About 75 local citizens attended a ribbon cutting on Thursday, July 14 to commemorate the nearly year-long renovation of the Monroe County Health Department building, which was completed in December 2021.
The Forsyth-Monroe County Chamber of Commerce sponsored Thursday’s gathering, which included hors d’oeuvres and a tour of the renovated facility. Monroe County Board of Health chairman Dr. Jeremy Goodwin, Monroe County Board of Health member Hugh Cromer and North Central Health District representative Erica Shaw were the speakers at Thursday’s event. Many elected officials, including Commission Chairman Greg Tapley, were among the contingent in attendance.
The renovation, which cost about $1.1 million, was made possible by a $750,000 Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA) grant. The Monroe County Board of Health and the Monroe County Board of Commissioners each chipped in an additional $75,000 to support the renovation project. Forsyth’s own Proform Construction, LLC was the general contractor for the project. It was the first major renovation project at the Monroe County Health Department office, located on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, in nearly 30 years.
As part of Thursday’s celebration, the Monroe County Board of Health unveiled a commemorative plaque in the renovated lobby dedicating the lobby to the memory of the late Dr. J. Ray Grant, a longtime chairman of the Board of Health as well as the Monroe County Board of Education.
Shaw read aloud a letter from Morris Hutcheson, the North Central Health District Director of Special Projects and Development, who oversaw the renovation project but could not be in attendance on Thursday. In his letter, Hutcheson described how the Board of Health’s initial plan in 2019 was to improve the building’s electrical, plumbing and roofing systems but that it quickly became evident that so many other facets of the building needed enhancing. At that point, the project became much wider in scope to include: new HVAC systems, improving client flow and providing staff and community partners with training areas. Hutcheson wrote that after securing $750,000 in funding from a DCA Community Development Block Grant and a total of $150,000 from the Board of Health and Board of Commissioners, the North Central Health District was able to obtain $145,215 in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) infrastructure funds for the project. He said the remaining funding came from the Board of Health’s operational budget.
Hutcheson wrote: “Monroe County now has a modern public facility, which will serve the community well into the future. . . Thank you again to the Monroe County Commission, (Monroe County Manager) Jim Hedges and his team at the county, and to the Monroe County Board of Health both current and past members. In addition, we wish to thank Proform Construction, Carter-Watkins Architects, and the Middle Georgia Regional Commission for their contributions.”
Dr. Goodwin noted that the purpose of Thursday’s gathering went beyond the completion of the Board of Health’s renovation project and extended to honoring the memory of longtime local physician Dr. Grant, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 65.
Dr. Goodwin, who succeeded Dr. Grant as Board of Health chairman, said, “I think most everybody here knows he was a local physician for more than two decades, a pillar of this community, a leader in multiple areas, and the chairman of the Board of Health for a very long time.”
Numerous members of Grant’s family were in attendance on Thursday, including wife Leigh, daughters Jessica and Natalie Estes, sons Barrett and Michael, and sister Dr. Priscilla Doster, the current chairman of the Monroe County Board of Education.
Barrett Grant spoke on behalf of the Grant family, saying his father’s life was one of service to medicine, and more importantly, to the Monroe County community.
“Just thinking enough of Dad to attach his name to it means a lot to us,” Barrett Grant said. “And I think Dad would probably be proud, but I don’t think he’d be proud because it shines a spotlight on him, I think he’d be proud just because this community meant so much to him. . . He grew up in Monroe County and absolutely loved it. Obviously, he went off to school and med school and residency and met Mom, but I don’t think it ever was a question with Dad of wanting to come back to Monroe County to be here and serve and care for people because he just thought so much of the place that gave him so much.”
Barrett Grant said his father always cared for his patients and said having the lobby named in his honor symbolizes the care that all of Monroe County medical professionals exemplify daily.
“I’m reminded that a life well-lived is a life worth living,” Barrett Grant said. “And I think Dad lived a really good life, and it’s not just because of all the stuff that he did and accomplished. And I’m biased, but I think he did a lot. But I think that his life meant a lot because he cared a lot. So my hope, and I think our family’s hope, is that when people walk through the doors of this beautiful building, maybe they will look over and see a plaque or picture or something, hopefully they’ll smile and have good memories of Dad. But I hope more so that they’ll know it’s people like Dad, doctors and nurses and technicians and all the health care professionals in Monroe County, and they’ll know that Monroe County is a place that people are cared for.”
Before attendees toured the facility, Cromer publicly recognized all of the fine Monroe County Health Department employees who work in the building.
