Vandiver Wins Margaret Ayers Award

The Toccoa Clinic and the Northeast Georgia Medical Associates chooses former First Lady of Georgia Betty Vandiver as their 2015 recipient of the Margaret Ayers Award for Civic Health.

The Margaret Ayers Award for Civic Health is in its 12th year and is named for Margaret Ayers, longtime civic activist, former first lady of Lavonia, and career banker.

The award is presented each year to the Lavonia resident who demonstrates outstanding civic leadership.

In making the announcement for this year’s award, Dr. Jonathan Hall reviewed some of the former First Lady of Georgia’s many accomplishments, including her work with the mentally ill.

“Her community work is exemplary,” Hall said. “The Carnegie Library Board, Lavonia Woman’s Club, The Daughters of the Confederacy, and Lavonia First Baptist Church. She’s a pioneer and a humanitarian. Long, long before we understood the problem of mental illness, she launched a public campaign of compassion and awareness for those patients and their families.”

Hall noted that compassion led to the establishment of the Mayor’s Christmas Motorcade, a statewide initiative that takes place in just about every municipality in Georgia in the fall that collects Christmas gifts for residents of Georgia’s eight state hospitals that is still going strong today.

In accepting the award, Mrs. Vandiver said she was thrilled to have been chosen as this year’s recipient.

“I want to thank everybody here because everybody in Lavonia has made this possible. Let’s face it. I have loved them and they have seemed to love me, and I have enjoyed my whole time in Lavonia,” Mrs Vandiver said. “If I died tonight this would be icing on the cake.”

Mrs. Vandiver is the widow of the late Ernest Vandiver, a Lavonia native who served as Georgia’s governor from 1959 to 1963.