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Summer 2012
Clarence Summerford l Anytime Fitness l Kathy Wright Retires
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What is TSPLOST? Some refer to the Transportation Investment Act as a TSPLOST or a Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. It is actually a regional tax that has specific transportation projects rather than categories like a county SPLOST list. A more accurate description is that it is a Regional Transportation Referendum.
Is this a statewide TSPLOST? No. The state is divided into 12 regions. Each region will vote on July 31, 2012 for it’’s regional transportation referendum.
Can this money be spent outside of our Region? No. By law all sales taxes collected in the Southwest Region must be spent within our region. These funds cannot be used to fund projects in any other region.
What will TSPLOST pay for? In the Southwest Region the revenue raised will fund local and regional transportation projects. 75% of the funds will be used for a specific project list approved by each region and 25% will be used for local discretionary transportation projects. A full list for each region is available at www.connectgeorgia2012.com.
Who selected the transportation projects? Project selection was led by a Regional Roundtable made up of local elected officials. These Roundtables held public hearings on the regional projects and submitted a final list to the state Department of Transportation for final approval. Many of the projects have been on the drawing board for years but lacked the funding to go forward. The final project lists were approved in October 2011.
Can the money collected be used for items not related to transportation, such as education? No. Revenues raised from this penny tax can only be spent on the specific project list approved by each region’’s Regional Roundtable in October 2011 (75% of the revenue) and on local transportation projects selected by local counties and municipalities (25% of the revenue).
How long will TSPLOST last? The penny tax will be in place for 10 years or until the funding level is reached, whichever comes first. By law, the tax cannot be extended unless approved by voters.
Vote on July 31, 2012 For more information: www.connectgeorgia2012.com
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From the Publisher
From the Publisher
Moultrie Magazine
The City of Southern Living
Locally Owned and Operated
Published Quarterly P.O. Box 2962 Moultrie Georgia 31776 229-798-2245 www.moultriemagazineonline.com Volume 6 Issue 3 Summer 2012
Hello Friends! Heat, humidity, gnats and mosquitoes can only mean one thing – it must be summertime in South Georgia. It ’s also time for the summer issue of Moultrie Magazine. We have a great issue for you to enjoy this summer. I have had the privilege of meeting a lot of great people over the years while publishing this magazine. I met another amazing person recently – Clarence Summerford. Chances are you can drive up most any street in Moultrie and pass at least one house that he and his father Paul either built or made some type of addition or renovation to. I can honestly say that Mr. Summerford is one of the nicest people you will ever meet. He loves to talk about his days as one of Moultrie's most sought after contractors, and his stories are interesting to say the least. Although he retired long ago, his work will live on for many, many years, and I am honored to have gotten to spend some time with such a warm and inviting human being. Another person who has made a lasting impact on our community is Kathy Wright. Serving as a choral director in Moultrie for 30 years, she has made the difficult decision to retire. Just before her last day at Colquitt County High School, she met with our own Allen Edwards to chat about the past and what lies ahead. If you know of her, but don ’t know her personally, then I can assure you that you ’ll want to read his article and find out for yourself just who she really is. In addition to those features, you will also find an in-depth look at Anytime Fitness, one of Moultrie ’s 24-hour gyms and a look back on Mega Impact, an event held this past spring with college students from Tennessee spending their spring break, not at the beach, but right here helping our local community. In closing, recently my best friend of 20 years came down for visit. Maintaining a friendship that long is no small feat these days, and I feel blessed that I have a friend who ’s been like a brother to me. So, I ’ll take this opportunity to pass on to you what I ’ve learned: take some time to value your friendships and work hard to preserve them. We hope you enjoy each and every page of our new issue. We ’ve certainly worked hard on it for you. It ’s hot outside so turn up the air conditioning and dive in to Moultrie Magazine!
Heath Dorminey Publisher
4 Summer 2012
Greetings!
We take pride in each and every issue of Moultrie Magazine, and we hope you are able to see that reflected in its pages. However, this issue's feature article took on special meaning for me. The beautiful grand house on Tallokas began when R.B. Wright Jr. first took on the task of moving the façade of the Paramount Theatre from Atlanta to Moultrie. But every house must have a foundation. Clarence and his father, the late Paul Summerford, served as the contractors who took on this great project literally from the ground up. The front of that landmark theater now stands in our town, and it took a lot of skill to reconstruct it. The Summerfords made a huge impact on our community by building many of the city’s residential homes and commercial buildings. My father, James W. Hill, was a master plumber back then and worked on the majority of the homes built by the Summerfords. My father took a great deal of pride in working on the Wright home in particular. Clarence said, "We wanted the best, and that's why we used Hill’s Plumbing Service on most of our construction." I’m sure my father would be proud to hear that today. I remember being a young boy and riding around on Sunday afternoons watching so many of Moultrie's beautiful homes from their beginning. Bill Cole now resides in Bob Wright’s dream home and takes much pride in it. Collectively, as a staff, we would like to take this opportunity to thank Bill for allowing us to use the beautiful grounds and the exterior of the home as the backdrop for our photo shoot with Clarence for what we think is one of the best issues we’ve ever produced. And to the Summerfords – we salute you for being not only talented contractors but also true Southern gentlemen.
Publishers Heath Dorminey Jim Hill
moultriemagazine@gmail.com
Editor-in-Chief Heath Croft
jheathcroft@gmail.com
Art Director Heath Dorminey Contributing Photographers Heath Dorminey John Oxford Contributing Writers Allen Edwards Heath Croft John Oxford For Advertising Information: 229-798-2245 moultriemagazine@gmail.com www.moultriemagazineonline.com
Disclaimer: Copyright 2012. Any ideas or opinions expressed in the content of Moultrie Magazine are not necessarily the views of the publishers. All claims, materials and photos furnished or used are, to the publisher’s knowledge, true and correct. Hence, liability cannot be assumed by the publisher for errors or omissions.
Contact Us:
P.O. Box 2962 Moultrie Georgia 31776 229-798-2245 moultriemagazine@gmail.com
Visit Us Online:
Jim Hill Publisher
www.moultriemagazineonline.com
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Moultrie Magazine
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Page 32 Making a Mega Impact
What exactly motivates college students to sacrifice their spring breaks at the beach to do mission work? John Oxford reveals the inspiration behind Mega Impact Week when more than 100 students from Knoxville came to Moultrie to do just that.
Page 8
She Made Magic Happen
The curtain fell this year on Kathy Wright’s illustrious career as choral director at Colquitt County High School. In an exclusive interview with Allen Edwards, she discusses what led her to become a teacher and what’s next for her as she focuses on the next chapter of her life.
Page 10
Page 10
Benching the Stereotypes
In this long-awaited piece on one of Moultrie’s fastest-growing gyms, General Manager Shannon Jimenez explains how Anytime Fitness has created a safe and welcoming environment where even the average person feels like part of the family and why anytime is the right time to get in shape.
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A Grand Fellow
At 92 years old, Clarence Summerford may not get around as fast as he once did, but his memory is still as vibrant as handblown glass. He sits down with Editor-in-Chief Heath Croft to talk about working alongside his father, meeting the love of his life, going off to war, and of course, that famous house that people know hardly anything about.
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O
Article and Photography by: John Oxford
ver 100 students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville gave up their Spring break vacations to come to Moultrie in March to show the love of God to residents here. The students from The Cross, Greek Christian Ministries at the University of Tennessee came to Moultrie for Mega Impact Week. This was the third year the students came to Moultrie during the university’s Spring break to do mission work throughout the community. The students did a variety of mission projects, including work at Woodmen of the World Park, Crossroads Mission House, the Boys and Girls Club, Green Oaks Center, Hope House, the Moultrie YMCA and three houses and doing outreach at Forest Apartments, Stringfellow Elementary School and R.D. Smith Youth Center. Jim Bailey, executive director of The Cross, says the ministry allows fraternity and sorority students to hear the Gospel of Christ in a real way and begin a relationship with Him. Coming to Moultrie then gives the students the opportunity to serve others and to respond to the Gospel message. “[The students] have been given so much,” Bailey says, “and now they get to give to someone who does not have as much.” By the end of the week, Bailey says it was a great pleasure to see not just what had been accomplished but seeing the in-
8 Summer 2012
teraction with the community. The time in Moultrie brought positive growth to the students and helped them form a bond with Moultrie and the residents here. “Over the course of the week,” Bailey says, “they became a community within a community. They can now finally take a step back and get a perspective of what they accomplished.” The students learn more about themselves and their relationship with Christ while they’re here. Sam Ellis, who was on his third trip to Moultrie, says he wanted to be more mindful of the growth happening here, whether in relationships with each other or people in the community. “The community is far more important than the work,” Ellis says. “We were created to be social creatures, and we build relationships with people in the group, the residents and the congregations at churches. At the core of every relationship is God.” Elayna Schranz, who was on her second trip to Moultrie, says being in Moultrie has taught her so much. She grew up in Los Angeles, not in the Bible-rich context of the South, but being here has allowed her to find her personal relationship with God. Coming to Moultrie for her is definitely a “mountaintop” experience. “Moultrie is a safe haven for us and a well of good memories had and to be had,” Schranz says. “I feel God is alive in this sleepy little town of the South. It is
fun to be here and a happy place for us.” The residents the students reached out to were definitely moved to see the students serving them. James Hughes, a resident at Forest Apartments, says it meant a lot to him for the students to come in and do things for him he could not do himself. He spent several minutes talking with students while they dropped off a bag of groceries to him and cleaned his apartment. Juanita Rorie, apartment manager at Forest Apartments, says it was absolutely wonderful to see the students come all the way from Tennessee and helping residents with whatever they needed. This was the first time anyone had reached out to the residents since she became apartment manger, and some of the residents really need help. Cheryle Reeves, Mega Impact team leader, says the week was amazing and she felt the impact this year was greater than ever. The Mega Impact team had prayed people’s lives would be affected, and she saw an incredible picture of exactly what had been prayed for during the week. In addition to the work done by the students, Reeves says Moultrie came together as a city to help the students in return for the help they were here to provide. Several churches and community organizations packed lunches for the students and took them out to work sites, and multiple people contacted her asking how they could use their gifts and talents
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in order to help. “The students tasted the reality of community,” Reeves says, “and they felt so loved. I am so grateful our community really gave to these students. Our community recognized they were here to give, and we gave back to them.” Community churches, businesses and civic organizations really helped to make Mega Impact week truly impactful for Moultrie, Reeves says. The Moultrie Junior Woman’s Club and Moultrie Rotary Club helped purchase equipment for Woodmen of the World Park, the City of Moultrie painted picnic tables, installed two water fountains and helped prep a half-court basketball court at the park. Sunset Redi-Mix helped with concrete for the basketball court and also helped to lay it out. Colquitt County High School students built the park picnic tables, the Community Action Council identified residents in need and paid for one to be given a new roof, the Boys and Girls Club supplied materials and labor and the Moultrie YMCA offered use of its facilities. All in all, many individuals gave to help make Mega Impact Week a success. Emily Watson, president of the Moultrie Junior Woman’s Club, says the club donated cleaning supplies to be used and, along with the Rotary Club, purchased a bench for WOW Park. Club members also took part in the outreach at Forest Apartments, mostly cleaning residents’ apartments, and at the R.D. Smith Youth Center, allowing club members to meet people in the community and see the needs here up close and personal. The people club members met were very appreciative of everyone’s help, and Watson says they asked club members to come back and visit them again, bringing their children with them. Being a part of Mega Impact allowed members to see needs here and to see how students and a community working together can make a huge difference. “There are so many who are in need right here in our community,” Watson says, “and projects like Mega Impact give us a great opportunity to see these needs firsthand. The students from Mega Impact serve as a reminder and an inspiration that everyone has something to give and a talent to share. And they give us an opportunity to become involved with those that are in need right here in our community.” Bailey says coming to Moultrie came out of a desire for The Cross to partner with a community to do service projects about four years ago after the group went to the Gulf Coast to help in hurricane-affected areas. A board member was friends with Reeves and her husband Roy, and a crew chief was friends with David Brown, and both suggested Moultrie as a community partner at the same time without knowledge the other would suggest it. The people were looking for an opportunity to get plugged into the community, and Bailey says Heritage Church became a host to bring the students here. The church was able to bring in city leadership, churches and civic organizations to form a collaborative partnership with The Cross. For the students and him, coming to Moultrie is like a second home, and he plans to return for Spring break for as long as Moultrie will have the students. “There is an element of coming to Moultrie that is like coming home,” Bailey says. “It is a wonderful experience of friends who share a vision of local people involved in projects. It is a wonderful, unique partnership, and we will be coming to Moultrie as long as Moultrie wants us back.”
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Article by: Allen Edwards
10 Summer 2012
Photography by: Heath Dorminey
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M
any teachers would agree that what they do is more than a vocation. It is something akin to a spiritual calling – a lofty task because society charges teachers with handing down the history, values and beliefs of a civilization from one generation to the next. More than transmitting facts and honing skills, however, the best teachers inspire ingenuity and instill in their students a passion for learning. If true insight comes from standing on the shoulders of giants, then teachers provide the stepladders that enable kids to climb higher than possible on their own. One particular individual has guided students here in the elusive pursuit of perfection, pushing them to better their work ethic and motivating thousands to achieve more collectively than they might have individually. In short, she made magic happen. And after nearly three decades in Colquitt County schools, Kathy Wright, director of choral music, retired this May, leaving a legacy largely unmatched in the tradition-rich Colquitt County High School choral program. Whether it was the in utero military ca-
choral tradition would be quite different. Folsom, former director at C.W. Ruckel Middle School, left more than just a lasting impression on the teenager; she gave her a destiny. “She was my inspiration for becoming a choir teacher,” Wright says. Wright impressed Folsom early on in middle school. “Her talent always stood out,” says Folsom, describing Wright’s sight-reading abilities and musicianship at the piano. “She was an outstanding student, always striving to do her very best and bringing other students along with her,” says Folsom. She says Wright displayed a dedication that would later become her hallmark. “Whether it was a piece she enjoyed or a piece she did not enjoy, her work ethic was the same,” she says. “So many times I would see her frustrated in the middle of rehearsal if I didn’t have everyone’s complete attention.” “She always expected everyone to work like she worked,” says Folsom. Wright was teaching before she even finished middle school. Folsom says that Wright would put together an ensemble and rehearse. “She had the total respect of her peers,
was,” Wright says, “but I quickly found out.” She planned to attend FSU after graduating from Niceville High in 1979, but financial obstacles blocked a direct path to the university. Instead she made plans to enroll in a local community college. However, the week before classes were to begin, providence stepped in. The Southern Scholarship Foundation awarded her a spot in a rent-free house near campus. Students from varying backgrounds lived together, sharing chores and splitting bills. The houses were prime real estate, Wright says. Perhaps not coincidentally, hers was near the school of music. “I just had to walk across the parking lot, and I was there,” she says. Wright says the foundation’s assistance is the only way she was able to attend the university for all four years. While at Florida State University, Wright met two professors, the late Clayton Krehbiel and the late Colleen Kirk, who would become her friends and mentors. “They were it,” Wright says. From the outset, Kirk took special interest in her. “I had my schedule all fixed,” says
“Music is powerful. When you somehow find a
way to get all of the choir members working
”
together, what can be accomplished is magic. dences or the discipline that military life instills, Wright, born into an Air Force family in Warner Robins, excelled early on in music and was devoted to her first love – piano. Unlike many who come into the world GI-stamped, Wright rarely moved as a child. After a transfer to Valparaiso, Fla., when she was in first grade, the family never left. In fact, her parents still live there today. That she remained in Valparaiso is important. If her family had left, Wright might never have met Anne Folsom. Without Folsom, Colquitt County’s
12 Summer 2012
which sometimes doesn’t occur if the very talented has the wrong attitude and turns off the others.” Folsom, a Florida State University graduate, encouraged Wright to continue her education in Tallahassee. “I told her as far as music education, that was where she needed to go,” Folsom says. “It’s just such a strong program.” Following the advice of her mentor, Wright set an eastern course, though what exactly she was headed towards, she wasn’t immediately sure. “I didn’t even know what a Seminole
Wright. “She found me and said, ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ and completely changed it.” Kirk even asked Wright to accompany her choir on piano, an unusual honor for a freshman. After earning a bachelor’s degree in music education in 1983, Wright began to look for job opportunities. During a career day at the university, she met Billy Mock, former assistant superintendent of Colquitt County Schools, who told her of a recently-created position as choir director at Colquitt County Junior High School.
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Wright says she wanted a junior-high position after having split her days between Melbourne high and junior high schools during her student teaching. Mock invited her to interview with Bucky Carlton, the high school choir director. She says the freedom the system gave its high school director impressed her from the beginning. “I never even interviewed with the principal,” she says. Moultrie also appealed to her because of its open spirituality. “Everywhere I went, Guidepost was displayed,” she says. “At 21, that made an impact on me.” If Moultrie made an early impression on her, she certainly made a lasting one on it, at least as far as its choir students are concerned. Alumnus Doug Hall, a former choir director in the school system and current president of the Colquitt County Men’s Choir, vividly remembers his first encounter with Wright. Hall was a student in the A Cappella choir, the high school’s premier mixed chorus, when she came to interview. “Mr. Carlton asked her to play the accompaniment for a piece A Cappella was working on called Of Crows and Clusters by Norman Dello Joio,” says Hall. According to him, the piece’s difficult piano part had proven too much for the choir’s student accompanist. He says she ripped right through it with no problem. “Later she told me she was faking the whole thing,” Hall says. “We never knew.” “It was the hardest thing I have ever played in my entire life,” says Wright. In 1983 she accepted the position as choral director of the eighth grade mixed chorus and ninth grade chapel choir as well as accompanist for the A Cappella choir. Hall returned to Moultrie to serve as choir director at C.A. Gray Middle School from 1991 to 1994. He remembers Wright’s insistence that students always give a piece of music their best. “[She was] always challenging her choirs to be honest and true to the composer’s intent of the music,” he says. In 1984, Wright’s second year, Dr. Bill Caldwell returned to Moultrie after having first directed the choirs between 1969 and 1980. He came back to replace the retiring Carlton who had also served two separate times as director. Caldwell, now an adjunct instructor of music at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., says Wright’s skills in the classroom were evident from the start. “When I first came back, the program was down in numbers, and that was a huge concern,” says Caldwell. In an effort to garner higher enrollment, Caldwell visited the junior high to observe Wright and offer feedback. “I discovered right quick I didn’t need to help,” he says. “I just needed to let her do her work.” With Wright at the junior high and Caldwell at the high school, students’ participation in the choral program increased almost immediately. “She deserves a lot of credit for that,” he says. “She was a
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stern teacher who knew what she was doing and what she wanted to accomplish.” Caldwell lauds Wright’s musicality, teaching abilities and work ethic, but he says Wright is more than just a good music teacher. “Involved in all of that is a real care and concern for the people she taught,” he says. Caldwell also found in Wright a gifted and much-needed pianist. “She’s as good a rehearsal accompanist as I’ve ever worked with any-
beat and completed the piece. “I don’t know if she had memorized the piece or if she was just making it up like Mozart,” says Caldwell. “When we got to the end of the piece, the lights came back on, and we were all still together.” However, Caldwell isn’t the only Moultrie legend with whom she has worked. The Rev. Hugh Ward, former pastor of First Presbyterian Church, calls her one of his closest friends. “Had I not met Kathy Wright, my life
High School’s choral program. “I sold my house in Moultrie and bought a house there,” says Wright. “I was thinking that was it.” However, she says she never truly felt satisfied in Bainbridge, and the move lasted all of one year. Luckily her job in Moultrie was still available. Caldwell said school administrators were unable to find a suitable replacement for Wright when she left, so he agreed to split his days between both schools until the county could hire someone.
“Had I not met Kathy Wright, my life would have
been decidedly different. She is a person of deep faith and one of extraordinary talent. ”
where,” he says. “A testament to her – when I was asked to direct an all-state or honor choir, I always asked that they hire her as an accompanist.” One of Caldwell’s favorite memories involves Wright at the piano. “We hadn’t been in the auditorium too very long and were doing a Mozart piece, three to four minutes,” he says. Halfway through song the lights went out. Caldwell says he continued conducting in the dark, though none of the students could see him. Still neither Wright nor the students missed a
would have been decidedly different,” he says. “She is a person of deep faith and one of extraordinary talent.” As organist and choir director at First Presbyterian, she served the entirety of Ward’s nearly two and a half decades as pastor. “She has melded her faith and her music together in such a way that she has blessed our church and this community with both,” he says. After a decade here, Wright says, she felt she was ready for a change. In 1993 she accepted direction of Bainbridge
“It was a killer of a year,” says Caldwell. He estimates that he was then teaching 600 students per day. He says that when she decided that she didn’t want to remain in Bainbridge, he immediately began trying to convince her to return to Moultrie and to her job. Wright says Willie Williams, principal of the junior high, called in February 1994 and asked her to return. She says she didn’t hesitate. That fall she returned to Moultrie and the junior high, this time also taking direction of the high school’s newly-formed women’s chorale.
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“I wanted to utilize her skills with our students,” says Caldwell. “It seemed to me pretty logical that she direct the women’s chorale as long as I didn’t have to accompany them.” Her second stint at the junior high would be much shorter, however. When Caldwell resigned in 1997, Wright was the obvious choice to succeed him at CCHS. “We had taught together collectively for 14 years by then, and I knew what she was capable of,” he says. Initially school administrators entertained the idea of hiring a director from outside the system, but Caldwell disagreed. “I knew we had a very good person inhouse who would fit nicely and continue and expand the program,” he says. “For me she was always the right person because she could handle the music part, she knew the program and she could help the students during the transition.” School administrators weren’t the only ones Caldwell had to persuade. He says he had to convince her that she was capable of handling the high-profile position. “We joked later on that when she moved from her office to the office across the hall, everything changed,” he says. A veteran teacher by this point, Wright had spent countless hours as pianist for the A Cappella choir preparing for the mantle of leadership. Still, she says, it was a major adjustment. “The pressure to take over and not only to maintain but grow the program was enormous,” says Wright. “I had some struggles with insecurities in myself in teaching and in figuring out what [the choirs] needed.” Caldwell himself says that the choral program here is a demanding job for a high school choir director. “In Moultrie-Colquitt County what has happened is the high expectation of the conductors is elevated by the students,” says Caldwell. “I used to tell people the difference between the A Cappella Choir and others is when they got on the stage, they didn’t hope to be good,” he says. “They knew they would be good.” Wright soon found her groove, however, and began making the program her own. Leaning on old professors and new mentors,
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she scoured texts and opened the floodgates of musical literature, bringing in pieces from composers, arrangers, styles, periods and languages long-since foreign to the program. According to her peers, Wright has an impressive awareness of music. “The greatest thing about Kathy is her knowledge of repertoire,” Hall says. According to him, that knowledge also plays out in her attention to detail and the traditions of the medium. “Her success has been in the integrity she places on the process of teaching music,” he says. “She doesn’t stray into interpretations of the music that would do a disservice to the composer or the musical style.” Kari Saunders, a 2012 graduating member of A Cappella, women’s chorale, and serenaders, feels Wright is more than just detail-oriented. “Ms. Wright's secret to success is simple,” says Saunders. “She holds herself to an exceptionally high standard that she expects the students of her choirs to
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meet.” Travis Kern agrees. A 1987 graduate of CCHS and assistant director of the choral programs at both the high and junior high schools since 1999, Kern describes Wright as a disciplined and tireless teacher. “Ms. Wright's strengths in the classroom include her certitude and her determination to be the best,” he says. “She has been successful because she is a fantastic musician, and students respect that ability.” Like a true master, Wright never felt her knowledge was complete. She finished her graduate work in 1987 and attended conferences and workshops yearly, she says. “I cannot stress how important it is to go to conventions and pick people’s brains,” says Wright. “Maybe I didn’t agree with everything they said, but I could take a part.” The most dramatic event in her teaching evolution happened in her 25th year at a seminar with Dr. Rod-
ney Eichenberger, professor emeritus at FSU. “He totally changed the way I teach,” says Wright. “I learned that, in conducting, the smallest gesture makes a difference.” Wright brought Eichenberger’s techniques back to Moultrie and allowed choir members to move more freely while singing, a practice she probably would not have allowed two decades earlier. The results were immediate. She says the choirs sang in tune more consistently than they had at any point in her career, and she in turn brought into the classroom those who had influenced her. World-renowned directors from universities and professional choruses visited Moultrie and conducted seminars with Colquitt County students – most notably was Moses Hogan – only a few years before the famed conductor’s death. Under Wright’s direction, the program’s already cavernous tradition of excellence grew deeper. After receiving
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straight superiors several years in a row at region festival, the measuring stick for most fine arts programs, Wright decided to take her choirs one step further resulting in national championships in 1998 and 2009. The choir visited Hawaii twice as well as performing at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City. The program’s international fame also grew under her direction, as choir students visited Scotland, Austria, the Czech Republic and even Paris where the choir performed at Notre Dame. Just last month, the choir toured Spain performing at cathedrals in Barcelona and Valencia before appearing at Almudena Cathedral in Madrid where Wright took her final bow. Despite the success, Wright says the program is more group-oriented than ever before. Gone are the days of set soloists, as Wright often chooses a member for the honor days before the performance and sometimes even asks for volunteers. “I’ve tried to make it less driven by particular individual voices,” she says. Likewise Wright has worked to extend alumni involvement with the program past the traditional performance of Carol of the Bells at the Christmas concert. In recent years Wright has hosted alumni-weekend events and invited alums to sing the national anthem with current students at the homecoming football game. However, after 14 years at the helm, Wright began considering her retirement in December 2011. With 28 years in Colquitt County, a year in Bainbridge and another of accrued sick leave, she had 30 years invested in the state’s retirement program. By March
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her decision was made. She says she shared the news of her retirement with Folsom, her longtime mentor, during a trip home over Easter weekend. Folsom says she was initially surprised, but as a retired educator herself, says she understands her reasons. “I think she feels like she has given about as much as she can,” she says. Wright slowly began letting others know. She says the hardest goodbye was to the women’s chorale, her trade-
mark choir at CCHS. Her sorrowful announcement turned to heartfelt pride in her students when the juniors openly discussed the standard they would now shoulder. “They have come to understand how important their role is next year,” says Wright. She also struggled to tell the camerata choir, the high school’s youngest performers.
“It was hard to tell the sophomores because we had begun to really connect,” she says. “They were beginning to see what was possible [for them as a choir].” Folsom says she also feels the students’ pain. “I’m sorry that Colquitt County High School will not be inspired by Kathy,” she says. “I’m sure someone will come in who has her full support.” That someone is Kern. He says he is excited to take over for Wright in the fall while understanding the demands of the position and seeing the magnitude of the task ahead. “It is difficult to step into this position and maintain or increase the quality of what has gone on before,” says Kern. He says Wright should be remembered for the passion and energy that she poured consistently into the high school choral program. Hall echoes Kern’s words. “Dr. Colleen Kirk, a wise and wonderful mentor to both of us, always said, ‘Leave it better than you found it,’” says Hall. “I think Kathy Wright is leaving a great program even greater.” “The Kathy Wright legacy will be an integral part of the rich tradition that is the Colquitt County High School choral department,” says Saunders. “She will be remembered for the high-quality singing she made happen, her fantastic piano talent and her ability to use choir as a catalyst for growing up.” Wright says she will miss some of the daily grind of directing and teaching but especially the beauty of individual voices coming together as one choir. While she will not walk the halls of CCHS next year, not even as a sub-
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stitute teacher, she will remain involved in choral music. She will continue serving as organist and choir director at First Presbyterian and is planning a return trip to Guatemala to work with a choir performing Handel’s Messiah. Folsom says she believes retirement will avail Wright with the freedom to use her talents on an even larger scale. “Teachers know that time away from the classroom short-changes students,” she says. “With more time away from her own school situation, she can give more time to workshops and judging.” Wright says she will never be far from her first love. “Music is powerful,” she says. “When you somehow find a way to get all of the choir members working together, what can be accomplished is magic.” By retiring, Wright extends her magic beyond momentary greatness on stage and takes a near mythic form in a tradition-laden program. “It is pretty remarkable that something of that quality has existed in that little town for so many years,” says Caldwell of the A Cappella choir’s six decades in existence. “To maintain the choir and the overall quality over all that time reflects the personal investment and talent of the conductors. Colquitt County has always had a holy trinity of high school directors, their very names legendary, beginning with Nat Frazer who for 17 years served as choral director before passing the torch to Carlton in 1964. Frazer, Carlton and Caldwell. Each indelibly shaped the face of Moultrie’s choral community. To that pantheon, one must now add Kathy Wright. “She certainly has a place in that legacy,” says Caldwell. u
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Article by: Heath Croft
20 Summer 2012
Photograph y
by: Heath D orminey
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I
n 1967 a 21-year-old Sylvia Hitchcock, raised on a chicken farm in Miami, won Miss Universe. That same year an Austrian-born 20year-old became Mr. Universe. It isn’t likely that anyone remembers either of them. However, in 1982 the former Mr. Universe would appear on movie screens across America as Conan the Barbarian and usher in an entirely new image of what real men should look like. “Years ago it was all about Arnold Schwarzenegger, trying to get the perfect body, drinking the raw eggs and all that other stuff,” says Anytime Fitness General Manager Shannon Jimenez. “That was a big thing back then, but fitness I don’t believe was as big as it is now.” Jimenez says the industry is booming, and that is due to a renewed interest in being physically fit without becoming the urban dictionary’s definition of the term meathead. Protein shakes and weight-lifting aside, Anytime Fitness facilities, founded in 2002, have risen to worldwide success by focusing on the average person. “I think for us the average person is anybody that comes off the street that’s looking to get in shape but not looking to be a bodybuilder,” says Jimenez. He says that most people are looking to get into shape in the least amount of time. “Everybody’s busy so in our facility we want this to be a place where we offer everything that you could possibly need for the most part to get into shape, to give you the ability to come and get a quick workout, and not have it where you feel like you’re going to be intimidated by guys in there throwing around weights,” he says. “A lot of people don’t like that.” Jimenez says the primary focus at Anytime Fitness is, without a doubt, the relationship between the staff and the clients. “Most of all – 100 percent – our main priority is our clients, the well-being of our clients, the happiness [of the
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clients],” he says. And clients, according to Jimenez, come in all shapes and sizes, which is exactly what Anytime Fitness intends to welcome. “We’re wanting everybody to come in here,” Jimenez says. “We want you to come in here because you have a goal in mind.” Plus, he says, the staff is trained to recognize that people often have very different goals when it pertains to fitness. “They don’t have to have the same goal as this person that may want to lose 50 pounds or this person that may want to gain 50 pounds,” he says. “It may just be a couple pounds here or a couple pounds there or ‘hey I just want to feel better and start running again because I used to do it 10 years ago.’” “Our big thing is it’s not how you look so much,” Jimenez says. “It’s how you feel.” “We’re not here to judge anybody at all,” he says. Given this new approach to fitness, Jimenez says, Anytime Fitness is able to focus on each client’s individual needs. “We’re one-on-one with a lot of our clients,” he says. “We go out there and we socialize. We don’t just sit in the office with the door closed and not try to communicate with people.” In fact, he says that he trains his staff to become proactive the moment someone enters the door. “So I tell everybody: step around the counter, greet your clients or your potential clients, shake their hands, introduce yourself, find out what they’re looking for, answer their questions, but then say ‘Well, hey if you’ve got five minutes, let me walk you around the gym and give you a tour real quick,” he says. “Because if you don’t give them a tour or you don’t do that one-on-one or make that connection with somebody and make them feel comfortable, it’s just a matter of okay these are our prices and that’s it.” Jimenez says he wants the staff to come from behind the counter when a client or a potential client walks in because it automatically
breaks down the barrier between them. He says that he’s been a member of different facilities that promise their customers the world but fail to deliver. He also says that his experiences have taught him not to treat his clients like they’re nothing more than a number. “We don’t want people feeling that way,” says Jimenez. He also says that many times people feel that joining a gym is like rubbing a genie lamp when one can only get three wishes and nothing more. “That’s not how we want you to feel,” he says. “That’s why we have people here.” According to Jimenez, the gym is staffed throughout the day, with limited hours in the summer, because Anytime Fitness stands behind the old cliché of putting the customer first by realizing that sometimes clients have multiple questions. “When we make a promise to somebody or if we come in to help you with something, we’re there for the long haul,” he says. “I don’t have set hours,” Jimenez says. “My people that work here may be staff, but they don’t have set hours. If they’re here, they’re still obligated to answer your questions for you. They still want to help you. And it’s not what they’re forced to do, it’s because they enjoy their jobs. They like seeing people in here happy and reaching their fitness goals.” As for his own journey to Anytime Fitness, the road Jimenez took was a winding one. Originally from Ohio, he moved to Florida at the age of nine and spent most of his life in Tampa before migrating north to the PensacolaNiceville area. In the early 1990s Jimenez became interested in firefighting at the suggestion of a friend in Milton, Fla. He says he found a brotherhood, an extended family of sorts and was locked on the idea. In 1993 he started as a volunteer firefighter while working in the construction business installing drywall with his father. In 2000, after attending school, Jimenez became a career fireman.
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Our
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After nearly a decade, Jimenez thought it was time for a change, and in 2009, crossed state lines. “I actually moved to Thomasville first, and that’s how I got involved with Anytime Fitness,” says Jimenez. “That’s how I met Adam because I signed up at the gym down there.” Adam Gatzemeier owns five Anytime Fitness locations including Moultrie, Thomasville, Tallahassee and two locations in Valdosta. At the time of his move, Jimenez says, he had been out of the gym for a while. “A lot of people do that,” he says. “They get into the gym, and then they get out of it, but I met Adam.” He says he continued to work out there for almost a year. “Then I found out that he was opening up this one here,” Jimenez says, “and I was looking for a part-time job outside of my fire department.” He says that it isn’t unusual for firemen to take on additional jobs. Whatever his early intentions were, his part-time status at Anytime Fitness wouldn’t last long. He and his family moved to Moultrie in December 2010. “Adam and I worked real, real well together, pretty much like family, and I stuck with the gym and ended up being the manager here,” says Jimenez. Last December Gatzemeier promoted him to general manager, a move that was a first for Gatzemeier. He currently oversees operations in both Thomasville and Moultrie, but much like his interest in firefighting, Jimenez admits his current job is something he fell into. “I didn’t really have any intentions of getting into the gym industry for the most part,” he says. “I’ve always been interested in it, and I’ve always been involved in it in some way or another, but I’m glad it turned out like it did.” With the tables now turned, the father of five still works as a firefighter in Perry, Fla. maintaining a one-day on, two-days off schedule. “I love this job just like I love the fire department,” he says. And it’s hard to take the fireman out of his station. Jimenez says he looks at both his jobs very much the same. “I’m always on duty,” he says. “I’m here to help the public. If I see somebody in need, I step out there to help them.” He says he tries to present the same image when working at the gym as he does while working as a public servant. “But Adam’s exactly the same way,” says Jimenez. “He cares about people.” Jimenez says when Gatzemeier opens a new gym, he normally stays there from four to six months, even if someone is working for him, in order to ensure that the business is going the way he wants it to go, seeing to it that clients are being taken care of in the manner that he has set forth at his locations. Once that’s taken care of, Jimenez says, Gatzemeier then leaves it to the gym’s manager. The cost to join Anytime Fitness is surprisingly affordable when compared to other fitness facilities in the area. According to Jimenez, membership fees are generally less
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than what one might spend on an average cup of coffee per day for a month or even the price of a professional haircut. Discounts are offered to groups, businesses, senior citizens, students, military personnel and public safety members. In addition members have the option of adding 24-hour tanning services at little or no cost depending on the length of their commitment. Personal training is also available to members for an additional fee. However, once joining the facility, members are given the first session for free. During the free session, a personal trainer will conduct a fitness assessment including a weight check and a BMI or body-mass index check, which calculates the percentage of body fat de-
ins says his personal trainers tailor their workout plans to meet the specific needs of each client. “Really it all depends on what you want to do – if your goal is to lose weight, tone up, or build muscle,� says Jenkins. “Those are the three things you come to the gym for.� “If you want to tone up and lose weight at the same time, I’ll do a mix of weights and cardio,� he says. “You’ll be doing a vast variety of exercises. It all depends on what your goal is.� Jimenez is quick to point out, however, that regardless of the client’s goal, the staff ’s goal remains the same. “Our goal is to make sure that you’re happy, you’re reaching your fitness goals, and that you’re comfortable,� says
“When we make a promise to somebody or if we come in to help you with something, we’re there for the long haul.� pending on the height and weight of a person. The assessment also allows the personal trainer to analyze a person’s fitness goals and to help develop a meal plan accordingly. Jimenez says this provides the personal trainer with a baseline for understanding the best direction in which to go with a particular client. “It’s kind of like building a house,� he says. “If I don’t have a frame, it’s not gonna stand.� Anytime Fitness only uses the services of personal trainers who have been professionally certified. Jimenez says the certification is the difference between a personal trainer and the average person. “They know the muscle groups,� he says. “They understand the structure of your body, the physics behind it all.� Becoming a personal trainer involves directed study of the anatomy and calisthenics, exercises aimed at increasing body strength and flexibility. “When you ask them a question, they can answer it based on their experience plus their education, not just pick something out of the sky and come up with an answer for it,� says Jimenez. Gym and Fitness Manager David Jenk-
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Jimenez. “If you’re not comfortable, you’re not going to give us 110 percent.� Jenkins says that a client has the option of paying for each training session individually or paying in advance for several. He also says that, regardless of how long it takes clients to finish the training sessions they’ve paid for, those sessions remain available to them. “A lot of places aren’t like that,� says Jimenez. “If you don’t use them within that month, they’re gone.� Personal training might be a subject of misunderstanding for many, and the staff goes to great lengths to explain what it means to the clients and how it can benefit them. “I’m more of motivation because a lot of people come to the gym [or] they want to come in, but they just don’t have the motivation to work out or a lot of people just don’t know what to do,� says Jenkins. He says that many people are misled by exercises they’ve seen on television or on Internet sites like YouTube. Jenkins also points out that any physical contact between the personal trainer and the client is explained in advance.
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“A lot of people are uncomfortable stretching or having somebody do that,� he says. “Sometimes it’s not that way.� But, he says, there is nothing offensive or invasive about the contact between the trainer and the client. As a certified personal trainer, he says, he’s comfortable with any type of client and wants them to be comfortable with him, something Jimenez says, that Jenkins has passed down to the personal trainers who work under his direction as gym and fitness manager. “I don’t mind stretching a guy out, girl, big lady, little lady, big dude, sweaty dude,� says Jenkins. “It [doesn’t] matter to me.� He says that oftentimes after a hardcore workout, a client needs help stretching especially after strenuous leg exercises when the muscles are tightest and walking is a challenge. Another primary focus at Anytime Fitness is the client’s safety and security – issues that many potential clients have concerns about when considering joining a gym with roundthe-clock access. “Our systems are top of the line as far as security goes,� says Jimenez. When joining the facility, members are issued a key that allows them access to the doors which remain locked to the public after normal business hours. The client’s key is synched with his/her personal information including a photo which he/she is required to take when the key is issued. This allows Anytime Fitness to track its customers’ visits. The gym is equipped with 24-hour surveillance cameras both inside and out. “We’ve never had a problem as far as a crime being committed in here,� says Jimenez. “I do have people that don’t necessarily work for me but have been coming to this gym since the very beginning that keep an eye on the facility because they do work out late at night.� The gym is also equipped with an AED or automated external defibrillator. Jimenez says the machine is easy to operate, and after turning it on, it guides the user every step of the way. “It’s set up to where the average person can use it,� he says. “An AED is more important to get on somebody than the CPR itself initially.� Not only as a firefighter, but also as a father, Jimenez knows firsthand the value of being trained in CPR or cardiopulmonary resuscitation. In 2001 he found his oldest daughter in the bottom of a swimming pool. “If I would have never known that, she wouldn’t have been here today,� he says. “So I can tell you from my standpoint of actually doing it to a family member, my own child, it’s very, very important.� Just last month members of the staff attended CPR training on-site. Jimenez says he doesn’t require his employees to participate, but participation is encouraged. “So if something happens, and the staff is here, they’re going to know what to do in that situation as well,� he says. In addition to the AED, clients also have access to pushbutton necklaces that can be worn either during or after busi-
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ness hours if they have pre-existing medical conditions. “Those push-button necklaces are there [so that] if something happens, you just press the button,” says Jimenez. “Automatically it’s bringing the ambulance, it’s bringing the police, it’s gonna bring the fire department, it’s bringing everybody. So it’s just the push of the button.” The necklaces also serve another important purpose for those who work out after hours. “Now let’s say that you come in here and you don’t feel comfortable walking out at night, for whatever reason, you can take one of those with you,” he says. “All we ask you to do is to bring it back the next day.” Jimenez says that the 24-hour access is integral to the success of Anytime Fitness. “This way we give you the opportunity to come in at your own leisure, at your own time,” he says. “You can make your own schedule to come in and work out.”
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Currently the minimum age to join the gym is 18, but Jimenez says that children as young as 13 can come into the gym to work out as long as they are accompanied by their parents. He says it’s important to get kids into an exercise routine at an early age. “We don’t want to discourage you to
the same time we have to look out for not only the facility but our clients’ well-being as well.” Jimenez says he plans to try and offer programs in the future such as kid’s outdoor-boot camps and kid’s zumba classes to get them more involved, but those events would require that forms
order to teach fire safety, he says that teaching kids now the importance of eating right, doing cardio and lifting weights gets transmitted to the entire family. Speaking of family, like the camaraderie of the fire department, Jimenez prefers to run his gyms as if each client
“That’s the way that we make everybody feel, just like family, just like you’re somebody that we’ve known for a long time.”
try to get your kids in shape,” he says. “A lot of people do come in here that say ‘Look they don’t do anything, they play video games all day, we want to get them more into activity,’ and so we don’t want to turn anyone away when it comes to that point of things, but at
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be signed by the parents releasing Anytime Fitness of any liability. “Our biggest thing is we want the younger generation to get involved early because of the obesity in America nowadays,” he says. Much like the visits that firefighters make to schools in
were a member of the family. “That’s the way that we make everybody feel, just like family, just like you’re somebody that we’ve known for a long time,” he says. “I like to think of us all being like a family because we do know a lot of people here, and when
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people do come in here and they feel like they have a question, they can come to us most of the time unless they’re brand new and they don’t know us yet.” The Anytime Fitness family worldwide includes more than 1850 facilities, and a membership to one means access to all. “So if you’re in Japan, you’re in Mexico, your key works on the front door just like it does here in Moultrie,” Jimenez says. He says that he does realize that some people would rather not ask questions so his staff will sometimes approach a member who seems confused about a machine and offer assistance in an effort to open up the dialogue. However, he says, some facilities think as soon as a person walks in the door that they are there to lose weight. “We don’t try to jump into anybody’s business and just make an assumption,” Jimenez says. “Assumptions can get you into a lot of trouble.” For him and his staff, it’s simply about making a
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connection with the client, but he says that if a person is looking to drop a few pounds, there are a few things to be aware of when working out. “If you’re looking to really truly lose weight, you’ve got to change it up,” he says. “You’ve got to be a little bit more intense. You’ve got to get that heart rate up. There [are] certain things that you have to do.” “A lot of people don’t know that,” says Jimenez. “They think ‘Well, I’m on the treadmill for 45 minutes, this is great.’ But, when you look at the calories, you’re only burning 200 calories for 45 minutes to an hour.” According to him, sometimes the only way to find out what a person’s goal might be is to ask and then point them in the right direction. It’s just another part of that open-dialogue policy he encourages at his gyms. “I think acknowledgement is good for most people,” he says. “I do think that there’s some that want to come in and do their thing, but it’s because they’ve never had encouragement.” Jimenez says he believes the gym has
the potential to be as much a place of inspiration as anywhere. “I like to say that a lot of our guys can be encouraging and inspiring for some of the younger guys that are out there and give them something else to do besides just hanging out in the street,” he says. One particular source of pride is Marco Velazquez. The 18-year-old began working out two years ago when the gym first opened, and after working out together casually for a while, a bond between the two of them began to form. Jimenez says the he and some of the other guys there tried to be a source of encouragement for Velazquez. “He hangs out with me some days when I’m outside of the gym,” says Jimenez. “He’s kind of like a son to me to be honest.” Velazquez says that, in the beginning, he wanted to go to the gym because he was out of shape due to his poor-eating habits, but that he never had the transportation to or the money to join the YMCA.
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“I didn’t really have a good life,” he says. Because it’s located much closer to where he lives, he convinced his dad to bring him down to Anytime Fitness and sign him up. At the time he was attending night classes at the high school. “The reason I went to night school [is] I didn’t really believe in myself,” Velazquez says. “I didn’t really care at one time.” He says that he went to the gym looking to work out, but found a family instead, and family is something that he takes very seriously. “Shannon opened my eyes and showed me the way that I can encourage myself to go on,” says Velazquez. “That’s when I started going back to day school.” Velazquez graduated this year from Colquitt County High School. His senior photo sits on Jimenez’s desk. “That feels real good because I know that he’s proud of me and just like a dad to me too,” says Velazquez. He says that Jimenez genuinely cares about people and their health and tries to help them any way that he can. Gym and Fitness Manager David Jenkins even attended his high-school graduation. Velazquez says he knows he has a lot of people supporting him now, people that are genuinely interested in seeing him make something of his life. He says he would love to go to music school to pursue his dream of playing the guitar professionally, but he says that it would require a scholarship due to the high cost of a performing arts school. For now he’s weighing his options while he enjoys spending his summer either at the gym with his extended family, at home playing his guitar, or skateboarding with his friends. Both Jimenez and Jenkins agree that there’s a special atmosphere at Anytime Fitness in Moultrie. “We’ve got a lot of good people in this gym that will help other people, and they’re very courteous,” says Jimenez. He says he hasn’t noticed any cliques like the ones founds at other facilities. Jenkins adds that one of the perks of
28 Summer 2012
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Moultrie Magazine
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living in a small town is that many of the clients there already know each other from working out together at
that, outside of advertising, word of mouth has been the greatest vehicle for bringing new clients into the gym.
And for those who still aren’t convinced that a gym can be full of more than just those who, according to the
“ I like to say that a lot of our guys can be encouraging and
inspiring for some of the younger guys that are out there and give them something else to do besides just hanging out in the street .
previous gyms. “We do have a lot of people that come in that don’t work here that are still willing to help out other people,” Jimenez says, and he is eager to attribute the success of Anytime Fitness to the level of service the clients receive. “If you’re happy, you’re gonna tell your friends and family about us,” he says. “If you’re not happy, that could destroy a business in itself.” He says
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Jimenez says the entire staff is grateful for the community’s involvement. “I think the biggest thing is the fact that we do appreciate the citizens in Moultrie,” he says. “We appreciate the support, and we appreciate the fact that there are a lot of people in this area that care about their fitness, that want to actually get into shape and do things [because] overall, without our clients, we’d have nothing.”
”
urban dictionary, wear only cutoff Tshirts, lift weights and drink gallon jugs of water, Jimenez has sage advice to offer. “People are always going to be scared of the unknown,” he says. “I say give us a shot. Let us prove it to you.” u Stop by Anytime Fitness at 803 First Ave. S.E. or call 229-668-2348 for more information.
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5k / 10k / 1 mile fun run/walk
Date: August 4, 2012 Race Starts at 8 a.m. Where: Moultrie Rec Dept. & Bike Trail Moultrie, Georgia Register online at www.active.com
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Moultrie Magazine
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N O RT H L A K E V I L L A G E Moultrie's Newest Shopping Destination
NOW LEASING! l Conveniently located on North Veterans Parkway next to Moultrie Stadium Cinemas and across from Lowe ’s and one block from the Hampton Inn on Moultrie ’s busiest highway. l Located in Moultrie ’s fastest growing area.
For More Information Call:
229-873-7791 229-668-3000 P.O. Box 2286 l Moultrie, Georgia
l Northlake Village features four buildings with up to four retail spaces per building from 1,250 sq. ft. to 5,500 sq. ft. l Each unit may be leased, purchased or a lease with purchase option is available.
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Article by: Heath Croft
Original Photography by: Heath Dorminey
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© 2012 Richard Cates, Atlanta
"What a wonderful collaboration between four very talented people: R.B. Wright Jr., Frank McCall, and Clarence and Paul Summerford these well-respected citizens of Moultrie worked together on a vast and challenging project that not only preserved a very important Atlanta landmark, but they also created a beautiful home." Bill Cole, current owner
Clarence Summerford may not be able to find his cordless phone, whether it’s the one that belongs in the kitchen or the one in his TV room. Often he cannot remember where he laid his cane. What he does remember, rather clearly in fact, is the four and a half decades he spent building hundreds of Moultrie’s most beautiful homes and commercial buildings as the son in Paul Summerford & Son, Builders – a company formed by his father in 1940. “I just learned it through him,” says Summerford, “and I just grew up in it that’s all.” He says he was born into the business. “His daddy was a builder, and my daddy was a builder, and I loved to trade.” Paul Summerford worked with a construction company building post offices during the Great Depression in the early 1930s. “That’s the only thing they built, and he was transferred from job to job through a post office through the contractor,” he says, “and so when the job
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was finished, then they’d send him to the next.” Summerford says he attended at least three different grammar schools including ones in Fitchburg, Mass., Madisonville, Ky., and Bellows Falls, Vt. “He enjoyed the work, too. Back then the public was really meticulous about everything we done in the post office. That’s the reason the old ones are still standing up,” he says. Summerford is a treasure chest of stories about the early days especially those stories that involve his father. Many of his stories are funny, some might even say a little irreverent, and others are bittersweet. Whatever spin he puts on them, however, one thing is definite: the stories are all true. “He said he came in one day, and the inspector came from the post office and he says, ‘This is supposed to be a vitreous china lavatory.’ They’re breakable; they’re not cast iron. So I think Daddy said, ‘Well, yeah it’s supposed to be.’ [The inspector] said, ‘Well that’s not the point.’ So he just took the lava-
tory and dropped it on the concrete floor, and it cracked. [The inspector] said, ‘Well it was.’” Summerford says his father was none too happy about the expense that the inspector had just cost his company, and he says it only took his father about four sentences to tell him so. “They were strict back then,” he says. “The last job he had was in Vermont, and they was gonna transfer him out to Helena, Mont. right in the middle of the winter,” he says. “He told Mama that he was tired of moving us around, and he wanted to come settle somewhere, and he didn’t want to go back north to that cold country. “He had a brother that lived here that was working at the post office and a sister that lived in Albany. So he got in touch with his sister in Albany, and we moved down to her house in Albany.” Paul Summerford’s brother Rufus knew a contractor here and was able to secure a job for him. The family moved to Moultrie into a house on Third Street in 1933. Clarence began school
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here in 1934 and graduated in 1937. In 1938 Paul Summerford was hired, not contracted, to build a house for Florence Barber, the wife of William Henry Barber, whose name the Barber-Tucker Inn bears today. After his death in 1923, she lived there with her children, but later decided to pass the larger home down to her son. “She decided she’d move out and build her a smaller house,” says Summerford, “and we did it across the street.” Normally, Paul Summerford didn’t take jobs on a labor basis but made an exception for the widow Barber. “She was gonna furnish all material, and this is funny,” he says. “I was a little fellow then. I’d go over and see Daddy and talk to him and all that stuff. “He got the footings dug, and he told Ms. Barber, he says ‘You got to start gettin’ me some lumber here. I’ve already given you a list of what we need.’ So Daddy says, ‘And by the way, I need some nails to start with; I got to have some nails.’ She said, ‘Well, I’ll have
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some when the lumber gets here.’ So when the lumber got there, she had brought the nails over in four or five buckets, now this is true, what she had done when she was taking out some old buildings, [she’d] saved the nails and straightened ‘em.” I remember what Daddy said. He said, ‘Well, I got to form that footing over there with that concrete chimney, we’re gonna reinforce it with all them nails.’ He poured every one of them nails in the concrete when they poured it, and then he told her to go back and get him some damn nails.” “Bent nails,” says Summerford. “That’s how tight they were back then!” “Daddy started working for another contractor here,” says Summerford. “He did real good. The contractor was good to him so he bought a lot over here.” He says his father built the house at 416 Sixth St. S.W. in 1938. He later added a 2-car garage and an upstairs apartment for Clarence. “Between ‘37 and 1940, I had some little jobs,” he says, “and then I finally got in with Daddy in 1940.” One of
those early jobs was at the Jitney Jungle which was located on South Main Street between First and Second Avenues just down from the Grand Theatre. He worked there after school and on Saturdays. “First I was a delivery boy,” he says. “I delivered groceries to people that called up on the telephone.” “I worked myself up and got to be assistant manager there not too long after I started.” Back then, he says, farmers would bring in produce to sell. He says Dan Castleberry from Adel raised sugar cane and made his own syrup which he brought into the Jitney Jungle. One Friday afternoon, while he was outside writing the specials for the weekend on the window, Dan and Effie Castleberry parked in front and out stepped their daughter, Madge. The way things worked at the Jitney Jungle, he says, is that clerks would follow the customers around and carry their shopping baskets for them. “So I made a point to get off my ladder and go in there where I could help them,” he says, “and that’s where I met her.
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“After she graduated from high school in Adel, she came to Moultrie to beauty school. Miss Curtis had a place down here on the corner, it’s gone now, and she had a little shop behind it. There was a rooming house behind that on the same street there a block away from where she had to go to beauty school.” Summerford says it was love at first sight. The two had been engaged to be married for several months when, in November 1941, his draft number came up. “I knew there was a possibility,” he says. However, he was teaching a carpentry class at the FFA building at the high school. He says that Charlie Powell, owner of both the Grand Theatre and the Moultrie Theatre, and two other members of the draft board were able to defer his enlistment until school was over the following summer. After tying the knot in mid-December, just one week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the newlyweds moved into his garage apartment. He would be leaving in eight months. “But now when we got married,” he says, “we decided since I was going into the service, that we wasn’t going to have any kids.” “I didn’t want her to be burdened with a child,” he says. From Moultrie in August 1942, he traveled to Fort McPherson in Atlanta. “Then they sent me to Atlantic City, N.J., and we had training on the boardwalk and beach,” he says. “That was rough. The Army had taken over all the hotels on the beach, stripped the furniture, put metal bunks in there. After I stayed there for a while, after I got all my basic training, they sent me to Madison, Wis., and that was the first school I went to.” Summerford’s military education was in the operation of radar systems. Madge was never far behind. “I tell you how much Madge loved me, like I loved her,” he says. When I got to Madison, Wis., I was up there three months, and she caught a bus, and I couldn’t even get out of the base except once a week on Saturday. The people in Madison were so good; they’d line up on the outside of the gate, and when you wanted to go the five miles into town, they’d take you to town. “She got a job there in Madison for at least two months while I was there. Then when I left Madison, they put me on a train, and I wound up down in Boca Raton, Fla., and after I got settled down there, she came down there.” Her sister had salon in a neighboring town. During the time she wasn’t with me,” he says, “she helped her sister at the beauty shop.” Summerford says he attended school there, and once he finished, he was picked to become an instructor for the next six to eight months, allowing him to live off base. “So we lived there, and we got us a garage apartment in Delray Beach, which is about nine miles from the base,” he says. “The Air Force had a bus that run every hour from the base to town.” “She stayed there until I got transferred,” he says. “Daddy and Mama could come see us.” Serving as a member of the Army Air Forces, Summerford arrived in England shortly after D-Day, and he stayed there until the war ended. He was later transferred to Frankfurt, Germany.
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“I was really in the ground troop,” he says. “My job was the radar business. I had to make sure those things worked.” It was during World War II that IFF, or identification, friend or foe radars were first used. “Every plane that came in, I had to be sure to check ‘em out,” he says. “It kept me busy, too.” “I was lucky, really lucky,” says Summerford. He returned home in 1946. “That train wasn’t running fast enough,” he says. He says Madge borrowed her brother’s car and met him at the station. “When I got out and went through the gate,” he says, “she was there waiting for me.” “So, we went to town to eat, and somehow or another, we were so excited, we parked the car in the wrong place, and got back, and the police had put a ticket on my car [for] parking in the wrong place.” The citation was $25. “I didn’t even have that much money with me,” he says. Once he returned home, the two settled back into their garage apartment, he went back to work with his father, and Madge gave birth to their first
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child, Randy. In 1948 he built their new home at 1816 S. Main St., where he still resides today. In the early 1950s, Summerford & Son remodeled the Moultrie Banking Company turning it into one of the most contemporary facilities of its kind in the state. They would go on to build such commercial structures as the first Lowe’s building supply company here, the first drive-thru banking facility at C&S National Bank and the county’s first motel, the Town Terrace in 1954. It included color televisions and phones in each room and also offered a swimming pool. In 1956, after a fire destroyed the inside of the Colquitt Theatre, which had been built in the early 1940s, Summerford & Son were contracted to rebuild the interior. “Everything inside was gone, everything,” he says. “The front of it was not damaged except a part of the wall, and we had to replace it.” He says the theater looks exactly the same today as it did before the fire. In 1958 the firm was hired to create the storefront for Cranford’s Jewelry, and a year later, they built the façade
for Turner’s dress shop. Both storefronts were Frank McCall’s designs. The health department came along in 1962 and was also their construction. In 1963, the Summerfords would again work with McCall to build the Moultrie-Colquitt County Library. “We didn’t sub out anything except the heating and air conditioning, electrical and plumbing, those three things,” says Summerford. “I had my own painter. Back then you had to mix your colors, and he could match any color you wanted. Then I had my own brick mason, my roofers, carpenters, laborers, concrete people; I mean we just did the whole nine yards. “I think that’s the reason we got a reputation of doing good building. We supervised everything. We didn’t have a superintendent on a job; we did it all. We had good men, too.” In 1961 Summerford & Son would take on its most ambitious and elaborate project to date – the R.B. Wright Jr. home at 20 Tallokas Rd. It would be the most challenging work the father and son would ever do collectively or individually. “Bob told me, he said, ‘I’d like for ya’ll
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to build my house. I know the kind of work ya’ll do, but I need to get a price on it to see if I can afford it,’” Summerford says. He says they later found out that Wright wanted them to be the ones to build his house, but naturally he wanted bids on the project. He says they bid low, and that’s how they got the contract. The house itself is not the reason for its near mythological existence. It’s because the façade of the house is from
was to be demolished to make room for a multi-story office building. “He took Frank McCall up there, and they took pictures and found out who the owner was,” says Summerford, “and so he made a contact, found out who the contractor was gonna be to remove it, and so he said, ‘I wanna buy the stone.’” It took more than a dozen flatbed trucks to bring the six bays of Indiana limestone from Atlanta to Moultrie. Summerford says once the
moved. Each piece was numbered when the stones arrived in Moultrie, but there was no corresponding plan that would show the contractors how to reassemble them. Imagine painting by number without the numbers. “As the building was built, the stone was numbered,” he says, “and if we’d had the setting plan, we’d have known where exactly each piece went. The only thing we had was a picture.
the Paramount Theatre in downtown Atlanta, which was originally built in 1920 and known as the Howard Theatre. It was the work of Phillip Trammell Shutze, who back then was still freelancing for one of Atlanta’s top architectural firms. “[Bob] went back and forth to Atlanta to the school board meetings and just saw that building,” says Summerford. “Then he found out they was gonna remove it, and that’s the reason he got involved in it.” The building
trucks arrived at the lot, the stone was promptly dumped on the ground, and the trucks left. As a builder, he says, he was excited about the challenge, but there was quite a lot of work put into that house. “That particular job, we didn’t know how long it was gonna take really, but we estimated really what the cost was gonna be,” he says. Summerford says the only thing they had to work with were photos that Wright and McCall had taken before the façade was re-
“I think my Daddy put his hand on every piece of stone,” says Summerford. He says that McCall drew the plans and had the measurements so the contractors could frame the house up first. He says the architect was finally able to get the original plans for the Howard Theatre from Shutze. According to the late Sam Perry, Wright’s business partner and friend, Shutze even helped with the rebuilding. “We had to put a foundation in, and then start off the stone,” he says. “You’ve
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got to frame it up to have something to attach your stone to.” He says they had the rafters on and the entire outside closed in with plywood before they even began on the stone. Summerford says it took his team eight months to put the façade back together. Once the house was completed and furnished, Wright hosted a party inviting both Atlanta’s and Moultrie’s elite to see his Italian villa for themselves. “You felt like you was a millionaire like the rest of ‘em,” says Summerford. “I was proud of it, proud for people to see it. They knew who I was because it was invitation only. “It was real fancy. The state patrol would park the cars for ‘em. You’d pull up in the curved driveway, and you’d get out and go to the front door, they’d take your car down the street and park it. And the governor was here.” Years later, when Wright decided he wanted a curved staircase, rather than the one that was originally designed for the home, he called Summerford, but he told Wright that he was too busy and that he wasn’t interested. “Well, Frank had to redesign it,” he
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says. “I didn’t want to fool with it.” Instead he referred him to another local contractor. In later years, however, he would return to the Wright house to add an art gallery and wet bar upstairs. Paul Summerford’s death came in May 1971, but Clarence continued the work that his father had started. In June construction began on an additional 30 rooms at the Town Terrace Motel. “We never did change the name,” he says. But, he says, a slump in the building business wasn’t far behind. “I wish I could have kept on going,” he says, “but times were getting rough.” He says that banks were not interested in long-term loans. He says that Moultrie Federal Savings & Loan was the only bank at the time that loaned money for houses here, but even they began capping their home loans at $10,000. Since the majority of his homes started between $20,000 and $25,000 including the lot, people could no longer afford to buy his houses. “That’s where the problem came in,” he says. “So things just got sorta tight.”
Between 1970 and mid-1980, Summerford says he remodeled 41 post offices while maintaining the family business. He says he installed additional post office boxes, new letter drops, stamp and money machines, and scales in some locations including Albany and Thomasville. “You could stand in the lobby and do all your work,” he says. “That kept me busy.” For two decades, Bob Wright lived in his Italian palazzo and filled it with priceless antiques from all over the globe. But on September 21, 1984, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 64. Since then, the Italianate masterpiece has had only two owners. “There’ll never be another one like it,” Summerford says. After almost five decades in business, Clarence Summerford decided to retire in 1985. With no children left in the house, he says, he and Madge were lonesome as heck. “We stayed busy. I got involved in the country club, got involved in this, that and the other. We kept going and busy.” He became president of the golf
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club for a year. They joined the Lions Club and even went to Mexico City for a convention. In 2001 Madge began showing signs of the early stages of Alzheimer’s. “We knew something was happening,” he says. “When she got sick, that ended the whole nine yards.” “I kept her right here at the house,” he says. For him, he says, putting her in a nursing home was not something he could do. “I had some help,” he says. “The government helped me some. They furnished me somebody three days a week.” He says a nurse came in at night to feed her and put her to bed. On May 15, 2004, after a three-year battle, his beloved Madge died at the age of 82. “I guess around 5:00 that morning I got up just to check on her again, and she was cold,” he says. “She just died in her sleep.” The two were married for 62 ½ years. Summerford says that he brought her back to the house, put her casket in the living room and had the visitation there. Her body lay in repose until her service was held at Westview Cemetery.
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“I wanted to be with her as long as I could,” he says. “That’s the reason I didn’t put her in a nursing home. “And that’s the reason I brought her back here and put her in the living room. I had a little more time with her even though she didn’t know it, but I loved the girl.” “We had a wonderful life, I tell you,” says Summerford. “No question about that. “She raised the kids, and I made the living,” he says. “She was a wonderful mother, I tell you what.” He says she had a Boy Scout unit for their four boys and something for Babs, their only daughter. “She’s my right hand now,” he says. “And I got a son that’s the same way right now,” says Summerford. “He started off just like his mother did.” Two years ago, he says, Jeff Summerford’s wife made the difficult decision to put her husband in a nursing home. Though he is bedridden, Summerford says, his son’s wife visits him every day to feed him. He says that he insisted his daughter-in-law make the choice because he knew what she was up against dealing with an Alzheimer’s patient, and he was concerned for her
safety. “You never know what they’re gonna do,” he says. As for his own health, Summerford says he’s out-lived almost all of his friends including many of the people whose beautiful homes he built. “I’m fortunate,” he says. “Thank goodness. I’m able to get around. I’m able to work in the yard. I think my exercise and my mind is still good.” As for keeping up with his cordless phones, that’s a different matter altogether. “I misplaced that one in the kitchen,” he says laughing, “and I can’t find it, and another thing, this cane of mine. I lose this cane all the time.” One thing he is certain of, he says, is that his and his father’s legacies are secure. “I think the people appreciated the kind of work we did, really, truly,” he says. “We always had a little sign out there, every building we built; we had a Paul Summerford & Son, Builders [sign]. “I didn’t build Bab’s house out there, but I put the foundation in it, and I put our sign out there, and somebody come by and said, ‘You know I’m glad
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said, ‘We’ve missed it.’” “And they lived out of town,” he says. “It makes me feel good because I’m proud of it,” he says. “I’m proud of my work, and my children are proud of me, and that’s important too, I tell you.” “I made a lot of friends, too, and they were friends, too.” Two of those friends are Hinton and Edna Reeves,
was in business for 67 years from 1934 to 2000. Mayor Bill McIntosh, whose mother graduated high school with Summerford, says he drives by his house every morning on the way into work and often sees him out working in his yard. “It’s inspiring to see his stamina,” says McIntosh. “He’s still around and doing things.”
want to be,” says Summerford. “I’m just happy with it.” In February 2005, with his daughter’s assistance, Summerford set out to document his and his father’s work in pictures. More than 200 photographs are compiled in a binder that will ultimately find its permanent home in the Museum of Colquitt County History. Over 100 original plans are held there now.
who for decades lived next door to him in a house that Summerford built for them in 1962. Summerford and Reeves were stationed together in England. Also in their nineties, the Reeves moved into an assisted-living complex three years ago. “Clarence and Madge were just about like a second mother and father to us due to the long relationship,” says Grover Reeves. He says that he has always had such high respect for the Summerfords. Most will remember Hinton as one half of Kelly-Reeves Furniture which
As for the Summerford & Son, Builders legacy, McIntosh says the two men left their imprint on this community and were “a breed unique to Moultrie.” He says they’re an institution here and approached every project with intensity ensuring that the end result would endure. “Summerford stands for perfection,” says McIntosh. After nearly eight decades of living here, Summerford says he is amazed at how far the city has come and that there’s nowhere he’d rather be. “This is my home, and this is where I
“I’m just proud of what I got done,” he says, “and if I had to go back over again, I’d do the same thing.” Summerford says that it’s not just the city that he loves but also the people he’s known for years. “You know you meet a lot of people when you build a house for ‘em,” he says. “In fact, you know about half the town.” Reeves says that Summerford still goes out to visit with his mother and daddy practically every Sunday. “He’s a grand fellow,” says Reeves.
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Fallin & McIntosh, PC Attorneys at Law 39 North Main Street P.O. Box 250 Moultrie, Georgia 31776 Phone: (229)985-5881 Fax: (229)985-0659 Email: falmac@moultriega.net William G. Fallin William M. McIntosh
“The Real Estate Lawyers ”
www.colonybank.com 42 Summer 2012
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(229)985-5336 Toll-free: (866)262-6822 713 South Main Street Moultrie Georgia Diane Parten, Broker...............................................229-873-6030 Vi Ladson................................................................229-985-2242 Mike Parten, Assoc. Broker....................................229-873-6029 Lynda Denham........................................................229-873-6228 Bonnie Tucker, Assoc. Broker................................229-589-1700 Dell Gay..................................................................229-985-2134 Karen Johnson, Assoc. Broker................................229-589-0467 Bill Acuff.................................................................229-985-9763
595 Edmondson Rd Enjoy Country Living! Frame home with 3BR, 1Ba, LR/DR, kitchen, and inside laundry room. Situated on 1.07 Ac with some fencing $46,900 MLS#902002
1022 2nd AVE N.W. Great starter home. 3 BR, 1 BA brick ranch style home. $50,000 MLS#901459
300 7th ST S.W. Nice 3 BR, 1 BA and half bath home on corner lot. Needs some TLC. Lots of room for the price. Perfect for the handyman. $59,900 MLS#901979
1605 9th St. SW Great price on this 3 BR, 2 BA home. Concrete Drive, vinyl siding. $59,900 MLS#901904
1901 3rd Street S.E. Nice 3 BR, 1 BA, 1 half bath home in Colonial Heights, 1 Block from RB Wright school. $89,900 MLS#902154
1326 4th Street S.W. 3 BR, 1 BA home ideal for couple just starting out. Screened porch. $89,990 MLS#902056
105 Big Creek Road 2 BR, 2 BA home. Located just a few minutes from town , on a secluded street, wooded yard. $99,000 MLS#901678
720 3rd St., SW Well built brick home. Room to make half bath into full bath. Hardwood floors throughout. Fenced back yard ideal for pets and children. $99,000 MLS#901050
1327 4th Street S.W. 3 BR, 2 BA ready to move-in condition home near diving well and tennis courts. $104,000 MLS#901977
161 Stone Bridge Way New construction on 1 acre of land, MBR has walk in closet , kitchen has stainless steel appliances and tile floors. Double carport with garage door. $134,900 MLS#901862
132 Tallokas Trail
Quality built recently remodeled 3 BR, 2 BA brick home Separate living room and dining room, eat-in kitchen with appliances included. Home office/utility/game room with private entrance, could convert to 4th. downstairs bedroom. Low maintenance grounds and garden area with complete privacy. Private well
2.15 acres Nice building lot on Lower Meigs Rd. $17,000MLS#442590
2309 Jacqueline Circle
Beautiful home with 3 large BR ’s, 2 BA ’s. Separate LR, DR, Breakfast room, & laundry room. All appliances remain in kitchen. Extra building lot joining property that is chain fenced with storage building.
454 Tallokas Trail Nice 3 BR, 2 BA home with fireplace, back deck and car part. $149,000 MLS#902035
$145,000 MLS#901870
.35 acres Building lot with Indian Lake fishing rights included. $18,000 MLS#900317
1.52 acres Building lot in Silver Creek Subdivision. $20,000 MLS#474341
$199,000 MLS#900737
1 acre Great lot for your new home in Thornridge Subdivision. $20,000 MLS#900432
12.77 acres Hide in the woods on this 1arge tract of timber land in the Hartsfield community. $44,700 MLS#902055
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SINCE 1957
709 South Main Street l P.O. Box 3007 Agents & Evening Phone Numbers Moultrie, Georgia 31768 Kirk Friedlander, GRI...................589-0618 (229) 985-1145 l Fax (229) 890-1445 Patricia Taylor...............................891-8456 E-mail: mattco@windstream.net Website: mattcorealtors.com
(229) 985-1145
SINCE 1957
Todd Hall.......................................850-0025 Curtis Leatherwood.......................873-0373 Wayne Cooper...............................891-6439 Regina Giles..................................891-8162 Tim Carroll....................................891-6081
“For All Your Real Estate Needs ”
810 5th Ave. SE
Very nice starter home w/plenty of space. 3 BR ’s, 2 BA ’s, hardwood floors, fireplace & unique coffered ceilings. Kitchen w/breakfast area has all appliances.
$85,000 MLS 901985
1949 South Main Street Great starter home in Colonial Heights. Hardwood floors, beautiful sun room, spacious living are, master BR & bath. Nice storage building.
$95,000 ILS#902151
1609 Cypress Lane Very nice Rosemont Townhouse w/3 large BR ’s and 2 BA ’s. Location is excellent, close to downtown & all shopping and services. Large LR and den that could be 3rd BR. All appliances stay including washer and dryer. Priced to sell!
$129,900 ILS#901494
1546 Ivy Lane Very well maintained condo, located in Rosemont. 2 BR ’s, 2 BA ’s large family room & dining room. Private entrance with 1 car carport in back. $135,000 MLS#902115
10 Pearl Street 3 BR ’s 2 BA ’s almost new home located in a great subdivision. Home has all appliances, large deck off kitchen established lawn and 2 car garage with concrete driveway. $139,900 MLS#901896
1558 Ivy Lane Beautiful well kept townhome. 2 large bedrooms, 2 large baths. Living room, dining room with built-in's, family room, screened porch on back. 1 car garage on back with a private and secure entrance. Back yard is fenced with a privacy fence. Excellent location and move in ready $149,900 MLS# 902011
132 Loblolly Road Great 3 BR, 2 BA home in one of Moultrie ’s finest neighborhoods. Home was recently renovated & updated. 2 car carport w/storage room. Two ventless gas fireplaces, new sunroom w/tile floors. All wood office w/built-in ’s, large master bedroom & bath. Great room with built-in ’s for the whole family. $178,500 MLS# 901717
103 Fairway Drive Nice all brick home located in Clubview. 3 BR ’s, 2 BA ’s, quiet neighborhood, excellent school district. $179,000 MLS#902147
1721 Gatewood Circle
418 Tanglewood Drive Nice 4 BR, 2 1/2 BA. Great location, close to everything. Beautiful kitchen with breakfast area and separate formal dining room. $229,900 MLS# 900866
1425 Kendallwood Church Road Beautiful custom built 3 BR, 2 BA home on 8.2 acres. Home has private driveway, pine floors, high ceilings w/crown moulding throughout. Open floor plan w/large breakfast/dining area. Master BR & bath features a large sitting area, his & hers sinks, walk-in closet. $279,000 MLS#901791
Well maintained brick home on a nicely landscaped irrigated lot. 3 BR;s 2 BA ’s, large open family room. Kitchen has center island down draft stove & double wall ovens. Master BR has 2 separate walk-in closets, jet tub & separate shower. Double enclosed garage & outside storage. Large laundry roomw/built-in cabinets & sink.
$179,900 MLS# 901698
44 Summer 2012
1145 1st Street SE
Located on one of the most desired “in town ” streets. Craftsman style house w/3 large BR ’s and 2 BA ’s. The owner has made extensive renovations and is move-in ready. Hardwood floors, new carpet in BR ’s. House sits on a double lot with a portico & garage w/workshop area & parking pad. Fenced back yard.
$149,900 MLS#902139
Moultrie Magazine
Summer 2012_Winter 2010_Holiday 7/2/12 12:54 AM Page 45
Bobby Browning.................................................229-891-5169 Patsy Browning...................................................229-890-7669 Buddy McCoy.....................................................229-891-4150 Charlotte Kelley..................................................229-891-5111
www.browningbrasskeyrealty.com
109 Hall’’s Trail 3 BR, 2 BA, Manufactured Home $50,000 MLS#902077
1179 5th Street S.W. 3 BR, 1/2 BA $65,900 MLS#902079
110 Southgate Dr. 2 BR, 2 BA 1,075 sf End unit, storage bulding. $110,000 MLS#901912
Reduced
Short Sale
Short Sale
822 2nd Street S.E. 5 BR, 3 BA and Guesthouse, What a deal! $150,000 MLS#901394
3909 Ga. Hwy 33 North 3 BR, 3 BA $155,000 MLS#901866
1814 Franklin Street 4 BR, 2 1/2 BA $180,000 MLS#901127
11 Tallokas Road 4 BR, 3 1/2 BA Frank McCall home renovated by New York designer Eric Cohler. $375,000 MLS#901492
2 Country Cove Farmhouse 3 BR, 2 1/2 BA , bonus room $385,000 MLS#902033
Reduced
Reduced
804 Doerun Norman Park Road 4 BR, 5 BA with 84 acres PRIME hunting land, timber, swimming pool, barn and cozy hunting lodge. $899,000 MLS#901863
2390 GA Hwy 133 South Commercial Property Ready for you! $69,000 MLS#901638
719 South Main Street Moultrie, Georgia 31768
229-985-3032
13 Pine Valley Cr. 3 BR, 2 BA, Builder Clarence Summerford.
$127,500 MLS#901481
124 Tallokas Circle 3 BR, 2 BA on 1.21 acres $199,000 MLS#901640
2 Old Tram Road 5 BR, 3 Full BA , 2 half BA Tastefully decorated. $359,900 MLS#901656
1156 South Main Street 4 BR, 6 and 1/2 BA Covered pool, prestigious home on South Main. $789,900 MLS#901349
Veterans Parkway 9.5 Acres Commercial next to Hospital. $599,000MLS#900493
OPEN YOUR OWN BUSINESS!! Day Care Center - Convenient Location - Fully Equipped - Large Corner Lot - Well Priced MLS#902201
NEW LISTINGS!! Sloans Village Thornridge Subdivison Reduced 3300 South Industrial Park Commercial/Warehouse Owner financing to qualified buyer. $150,000 MLS#901533
2929 South Main Street Commercial Building $550,000 MLS#901487
514 South Main Street Office Building $750,000 MLS#901441
Call for more information! 229-985-3032
Vote for TSPLOST on July 31, 2012 for lower taxes, safer roads and JOBS!!!
Summer 2012_Winter 2010_Holiday 7/2/12 12:54 AM Page 46
19
Realtors Terrie Alderman, Broker/Owner..................229-985-2206
Realtors Jenny Ray, Realtor Associate......................229-873-2291
Debbie Mock, Realtor Associate.................229-873-2533 Lifetime Member Million Dollar Club
Lee Redmond, Realtor Associate................229-985-0177
Judy Burnham, Broker Associate................229-589-0758 Member of Million Dollar Club
“We Handle All Your Real Estate Needs ” 125 South Main - At the Grand Downtown Moultrie, Georgia 31768
Connie Garcia, Realtor Associate............... 229-891-6443 “se habla español ” Margaret O ’ Neal, Realtor Associate...........229-873-7102
Office: 229-985-0177 Fax: 229-985-0178
4 BR, 2 BA, 1 half bath Debbie: 229-873-2533 $275,900 MLS#901504
3 BR, 2 BA Debbie: 229-873-2533 $175,000 MLS#901856
4 BR, 2 BA Debbie: 229-873-2533 $175,000 MLS#901908
4 BR,2 BA, 1 half bath Debbie: 229-873-2533 $185,500 MLS#901784
5 BR, 3 BA, 1 half bath Debbie: 229-873-2533 $295,000 MLS#901773
4 BR, 3 BA Debbie: 229-873-2533 $239,900 MLS#902004
4 BR, 2 BA Debbie: 229-873-2533 $169,900 MLS#902037
3 BR, 2 BA Debbie: 229-873-2533 $132,500 MLS#902039
4 BR, 3 BA Debbie: 229-873-2533 $399,900 MLS#902057
3 BR, 2 BA Debbie: 229-873-2533 $135,000 MLS#901581
3 BR, 2 BA Debbie: 229-873-2533 $145,000 MLS#902058
3 BR, 3 BA Debbie: 229-873-2533 $259,000 MLS#902122
3 BR, 2 BA Virginia: 229-873-2291 $175,000 MLS#901869
3 BR, 1 BA, 1 half bath Margaret: 229-873-7102
$80,000MLS#901902
3 BR, 2 BA Connie: 229-891-6443 $124,900 MLS#901962
2 BR, 2 BA Debbie: 229-873-2533 $115,000 MLS#901774
3 BR, 2 BA Judy: 229-589-0758 $114,900 MLS#901898
3 BR, 1 BA, 1 half Judy: 229-589-0758 $99,900 MLS#901531
3 BR, 2 BA, 1 half bath Judy: 229-589-0758 $259,000 MLS#901963
4 BR, 4 BA Judy: 229-589-0758 $225,000 MLS#902059
4 BR, 2 BA Judy: 229-589-0758 $139,000 MLS#901941
3 BR, 3 BA Judy: 229-589-0758 $94,900MLS#901899
Commercial Judy: 229-589-0758 $145,700 MLS#901796
Commercial Judy: 229-589-0758 $359,900 MLS#902084
46 Spring 2012
Moultrie Magazine
Summer 2012_Winter 2010_Holiday 7/2/12 12:54 AM Page 47
Now Open! Convenient Care 207 31st Ave SE Moultrie, Georgia 31768
(229)217-0088
l
(229)217-0086 (fax)
Westside Pharmacy 720 West Central Ave. l Moultrie, Georgia (229)890-6054 24 Hour Refill Line: (229)985-2697 Hours: M-F 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. l Saturday 9 a.m to 1 p.m.
Now Accepting New Patients Walk-ins Welcome! We treat all types of illnesses and minor injuries, and office visits start as low as $50. Monday - Friday 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Saturday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The Prescription Shoppe 203 - 31st Ave. SE l Moultrie, Georgia (229)985-9296 24 Hour Refill Line: (229)985-2698 Hours: M-F 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. l Saturday 9 a.m to 1 p.m.
Summer 2012_Winter 2010_Holiday 7/2/12 12:54 AM Page 48