The distinguished career of the longest-serving commissioner in the history of Monroe County came to a close at the end of 2020.
Larry Evans has served as District 1 Commissioner since 1987, representing much of the City of Forsyth for the past 33 years. Among the many achievements Monroe County has made during Evans’ tenure were: paving about 80 percent of the county’s roads, successfully starting a water system, constructing a county landfill, drastically expanding the size of its sheriff’s office and fire service, expanding its recreation park to include a Youth Center, securing millions of dollars in federal and state grant funding for community needs including a Senior Center, Head Start location and Workforce Development Center, restoring the more than century-old Monroe County Courthouse and opening a state-of-the-art administration building.
Along the way, Evans served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, worked a long career with Norfolk Southern Railroad and raised a wonderful family, which includes Annie, his wife of 50 years, daughter Chandra, two sons, Farrell and Andrell, grandsons T.J., Pierce and Tatum and great-granddaughter Mia.
Shortly before leaving office on Dec. 31, Evans reflected on a memorable three-decade-long career as a commissioner.
On how he most wants to be remembered as a commissioner:
“I want people to remember that I was fair on each and every issue that came before the board. And I was neutral when you arrived and presented the necessary information concerning an issue. I’m always going to look at both sides. I’m impartial. I’ve never judged issues about who’s presenting them. I don’t care if you’re considered very affluently rich or very non-affluently poor. I look strictly at the issue that’s before me. And once I gather all of the information necessary on the issue, I will then make the determination as to my position on it and how I will vote. Because you can’t go back in most cases and retract a vote. And I always look at issues as if it is me. I put myself in that particular position. And I say, ‘How would I want to approach this issue? How would I handle it in the best interest of all concerned?’ I never ever went home at night after voting on an issue and felt as though I mistreated anybody. And I can sleep at night that way. I wanted to treat people just as I would want to be treated.”
On how his interest in local politics dates all the way back to when he was a young teenager:
“When I was in the eighth grade, I was taking Civics, and my eighth grade teacher was Mrs. Rubye Watts. And she was a wonderful teacher. And she taught us everything about local, state and national government. We had to know that there were 435 representatives and 100 senators. We had to know who they were, the people in our state. We studied local government and the best way to learn about local government is to go for yourself, hands-on, and see what they do in local government. So we came to some of the meetings. . . There were so many things we took. We understood that the county commissioners taxed property mainly to get the money, and it’s roads and revenue. We read what the charter was all about. So the election was coming up. Commissioners used to run for two years. And we had a group that we still have right now, the Voters League. And the Voters League is all about teaching people about voting and getting them out to vote. No money is involved. You don’t pay any dues or anything to the Voters League. It’s all about getting people to participate in the voting process. And under the Voters League, Mr. Charles Wilder was president of that then. We also had the Youth Civic League. The Youth Civic League was a kid under the Voters League, so we were the stepkids. We decided to have a commissioners forum, and we had it at Kynette Church. We were bent on the issues, the roads, the recreation, we had a list of things that we wanted to know about. We had a long, long list of questions. And when the commissioners arrived, they said, ‘Well heck, what’s going on here? We ain’t got nothing but a bunch of kids here. Y’all can’t vote.’ We said, ‘Well our parents can. Other people can. We’re the Youth Civic League.’ The commissioners said, ‘Well heck, ain’t no sense in us staying here.’ And we said, ‘We’ve got a bunch of questions for you and everything.’ But they decided to leave. They left. So we said, ‘Ok.’ Well the rest of the story is we got them all un-elected.”
On how he became the first African American commissioner in Monroe County history in 1987:
“All of the three (commission) seats were at-large then. And in 1986, I, along with about six other African Americans, we sued the county. We sued the county in federal court to set it up in districts. Several blacks had run at-large and couldn’t win. So we set it up, and we argued back and forth for over a year about it. And we wanted five districts, five single-member districts. And that way we could have elected possibly two blacks. Judge Tommy Wilson, Robert Williams and Linda Arthur, they were the commissioners then. And we didn’t just sue. I came to many meetings and asked them. I said, ‘Let’s set this up on districts.’ They refused. I told them, ‘Well, we’re taking you to federal court before Judge Wilbur Owens.’ He was the Senior Federal Judge down in the Macon District. We took them down there, and we won. And we set it up. Like I said, we wanted five single-member districts. And the commissioners elect the chairperson. And the chairperson will preside at the meetings.”
On how the lawsuit to establish commission districts was not the first time he sued Monroe County:
“I had sued the county before this too. I sued the Superior Court in 1975. Myself, Carrie Lamar and Mildred Wilder. We sued the Monroe County Superior Court for a lack of blacks on the juries. Took that to federal court, and Judge Wilbur Owens heard that suit too. Found in our favor to ensure that blacks were represented, percentage-wise. And one of the things that he stipulated in the order, and the order is still in effect right now, was that back then they were getting the majority of the people that were on the juries, the traverse juries and the grand juries, they were getting them from the voter registration lists. Well he said you need to reach farther than that, get them out of the phone book, get them out of the neighborhoods, or wherever. We won that suit in federal court, and it’s still in effect right now, that order. That was in 1975. And the reason for that was a guy was convicted of killing a lady on Hill Road, right down in Bolingbroke. . . The accused man was illiterate. We sat up there and watched the court, how they convicted him, gave him life. He did not kill that lady. He did not kill her. He was eventually released. But he was convicted, and we went to court every day. We raised $6,000, the NAACP. And I was president of the NAACP to help defend (the accused). He served at least 30 years before he was finally released. That was just a total injustice.”
On arguably his greatest achievement in office, serving as project manager of the three-year-long renovation, completed in 2010, of Monroe County’s historic courthouse:
“I was on the courthouse committee starting in 1992. And it needed renovations back then. Years and years passed and passed. And we finally put $1 million in the SPLOST. If I’m not wrong, it might have been in 2004 or thereabouts. But we put $1 million in SPLOST and then the courthouse committee changed. There were some members that moved away or faded away or whatever. And the money was just sitting there. Jim Ham remained on the board with me, and he had a concern about the courthouse also. And we sat down and talked about it. Mike Bilderback was on the board at that particular time, and Jim Peters, and Harold Carlisle. They wanted to move forward on the courthouse, so they said since I’d been on the courthouse committee for so long, they asked me, ‘Would you assume the responsibility of the restoration of the courthouse?’ It took three years to complete. And the reason it took so long is we did about 65 percent of the work in-house with the county maintenance staff. And that was Emmett Smith, Ray White, John Fortner, Alfred Taylor and Claude Webb. . . They (commissioners) more or less let me pick the members that I wanted on the courthouse committee. So I gave them a list. I gave them the Clerk of the Superior Court Lynn Ham, the Probate Judge Karen Pitman, Jane Newton and Wiley Crosby. After we picked that committee, we all went through the courthouse and assessed the needs. We all agreed it needed the roof, the windows were falling out, aluminum windows, and the doors. It still had the original doors in the courthouse. They were falling off the hinges.”
On the undeniable success of the courthouse renovation:
“It was estimated that we saved something like $3 million. Because we had taken bids on it and the cheapest bid we got was somewhere like $4 million. And we did everything for $1.2 million, and that was with the grounds. That was with completely removing the grounds and putting new grounds in. And (Reporter editor) Will Davis said we cut down the trees and just destroyed the aesthetic value of the whole town. But we agreed that was the best way. And the only way to do that was to put the walkway back all the way around the courthouse just as it was 100 years ago. The courthouse was built in 1896, and to do it and get it right, that sidewalk was a circular sidewalk, so we first said we were going to do a rock walkway because back then that’s what they used. It was a rock-type walkway around there. We said that was kind of impractical, so we took bids on the walkway. A company out of Griffin, Favors Concrete, got the bid to simulate the walkway. You call that stamping. They did a stamp job. If you notice, it appears like it’s rock. . . But to make a long story short, it turned out better than any of us ever could have imagined.”
On his unsuccessful initial attempt to start a county water system:
When I came on the board, we sat down, and they (other commissioners) wanted to know exactly what I saw the most need for in Monroe County. I said the main thing we need right now is paved roads and we need water. Well I couldn’t get any traction on the water, so we said that we would first try to pave every road that there’s a church on. And we started right away within a year. On the water projects since I couldn’t get any traction, I got a company called Rogers Engineering out of Atlanta. Mr. Rogers was doing the water system in Spalding County, and I went out when he just happened to be there. One day I saw him standing out when they were digging, and I went and met him and talked to him for a minute. He seemed like he was a swell guy. And I told him I was newly-elected down here and wondered would he come down here and look at Monroe County and assess our needs and be willing to talk to us about the commission. He said, ‘I sure will.’ He said, ‘I fly my own plane, and I’ll fly Monroe County and look at all the topography of it. And I’ll get back with you.’ A couple of months later, sure enough he called me and said, ‘I’ve got all the information for you.’ So I lined him up to come meet with us at the commission meeting. I put him on the agenda. He showed up with his facts and figures. He said, ‘You know what? I’ve got good news for y’all. I can put water in Monroe County.’ They wanted to know, Tommy (Wilson) and Robert (Williams) and them, ‘What for? How much is it gonna cost?’ He said, ‘It’s not going to cost Monroe County a dime.’ He said, ‘I can put it in in stages.’ And there was USDA money out there then. And he said, ‘We’ll put it in in stages, and we’ll go where water can pay for itself.’ They said, ‘Nah, we don’t need no water here. We’ve got wells.’ And Tommy and Robert were adamantly against it. They’ll tell you that. I said, ‘You might not need water now. But we’re going to need it down the road for progress.’ I said, ‘We can get it free.’ I said, ‘It looks bad to me that I know of counties down in South Georgia and over in Alabama that ain’t got no interstate and don’t have nothing, and they’ve got water.’ And then we had a little forum down at the fire department in Popes Ferry. I never will forget it. So we had a group down there in the bay area at Popes Ferry. I said, ‘I’ve got a proposal from Rogers Engineering out of Atlanta that we can put water all over the county, and it won’t cost us nothing.’ ‘Who? I’m depending on my well. We don’t need no water.’ Heck, I got that over and over again. I said, ‘Listen, if we had water, we can put in fire hydrants. Your homeowners’ insurance is going to go way down. I have clean water.’ And that crew jumped on me down there. And when they came up here raising hell about water, I reminded them of it. I said, ‘Were any of you at that meeting down there when y’all whipped me because I wanted to put water in the county and it wasn’t going to cost you nothing?’ And some people remembered it. . . They went on so bad over there that you wouldn’t believe it. I was just dismayed. I said, ‘I just can’t believe this.’ And finally about 10 or 12 years later, Tommy Wilson discovered that we did need water.”
On a fruitful negotiation with the City of Forsyth that led to the expansion of water in Monroe County:
“In 1995, we were at a stalemate on the LOST tax, Local Option Sales Tax. Paul Jossey was the Forsyth mayor. We were at a stalemate about splitting that money up. They were getting about 20 percent then of the LOST money. And my crew wanted them to go down. They’re getting 15 percent now. But that went on for about a year. And we had the state come down here. They tried to moderate the thing and get us to work out something. So after we found we were at an impasse for so long, what we did was we finally got together with Paul Jossey and council that if they would run water out 10 miles, give us 10 miles of water out into the county, that we would leave the LOST sales tax where it was, the same percentage. And they agreed. And that’s how we started extending the water lines in every direction. We extended them out Old Brent Road. That’s how we got water out to I-75 at Johnstonville Road. It was there long before River Forest. That’s how the water went there. So that started the water. So we said rather than fight about the water money, we said we would divvy it up, split it up. And that worked up until this new crowd came on three years ago. We split up the road money. And when we’d run into a problem on road money, we would exchange money. And that worked.”
On Monroe County getting unexpectedly ejected from the City of Forsyth’s landfill:
“In 1989 we were using the city’s landfill. The city landfill was on Old Brent Road behind Hubbard School. And the state came out with new policies concerning landfills that if a landfill wasn’t closed by a certain date that you would have to monitor that landfill for 30 years upon closure. You were going to have to put wells all around the landfill and supply water samples to the state like every six months or something to see if there was any contamination. We got a copy of that letter too. The county was providing one employee out there and a dozer. And the city was providing one person at the landfill. And back then, we didn’t even have a scale out there. The state didn’t require a scale. And they weren’t charging anybody to dump back then. You could drive in there and dump. And once they did that, we got the letter. We told the city, and the city didn’t have but so much longer until the landfill would be full. Maybe a couple of years at the most. So we told them, ‘Why don’t we get together and build a landfill together?’ They said, ‘Build it? It’ll last longer without you all. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll just kick you out of the landfill.’ So they gave us a couple of months to get out of the landfill. They contracted and turned the landfill over to a private operator. And he tried to negotiate with us where we were going to pay him so much to dump in there. We said, ‘Hell will freeze over. We ain’t going into no shotgun wedding.’ They (other commissioners) said, ‘Well what are we gonna do here?’ And I said, ‘If we can get one of these counties to let us into their landfill until we can build one, maybe we can do it then.’ They said, ‘You’ve got such an idea. You find us a county that will let us in until we can build a landfill.’ I called Lamar County. They wouldn’t talk to me. Butts County, Jones County, and Jasper too. And I said, ‘Heck with it.’ I knew I had a good rapport with a couple of the commissioners in Crawford County, and I went and talked with them. . . “I told them, ‘If y’all were to let us in your landfill, we’d we willing to pay a sum. And we would be willing to pay you back if y’all need to dump or whatever.’ They said, ‘We do need a scale out there now. We’ve never had a scale.’ I said, ‘I think we might can work something out on that.’ They said, ‘Let’s find out how much a scale would cost.’ I said, ‘Find out.’ So they found out a scale would be $75,000. I remember it just like yesterday. And I brought it to my board. I said, ‘They’re gonna let us in there if we buy them a $75,000 scale. They ain’t gonna charge us by the tons or nothing like that. But if they ever close their landfill or anything like that, they can come up here and dump.’ And a couple of commissioners didn’t want to go for that. I know Jim (Ham) didn’t. ‘$75,000, that’s a lot of money.’ I said, ‘It ain’t nothing because what else are we gonna do?’ Anyway, we took them up on it and put the scale in.”
On a protracted legal fight that ended in victory for Monroe County and the building of the county’s landfill:
“Meanwhile, we went and took requests for proposal for the landfill. We did not even have a site in mind. We hired an engineering firm, Moreland Altobelli. What happened was they came in and they assessed our needs, how many tons we’d be dumping a day, all that kind of stuff. And what would make sense. So we told them to come up with us 10 sites, 10 possible sites, and evaluate them and come up with the best available sites. Give us one, two, three. So the site that was picked No. 1 was right out there where it is, Strickland Loop. And the priority for the site was we wanted the least populated area we could find. We wanted to put it in the most isolated spot we could find. Then it would have a longevity of as much as 100 years, where we wouldn’t have to come back and do this all over again. And that it wouldn’t be any problem about the soil in the area. In other words, we didn’t want to have to go and drill through rock. So anyway, they came back with one, two, three, and that was it, Strickland Loop. We did not know that that belonged to the Fickling family. We didn’t know that. And when we selected that site, Mr. Fickling said, ‘No, y’all are not coming out there. That’s my hunting reservation.” So we went to court. They took us to state court here. They took us to federal court in Macon. They took us to state court in Atlanta. We had to have the whole nine yards. That lasted for about a year-and-a-half at least, two years, we were in court with them back and forth. And we had to testify. I was the main person that testified in federal court. I said, ‘Put me on the stand.’ What they were trying to prove is that we only looked at that particular site, which wasn’t true. We asked for 10 sites and showed why that was the best site. We won the suit, and we built that landfill. . . The landfill was a significant accomplishment because never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that a landfill would be a No. 1 priority. Because when I was a kid in the early ‘50s, everybody just buried their trash in the backyard and burned it all over the county. But all that went out. EPD stopped all of that mess.”
On whether he ever considered running for state or federal office:
“I sure did. I gave some thought to running for state representative. I determined that it was not plausible. I looked at who was representing the districts then. Denmark Groover, he was a lawyer in Macon. He was representing a good part of this county. And Benson Ham was representing the rest of it basically. And they were unbeatable. They were very approachable on issues and what not. If you called Benson and told him you needed to see him or Denmark, they would show up. They would come right on and work on the issue, and they helped us out statewide. Here’s why I came back here. I had better job offers. The railroad offered me a position in human resources and planning in Washington, D.C. that paid me double what I was making. They couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t take it. But here’s the reason I came back here. Because there were so many things that needed fixing. The best way to fix it is to fix it yourself. So that’s why I stayed here. And it was a good place to settle. I didn’t want to raise my kids in a big city, which was wrong because all of them live in big cities now, and they love it. . . And I always did say I was going to coach my kids in Little League, which I did. I coached them in baseball, basketball and wanted my daughter to be a cheerleader, majorette, which she was. I just liked the rural setting.”
On the person who most influenced his political career:
“Mr. Charles Wilder, who is the most intelligent man I’ve ever met. He was my eighth grade math teacher. He was my Boy Scout leader. He was a city councilman for 20 years, and he was an agriculture teacher here for 30 some-odd years. Charles Wilder had the overpowering influence on me because he was president of the Voters League for a while. He stayed with it. He’s highly, highly intelligent. Charles Wilder is a smart man. To give you an example, he went to school with a guy named Curtis Atkinson. Curtis Atkinson was the assistant secretary of state under Max Cleland. And Curtis said that no man was supposed to be as smart as Charles Wilder was at that time. And he’s an avid, avid reader. It’s hard to get around him. And he insisted on no bull, no foolishness. He’d kid with us or whatnot like that, but he was dead serious about your studies. He said, ‘If you’re going to get somewhere in life, in most cases it’s going to have to be through education.’ I agree with him 400 percent.”
On whether he ever imagined when he first ran for office that he would spend 33 years as a county commissioner:
“No, I never intended to stay that long. I figured I’d stay two terms. That would have been four years. We were doing two-year terms. No, I never imagined it. But the reason I stayed is for this very reason, I don’t consider myself indispensable by no means. No one is indispensable. But I know that the two things that I’m reminded of is that I’m fair and objective. I’m objective. I’m going to always look at all sides of the issue. I don’t take nobody’s word. People come up here and tell us all kinds of lies on stuff all the time, all kinds of misinformation. So I’m going to be objective, and I’m going to listen to what you say. But if I don’t have the facts up here, or I can’t readily Google it to find out what you’re talking about and try to figure it out. I said, ‘We’re going to hold off on this.’ ‘But we need this done right now.’ I said, ‘Well we can wait a while longer. Let me get some more information on it.’ That’s being objective. And I’m not going to vote on anything that I don’t have any information on.”
On refusing campaign contributions and doing minimal advertising:
“I’ll make time for any situation. If somebody called me right now and tells me, ‘I’ve got a problem, Larry, that I think you can help me solve.’ I’m gonna go and try to do it. That’s my way of thinking because it will make things better. For the record, and everybody knows it, I have never taken a dollar from anybody, campaign contributions. Never. Never a dollar. And I don’t take dinners from people. ‘Let me take you out to dinner.’ I say, ‘If we go out to dinner, it will be Dutch.’ You can’t find nobody in this county that can say they’ve taken me to dinner. Nobody. And I’ve been offered money. I’ve been offered money. I’ve been offered like, ‘Larry, I’d like to give you some money. What do you need?’ I say, ‘No problem. I’ll finance this.’ I’ve been in a situation where I could finance my own self.”
On his favorite memory of longtime friend and adversary, the late District 2 Commissioner Jim Ham:
“My favorite Jim Ham story is we were at a conference I believe in Atlanta, and he showed up in this suit. And his tie was all crooked and everything. And I told him, I said, ‘Jim, your tie is crooked and everything.’ I said, ‘I like your suit, but you could put on the fanciest tuxedo in the world and you’d still look like you’ve got on that big ole size 99 overalls that you wear.’ And everybody laughed because he loved those overalls. And I told him, I said, ‘I started to buy you a pair over there in Thomaston one day I was over there. This guy had them out in the shop over there hanging out in front.’ And I said, ‘They were about a size 99 that you’ve got.’ He said, ‘I hate that you didn’t get them because I need me some.’ I miss him. And he told me plenty of times, ‘Larry, you’ll miss me.’ Listen, I miss him. I miss Jim big time. Jim wasn’t gonna stab me in the back. Jim was going to work. He’d come to my house. We’d talk about stuff, and we’d try to work out stuff and we would. I’d go down to his barn and talk to him and everything. That’s not the situation anymore. But I could work with Jim Ham, and that’s how we got things done. And the best thing about Jim Ham and myself is we had disagreements, but we didn’t take them personal. We didn’t take nothing personal like that. I’d tell Jim, ‘You can go to h—.’ And he isn’t thinking nothing about that. He’d say, ‘Well, I’ve been there, and I’m back now.’ We’d carry on. And we just had a good rapport. I miss him terribly. He carried on, but listen, his heart was in Monroe County. He wanted to do the right thing.”
On what he thinks that commissioners’ main focus should be in the near future:
“What I see that needs to be done right now is for us to get on board with H&H (Timberlands, LLC) with this 1,648-acre project that we’ve been working towards for the past 15 years. So that we can attract some industry here. We need jobs. I was in Atlanta yesterday. I want you to go up and look at the Griffin/Jackson exit. They’ve got another warehouse up there besides Dollar General now, about 500 jobs. And these jobs may not be paying but $13 or $14 an hour, but it’s better than $7.25. They’re paying with benefits, but they need to be here in Monroe County so that we will get taxes off of it. And the people will spend their money here. The book says people tend to spend their money where they make it at. And I never made any money here. I had access to a company car. I didn’t drive it home. I left it up in Griffin. But anyway, most of my grocery shopping was in Griffin. . . And we’re missing the tax dollars off of it. We’re missing the jobs off of it. They’ve got a mega truck stop up there, and the truck stop that just went down to Warner Robins. You’re talking about 130 or 140 jobs, and those jobs are paying $15 an hour. I mean that’s a lot of money.”
On whether he’ll ever run for public office again:
“Absolutely, I’ll probably run for commissioner again. District 1, chairman, it don’t matter. Whichever is more practical at that particular time. I was preparing for this, like I said, starting in the eighth grade. . . No, I’m not out of politics.”
