Hope for a hometown

“Hey!” A bicyclist yells as he pedals past. “When can you get me a job?”

Gibson, Lumpkin’s mayor, is pleasantly vague. He is, after all, a politician.

“We’ll see!” he says. “We’ll see!”

Gibson, 38, has so much in his sights these days. From the rubble of an old peanut processing facility, he envisions something around which the Stewart County town will rally — something of which this banged-around little town can be proud. And civic pride has been woefully short in Lumpkin these past few decades.

He knows. Gibson is a native son who went away, came back and is raising a family on the same street where his mama raised him, the same town where his grandfather lectured the boy on how to live right. He loves Lumpkin, and he worries about it.

Like others here, he’s watched as one store after another has closed: Richardson’s, which outfitted the town’s best-dressed; Lumpkin Drugs, where everybody stopped to get their prescriptions filled; Michelle’s Restaurant, where folks ate fried chicken. One after another, they turned empty glass eyes to a world that increasingly passed Lumpkin by. In time, they became no more than dusty mirrors reflecting the log trucks that rumble through this town 140 miles southwest of Atlanta.

Gibson soon reaches his destination, a low cement wall, the remnant of a building where peanut growers once weighed the worth of a season’s toil. The mayor, 6-foot-5, manages to look 7 feet tall as he places one big foot on the site. His Honor can’t keep the pride out of his voice.

“This,” he says, “is it.”

He sweeps a big arm in the direction of the tract, where shards of broken glass bottles glitter in the winter sunlight, where scrub trees and bramble compete for space. Amid the wooded tangle are the remains of other buildings, unintended monuments to a time past.

Back there, toward the rear of the 2-acre tract? Perhaps a park where people can let their dogs romp. Closer by, maybe a park for folks to enjoy days such as this sunny January gift.

And, right where he stands: a library, with books and movies and Wi-Fi, the works. A library, the cornerstone of Lumpkin’s rebirth. After that, who knows? The mayor, who’s not afraid to pray, believes the Almighty has not forgotten this corner of southwest Georgia.

He has reason to ask for help. Critics have assailed his choice for the library site. Others have wondered why he’s focused on a library at all when Lumpkin lacks something as basic as a food store. Even his wife has asked, more than once, how long he’s going to keep at this mayor thing.

Gibson smiles at critics and supporters alike.

“This is coming,” he says. “Slowly, but surely. It’s coming.

2

A change of plans

Charles Gibson was born in Richland, nine miles down the road, but he grew up in Lumpkin. His daddy, a truck driver, was rarely around; in time, he and the boy’s mother divorced. His mom operated a sewing machine at a clothing plant and also worked a part-time secretarial job to make sure they ate. He had the good fortune of growing up near his grandfather, who stood in for the father who wasn’t there. Even now, decades after his grandfather died, the mayor often thinks of him.

Gibson remembers jumping in the old man's pickup, a one-ton Ford, and riding with his grandfather to the train tracks just as the afternoon freight rumbled through. It was a ritual, counting the cars and listening to the fwump—fwump, fwump-fwump of the steel wheels. In such a way, one generation reached out to another.

Sitting at a table at Lumpkin’s City Hall, Gibson smiles at the memory.

“He taught me a lot of things a man should know,” he says.

Gibson was a big kid, growing up in a small town where everyone knew him, where folks kept track of young Charles to make sure he behaved. By ninth grade, he was 6-foot-2; at little 1-A Stewart-Quitman High School, he had no choice but to play basketball. Not surprisingly, he was the Royal Knights’ center. Gibson wasn’t a great scorer but excelled at rebounds; in one game, he pulled down 27.

A big man on campus, he soon had a sweetie — Monica Carter, who was a sophomore when he was a junior. He remembers that spring afternoon when she pulled him aside for a private talk before basketball practice. He repeated the word:

"Pregnant?" Pregnant.

The Knights’ center merely went through the motions at practice that day. Walking home, Charles wondered what his mom would say. He was 17.

Tressye Hardwick was heartbroken — resolute, too.

Just because you stumble doesn't mean you fall, the mother told her son. We'll raise this child.

The baby was born in early 1994. Her parents named her Gamberdecia — a huge name for such a lit tle human, with nearly a syllable for every pound at birth. The father watched the baby learn to crawl, then to walk. He was about to learn something about himself, too.

His senior year, Stewart-Quitman went to the state basketball championships. The Royal Knights lost to Richmond Hill, 62-46, but the big center’s play was good enough for Miles College. The historically black college near Birmingham offered him a scholarship.

He wanted to say no. Gamberdecia was in Lumpkin; he belonged there, too. But his mother and others urged him to go. They’d look after the baby while he was gone. She’d still be a little child by the time he finished his education and, presumably, had more resources to raise her. Gibson went. Reluctantly.

What happened next still seems to bother Gibson. Miles College withdrew his scholarship — administrators told him funds had been misused and it lacked the cash to underwrite his education. Stung, Gibson moved to Atlanta, enrolling at DeVry University to learn computer science. But DeVry didn’t offer basketball scholarships, and Gibson soon reached a tough conclusion: He couldn’t afford school.

And this: He missed his little girl, by then living full time with his mother.

“My dad had never been a presence in my life,” he says. “I wasn’t going to let that happen to my daughter.”

Gibson hired on as an assembly worker at a southwest Georgia company that made fluorescent light fixtures. It was dull, repetitive work; as his hands pulled wiring, Gibson thought of the lost basketball game, the college he briefly attended, the little girl relying on her daddy. Life, he knew, had to hold more than this. Nights, he studied computer repair. To this day, he still works on customers’ computers in the evenings. He’s also a paraprofessional at a Richland group home that helps people suffering from mental disabilities, drug abuse or both.

In 2004, he married Keltrina Rivers, whom he’d met in Atlanta. They had three children, now 9, 7 and 5. In 2008, he and Keltrina divorced. She left for Columbus. Suddenly, Gibson had four children.

The next year he remarried. He and Amber Glenn soon had a boy, Charles Jr., bringing Gibson’s family to five children. They all still live with him.

Gibson embraced family life. He headed a Boy Scout troop and got involved in his church; people were drawn to his ready smile and positive attitude. Folks in Lumpkin took a second look at the tall man who’d once played basketball for the school.

He also took a hard look at his hometown.

“I felt like I needed to do something,” he says. “When I asked, ‘What can I do to help?’ people said, ‘Run for office.’”

He took that advice. In early 2006, newly elected Councilman Gibson took his seat on the six-member board.

3

Hard times

In many ways, Lumpkin represents the peaks and valleys of rural life in Georgia. It incorporated in 1830 and took its name from Wilson Lumpkin, a Georgia congressman instrumental in removing Cherokees from north Georgia. In the years before the Civil War, Lumpkin attracted settlers from across the young nation; by 1850, it was one of Georgia’s largest towns with about 1,000 residents. It thrived as a stagecoach stop, and the town’s merchants enjoyed a healthy trade with area cotton farmers.

But another young town, Atlanta, began luring away residents of southwest Georgia. After the Civil War, that migration only intensified, especially among blacks who sought better economic opportunities elsewhere. Then the boll weevil decimated the cotton industry, and thus began a decline that has not subsided.

In 1910, the U.S. Census estimated that Stewart County, hard on the Alabama-Georgia line, had more than 13,400 residents. In 2010, the federal agency determined that Stewart’s population totaled 6,058 — a decline of more than 50 percent during the past century.

Those hard numbers are reflected in downtown Lumpkin, population about 2,700. Six businesses, excluding the courthouse, operate regularly on the town square. They include an insurance agency, a medical clinic, a gun store and a taxidermy shop. People may have left Lumpkin, but whitetail deer have not.

Stewart County was a different place four decades ago, says Ron Provencher, publisher of the Stewart Webster Journal Patriot-Citizen. The weekly newspaper covers five southwest Georgia counties.

“Back then, it was jumping,” says Provencher, who delivers his newspapers every Wednesday from the back of a Ford Excursion. “Everything was going right along.”

But events were unfolding that no chamber of commerce could stop. The rail line that Gibson had visited as a boy went out of use, cutting Lumpkin off from rail commerce. In the early 1990s, highway crews built the US 27 bypass around Lumpkin; cars that once passed through the Georgia town on their way to somewhere simply looped around the town. The peanut industry around Lumpkin languished as farmers switched to growing trees, an industry not requiring as much labor.

Provencher, whose livelihood depends on selling advertising, watched as one business after another closed. For years car dealers and other big-ticket merchants paid for advertising space; these days, says Provencher, the mom-and-pop businesses in Lumpkin can hardly afford to buy ads. And it’s not just Lumpkin that’s hurting.

“If it weren’t for (advertising in) Americus, we wouldn’t be here,” says Provencher.

A quarter of the households in Stewart County households live below the poverty level, compared to less than 20 percent statewide. Unemployment hovers slightly above 10 percent, well above Georgia’s overall unemployment rate of 7.4 percent.

Those numbers likely don’t surprise anyone in Lumpkin, even its younger residents. Daughter Gamberdecia, one of the reasons Gibson has stayed in the area? She’s attending Columbus Technical College, studying to be an aesthetician, a specialist in skin care and makeup. She should finish her studies later this year. And then?

“I’ll go to Lumpkin,” she says, “but that’s to visit family.”

She’s got her sights set on Atlanta, maybe even L.A.

4

Library closes

He was no longer a council newcomer that 2008 afternoon when Gibson visited the town library on the square. For the councilman, entering the compact building brought back memories. Upstairs, he’d watched “Old Yeller,” “The Goonies” and other movies. Downstairs, he’d read books. All over the place, he’d made memories.

Gibson sniffed.

“Do you smell gas?” he asked the librarian.

“I don’t smell anything,” the librarian replied.

Gibson, unconvinced, questioned the odor in a message he wrote on a comment card. He signed it “Councilman Gibson” and dropped the card in a suggestion box. Chattahoochee Valley Libraries, the authority providing equipment and staff, took heed: When an elected official raises a question about safety, it’s prudent not to ignore him. An investigation revealed the old building was filled with mold. Removing it would cost $80,000-$110,000, so the library closed later that year.

The entire town felt the loss — none more so than Councilman Gibson.

“I was the one who asked about the smell,” he says.

He ran for re-election in 2009 and won. The next year, the town’s mayor gave up his office for health reasons. Gibson resigned his seat to run for Lumpkin’s top job.

It was a three-way race, pitting Gibson against a former mayor and another candidate.

“I tried to knock on every door in town,” he says. “I didn’t get to all of them, but I got to most.”

Establishing a new library — he calls it a knowledge nest — was part of his campaign platform. It would form the nucleus of an expanding economy, Gibson told the people of Lumpkin. It would provide access to computers and Internet service to those having to do without. With the town’s proximity to Columbus, new industries could be attracted to Lumpkin if they invested in a library.

His campaign worked. The councilman captured 77 percent of the vote.

When he took the oath of office, Gibson became the first African-American mayor in Lumpkin’s 185-year history.

In 2011, he ran for a full, four-year term. Gibson won that election, too.

The easy part was over.

5

Critics and challenges

In November 2012 Stewart County voters approved SPLOST, a special local option sales tax. Of that amount, about $600,000 was Lumpkin’s. City officials designated $150,000 for a library. Gibson wanted to build a new one from the ground up. Early estimates placed the cost at $280,000.

While city officials were happy to receive the money, not everyone backed the mayor’s plan — Council Member Barbara Cullefer, for one. Cullefer led the council’s decision to buy the old Lumpkin Drugs building on the square. It was vacant, she argued, and would be a perfect spot for a new library. Gibson wasn’t able to muster the votes to stop its acquisition. The council voted 5-1 to buy the old building for $50,000.

Only later did officials learn that refurbishing the building to accommodate a library could cost as much as $500,000 — nearly twice the estimated price to build a new structure. It was too late to back out of the deal, so the council bought the building. But for an abandoned copying machine, it’s empty.

Cullefer remains convinced the square is the appropriate place for a library, even if the old drug store may not be the right fit.

“I feel like we need to be building up on our history and promoting the square,” says Cullefer, who’s criticized city spending in the past. “If we could get one or two things started on the square, eventually other things would follow.”

And who says the library is the most important thing Lumpkin needs? MaryAnne Holloway, 22, isn’t convinced it is.

“I have a library card,” says Holloway, who works at Snooky’s restaurant just off the square. “I can to go Richland when I want to go to library.

“There’s a grocery store there, too,” she says pointedly.

Other challenges face the library, says Alan Harkness, director of Chattahoochee Valley Libraries, which serves more than 250,000 people in Muscogee, Chattahoochee, Marion and Stewart counties. Outfitting a new library could cost more than $1 million, and that doesn’t include an estimated $70,000 to $82,000 in annual salaries to staff the place.

“It’s tough,” says Harkness, who’s visited the proposed Lumpkin site several times. “They need a shot in the arm. Maybe a library will do it.”

Gibson understands the challenges, but he has help. He’s working with the Rural Library Project, an Atlanta-based nonprofit whose name explains its mission, in planning a full-service facility. A library at Emory University, as well as Chattahoochee Valley Libraries, have donated shelving. Others have pledged books. The mayor also has the phone number of Jarvis Jones, Stewart County native and millionaire linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers; he’s going to call Jones one day and discuss the town’s future. He’s also looking for other private donations.

“I know that it’s something we can get done,” he says.

Kartina Dalton shares Gibson’s optimism.

“It’s like something’s been taken from this town,” says Dalton, 34, and a Lumpkin native. “I’m counting on him.”

6

Vision for the future

After a recent council meeting, an irate resident pulled Gibson aside.

“Your time,” he said, “is coming.”

While Gibson shrugs off such talk, others don’t. Some wonder if his skin color has polarized his constituency.

“Believe me, every time he walks out that door, I’m scared,” says Tressye Hardwick, the mayor’s mother. “I tell him: ‘I don’t know who’s gotten more gray hair (in office), you or President Obama.”

Others suspect his age is an issue.

“I think it’s because he’s so young,” says the Rev. Henry Clark Sr., pastor of Greater St. Mark A.M.E. Church, where the mayor is a member. “They remember him when he was just a child, growing up.”

And others say it’s the Lumpkin way to distrust something new.

Fannie Perrymond taught in the Stewart County school system for 35 years. A Lumpkin resident, she’s watched the town’s latest mayor with a mix of pleasure and pride. Years ago, he was her student.

“He has a vision for the town which, you might say, is beyond the average expectations of this town,” she says. “He believes this town can live again.”

Gibson does. Industries could return. Entrepreneurs could move into some of the old buildings on the square. It hinges, he thinks, on what’s happening on that battered plot where peanut farmers once congregated.

On a February morning he leads another trip to the library site. It’s a glorious day, warm and windy, as welcome as the season’s first daffodil. The sun winks off his cuff links. Each features a stylized “S” — Superman’s logo. He sees parallels between the cast-off superhero and himself — each without a father, each raised by an older man.

Each with a mission, each not fully understood.

His wife, Gibson says, recently had a few questions for His Honor.

Wife: “Are you going to run again?”

Mayor: “I haven’t made my mind up yet.”

Wife: “Well, when will you?”

Without realizing it, the mayor starts walking faster as he recounts that conversation until his steps bring him back to that spot on MLK. In the distance a yellow John Deere’s backhoe claws at the earth, yanking up trees and moving dirt. It’s the first serious step in preparing the tract for the library, and Gibson is relieved to see it. Folks want proof that the mayor is doing more than just talk.

He points at a pile of cement blocks.

“I hear they recycle concrete these days,” he says. “I tell you this: We’ve got all they want.”

But that’s not what Gibson really wants to recycle, nor what Lumpkin needs. His little town needs hope, and he knows it.

“Every night,” says Gibson, “I get on my knees and ask God for the people and tools we need.”

Lord willing, Lumpkin breaks ground for a new library this summer.

HOW WE GOT THE STORY
While talking to a colleague one day, Mark Davis learned about the Rural Library Project, an Atlanta-based program that fosters the growth and development of public libraries in small towns. He was intrigued and called project director Dan White, who gave Davis some advice. "You need to talk to the mayor in Lumpkin," he said. "What he's trying to do is remarkable." Davis took his advice.  "Hope for a hometown" is the result: an inspiring story about one man's efforts to improve the quality of life in a small South Georgia town and the challenges he's encountered along the way.

Suzanne Van Atten
Features Enterprise Editor
personaljourneys@ajc.com

About the reporter

Mark Davis joined the AJC in 2003 after working in Philadelphia, Tampa and his native North Carolina. A graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Davis has reported on heroes, bums and creatures that walk, swim, crawl and fly.

About the photographer

Kent D. Johnson is a veteran journalist with more than 31 years experience. He joined the AJC as sports photo editor in 1998 and has held a number of visual editing and shooting roles at the paper since, including photo assignment editor for nine years. Johnson also worked at papers in Charlotte, N.C., Jackson, Miss., Fort Myers, Fla., and Muskogee, Okla.