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Retired educator bolsters art center
Jeanne Tompkins
Former teacher Jeanne Tompkins currently serves as co-chair of the board of directors for the Bowen Center for the Arts in Dawsonville, where she uses her passion for art to better the community. - photo by Allie Dean

 

The current co-chair of the board of directors for the Bowen Center for the Arts in Dawsonville, Jeanne Tompkins is channeling a lifelong career of teaching into bolstering the arts center to be the best it can be.

Native to Atlanta, Tompkins considers Clarkesville her home and attended the University of Georgia, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in home economics and chemistry.

Tompkins was a home demonstration agent with 4-H after graduation, and eventually went back to UGA to obtain a masters in elementary education and special education.

She worked in special education for a time, but when she started having kids, the work became too demanding. At that time, she said, the job was much more involved than it is today.

“I had to see that they got doctor’s appointments, dental appointments, it was very comprehensive,” she said.

Tompkins moved to Cobb County with her husband and two kids and taught elementary education, and when the family moved to Louisiana, she took a middle school job.

“I loved it. I knew it was where I needed to be,” she said. “They’re kind of special, eighth graders are always kind of weird but I just love their sense of humor and I loved what they did and how they did it, there was nothing they wouldn’t try one time.”

Tapping into their curiosity and willingness made teaching middle schoolers a joy, she said.

“I started teaching earth science, and I knew I was doing exactly what I wanted to do, so I stayed in that,” Tompkins said. “I taught 31 years total.”

Tompkins went back to school a third time to get her National Board Certification, which she compared to getting a doctorate degree in classroom teaching. The program was incredibly intense, she said, but taught her how to analyze her teaching in a way she’d never done.

“It was more about vision and understanding students, and I’ve probably used that skill more than anything else that I’ve learned in all my teaching, all my degrees, all of that: Being able to look in the moment, what needs to be done, how we’re going to do it, what’s the next step, what’s right, what’s wrong, those kind of things,” she said.

And when you have an organization like the arts center, Tompkins said, that’s vital.

“What’s right, what’s wrong, who do we need that can do this, this, to reach a goal, all of that,” she said.

Tompkins and her husband moved to Dawsonville in 2003 because she wanted to be closer to her sisters, who lived in Clarkesville.

When her husband died from complications of leukemia in 2014, Tompkins said she started looking for something to focus on. Around 2008, she started hanging around the center, and later when her husband got sick and received a bone marrow transplant, she decided for her health to find something to do other than direct his care.

“I got interested in photography, I went to (the University of North Georgia) and took photography certificate courses through their continuing education,” she said. “That got me into shows, and the shows got me into the Bowen. The Bowen filled a void and a love for other things. I began to understand fine art a lot more through my photography.”

One year when the center hosted Art in the Garden, Tompkins was in charge of publicity for the event, which opened doors for her to later serve as vice president and president.

“The arts center is certainly a love of mine, I’ve even left it in my will,” she said. “I think art feeds your soul. Other organizations that are nonprofit, they feed people, I’m all for that...I love Rotary Club, because it has fingers in every nonprofit in the county. But the arts center just feeds your soul.”

Tompkins compared the center to a flowering bush.

“You have the roots in the community that are underground and not so pretty, and you have to feed those roots and you have to take care of them, and then you have the leafy parts that come as an outgrowth from that but what makes it beautiful and what gives you joy are the flowers, and to me that is the arts center, the flowers,” Tompkins said. “You need all of it together, but you need it.”

Her favorite thing about the Bowen is meeting people who come to the shows, whether it be artists or people in the community.

“Being a part of all these different groups is how I function as a person,” she said. “It’s like when I was teaching, I was always motivating. It’s the same with the arts center: Motivating people to want to come, motivating people to want to be a part of it, to participate in events.”

Tompkins is constantly donating her time to better the county, and takes it all in stride.

She is also heavily involved in the Dawson County Rotary Club, and is president-elect for 2019-2020.

She also donates her photography. She takes photos for the Friends of Recovery pictures with Santa at Christmas time so the families can have the memories, and also donates photographs to Grace Presbyterian Church, where she is a member. She also does free photography for high school students for their senior pages as well.

Tompkins is also a mentor, and saw one student from third grade to graduation.

And last but not least, she makes sure everyone in her life is fed, from Rotarians to friends to neighbors, purposefully making too much food when she cooks. 

“I like that kind of sharing,” she said. 

Community Events
Volunteer keeps Dawson citizens healthy
Margie O'Byrne
Margie O'Byrne. - photo by Allie Dean

For Margie O’Byrne, there is nothing quite like the reward of helping patients obtain medications that can drastically improve their quality of life.

O’Byrne spends hours each week at the Good Shepherd Clinic in Dawsonville, filling out reams of paperwork to obtain drugs for the clinic’s patients. The drugs are free for the patient, as are all other services provided at the clinic. And O’Byrne’s help is free as well.

Retired from business, O’Byrne has been a volunteer at the clinic since its inception, when Grace Presbyterian Church started treating patients in its basement in 2009.

Prescription assistance is O’Byrne’s job at the clinic, but it wasn’t her calling.

O’Byrne graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in history and political science and a minor in education and taught history for two and a half years.

When she moved to Georgia, she started at Pacesetter Steel Service Incorporated as an executive secretary. She was the second employee and watched the company grow to over 200 employees, and retired as vice president of the company in 2000.

An active member of Grace Presbyterian, she was part of the original group who signed up to help with the clinic, and was delegated her role.

“When we were organizing the clinic, the woman who was the head at the time had all of us who said we would volunteer get together and ask us what we wanted to do. I said I wanted to be the receptionist, and she said ‘nope, I’ve already got that filled, you’ve got prescription assistance.’ That’s how it happened,” O’Byrne said.

Now, the clinic serves hundreds of people each year who live, work or go to school in the county and are between the ages of 18 and 64, as well as have income 200 percent of the federal poverty guideline or lower. It has grown from the basement to a 5,000 square feet of space in a professional medical building behind the Burger King.

With that growth, O’Byrne has maintained the clinic’s mission to help patients obtain drugs they couldn’t otherwise afford.

“My job hasn’t changed, it’s just gotten broader,” she said.

In her role with prescription assistance, O’Byrne obtains medications from drug company foundations at no cost for a year’s period of time, which requires massive amounts of paperwork, she said.

“But last year we provided over $800,000 worth of drugs to our patients at no cost,” she said. “That’s just from drug company foundations.”

In addition to the drug foundations, a pharmacist at the clinic obtains drugs from Dawson Pharmacy and Good Pill, another 501(c)(3) in Dawsonville. Drugs from the pharmacy normally have to be paid for, and account for the largest expenditures the clinic incurs each year.

The clinic is open on Thursdays, but doctors often come in throughout the week as well. O’Byrne works all Thursday and during the week to get the work done, along with a team of four part time volunteers.

She doesn’t mind the hard work, just how unstreamlined the process is to obtain free mediation.

Everyone is treated individually, and each prescription ordered by a doctor requires a separate application, O’Byrne explained. Refills are not automatic, and the paperwork can vary greatly from foundation to foundation, which is the most time consuming part.

The biggest problem the clinic comes up against is insulin, because it must be refrigerated and is extremely expensive.

“If someone needs insulin, they can’t go a day without it,” she said.

O’Byrne found out that a friend of her son was the regional manager of Sanofi, which makes a type of insulin the clinic uses a lot of, and was able to connect with him to get the drug to the clinic so that there is a reserve for patients who run out before more can be obtained.

Working to solve problems, like obtaining high-price insulin, comes naturally to O’Byrne, due in part to her business background.

“One of the things that I did when I was working was to write procedures, and while we haven’t written procedures yet, we’ve pretty much developed them, and that’s helpful,” she said.

Her favorite part of the job is interacting with patients.

“You get to be friends with them, you get to know them, I think the biggest thing is we don’t treat them as ‘you don’t have the money to go to a real doctor, hang tight, we’ll get to you when we get to you,’” she said. “We make them feel as important as we are, or more so.”

Jane Stuckey, chair of the clinic’s board of directors, said that in addition to her assigned job, O’Byrne will help wherever help is needed, even answering the phones and helping check patients in.

“It’s all about helping the patients for her,” Stuckey said. “She’s probably one of the most kind people to everyone, patients and doctors and other volunteers, that I’ve ever witnessed in the healthcare environment. People would be going without medication in Dawson County if she didn’t do this job.”

Above all, spreading the word of Christ is O’Byrne’s primary mission.

“The camaraderie of being with other people and the joy I get from meeting the patients and figuring out what they need and how I can best help them, that’s just very fulfilling to me,” O’Byrne said. “And hopefully I’m showing Christ’s love to them, that’s my bottom line intent.”