Rocking and Talking: Beginnings of Archway in Hart County, GA

When Mr. Dick Phillips and Mr. Jack Edmunds sat down in matching army green rocking chairs on an expansive front porch crawling with lady bugs and comforted by a north Georgia fall breeze, they looked out on the rolling hills of Wakefield Farm. The farm, with its graceful forest of trees, maroon barn houses, and endless open fields primed for crops and cattle, stands testament to the agrarian promise of Hart County.

Yet, when these two men sat on this very porch nearly eleven years ago, they weren’t talking about Hart County’s cattle and poultry. Instead, they looked into the potential of bringing something new into the county. They looked into something that could, much like the agricultural business, bring sustainability and life into an evolving community while maintaining the same historical elements that make Hart so unique.

They looked to the Archway Partnership.

This investment in Archway and the Hart County community all started one day when Phillips got his hands on an issue of Georgia Trend magazine. The magazine grabbed Phillips’s attention when he spotted an article on a program called the Archway Partnership in Colquitt County. Intrigued by the benefits this program had on Colquitt, Phillips considered how Archway could help a place like his own home of Hart County.

“[Phillips] saw in Georgia Trend magazine, some nine or ten years ago, an article about Archway and the work they were doing down in Moultrie and Colquitt County, which I think was the first Archway project,” Edmunds said.

Along with the magazine story, something else caught Phillips’s attention. Years ago, Phillips served on the University of Georgia Department of Agriculture’s Dean’s Advisory Board, a group composed of agricultural authorities across the state invested in UGA’s agriculture program. While on meeting with the board, Phillips heard about Archway. And it clicked.

“It struck a message with me that [the Archway Partnership] makes business in a sense,” Phillips said. “And they explained what Archway did and does, and I thought about it for a couple of days.”

Itching to run through the ideas wracking his brain, Phillips rang up the first person who came to mind—his trusted friend and community leader, Edmunds.

“In Hart County, it’s like everywhere else, it’s people that make the difference,” Phillips said. “So I heard about that, and the only thought that I had was this fella right here [Edmunds]. So I called Jack [Edmunds], and I said, ‘Jack, you got a few minutes?’”

During their call, Phillips and Edmunds discussed the impact the program could have.

“[Phillips] enlisted my support and help, and we talked about how nice it would be to have something like this in Hart County,” Edmunds said. “We are geographically close to the University [of Georgia] and thought it would be an ideal situation.”

After Phillips and Edmunds agreed that the benefits Archway provided to their communities seemed compelling, Phillips took the next step: contacting Dr. Mel Garber, the Director of the Archway Partnership at the time, and bringing him to Hart to come sit on the front porch of Phillips’s home at Wakefield Farm. If they could meet with Dr. Garber, Phillips and Edmunds planned to discuss an Archway future for Hart County and show Dr. Garber the beauty of Hart County in person. “You know [Edmunds] is very patient with me,” Phillips said. “He listened, and the next thing I know he had it all lined up [for Dr. Garber] to come to the front porch.”

Sure enough, Dr. Garber, Phillips, and Edmunds sat down on the front porch, gently rocking and talking about Archway’s mission, its purpose, and how the program could help strengthen Hart County, a place bustling with educational potential, business promise, and budding community leaders.

“Dr. Garber came up, and the three of us sat on the front porch, as I recall, and gabbed a little bit,” Edmunds said. “One thing led to another and we decided that we would like to give [Archway] a try.”

The gentlemen then worked to mobilize the Hart County community, reaching out to various regional and local leaders—from newspaper editors to county managers to school superintendents—who could assist them in making this vision a reality.

“One thing led to another, and it has been the most amazing thing that I have seen in my little career in business and agriculture,” Phillips said. “What can be accomplished when you get people together and they decide together to do something.”

With each informal community meeting at a small restaurant in town, and with the direction and passion of Phillips and Edmunds, Hart County citizens began to prepare for a program that would reinvigorate their community—a program that, little did they know, they will still be deeply invested in over a decade later.

“The county used to fuss with us, see, and the city would fuss with the county, and the bankers would fuss with this, that, and the other, and when you get those people together and they see something that is good for the community…. I like that old expression that says, ‘All of us are better than any of us,’” Phillips said.

“And that’s kinda what Archway has done. I don’t know about the other communities—but in Hart County.”