Working For Progress — By Tommy Purser

Reading this week’s column by Joint Development Authority Executive Director Oakley Perry brought back some memories for me.
Years ago, officials from Jeff Davis, Appling and Bacon counties got together and formed a group development authority through which leaders in the three counties could work as a team to attract new businesses to this area of the state. Later, Pierce County was added to the group, which is now known as the Southeast Georgia Regional Development Authority (SGRDA).
When the three original counties formed the authority, it was a relatively new idea, spurred by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA). DCA had been urging leaders in rural Georgia to work together, to combine their efforts to sell “The Other Georgia” regionally. Working alone, rural Georgia counties ocould not possibly compete with the Metro Atlanta area to attract industries and jobs.
Not long before the SGRDA was formed, I was covering a meeting of the Jeff Davis County Development Authority during the time that the Golden Isles Highway project was underway. The Golden Isles Highway project was an effort to convert Highway 341 from middle Georgia to the coast from a 2-lane highway to a 4-lane highway. It was a monumental project, sorely needed to improve transportation through the area, with Hazlehurst and Jeff Davis County located at the center point of the Golden Isles Highway.
At the time of the meeting I was covering, the project was in its early stages and the progress was slow. Weeks before the meeting, an effort began to 4-lane Highway 441 from Douglas/Coffee County to Athens. A couple of members of the Jeff Davis Development Authority were angered by the Highway 441 4-laning idea. They felt it would stymie the Golden Isles Highway project.
Hearing their concerns, I offered my opinion, saying that what’s good for Coffee County is good for Jeff Davis County, what’s good for Jeff Davis County is good for Appling County, what’s good for Appling is good for Wayne, and so forth. If we’re going to succeed, we need to work together and not fight each other.
But my thoughts pretty much fell on deaf ears. “Yeah, but we were first,” one of the naysayers replied. He wanted the Golden Isles Highway project finished before any thought went to the 441 project.
Well, today, the Golden Isles Highway project is, indeed, finished and, as anyone who has traveled to Athens lately can see, the 441 project is well underway, with still much work to be done.
That meeting of the Jeff Davis County Development Authority was long ago. Since that time, the SGRDA was formed and the Jeff Davis County Development Authority no longer exists — it has been replaced by the Joint Development Authority of Jeff Davis County, Hazlehurst and Denton, through which city and county leaders work together.
And other regional development authorities have sprung up in rural areas across the state.
Has the “working together” concept helped? The results have been mixed.
While there are certainly some success stories in Hazlehurst and Jeff Davis County, our county has suffered greatly over the half century that I’ve been at the helm of this newspaper.
When I first got into this business, one avenue of success in the weekly newspaper business was to buy a newspaper in a small community and, as the community grew and excelled, so would the newspaper.
Today, I find myself on the other end of that spectrum. While Jeff Davis County grew markedly during the time the late Claude Cook established his statewide reputation as a “One Man Chamber of Commerce,” things have slowed. While Mr. Cook’s force of personality worked for decades, our state and country do not operate that way any more.
Force of personality doesn’t work today.
Today, it takes much more than one man to pave the path to success.