The Vintage Magazine, Southwest Georgia, for Boomers and Beyond

February/March 2012

By Kate DeLoach

A vintage Good-bye

This is a tough editorial to pen. It is my last.

Since losing my right hand assistant last July, I have been selling ads by day and doing everything else nights and weekends. Six months of being "chief cook and bottle washer" is enough. Friends in the industry warned me from the beginning that getting and keeping good sales reps would be my biggest challenge. Understatement. But I've had a blast producing Vintage for the past five-and-a-half years, and now this chapter of my life and work is coming to a close.

I want to thank all of my faithful advertisers - those who believed in a mere concept in the beginning and helped to launch Vintage , and those who stuck with me for the long haul. Needless to say, the magazine would have been history a long time ago without you!

Vintage is still - and always has been - a revenue producer. I just can't do it all myself. If there is someone out there who wants to get into the publication business, give me a call. I have a distribution system set up in five counties, software, templates and a well-recognized logo in place. Let's talk! .

Features

Back From the Brink

By Chip Jones

“It's not often that you can exceed people's expectations,” Marcus Johnson offers when he tells us about the hundreds of tours he's hosted at the Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus. “People are awed by what they see when they come here.”

And no wonder. The mission-inspired building is a vision at night, floating in a glow of golden light streaming from the abundant windows on all sides. Everyone in the region watched the steady progress of the “green” building project rise out of a spent pecan grove as a phoenix from its ashes.

By day, it is the bustling epicenter of 21 st century healthcare for Sumter and surrounding counties. Like no other small hospital in the state or nation, it offers the most advanced diagnostic and care technologies in the industry. Phoebe Sumter has been widely recognized for its facility design and its environmental sensitivities.

Johnson is the marketing and public relations director for the new medical center. He had been with the Sumter County Hospital Authority for five years when the tornado struck the former hospital almost six years ago. That gave him a front row seat through the recovery process.

Today, our region is witness to the end, for the most part, of a cycle of pain and loss suffered when the storms tore across several counties in Southwest Georgia March 1, 2007.