us off,” he says, adding such treatment “was part of the Jim Crow nastiness of the time.” There were also occasional “knot-hole games” where kids small enough to watch through holes in the fence were let in for free. Growing up when segregation was the law of the land, Allen’s first memories of going to Golden Park were using the “Colored” entrance to stand along the Fourth Avenue side of the stadium. When the stadium was renovated in 1951, a separate section of bleachers away from the grandstand were placed on the left-field.
“There wasn’t a cover on those bleachers,” Allen says, noting that made the elements, especially the brutal Georgia summer sun, tough to take. Still, he recalls many great memories there: a stop by, entertaining Negro League favorites the Indianapolis Clowns; an All-Star game hosted by Jackie Robinson; and seeing the House of David, a Negro League team formed out of an Israelite religious colony in Michigan with African-American players know for their faith-prescribed long hair and beards.
“The biggest crowd I ever saw there was when 19-year-old Hank Aaron came to town from Jacksonville,” Allen says of the late, great Hall of Famer, who came to Columbus in the 1953 season when he broke the Deep South-based Sally League’s color barrier. “The Braves bought him up for AA ball. He hit two home runs and we all came out to root for him.”
Allen reserves as his best experience in Golden Park the three-game series his son Marlon, a Shaw High School star who was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds out of CSU, came to Columbus to play as a member of
the Chattanooga Lookouts against the Mudcats. This time, of course, he sat in the grandstand. “We must’ve had 25, 30 folks in the stands to cheer on my son,” Allen remembers.
Sign Painting Memories
Well-known Columbus artist and counter-culture icon Ralph Frank had first-hand knowledge of Golden Park, having painted all over the ballpark for decades.
The definition of a colorful character, Frank has absurd comical stories that span his time working for the Astros, Mudcats and then RedStixx. He was preceded by another local legend, daredevilish wildman Bunt Hood, who was the sign painter at Golden Park. That is, until one night when, so upset about the name Yankees attached to the home team and likely not sober, he drove his car onto the field and shouted out rebel yells as he cut donuts and tore up the turf. Hood is also remembered, Frank says with a laugh, for once flying his plane underneath the Dillingham Bridge.
“Morris Signs had the contract when I came into the picture,” he says of his work at Golden Park, pointing out the contrast of coming in every Friday to an office full of men in coats and ties while he dressed as the paint-splattered hippie he was (and is!). The job was primarily painting ads on the brick outfield wall. “There were 80 sign faces on the wall and each had been painted over so many times,” says Frank, a South Columbus native who played Little League for the Sunshine Biscuit-sponsored team on Torch Hill Road. “They measured 8 by 16 feet and sold for $2,000 for the season. It was the usual stuff. Fast-food joints. Banks. Some were more artsy than others. One of the coolest was a Honey Brown Beer sign that was very detailed. Another was for Cook’s Hot Dogs, who had a booth down there, with a guy’s mouth wide open and a giant hot dog in it. Did some nice ones for the Georgia Lottery and Harvey Lumber as well.”
Frank cites as possibly his favorite sign came as Golden Park prepared to close for renovations in 1995 in preparation for perhaps its greatest moment, when it hosted the softball competition during the 1996 Olympics. The sign (sponsored by Lite FM) took the form of a light switch, with a moving part
Columbus Astros mascot Sgt. Duck has fun with Army Private Wade Fowbie during a game in the 1980s.
flipping between off and on, created “as a symbolic thing.” Sheriff deputies held it up on the field after the last game before closing for the Olympics. When they flipped the switch to off, the crowd erupted.
Sprucing the stadium up for the ‘96 Games, the brick outfield wall was sandblasted clean of those many layers of painted signs. After the Olympics, Frank says vinyl printed signs began to replace his hand-painted style, though he continued to paint section and row numbers as well as the top of dugouts. He managed one more good laugh from his glory days painting at Golden Park, however, when local police and federal agents prepared for heightened security at the coming Olympics. “They were all geared up, practicing for a situation,” Frank says. “They were crouched down in the walkways, real serious, big guns pointed in every direction, and I walk up to ‘em real casual and asked, ‘Ain’t it a bit early for Halloween, fellas?’”
Hosting Olympic Softball
Golden Park was a late addition to the Atlanta Olympics’ roster of host sites.
Its role hosting softball was the result of Columbusites’ yes vote to a SPLOST in 1994, the first year Georgia allowed city and county governments to enact Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax through public referendum (popular vote). Presumed softball host Cobb County lost
its bid after voters there rejected its SPLOST that would have raised funds necessary for Olympics-quality infrastructure. This forward-thinking initiative paved the way for the boom in sports tourism since then for the city, which last year raked in the second-highest amount of revenue
The Olympic Softball hosting opportunity paved the way for a grand transformation of Golden Park and South Commons.
from this economic-development sector ever, only below the Olympics’ massive spending totals in 1996.
Data just released by the Columbus Sports Council for sports tourism in fiscal year 2024 is indeed impressive: $26 million in visitor spending among 120,000
attendees booking 62,000 hotel rooms for 83 events in town.
“The 1994 SPLOST not only helped pay for Golden Park renovations but gave us the Civic Center and the eightfield South Commons Softball Complex,” says Columbus Sports Council Executive
Director Merri Sherman noting the softball venue pulled in $12.7 million last year, five times as much as the next mostlucrative venue, the Woodruff Farm Soccer Complex ($2.6 million). “That [vote yes] spurred major economic development in our city before many cities even understood the concept of sports tourism. The Olympics shows we’re well versed in hosting events at the highest level. We have a resume a mile long now with events such as the 2019 International Cup in softball, broadcast around the world live on ESPN, when Team USA coach Ken Erickson called South Commons ‘a cathedral of softball.’”
Watching the renovations underway at the former Golden Park close-up from her office on the site, Sherman predicts the latest change in the long history of professional baseball in Columbus points to an even brighter future. “What sets us apart is the collaborative spirit here,” she says. “We have so many wonderful partnerships with Visit Columbus, CSU and others, and it seems we all have clients calling us eager to book dates at Synovus Park for 2025 and beyond.” C
Golden Park before recent renovation
CTHE
hristmas is once again upon us. If you have a cinephile on your shopping list, then you’ve come to the right place. Here are some recommendations (big and small) for gifts for the movie lover in your life:
CC40 from the Criterion Collection: The gold standard for home video curating turns 40 this year. To commemorate the occasion, they are releasing a beautiful, deluxe box set of forty Criterion releases under the name CC40. For decades Criterion has invited “filmmakers, actors, writers and other movie-loving luminaries” to pick their favorite releases throughout the label’s history. This box set contains the Top 40 picks from these experts presented with pristine sound and picture. Any set containing forty films is going to
come with a hefty price tag, but this box will be 50 percent off at Barnes & Noble for the month of November during its semi-annual Criterion sale.
The Books of Glenn Kenny: If your gift recipient is a fan of crime films, then you have two stellar options from New York Times film critic Glenn Kenny. In 2020, he released Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, the definitive behind-the-scenes account of the making of Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic. Given his stature in the world of film criticism, Kenny was given unprecedented access to Scorsese himself as well as famed film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and almost everyone else involved in the making of this crime masterpiece. In 2024, Kenny released The World is Yours: The Story of Scarface, an equally comprehensive look at the 1983 Brian DePalma film starring Al Pacino as a coke-snorting, gun-toting drug trafficker.
A Subscription to MUBI: This streaming service was based on a simple idea: provide 30 hand-picked, hard-to-find movies that remain on the service for thirty days. Each day a movie drops off and is replaced by a new film that will remain for its own 30-day run. A new movie every day. From those humble beginnings, MUBI has turned into a streaming juggernaut for foreign films, documentaries and independent films. Over the last few years, I find myself watching MUBI more than Netflix. You can subscribe to MUBI for $109.99 per year or $39.99 per quarter.
The Magnetar UDP800: If your cinephile is a lover of home video gear (projectors, surround sound setups, etc.), then you can’t go wrong with this top notch 4K UHD Blu-ray player. Most people think that a disc player is a disc player. The Magnetar UDP800 proves them wrong. I bought one earlier this year and was absolutely gob smacked by the quality of the picture and sound produced by this player. The five-star review it received from Sound & Vision magazine was spot on. The Magnetar UDP800 makes me want to watch my entire film collection over again because I’ve never seen it look this good.
Bluetooth Headphones: Is your action movie lover driving you crazy with explosions that shake the house? Give them a gift that’s a gift for you, too: a set of Bluetooth headphones. They will keep all that loud action movie mayhem contained. My personal favorites are the Apple Airpods Max. They do an astonishing job of reproducing spatial sound. The sound mix comes from all directions. On occasion, I’ve had to take them off to make certain that my surround sound setup wasn’t on, inadvertently disturbing the household. If you have a movie-loving night owl in your home, this is the perfect gift … for you both. C
Scott Phillips is a Columbus resident and serves as the President of the Southeastern Film Critics Association. His reviews and other work can be found at Forbes.com.
Valley Scenes
Columbus and the Valley will publish as many photos as quality and space permit. Black and white or color photos may be used. Please identify all subjects with a brief description of the event and the date. Mail them to: P.O. Box 229, Columbus, GA 31902. Email them to: ContactUs@ColumbusAndTheValley.com, Columbus and the Valley assumes no responsibility for care and return of photographs submitted.
Historic Springer Opera House Sign Gets Restored
Synovus Celebrates Grand Opening of New Midland Commons Branch
Synovus opened its Midland Commons branch on Sept. 5 with a ribbon-cutting to celebrate the grand opening. The branch is located at 6838 Midland Commons Blvd in Columbus and includes three drive-thru lanes, and a drive-up ATM. The new branch features dynamic and innovative digital capabilities to deliver a modernized client experience.
Synovus team members and personal bankers gather outside at the ribbon cutting. Retail Market Manager Terri Council leads the Midland Commons branch team.
(L-R) Brian Sillitto, VP, Partnership and Engagement, Columbus Chamber of Commerce; Susan Pitts, COO of Synovus Consumer Banking; Liz Wolverton, Head of Synovus Consumer Banking and Brand Experience; Terri Council, Midland Commons Branch Retail Market Manager and Heath Schondelmayer, Synovus Division CEO and Columbus Market President do the honors.
photos by Mike Culpepper
The Springer Opera House sign was restored on the side of the building known as the “Fly House.” The sign was painted in the original green color by Christoph Johnson. To put into perspective the size of the sign the “S” in Springer is almost 10 feet tall.
Highland Galerie Wild & Precious Exhibition
St. Francis Emory Healthcare Dedicates Learning Centers
Friends and family gathered at the Butler Pavilion Lobby at St. Francis-Emory Healthcare to honor of Representative Richard H. Smith and Jerry “Pops” Barnes and the dedication of the newly constructed spaces for the Graduate Medical Education Learning Centers on the main campus and at The Bradley Center.
photo by Matt Johnson
Kellie Newsome and Libbie Rothschild collaborated on an exhibition bringing together the vibrant energy of Kellie’s whimsical floral paintings with the intricate world of Libbie’s ceramic artistry.
photos by Two Seven Photography
Reverend Jimmy Elder, St Francis-Emory Healthcare Board of Trustees Vice Chair and Pastor, First Baptist Church
Anand Gupta, M.D. gave an overview of the Graduate Medical Education program.
(L-R) The Honorable Jon Burns, Speaker, Georgia House of Representatives, Butch Parrish, Rules Committee Chairman, Ashley Smith Patterson, Shannon Smith Moore and Tami Smith
Gala in the Garden
photos by Morgan Duke Photography
The annual Columbus Botanical Garden Gala was a great success despite the wet weather. The WILD themed event began with celebrity floral designer, Canaan Marshall, giving a live flower arrangement demonstration on stage during the lunchtime event. Keeping with the wild theme the evening gala was held amongst the lush animal topiaries with live music from Tanner Fussell and food from Epic Restaurant.
2024 Historic Columbus Foundation Preservation Awards
by Margie Richardson
HCF’s celebrated the recipients of the 58th Annual Preservation Awards held at the W.C. Bradley Company Museum on October 14th.
Columbus Historic District
Jacqueline Boling - 514 First Avenue
Larry Bussey and Shaun Bussey - 600, 604 & 608 Second Avenue
CAZOHGA, Debbie Young, Renee Roth - 745 First Avenue
MG Bibb, LLC - 802 Second Avenue
The Mill District
Mollie Jenkins - 3506 Second Avenue
Brad Turner and Justin Krieg - 3500 Second Avenue
Uptown Columbus
Buddy Nelms - First National Bank Clock
Nonic Bar & Kitchen - 207 13th Street
The Cotton Companies - 207 13th Street
Wynn’s Hill - Overlook Historic District
The Columbus Museum - Reimagining The Columbus Museum
Wynnton Village Historic District
Jennifer Flournoy - 2101 and 2213 Wynnton Road
Around Town
Mr. and Mrs. Scott Jones - 2300 Preston Drive
Schuster Enterprises, LLC - Clifton Woods Neighborhood Revitalization
2024 Sarah Turner Butler Heritage Award
Kenneth M. Henson, Jr.
photo
Meredith Waddell, Olivia Blanchard and Anna Garcia
Angela Springer, Jessica Tillery, Caroline Kennon and Jana Scarbrough
Callie Dixon, Canaan Marshall and Nora Garrard
Live music was performed by local singer Tanner Fussell and band.
Sarah Butler Heritage Award winner Ken Henson with his wife, Chris.
Kenny Gray Exhibits
Photos at Do Good Fund Gallery
photos by Charlie Windham
The Do Good Fund hosted a public reception for local photographer Kenny Gray on September 12th at their gallery on 12th Street in Columbus. His show titled My Southside: 1977-1992 displayed photos from his time living in and documenting the people of South Columbus during those years. The photos were on display from August 10 to September 28.
Columbus FEMA Gets New Vehicle
Columbus Homeland Security and Emergency Management received delivery of the new unified mobile command vehicle. The state-of-the-art, custom-built vehicle replaces the outdated command model purchased in 2002.
Kenny Gray gave remarks and answered questions after being introduced by colleague and CSU Art Professor, Hannah Israel.
Quincy Preer, Deputy Director of Emergency Management shows off the inside of the vehicle.
Museum President, Brigadier General (RET) Pete Jones detailed the longtime support of Richard to the museum and how his life’s work echoed the mission of honoring soldiers past, present and future.
National Infantry Museum Foundation Honors Smith
photos courtesy of NIMF
A beautiful Georgia day at the National Infantry Museum celebrated the life and work of Georgia State Representative Richard Smith. The paver dedicated in his memory now resides with fellow heroes along the Heritage Walk on the museum campus.
Midtown Mingle returned Lakebottom Park on October 15th as a fundraiser for Midtown, Inc. Country’s Barbecue catered the event.
Midtown Mingle photos by Joe Paull
Georgia State Senator Randy Robertson delivered a personal tribute to the life of his mentor and friend, Richard Smith.
Scott Ressmeyer and Henry DeGracia Chandler and David Rohwedder with children Poppy and Edward
Five Under 40 & Rising Stars Reception
photos by Tim Bragg & Charlie Windham
Friends and family gathered on October 3rd to celebrate Columbus and the Valley Magazine’s 2024 Five Under 40 and Rising Stars. The event was held for the second consecutive year at The Rankin Livery in Uptown Columbus through the support of Columbus State University. The Columbus Chamber of Commerce partnered in the presentation and CEO Jerald Mitchell addressed the attendees. The recipients were announced by Tiffany McBride, 2023 5U40 and Brantley Pittman, 2023 Rising Star. Certificates were awarded by Jodi Saunders, Publisher and Editor of Columbus and the Valley. This year’s Five Under 40 recipients were Megan Kelley, Stefan Lawrence, Ryne Stokes, Hayley Tillery, and Ashley Williams, and the Rising Stars were Ashley Becker, Courtney James, Jud Richardson, Jherika Tyler and Allen Whitley.
All the Five Under 40 and Rising Stars recipients: (L-R) Allen Whitley, Ashley WIlliams, Ashley Becker, Jherika Tyler, Ryne Stokes, Hayley Tillery, Megan Kelley, Stefan Lawrence, Courtney James and Jud Richardson
Robert Richards and Eryn Tyler
Ashley and Jason Williams
Brantley Pittman and Tiffany McBride
Jodi Saunders, Jerald Mitchell and Jill Tigner
Courtney James with family and friends
Allen Whitley, Stefan Lawrence and Ryne Stokes
Stefan Lawrence with his parents, Marilyn and Kenneth Lawrence and sister Dr. Chelsea Lawrence
Dining Guide
Big Mama Vietnam Kitchen
Big Mama’s is proud to serve you fresh, homemade food made with local ingredients that you are sure to love. Our specialty involves healthy cuisine with plenty of fresh vegetables and a variety of flavorful spices.
Tu-F 11AM-3PM, 5PM-9PM, Sa-Su 11AM-9PM
5300 Sidney Simons Blvd., Unit 14 BigMamaVietnamKitchen.com
Country’s Barbecue
Real Barbecue Slow Cooked Over Hickory and Oak. Casual dress, takeout, catering, kids’ menu.
Su-Sa 11AM-10PM Mercury Dr., 706.563.7604
Broadway/14th St., 706.596.8910 Veterans Pkwy., 706.660.1415
Fountain City Coffee at Banks Food Hall
FCC's second location located in Bank's Food Hall. Serving up made from scratch baked goods and delicious sandwiches daily in the heart of Columbus.
M-Th 8AM-6PM, F-Su 8AM-8PM 1002 Bay Ave. • 762.524.7774
Mellow Mushroom
The combination of a great menu, hand-tossed dough, fresh ingredients and friendly service makes the Mellow Mushroom a must when you have a taste for pizza. Bring your group for a family-friendly dinner or join your friends in our comfortable neighborhood bar.
M-Th 11AM-9PM, F-Sa 11AM-10PM, Su 11AM-9PM. 6100 Veterans Pkwy. • 706.322.4602
Ruth Ann’s Restaurant
A Columbus tradition for families, friends and great food. Ruth Ann’s offers authentic Southern style lunches, and breakfast is served all day.
W-Su 6:30AM-2PM • 940 Veterans Pkwy. • 706.221.2154. Place your next takeout order at ruthannsrestaurant.com.
Speakeasy
A local favorite serving great, homemade food and drinks in a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere.
Su-Th 11AM-8 PM, F-Sa 11AM-9 PM 3123 Mercury Drive • 706.561.0411
Uptown Vietnam Cuisine
Uptown Vietnam Cuisine offers authentic, traditional Vietnamese dishes that are both delicious and healthy, featuring fresh ingredients and a variety of flavorful spices. Dine-in, carry-out and party trays are available, as well as a 10 percent military discount.
M-F 10:30AM-3PM & 5-9PM, Sa 11AM-9PM • Closed Sunday. 1250 Broadway • 706.576.9922
Wasabi Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar
Traditional Japanese cuisine with hibachi grill tops and fresh sushi. Come and try our flavorful and fresh ingredients. Su-Th 11AM-9PM, F-Sa 11AM-10PM 1808 Manchester Expy 706.642.0888
Dine in or order online at wasabijapanesecolumbus.kwickmenu.com
To have your restaurant featured here, contact Becky Kenimer at 706.289.8338 or Margie Richardson at 706.575.7825.
