GMA Honors Former Ga. First Lady Betty Vandiver

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR Radio, Lavonia

The Georgia Municipal Association is honoring former Georgia First Lady Betty Vandiver, wife of the late Governor Ernest Vandiver, for her work on behalf of the mentally challenged.

Mrs. Vandiver is the founder of the Mayors’ Christmas Motorcade, an annual holiday event in which towns and cities across the state collect and deliver gifts to residents of Georgia’s state homes.

At Monday night’s Lavonia City Council meeting, the GMA’s Lamar Norton praised Mrs. Vandiver for the annual fundraiser she started.

“The most amazing thing in the world is to see city officials in late November, early December get excited about helping someone who can’t help themselves,” Norton said. “That’s what Mrs. Vandiver gave to us. We cherish that.”

Norton then showed a video which was presented recently to members at the Georgia Municipal Association annual convention in Savannah.

The video documents how Mrs. Vandiver came up with the idea for the Mayor’s Christmas Motorcade.

She said it started with a visit to the Georgia Central State Home in the early 1950’s with then-columnist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Celestine Sibley.

In the video, Mrs. Vandiver said what she saw broke her heart.

“It was the most pitiful thing you’ve ever seen,” she said on the documentary. “The smell of food cooking, residents who had no control; patients ages infant to 60. The patients were cooking for themselves. There was a pot of black-eyed peas. The biggest pot I’ve ever seen. The flies, I never shall forget the flies.”

Mrs Vandiver said her husband, Governor Vandiver, was so moved by what his wife saw he vowed to do something about it and the Mayor’s Christmas Motorcade was started.

Monday night in Lavonia, Mrs. Vandiver was presented with a resolution honoring her achievement.

“We have a Resolution, passed by the Board of Directors of the Georgia Municipal Association, as a small token to show you how special you are to the cities of this State, and certainly to the patients and the hospitals around this state. It’s remarkable what you have done,” Norton said.

After receiving the framed Resolution, Mrs Vandiver said the Mayors’ Christmas Motorcade was a group effort at the state level.

“The House of Representatives, Ernie, the Lieutenant Governor, everybody – they were all for it,” Mrs. Vandiver said. “I remember Celestine Sibley wrote the most heartwarming article about it in the paper and that helped so much, because she cried with me.”

Norton also presented the former First Lady of Georgia with another award, the Lifetime Achievement Award, for her service to her community and her state.

“It’s a lifetime achievement award from the staff of GMA,” Norton said. “We just love you and what you’ve done because we fell the Mayors’ Motorcade is a very, very important aspect of our mission.”

The Mayor’s Christmas Motorcade was begun in 1958. Since then, it has been organized and sponsored each year by the Georgia Municipal Association.