Dougherty County Commissioner Jack Stone set to end 28-year political career

PUTNEY — Dougherty County Commission Chairman Jeff Sinyard starts laughing before he even gets into the story.

“One day, ole Jack invited Commissioner (Lamar) Hudgins and me up to his place to shoot some dove,” Sinyard says. “We had our licenses and everything in place, so Jack put us on a field that was pretty close to a highway. As we’d shoot the birds, some of them would fall on the side of the road or even in the field on the other side of the highway.

“Jack saw this, and he came and got Lamar and me and told us we were moving over to that field across the road so we wouldn’t have these issues. I said, ‘Jack, is that your land over there?’ He gave me that look and said, ‘Bodine, you don’t have to worry about anything out here. You’re in Stoneyville.’”

For the many people who’ve known and admired him — and even for those who have had their issues with the man who became legendary for having “the sharpest (car-dealing) pencil in town” and for openly speaking his mind where others dared not — Sinyard’s story is about as good a summary of soon-to-be outgoing Dougherty County Commissioner Jack Stone as you could find.

For 28 years, Stone has served the people of District 6 in southern Dougherty County, confounding colleagues on the Dougherty County Commission who foolishly thought they could bend him to their will. Stone has remained a public servant and a man of the people while at the same time remaining his own man.

Indeed, there are those who will tell you we’ve all been operating in Stoneyville for the last three decades.

“My daddy always said to tell the truth and you won’t have to remember your lies,” Stone says as he takes a visitor on a brief tour of his 150-acre property, showing off his nine donkeys, his 80 head of cattle, the pecan trees that “ain’t done squat this year” and the small garden where he stops to pick a mess of turnips with his visitor. “I’ve always told people the truth, whether it was what they wanted to hear or not.

“I feel like I accomplished something in my 28 years on the commission. What I always tried to do was represent everybody in my district equally and fairly, no matter what color they were, what religion they were or how much money they had. You know that old saying about how ‘I was country before country was cool?’ I did what was right before it was cool. I did things the right way.”

Stone will participate in his final meeting as part of the County Commission Dec. 15. After launching a winning campaign to oust “the guy ahead of me who wasn’t doing folks right” and holding off six more challengers over the years — “I had white folks, black folks, rich folks, poor folks, men, women — even my former daughter-in-law — challenge me over the years,” Stone notes — the long-time commissioner was unceremoniously removed from office by the voters he’s loved so well over the years in the May 20 Democratic commission primary.

Political newcomer Anthony Jones, who made it clear after winning the election he would be “following in the footsteps of a legend,” easily outworked and outpolled Stone to claim the District 6 seat that had been occupied for the better part of three decades by the wheeler-dealer who had a special kind of way with words.

“If I’d known I was going to be as sick as I got, I never would have run,” Stone said of that final election. “I just

didn’t want the people of this district to think I was walking out on them. To be honest with you, I didn’t even vote that day. I’d talked (with Jones) two or three times and told him people in this district expected to be taken care of. He said if he won, he wouldn’t let them down.

“I was OK with the outcome. Now, he has to follow through.”

If losing the election after such a long tenure in office bothers Stone, you wouldn’t know it now. As he settles into the driver’s seat of his Mule all terrain vehicle, packing a sizeable wad of Red Man in his cheek before taking off, it’s obvious he’s a man in his element. He talks about his time in office with the certainty of someone whose principles cannot be questioned.

That observation is confirmed by his beautiful wife of just short of 52 years, Charlotte.

“Jack has always loved Dougherty County more than anybody I’ve ever seen in my life,” Charlotte Stone said with more than a trace of pride in her voice. “His main objective has always been to take care of the people in District 6, no matter who they were.

“I hope, now that he’s not going to be a part of the commission, he’ll calm down a little bit. He’s always spoke his mind. And I’ve seen him so involved in the things going on with the commission he couldn’t even sleep at night. He just has always cared so much.”

Born in Mitchell County, Jack Stone moved to his beloved Dougherty County when he was 12 years old. He joined the Army when he was 17 and, after serving for three years, came home looking for something to do. He got his first job working as a butcher, but that was short-lived.

“The guy who was my supervisor told me, ‘Boy, you need to find a job making a living with your mouth, not with your hands,’” Stone laughs. “So I walked out … decided I’d take him up on it.”

Stone worked briefly at a series of jobs — at a local tractor company, with an insurance company and finally as a shipping and receiving clerk with a grocery wholesaler. And while none of those jobs stuck, he found something that did while enjoying a snack at popular teen hangout, the Arctic Bear. The then-20-year-old Stone saw his cousin out with a 16-year-old beauty at the restaurant and was immediately smitten.

“I knew right then she was the one for me, even if she was with my cousin,” Stone declares. “And I was right … It just took me a while to train her.”

Charlotte Stone shrugs off her husband’s comment, noting, “I may not have fallen for Jack the first time I saw him, but it didn’t take long. I graduated high school on June 3, 1963, and we were married on June 9.”

Before Stone could get entrenched in his job as a food wholesaler, running buddy Earl Hiers asked him to take a shot at selling used cars with him at Albany Lincoln Mercury.

“He told me to work for him, and if I didn’t make more money selling cars on commission than I would be making at that other job, he’d find me a job making as much money,” Stone said. “I didn’t want to take the chance, so I decided to go back to the other job. But when Monday rolled around, I woke up and looked at the clock. It was 8:30, and I was supposed to be at work at 8. So I went on down to work with Earl.”

And a car-selling star was born.

Hiers taught Stone the car-selling business, and soon other dealerships were courting the diamond-in-the-rough salesman. Stone took a job at the local Ford dealership for a while, but then came back to Albany Lincoln Mercury after reaching a profit-sharing agreement.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but they were $60,000 in the hole when I got back,” Stone said. “They’d borrowed that much money and were just paying the interest on it every year. Well, I got in there in June of ‘75, and by the end of that year I’d made that money and $70,000 more. They paid the whole note off the next year. I had years after that where I’d make $100,000 off a 10 percent commission. That’s a million dollars in sales a year.”

Stone became a partner with Albany Lincoln Mercury owner Herbert Haley, and when Haley became too ill to continue work Stone offered to buy him out. A disagreement with Haley’s relatives, however, led Stone to sell his share in the business. He went on to establish his own string of used car dealerships.

A group of disgruntled District 6 residents coaxed Stone into running for a seat on the County Commission in 1986, and he became a fixture with that body.

“There’s never been a more dedicated person who has served Dougherty County than Jack Stone,” Sinyard said of his fellow commissioner. “He goes above and beyond to make sure every one of his constituents gets a fair shake. He absolutely loves this community, and he loves its people. When you consider his background, it’s really amazing what all he has accomplished in his life.

“Now, with Jack, he always thinks about what he says, but he’s going to say what he thinks. Still, he’s made such a big difference in this community.”

Stone points to issues like location of the Dougherty County Jail, pushing through vital transportation and economic development projects, creation of much-needed industrial parks, the promotion of the county police force’s first black female chief and his work to stop consolidation of the Albany and Dougherty County governments as some of his most memorable accomplishments in office.

“If it weren’t for me, our jail wouldn’t be where it is today,” Stone said. “I talked with (fellow commissioner) George Brown while (Commission Chairman) Gil Barrett was out of town, and we kind of agreed that we needed to move this issue forward. When Gil got back the next week, I made a motion to put the jail in one location, and none of the other three (African-American) commissioners who had said they didn’t want the jail near the neighborhoods around (Evelyn Avenue) seconded the motion. There was a motion to locate the jail (at its current location), but that got only three votes.

“Gil said it looked like we would have to wait another week to tackle the issue, but I told him, ‘No, last week, I told everyone here “Read my lips, we are going to make a decision.” So I made a motion to locate the jail where it is, and that got four votes.”

Stone said he was accused of betraying the black commissioners and one, Victor Edwards, said he wanted Stone to come to a community meeting and explain why he voted to put the jail near their neighborhood.

“I told him I’d be glad to come to his meeting,” Stone said. “But I told him I was going to tell the people there that I had made a motion to put the jail somewhere else, and not one person — including you — seconded my motion. So, yeah, I’ll be glad to come talk with them.

“He told me, ‘Nevermind.’”

That, for the uninitiated, is vintage Jack Stone. He’s the man who, last month while discussing the need for new jobs in the community, said, “These days, the best way to get back on your feet is to miss two car payments.”

He’s also the man who indelicately used as an addendum to his now famous sharpest pencil in town slogan, “Money talks and BS walks.”

Stone admits that he’s “worried about the future of the commission,” as both he and Sinyard prepare to leave. (The chairman announced he would step down from the board in January.) But there’s no missing the relief — even if it is a bittersweet one — he’s feeling as the final days of his political career wind down.

“The only thing I regret about my time on the commission is that, looking back on it, I cheated my wife and family out of a lot of time,” Stone says. “It’s so wonderful that she and the kids — Karen Swain, Jack Jr. and Blair — all stuck by me. I got to thinking the other day that, between my time at Albany Lincoln Mercury and the commission, I spent the largest part of more than 50 years of my life doing stuff that didn’t involve my family. That’s a lot of time.

“I’m going to get up and check up on my cows on Mondays now, let my wife fix me breakfast. And we’re going to hook our boat up to the motor home and go to the flats fishing. I don’t rightly know what people are going to remember about Jack Stone when I’m gone. I hope they’ll see me for what I tried to be: a representative of, for and by the people.”