By Carlton Fletcher, The Albany Herald
March 15, 2015
ALBANY — Stephen Dervan remembers all too well the conversation he had with himself some 14 years ago when he left Albany “for good.”
“I remember thinking, ‘I love my family, I love my friends and I love my church,’” said Dervan, the associate pastor at Sherwood Baptist Church. “But I also remember thinking, ‘Albany is a great place to be from.’ I told myself as I looked in the rearview mirror: ‘I never want to come back here.’”
Dervan did come back, though, “called by God” to return to the hometown that he was sure he’d left behind while serving at churches in Atlanta; Memphis, Tenn., and Jupiter, Fla. What he’s found since settling back in is that he’s not alone. A growing number of young professionals, many of whom had decided that leaving was the “escape” they’d sought their whole lives, are making their way back to their roots, building careers and raising families in the community many of them once had shunned.
“I don’t know any high school student who doesn’t look forward to ‘freedom,’ to finding something new and exciting in life and proving that they can make the break from home,” said Melissa Strother, the 30-year-old owner of Southern Threads Embroidery and a member of the Dougherty County School Board. “But a lot of young people end up like I did. It wasn’t until I came back to Albany as an adult, with a different perspective, that I was able to embrace the good life that my hometown offers.”
Albany’s emerging young business and community leaders didn’t just return to familiar territory because they lacked options. Several who talked with The Albany Herald admitted to being surprised that the things they were looking for in life were readily available right back where they had started.
“Our parents had always told us to embrace our passions in life,” said Katie Hughey Gatewood, at 30 the co-president the Hughey & Neuman property management firm that was co-founded by her grandfather, George Hughey, 60 years ago. “I majored in fashion merchandise and design (at Auburn) and worked for a period in the fashion industry in New York because that was one of my passions.
“But I’m more passionate about family. And I wanted my family to have a life like the one I had growing up.”
MAKING AN IMPACT
The lure of greener pastures and the promise of the kind of excitement they’d only dreamed of while growing up in Albany tugged at many of Albany’s expanding crop of young professionals. Mario Meadows, 37, was “rubbing shoulders” with the elite of the music industry working in Atlanta, and Bridges Sinyard, 33, was 5 1/2 years into his position with U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Moultrie, in the nation’s capital when they decided to head back home.
“Sure, when you’re working in the studio with guys like Ludacris, in the back of your mind you ask yourself what might happen if you stick around,” Meadows, the owner of Platinum Sound Studio at 523 W. Broad Ave., said. “But then, you also have to think about how, in Atlanta, you’re just another guy working at one of 1,000 studios. In Albany, you have the opportunity to be in charge of the only studio in town.”
Meadows has made his impact at Platinum Sound, earning a certified-gold record for his work with Lil Scrappy and helping launch the careers of such regional/national artists as Field Mob and Yung Joc.
“The thing I learned (after opening Platinum Sound) is that I can do anything here that they can do at the studios in Atlanta,” Meadows said. “The technology is now affordable, so you just have to adapt to the newest stuff that comes along.
“I also like to think that I’m giving back to the community that helped raise me by working with artists from our area who might not get a chance in a larger city.”
Sinyard, who with younger brother Stuart, 29, is following in dad Jeff Sinyard’s footsteps by learning the pest extermination business from the ground up — literally, by crawling under houses — said the decision to come home was, essentially, all about family.
“Yes, moving back to Albany and working in the family business allowed me to plug right back in and reconnect with my family and with friends who had been a big part of my life before,” Bridges Sinyard said. “But the big question for me and my wife — who is from New Orleans and suffered a little bit of culture shock when she came to Albany — was, where do you want to raise your family?
“I did not want to try and raise my family in D.C. Yes, my wife loved the fact that there was so much going on there and you could hop on a plane and be anywhere in no time. So, I had to drag her here kicking and screaming. But once she got here and started to meet people, make friends, she figured out what it was that I loved so much about Albany. This is just home for us.”
PLENTY TO DO
The cry of “nothing to do here” is a common one for the young in Albany, much as it is almost anywhere else in the world. But several Albany returnees say they’ve discovered the fallacy of such a notion.
“That thing about, ‘I can’t wait to get out,’ we’ve all said it about our hometown,” noted Reedi Hawkins, 23, a Georgia Southern University graduate who scrapped her anywhere-else plans to return home for her first job, marketing director for the Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission. “But we’re not unique. I guarantee you, they say that in Albany, Atlanta, Tallahassee, Timbuktu.”
“There are so many ways to meet people and get connected here. Whether you’re pursuing a particular interest, frequenting one of the night hot spots, working out, going to church or eating out, you can definitely find things to do. Anyone can actively pursue their own personal niche in Albany.”
Stephen Davis, 38, played basketball in college at Mercer University and lived in Atlanta for seven years before returning home, settling on education as a career path — just as his mother, father and two of his four brothers had. Within two years of making that transition, he was the Dougherty County School System’s Teacher of the Year.
“See, Atlanta, as it turns out, is a great place to visit,” Davis said. “I really liked Atlanta, but I didn’t love Atlanta. Atlanta is actually like a bunch of small Albanys connected together by a messed-up highway system. I worked at a place five miles from where I lived, but it took me an hour each day — there and back — to go those five miles.
“You live in all of Albany. And as you become an adult, you realize that we’re located in what I call the center point of the travel circle. We’re only 2 1/2-3 hours from the Gulf (of Mexico), 3 1/2 hours from Jacksonville, 1 1/2 hours from Macon, three hours from Atlanta and about 90 minutes from Columbus. If there’s something you want to do that’s not in Albany, you can get to it easily. I think sometimes people want to get away from their hometown for the wrong reasons.”
Callie Hughey Walker, 27, who shares the Hughey & Neuman president title with sister Katie, said she’s never been happier than she’s been since she graduated from the University of Georgia — after starting her college career at Auburn — and returning home to get involved with the family business. She and Gatewood have used their complementary strengths to form a perfect yin/yang team while running the operations of Hughey & Neuman.
“I can’t fathom people saying there’s nothing to do here,” Walker said. “There’s plenty to do, but just like every other town in America, Albany is what you make it. To get something out of this community, you have to be willing to invest in it. One of the things that’s been important to me is that I never imagined I’d have as many young, professional friends to do stuff with.
“The key to being part of an active community is staying involved … in your work, with your family, by volunteering. I know it’s a cliche, but home really is where the heart is, and my heart and family have always been in Albany.”
MAKE IT BETTER
Unlike his older brother, Stuart Sinyard knew as his college career was winding down that he wanted to return to Albany to be a part of the family business, a requirement dad Jeff had placed on brothers Bridges, Stuart and Beau while they were in high school.
“Yeah, we didn’t have a say in that,” Stuart Sinyard laughed. “When we all got a certain age, dad said, ‘Welcome to termite 101.’ We all spent our time crawling under houses, and both Bridges and I knew when we came back to work in the family business that we wouldn’t be moving into some nice office. We went right back to crawling under those houses. But how could we earn the respect of the business’ employees if we asked them to do anything we wouldn’t do?
“I got my taste of a bigger city driving to Atlanta while I was at the University of Georgia. And while Athens is a wonderful place, it’s a college town. It’s a fantasy land. Albany offers an amazing quality of life. It’s a place with good people, a place where you’re proud to raise your family. A lot of the close friends I had in high school (Deerfield-Windsor School) went to Georgia while I was there, and I got a sense that a lot of folks at UGA were jealous of the close bond we had. That’s what Albany’s all about.”
Like his recent hire Hawkins, EDC President Justin Strickland, 34, landed his first job in Albany immediately after graduating UGA. That fortuitous decision allowed him to eventually accept a position with the Economic Development Commission, where he flourished. When his boss, Ted Clem, left a year ago, the EDC’s board quickly realized they had the right man to fill the position already in the fold.
“I thank God I took the position (at Albany Bank & Trust) 12 years ago when I left Georgia,” Strickland said. “I wouldn’t say I’m one of those people who said, ‘I’m never moving back home,’ but I was definitely considering other options when I got the offer.
“I left Athens with a serious girlfriend who became a serious fiance who became a serious wife. We had the opportunity to move back home to a place where we knew the people, knew the community, knew its personality. It was much easier to rediscover our passion here.
“It was tough to leave Athens,” Strickland said. “You’re there with 30,000 people your age. But when we got back here, I immediately felt like part of the community. I didn’t really see Athens outside the university setting until I got a part-time job there at the Y. Now that we’ve settled back into this community, I’ve realized that, minus UGA sports, you can do everything here that you can in Athens. That’s why I encourage everyone who’s moved back here to quit being a critic, to get involved. Step up, run for office, make a difference in your community.”
There’s a kinship among the young professionals who’ve actively reinserted themselves into the community that they thought they’d left behind. To talk with them is to experience hope, promise, enthusiasm.
“We are the first generation that didn’t live personally through the civil rights movement,” Strother said. “I think that’s helped us see each other for who we are, not for things like the color of our skin. And we’ve started having those conversations among our peers about how we can make Albany better, not about what’s wrong with it.”
Dervan, who is raising his four children — Cade, Cole, Casen and Carrington — with wife Rebecca (Carr, who is a former Miss Albany) in a community that they had both written off years ago, admits he’s gone from enjoying the view of Albany in his rearview mirror to appreciating the city’s sights from the windshield.
“When you’re making memories in your hometown as a kid, you don’t realize how special they are,” the minister said. “We used to complain that ‘Albany never changes.’ Now that’s a plus. Hey, I love the fact that the Video Warehouse in Albany is still open. That’s part of the simplicity. That’s Albany. That’s home.”
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