MILLIANS: Green and still growing

Published 3:00 pm Friday, July 19, 2024

Growing up on her father’s dairy farm on Vinson Highway, Janet Adams Green quickly learned the meaning of hard work. 

She was the oldest of three girls in a family with no sons. That meant she was up early every morning, feeding the cows and doing other chores before she caught the bus to attend Midway School.

She would ride the bus home after school, change into her work clothes and help get the cows back in the pasture before cleaning up the barn so it would be ready for milking the next day.

The cows had to be milked every day, twice a day.

Janet (pronounced Ja-nett) Green, who celebrated her 88th birthday on July 1, is closing in on her 51st anniversary working at our local hospital, which is now called Atrium Health Navicent Baldwin. 

She has seen the name of the hospital change so many times that I don’t have room to list them all here. She has seen administrators and doctors come and go. 

Janet’s husband, Bob, was instrumental in getting the Baldwin County Hospital built when he was a member of the Georgia House of Representatives for several years.

Janet and Bob Green were married in 1955. He was 11 years her senior. They met when she was working for attorney Frank Bell after finishing at Midway High School. 

Three daughters — Suzanne, Nannette and Sherri — were born in three years. Son Walter came along five years later.

“I was busy,” Janet said, laughing. 

Before long, she was ready to go back to work. 

“Mom’s worked since I was 4 or 5 years old,” said son Walter Green, now a local attorney. “That’s what keeps her going.”

Janet taught school for a couple of years. She earned an RN degree and worked in OB/GYN while helping in medical records on weekends.

She remembers Dr. James Baugh, who delivered her first child at the Richard Binion Clinic, then one of the two hospitals in town. The other was Scott Hospital on Jefferson Street.

She recalled Dr. Veal, Dr. Headley, Dr. Allen, Dr. Grimes, Dr. Caulton and others.

She eventually moved to medical records full time, and today is the director of Health Information Systems at the hospital.

“I tease people and tell them they have to be careful with me,” Mrs. Green said, smiling. “I know where all the bodies are buried.”

Like medicine, record-keeping has come a long way. 

“We don’t have paper charts anymore,” she said. “Everything is out there in the cloud.”

But she did recall the days when older paper charts were stored in the basement in a room set off with chicken wire.

“That was how we kept things ‘safe’ back then,” she said. “It was difficult to get down there, but you could easily cut through that chicken wire.”

Today, medical records have 24-hour security, seven days a week.

The Green family has played a big part in the city’s history. They owned the old Baldwin Hotel, which was downtown where the Magnolia Bank now stands. In fact, early in their marriage Janet and Bob had an apartment there.

Bob opened the Holiday Inn in 1968, the first full-service motel in Milledgeville. 

“People used to ask why Bob put it out so far, but he was a progressive thinker,” Janet said.

Bob had his law office above the Campus Theater and was there on the Saturday that Marion Stembridge murdered Marion Ennis in a nearby office. Green and a client heard the shots, but Stembridge didn’t try to open his door.

Janet said she has a lot of things to be thankful for, including that her family didn’t throw her a huge birthday party earlier this month.

“But every time our family gets together, it’s a big party,” Janet said, laughing. 

She has eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. 

Her official 51st anniversary at the hospital will be Nov. 11. 

“She’s like the Energizer bunny,” Walter says of his mother. “She just keeps on going.” 

Janet says she’s too busy to retire.

But she does concede, “I’ve enjoyed all these years, but it’s getting close to the time for me to do something different.”

Walter adds, “Her drive to continue working is pretty incredible. She’s still driving, has still got great health and is independent.”

Janet says she’s still an early riser, like she was back on her father’s dairy farm.

She’s not planning on milking any cows, gathering any eggs or slopping any hogs.

But she’ll be busy being useful.

You can count on it. 

Rick Millians, a 1970 Baldwin High graduate, retired after working at newspapers in Georgia, Ohio and South Carolina. Reach him at rdmillians@aol.com.