John H. Owen: Reflections on a lifetime of service
From Dahlonega Nugget
Published on: July 15, 2009
By Sharon Hall
If you take the prescription drug coumadin; have ever been a patient at Chestatee Regional Hospital; had a loved one seek shelter at NOA; enjoyed watching your child play basketball at North Georgia College & State University; had a daughter, niece or other female relative enrolled in the university's ROTC program, or benefited from any of the many activities of the chamber of commerce, you owe a debt of gratitude, in large part, to Dr. John Owen. It is through his hard work that these benefits, institutions and opportunities are available today.
Owen came to Dahlonega in 1970 to act as the 12th president of North Georgia College. Hard work was what got the 47-year-old to such a prestigious position-he was one of the youngest, if not the youngest to be appointed to the top position in the four-year senior military college. His hard work ethic is also what helped him to accomplish so much at the college, and in the community.
Owen came by his habit of working hard in his youth, as a country boy in north Florida in the small town of Quincy where his family moved from Savannah when he was six years old. From the time he was 12, he said, "I worked in shade tobacco. I made 50 cents a day for 12 hours work. I was 'stick boy'-I strung tobacco on sticks about 40 inches long and hung it in barns over charcoal heat to cure."
As a young man in 1940, Owen landed a job at the University of Florida's North Florida Agriculture Experiment Station in Quincy for the summer. That fall he set off in the back of a friend's pickup truck to further his education at the university.
"I brought ... a suitcase with two pairs of pants, identical for some reason, two shirts and a cheap pair of shoes that left blisters on my feet for months because I'd been used to running barefoot all summer," he said.
While at UF, Owen worked in the Plant Pathology Department and the school's experimental plots, earning 25 cents per hour as a freshman. He got a nickel raise the next year, and the year after, working about 100 hours each month. He also threw javelin and ran the 880-yard dash for the school's track team.
And he also kept his nose to the grindstone academically, "clepping" (College Level Exam Program) several mandatory general education courses. He took overloads each year and attended summer school so he could graduate in three years, with honors, earning a degree in agriculture with a major in plant pathology and minor in botany.
One reason Owen worked so hard to graduate early was World War II. During his sophomore year he received word that he had been drafted.
"I immediately went to the Navy Recruiting Station and joined the Navy," Owen said.
Owen was allowed to remain at the university until graduation, after which he reported to Midshipman School in Evanston, Ill. It was there he met his future wife, Margaret Wilson.
"John and I met at a USO dance in Chicago 66 years ago," Margaret said. "He told me it was love at first sight. We will have been married 63 years Aug. 3. It's been an interesting life, with so many wonderful people from so many walks of life. John was at home with politicians, college personnel, military people and the wonderful towns people. One thing that always impressed me is how he treated people with the respect they were due."
That statement turned out to be a recurring theme with nearly everyone The Nugget spoke with.
Owen saw service as a Naval officer in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, Pacific, Philippine Islands, China Sea, Okinawa, Korea and Japan before being mustered out of the Navy. He served in the Naval Reserve, retiring in 1969 with over 20 years of service.
Taking advantage of the GI Bill, Owen earned Master's and Doctorate degrees in two and a half years from the University of Wisconsin. While a grad student at UW, he conducted research on coumadin, writing his Master's thesis on the drug that is now commonly used as a blood thinner. More interested in obtaining his doctorate than royalties, Owen signed away his rights to his thesis and his work was never published. It is, however, still on file in the library at the university, he said.
Owen returned to UF as an assistant professor, and later served as head of the plant pathology department at the University of Georgia and director of the Georgia Experiment Stations before becoming president of NGC and relocating to Dahlonega.
Hard work had landed the former "stick boy" a job at the top, but Owen did not slow down. He was interested in every aspect of the college, from its physical plant to its faculty, staff and students.
"He had a lot of energy. He never could sit down and be still," said Jimmy Berrong, who worked with Owen from 1976 as Director of Finance and Business Services. "He'd walk through the buildings early in the morning-at four or five a.m. He'd come back and say, 'you need to adjust the clock down in the gym. It's not in sync with the others.' He paid attention to details like that."
"He wanted to know what made NGC work, from the top to the bottom, and how to make it better," his wife, Margaret said. "[He had] operations take him everywhere, from the boiler rooms to the top of Price Memorial Hall. He even walked under the drill field through the huge drainage pipes."
Learning the nuts and bolts of his new domain, Owen also evaluated the college's academic programs and saw room for improvement. Under his leadership, the university instituted a number of new programs to draw students to its campus. One of the first was a development of a fine arts department. When Owen arrived at NGC, crafts and music were offered as part of the education department. Owen established a separate fine arts department that today offers crafts, art, music, voice, drama and speech, holds art shows, concerts and produces plays on a regular basis. He expanded the education department from offering only a degree in elementary education to offering secondary, special ed, early childhood and a Master's in education. Criminal justice, nursing, physical therapy, business administration, computer science and physical education, health and recreation programs were all added under Owen's watch. He established a duel-degree program with Georgia Tech for students of the physical sciences and business.
Another of Owen's initiatives that has had a lasting effect on campus life is the reinstatement of intercollegiate athletics. Beginning with men's and women's basketball in 1971, NGCSU's sports program now offers opportunities for students to compete with other colleges in softball, soccer and baseball as well as basketball. NGC was also the first college in the state to offer an athletic scholarship to a woman in 1974.
The university was also the first to accept women into its ROTC program, not just in the state of Georgia, but in the nation.
Perhaps one of the most important additions for the community during Owen's tenure was the founding of the university's continuing education program. Begun in the early 1970s, continuing education provides practical training in many different areas, from recertification for electricians and plumbers to flower arranging and ballroom dance. The program has expanded to include offerings online, and an Appalachian Studies Certificate Program.
In addition to creating new academic and athletic programs to draw students to campus, Owen worked to spread the word about what NGC and Dahlonega had to offer and find funding for programs and scholarships. NGC offered no scholarships when Owen arrived. Today it offers more than 300 in all academic areas, many through the Alumni Association and Foundation, which he helped to grow and develop.
Owen devoted much of his time, during his tenure as president and after his retirement, to raising money for the college and Foundation. He successfully raised funds to support four professorial chairs, and received a $.5 million endowment for the Performing Arts program.
"Except for large sums of money needed for large building construction, his principle has been: 'if you can't get the money from state funds, find another way to raise it,'" said former NGC Vice President Hugh Shott, who worked under Owen before retiring and spoke on the occasion of the dedication of John H. Owen Hall in 2003.
Owen created the position of Director of Development to secure grants for programs, faculty development, construction and other needs, and to recruit various outside groups and programs to the campus, including the Governor's Honors Program, Boys State, bands and basketball camps.
During the two decades of Owen's tenure as president, the university constructed a $1.7 million student union building, a $1.8 million library, a plant operations and maintenance building, renovated the old library to house the social science department, renovated the old academic building to house the department of education, constructed a new women's dormitory, renovated Barnes Hall, constructed a $1.7 million food services building, put in a new drainage system for the campus, built five new parking lots, completed a $1.2 million renovation of the science building, constructed the athletic track, built the continuing education building and much more.
"An individual's immortality largely resides in what he has contributed to the society of which he is a part," Chancellor H. Dean Propst wrote in celebration of Owen's 20th anniversary as president of NGC. "We build monuments through the nature of the lives of service that we live. The quality of your past, present and continuing service at NGC will be your immortality. The thousands of lives you have so positively touched will be your monument."
Owen never forgot that it is the people that make a university successful.
"He was interested in his faculty and their families, and was there to praise and always to help when tragedy struck," Margaret said.
"Always, even though he was the president, I never saw him make a distinction between people-janitorial staff or professors," Berrong said. "He saw them all as people."
"All who worked for him, from the grass cutters on up, would do anything in the world for him," said former sole commissioner J.B. Jones, who became county commissioner shortly after Owen came to Dahlonega and worked with him on many projects through his own 26-year tenure as commissioner. "I can't say enough about the common folk of Lumpkin County and how they loved him. He loved to trout fish-and boy, he could fish, too. The regular folk at the college took delight in going fishing with him."
He loved to help people, Jones said. Having been in charge of the state's experimental agricultural stations, Owen would "come by once or twice a year and we'd get in the pickup truck and go over and get a truckload of vegetables, things the experimental stations grew, and come back and parcel it out. He loved to do that."
As a boss, Berrong added, Owen was "mission oriented. He watched over us to make sure things were going the right way, then he'd back off and let us do our job. I enjoyed working for Dr. Owen. He was a boss I respected, but I also considered him a friend."
Gary Steffey worked with Owen for 20 years. In fact, he said, Owen was the reason he resigned from the Army to take a position at the college. He echoed Berrong's statement.
"Dr. Owen used to say his job was easy. He just hired good people then got out of the way. And he did, too. And I always appreciated that as long as you did your job, he would back you up," he said. "He led by example. He didn't just tell you, he showed you how. He had absolute integrity and honesty. He was gentleman and a scholar, and a pleasure to work for."
Owen was also a friend to his adopted community, and applied the same work ethic to his civic as he did to his professional life.
"There were no such words as 'it can't be done' for Dr. Owen. He would always find a way," said Brenda Cook, first executive director of NOA, Lumpkin County's shelter program for victims of domestic abuse. Owen, she said, "played a huge role in getting NOA off the ground. I don't know that it would have happened without him."
Owen served on the NOA board of directors almost from the beginning. For the first NOA banquet, Cook said, Owen "single-handedly sold 75 percent of the tickets."
Today, NOA presents the "Dr. John H. Owen Angel Award" to a NOA supporter each year in Owen's honor.
He headed up a committee to plan and direct the construction of a county hospital and to attract more medical doctors to the area. He then served on the county's hospital authority, using his expertise to help secure state approval to build the county's first hospital. He personally directed the landscaping and beautification of the hospital grounds. In 1986, Saint Joseph's Hospital of Dahlonega (now Chestatee Regional) recognize Owen for "his insight into the health care needs of Lumpkin County" and his work in fulfilling those needs.
Former Highway Commissioner Tom Moreland credits Owen with bringing Highway 400 to its current terminus at Highway 60 in Lumpkin County. "If it had not been for John Owen," he said, "Highway 400 would not have been constructed past Cumming." This highway now provides easy access for the thousands of tourists who come to Dahlonega each year from the metro-Atlanta area.
He also worked with DOT to improve highway safety, and is responsible for several miles of guardrail along Highway 60, and (at one time) passing lanes over Crown Mountain.
Owen also had a hand in the construction of the bypass around Dahlonega, said Jones, helping to get the Board of Regents to grant the right of way needed on the western section of Morrison Moore Parkway.
"We took him over there, and he looked and said, this is where it needs to go, then he got us the right of way," Jones said. "There are people that come up with ideas, and people that can make things happen, and he could do both."
One of the things that Owen made happen, Jones said, has helped make downtown Dahlonega what it is today. "The square you see today is Dr. Owen's and Morrison Moore's ideas. As co-chamber president with Morrison Moore, they came up with putting the wiring underground and got Georgia Power to go along. They had the idea of making the buildings resemble the old gold mining days. The streets and sidewalks were rebuilt, new streetlights installed and the square was landscaped. Abut everything that's been done in Lumpkin County, Dr. Owen touched," Jones said.
As chamber president, Owen also organized citywide cleanups; held training meetings for business owners, promoting customer etiquette and successful business practices; worked with downtown businesses to conduct programs to promote tourism; and entered the statewide Georgian Chamber of Commerce's "Stay and See Georgia" contest. In stiff competition with numerous other cities, Dahlonega won the 1971 competition.
In addition to serving as chamber president for two years, Owen's wide range of volunteer activities includes local, state, regional and national work. He organized forums, workshops and seminars on crime and drug abuse, environmental control and tourism; provided meeting places for local senior citizens for five years until a senior center was built; actively supported the Boy Scouts of America, serving as director and Vice President of the Northeast Georgia Boy Scout Council; served on the Advisory Panel on ROTC Affairs, and as chairman of the organization for eight years, working with congress to increase the number of ROTC scholarships from 6,500 to 12,000; served as Director and Chairman of the Georgia Mountains Area Employment and Training Council (CETA), working with county officials and industries to help train the unemployed in north Georgia; and led the Dahlonega Lion's Club project to raise funds and construct a pavilion and garden area at the local nursing home.
The list of Owen's awards, decorations, certificates of appreciation and other honors could nearly fill a book. As Jones pointed out, "About everything done in Lumpkin County, Dr. Owen touched. He made things happen because he was there. He was great at innovating partnerships with the college, county, state and military. He was very kind to Lumpkin County in making the expertise of the college available to us. He allowed Charlie Yeager, who wrote grants for the college, to help the county with grants-probably more than the college did. We had professors on the board of parks & rec, the hospital board and the industrial authority. He did a lot on the state and national level, and made it possible for me to meet state and national people too, but he did the most for Lumpkin County. He liked to help people."
And he often liked to offer that help quietly, said Wendy Kelley Jenkins, former president of the Dahlonega/Lumpkin County Chamber of Commerce. "He would monitor people from a distance, and if he saw they needed help, he would assist them behind the scenes," she said. "He helped me many times in my job."
"You could write a full newspaper about Dr. Owen," said Lumpkin County Superintendent of Schools Dewey Moye, who has known Owen for 28 years. "He's contributed in so many ways to this community, from his leadership at North Georgia College to his work with civic organizations. He always had time for people. He was a forward thinking, pro-active community leader. Everything he touched he made better."
"The whole county could take a lesson from his life, and how he worked with people," Jones said.
From www.thedahloneganugget.com
