helped define Atlanta

BUSINESS Charlie Loudermilk, Andrew Young friendship helped define Atlanta

From left, Lisa Loudermilk Degolian sitting next to her father, Charlie Loudermilk, and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young. Two portraits painted by Ross Rossin honor the Loudermilk-Young Debate Series and the unusual friendship between two Atlanta leaders. (Photos by Maria Saporta)

Seeking nominations of students for our 14th Annual 20 Under 20 issue.

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BY MARIA SAPORTA

Atlanta lost one of its most colorful leaders with the passing of Charlie Loudermilk, 95, on Aug. 3.

Loudermilk, founder of Aaron’s, became a fixture in Atlanta for decades – as a philanthropist, as a booster of Buckhead, as chair of the MARTA board, as an advocate for the Republican Party and as a prankster with a playful personality.

For me though, his enduring legacy will be his unique friendship with Andrew Young – one that lasted more than 50 years.

The first time I interviewed Loudermilk was in 1981 when Young was running to become Atlanta’s mayor, succeeding the city’s first Black mayor – Maynard Jackson. There were four major candidates – two whites and two Blacks. So, I decided it would be interesting to interview the top person of the opposite race for each of the mayoral campaigns.

That’s how I got to know Charlie Loudermilk. I asked him why he was supporting Young, and he told me he thought Young would be the best mayor for Atlanta and the most likely winner. Then I asked why he wasn’t supporting the leading white candidate – Sidney Marcus – or the other two candidates.

I remember he carefully paused before saying with a twinkle in his eye. “You’re dangerous,” he said.

Loudermilk was the only well-known white Atlanta business leader to support Young’s candidacy – making him a bit of a pariah among the established business community.

“His friends were mad at him for supporting Andy, but he knew they could work together,” recalled Lisa Loudermilk Degolian, his daughter. “He saw Andy as a great person no matter what his politics were.”

In an interview Saturday, Young explained that he didn’t want to run — or win — without any white support.

“I knew I was going to need somebody to put the community back together,” Young said. “You can’t run a city divided.”

The day after Young won the election, Loudermilk and Atlanta Life executive Jesse Hill approached the godfather of Atlanta’s business community – CocaCola’s Roberto Goizueta – to convene a meeting with the mayor-elect.

“We had 85 people on that Friday for lunch at the Top of the Mart,” Young said.

It was at that meeting that Young told business leaders it was possible for him to win without their support. But he could not govern the city without their help. So, he gave them all his home number, urging them to reach out to him.

Young’s relationship with the business community grew stronger during his eight years as mayor as he helped build Atlanta’s profile through influential trade missions around the world and the international expansion of Delta Air Lines.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Atlanta’s established leaders were less willing to integrate the business of the city.

“They focused on believing the economic pie would stay the same,” Young said. “But we made the pie bigger.”

At the center of Young’s administration was Charlie Loudermilk, who with the mayor’s backing, became chair of the MARTA board.

“We were trying to get MARTA to go into the suburbs,” said Young, lamenting that they didn’t succeed. “It wasn’t that we didn’t try.”

It wasn’t just Young and Loudermilk. A close friendship also developed between them and Atlanta architect John Portman, minority builder Herman Russell and Atlanta Life’s Hill. They were seen as the four or five musketeers who loved to joke around.

“Of that group, I was the youngest,” said Young, the only one of the five still living. “When you stop and think about it, they all were born very poor but they all made it on their own. The thing I remembered was the argument of who was the poorest, which boiled down to who was the last to get indoor plumbing. It turned out to be John Portman.”

I remember going on several trade missions with Young, Loudermilk, Russell and Portman – Scandinavia in 1984, France in 1985 and the Soviet Union in 1989, when I was six months pregnant. Loudermilk loved to embellish the story saying that I was nine months pregnant, and everyone was worried I was going to go into labor and have a Russian baby.

Over the years, I followed Loudermilk and Young and the other musketeers