GC library accepts former mayor and state senator’s personal effects

Published 2:06 pm Monday, June 26, 2017

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — The personal items of one of Milledgeville’s public figures have been officially collected for posterity.

In a well-attended ceremony in Georgia College’s Ina Dillard Russell Library Monday, friends, family and local dignitaries gathered to celebrate the life and career of Floyd L. Griffin.

The event followed a decision by Griffin, who at different times has served as a U.S. Army colonel, state senator, mayor, football coach, funeral director and professor, and his wife, Nathalie Huffman Griffin, to donate a group of items from the former colonel’s life and career to the Russell Library’s Special Collections. While the collection includes numerous pictures, documents, and even a U.S. Army colonel’s jacket from Griffin’s extensive career in public service, the Griffins have also donated some lesser-known personal effects, including photos with former Pres. Barack and Michelle Obama and his official jacket from the Winston-Salem State University Athletic Hall of Fame.

“I’m not quite sure if he realizes how valuable [the collection] really is,” said Russell Library interim director Dr. Shaundra Walker. “We were so happy to get it because it really works well with what we already have. To him, it’s just his old stuff, but to us, it’s very valuable. … He told us to take what we wanted, but we told him we wanted all of it.”

In an hour-long ceremony in a bright room behind Russell Library’s main entrance, several of Griffin’s longtime friends and colleagues gathered to share their recollections of the former colonel. While local figures like Georgia College President Dr. Steve Dorman, Baldwin School Superintendant Dr. Noris Price and GMC Prep basketball coach James Lunsford shared how Griffin had impacted them over the years (Griffin was Lunsford’s quarterback at the former Boddie High School), perhaps the most telling anecdote was that of former friend and political rival Rusty Kidd.

“I, too, got a call asking if I could come over and say something nice about Floyd, and I said ‘I think you’ve got the wrong number’,” said Kidd to begin his remarks. “My father [former state Sen. Culver Kidd] went way back with the Slaters and then the Griffins, and he and Floyd got to be good friends when Floyd came back as a veteran, because my father was a veteran, and they talked a lot back in those days. My daddy realized real early that this young man had an interest in public service — not so much in getting elected, but in wanting to do something for the public and the community. Not the black community or the white community, but the community at-large.”

While stories of the former senator from some of his oldest friends provided more than enough subject matter for the event (Griffin jokingly admonished the speakers for not sticking to his three-minute time limit), the ceremony also included two important news items. After a gracious introduction to the event by Dr. Dorman, the  Griffins presented the president with a $2,000 check made out the Special Collections department in the hopes of expanding the office’s reach in the Milledgeville community. In her own speech thanking Griffin for his service a short time later, Price revealed early plans for a foundation to provide scholarships to first-generation college students in Baldwin County, to be chaired by the former senator.

While more than 10 years have passed since Griffin last occupied City Hall as Milledgeville’s mayor, Monday’s opening showcased the public servant’s efforts to bettering the community he calls home. When reached for comment after a brief address expressing his gratitude to the university, the former senator said he hoped to preserve the highlights of his career for posterity so that another generation of leaders might be spurred forward.

“It’s a great honor for Georgia College to want to place my collection in the library’s special collections,” said Griffin. “I’m hoping that this will give the present generation and ongoing generations an opportunity to look at what a local person has done, and to try to do better than Floyd Griffin. … I’ve had a tremendous life with great opportunities, and it wasn’t always easy, but we were able to achieve.”