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Fayette Faces
Fayetteville owes unpaid
debt to selfless mayor
By BRUCE L. JORDAN
Special to The Citizen
[Fayette County a half-century
ago was a world away from what is now our congested suburban community.
Although it was a poor farming area, the people that built the towns were
proud people, striking characters whose faces if not for the early development
of photography would have been lost forever.
Those black and white photographs captured the times and the flavor of
the people that developed this county during the past century. Here are
some of the untold stories behind those intriguing but otherwise silent
pictures.]
During the same years that Sheriff Tobe Brown was enjoying time with his
granddaughter Mildred there was another family halfway across the state
raising a son who showed great promise. John and Lillie Day were proud
parents of two sons and two daughters. The youngest son was John Day Jr.
Although John Day Sr. was much too proper to ever be known as anything
but John or Father Day, John Day Jr. would come to be known as Jack.
John Day Sr. was the president of the local bank in Milledgeville and
the Days were one of the prominent families in the middle Georgia town.
In those days it was an odd tradition among families of means to dress
their toddler boys in such fancy attire that while viewing their photographs
today you might mistake a young boy like Jack Day Jr. for a girl.
Lillie Day took John Jr., or Jack as he would come to be known, for numerous
photographic sessions with the local photographer. Looking at those photographs
today, you would never guess that he would be the future mayor of Fayetteville.
John Day Sr. and his wife Lillie sent Jack Jr. to Georgia Military College
where he studied and enjoyed college life. There is no way of knowing
if the Day family had ever heard of the small town of Fayetteville or
its county sheriff or town doctor, but the families were about to come
together and change the quality of many people’s lives in the small
farming community.
Mildred Day was attending Wesleyan College of Georgia in Macon. She took
advantage of the newly introduced Ford motorcar and visited Milledgeville
and Georgia Military College where she met Jack Day Jr. It was the 1920s,
an exciting time in America for young college students.
Jack Day and Mildred Seawright met, fell in love and married after her
visit to Milledgeville. Jack became a pharmacist, and although he initially
lived in Athens, as Mildred’s mother had done before her, Mildred
convinced her doctor-husband to return with her to the small town of Fayetteville
and take over her family’s pharmacy on the town square.
Jack found in his wife many of the qualities John Sr. had found in Lillie.
Mildred Day had been raised with small-town values and was the quintessential
Southern belle. Mildred was a sweet, well-balanced, lovable, proper lady
who won the heart of anyone she met. Those who remember her say her personality
was the opposite of her mother’s.
The words prim and proper are seldom if ever used to describe her mother
Lois’s personality. That’s not to say Lois was not a decent
woman with moral values; she was. Growing up as the sheriff’s daughter
and eventually the town doctor’s wife, she was also raised with good
Southern moral values and a belief in right and wrong.
And if you were ever wrong around Lois Seawright, she would be quick to
let you know. She was a strong-willed, opinionated woman who took no grief
from anyone, not even the F.B.I.
Jumping ahead for a moment to 1965, Lois was at that time the county voter
registrar, operating out of the store on the square.
By that time the store was only being used as a Trailways bus station
and Lois’ office. Her grandson, Kerry Day, was there the day the
F.B.I. came to her to ask how many black voters were registered in the
county.
“How the hell do you expect me to know?” was her response. She
threw her voter registration box on the counter and said, “There
was a time I could’ve told you because we used to use color-coded
cards but y’all made us stop doing that.
“Now you want me to tell you a count of black and white when I’ve
got no damn idea.”
Lois continued, “You boys need to make up your damn mind whether
you want us to keep a count or not.” The F.B.I. left Fayetteville
knowing only that Lois Seawright did not mince her words.
Long-time Georgia Secretary of State Ben Fortson Jr. learned a similar
lesson when he tried to speak to Lois in the rotunda at the state Capitol.
Her granddaughter Dale, who worked in the Capitol at the time, was with
her as Mr. Fortson, who was confined to a wheelchair, followed Lois though
the rotunda trying to get her attention. She told her granddaughter, “Just
keep walking.”
Dale, being a state employee, was not at all comfortable with ignoring
the Georgia Secretary of State who was chasing them in a wheelchair, but
Lois insisted, “Keep walking.”
When Fortson caught up with her, he said, “Lois, I’ve been wondering
how you’ve been.”
Lois stopped abruptly and turned to him and said, “Ben Fortson, you’re
a liar. You don’t give a damn how I’ve been!”
Jack Day Jr. had married one of the sweetest women in Fayetteville and
with that came a mother-in-law who, if he wasn’t careful, would bowl
him over and never look back. Jack Day Jr. would be up to the challenge.
Jack and Mildred’s life was a storybook love affair. They started
the all-American family with three beautiful children. Jack took over
the pharmacy on the square. Soon after moving to Fayetteville, Jack became
very active in the town of Fayetteville.
Fayetteville was the ideal place to raise children. It was a small-town
atmosphere with good churches and good people but with a dwindling population
and in desperate need of good leaders.
In 1950 Jack was elected to the Fayetteville City Council where he served
with Mildred’s cousin, William O. Dettmering, one of Sheriff Tobe
Brown’s grandsons. In 1954 Jack was elected mayor of Fayetteville.
He was a sincere leader who wanted the best for the county seat and his
new-found home of Fayetteville.
Jack served as mayor and city councilman during some lean years for the
city and Fayette County. Transportation and good roads provided Fayette’s
young population good access to more affluent areas and opportunities
around Atlanta. Fayette’s population had plummeted to its lowest
ever at around 8,000. The county courthouse and county and city facilities
fell into a serious state of disrepair as the tax base dwindled and fewer
tax dollars were collected by local governments.
Many of those who remained in Fayetteville could not afford health care.
They would bring their prescriptions to the Jack Day pharmacy with no
insurance or means to pay for the medicine many desperately needed. Jack
Day did not have the heart to turn them away.
The Day’s pharmacy was located on the town square, and in the 1950s
with its soda fountain, it became the local popular hangout. So popular
that Fayette County Sheriff Hugh Stinchcomb had routed his county radio
into a speaker in the pharmacy and answered calls of trouble in the county
from the drug store. Many of the local men hung out there and discussed
county matters.
When those who could not afford the medicine prescribed to them brought
the prescriptions to the Day pharmacy, Jack Day gave them their medicine.
Randall Johnson, Fayette County’s sheriff today, remembers someone
asking the man he knew as Doc Day, “How you ever gonna have anything
if you keep giving everything away?”
Jack Day’s answer, “I just can’t stand to see people suffer.”
According to those who knew him, “Doc” Jack Day would have died
a rich man were it not for his compassion for those in pain who could
not afford the medicine they needed. In Jack Day’s tenure as the
town’s pharmacist, few people suffered if he could help them.
“He was one of the most giving people you would ever meet,”
remembers one of Fayette County’s leading amateur historians, Bobby
Kerlin.
Kerlin continued, “When he died, the city named a park just south
of his store after him for all that he did for the town and its needy
in his years.”
That’s what people do when someone in their town gives so much to
their people that they believe he or she should be remembered for their
contributions. It is a town’s way of saying, “Were it not for
him, some among us may have not have made it through our leaner years.”
Memorials are built to mark significant times and people, and the history
of an era.
Jack Day Park, named in 1965 after his death, was located at the corner
of Stonewall Avenue and South Glynn Street, one block from his pharmacy.
Such a valuable piece of prime property was dedicated to him to remember
the mayor and city councilman who gave so much to the community during
a difficult time.
That same year the students of Fayette County High School dedicated two
pages of their year book to Jack Day. Rarely do you see a politician or
town leader recognized by high school students, a monument to the man’s
contributions to the town at the time.
In 1992 the people in power allowed Jack Day Park to be demolished to
make way for what is now Stonewall Village. Most of the park became a
large office park which is now the home of the county offices. A small
portion of the lot where the fountain is now located was named “Heritage
Park.”
The Day family was told that the small pavilion area would be named Jack
Day Park, but it never happened. None of the city or county politicians
holding office now were responsible for the action then, but only they
can correct it now.
In my second book I argued that the statue on the state Capitol grounds
of politician Tom Watson should be replaced or accompanied by a statue
of Gov. John Slaton. Watson’s anti-semitic rhetoric inflamed and
encouraged the Cobb County community to lynch innocent factory owner Leo
Frank while Gov. Slaton sought to save him.
More intelligent people argued to me that this position represented revisionist
history. I now believe they were correct.
Monuments should forever memorialize the person and their contribution
to their moment in history, whether we agree with them later or not. Would
we rename the Washington Memorial the Ronald Reagan Memorial, or the Lincoln
Memorial the Bill Clinton Memorial? No, we wouldn’t.
City streets should forever maintain their original names, if named after
a person. Hartsfield Airport should forever be known as that, and Jack
Day Park should be reinstated as Jack Day Park.
NEXT IN PART 4: A carnival comes to town ... and produces a mayor.
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