Gaye & Frank George

Timing Is Everything

After Several Near Misses Everything Clicked

ven though Gaye and Frank George were born and raised a few miles apart in Lowndes County, they didn’t know each other until college. He went to Valdosta High and she went to Lowndes. In those days, there wasn’t too much cross-town mingling. Or at least, according to Frank, certainly not as much as the guys would’ve liked. With a four-year age difference, they were definitely not in each other’s high school orbit.

Gaye remembers Frank from her days of rushing Phi Mu freshman year at Valdosta State College. He was the sorority’s Sweetheart as a senior. She jokes that she remembers him, but he doesn’t remember her. This was when he was heading off and she was heading in. Frank left for MCG, where he spent the next two years learning occupational therapy. Gaye would be at Valdosta State College for two years, then at UGA for three, at the university's College of Pharmacy. They’d spend their education years just missing each other.

After Gaye had been in Athens for a year and a half, she came home for Christmas. It was 1988. She ran into Frank, who was working at SGMC at the time. That is when all their near misses finally clicked. They dated that month of Gaye’s Christmas break and she figured as she returned to Athens that he’d go back to his life, but no, they continued to date. He’d come visit her and take her to Atlanta to see his brother and her cousin.

She took him to see his first real play at the Fox. It was Les Miserables and he fell in love with the theater. He took her to see her first MLB game. Dale Murphy was playing for the Braves. This was back when fans could drive up and get tickets five rows behind home plate. Gaye discovered she loved baseball.

“Part of falling in love is you want to do the things they love,” Gaye says.

Gaye and Frank continued to date all through the rest of her time at UGA and got engaged in the spring of 1990. When it came to proposing, Gaye said he planned a romantic evening.

Frank borrowed the sundeck of his cousin Joe and Mary George’s lake house. He lined the staircase with luminaires and had a friend serve them dinner. The meal was from the very popular restaurant at the time, Fiddler’s Green.

Their wedding was a traditional affair held at Westminster Presbyterian Church, which was formerly on Country Club. They filled the church, on what Gaye described as a cool, sunny spring afternoon, with Frank’s large Lebanese family, their church family, Gaye’s family, and friends from near and far. Gaye remembers fondly that Sue and Stan Cox catered their reception at the Crescent, while they were still at the Sheraton, shortly before they opened Covington’s.

After they married, the couple settled into work. Gaye was a pharmacist and Frank continued with the hospital. He did general occupational therapy. This means that he worked with any kind of patient the hospital had. That could be pediatrics, burns, orthopedics, neurology, hands — anything and everything. Frank explains that back then South Georgia didn’t really know much about OT. Occupational therapy has been around since the 1900s but is not widely understood. It differs from physical therapy because it isn’t just the physical aspects of the body, but the cognitive and social needs as well. Frank explains it like this: “When you woke up this morning, everything you did, except the walking, everything you did — your showering, brushing your teeth, bathroom, dressing, cooking breakfast, leaving for work — all of those things are what occupational therapists get their patients back to doing. We get our patients back to work. Whatever that looks like to them.”

After 2½ years with SGMC, Frank left to do contract work regionally. He did that for seven years before opening his own specialty clinic. In November of 1998, he opened Valdosta Pediatric Therapy Services. Everyone thought he was crazy to specialize in children, but he says peds was always his first love. He loves helping children. The pediatricians in town, and in a 45 mile radius, were so happy to have somewhere to send their kids who needed help, and that caused Frank’s practice to take off. This year his clinic will have been in business for 25 years.

“If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

On the home front, Gaye and Frank raised three children in Valdosta. Their eldest son, Judson, has followed in his father’s footsteps and become an occupational therapist as well. He spent his formative years playing baseball, another George family tradition. Their middle son, Cannon, lives in Macon and is in management. He spent his years in Valdosta swimming competitively. Their youngest child, their daughter, Evans, is following in her mother’s footsteps and is in Pharmacy school at UGA. She, like her mother, enjoyed dance for many years here in Valdosta. She’s also left her mother the joy of her horses. Gaye spends many hours mucking stalls and feeding and cleaning the horses. Gaye loves to say, “We don’t regret a minute, a mile, or a dollar spent on our children. It was all worth it.”

As these two Valdosta natives contemplate the future, they think they’d like to travel this beautiful country. Gaye would like to see parts of Europe too, but they are having a good time enjoying each other, and the quiet of their South Georgia sunsets. | VM