To describe former Gray Mayor Jimmy Roberts’ journey in life as one “from the outhouse to the penthouse” would not be stretching the truth too far.
Roberts, who will be 86 in October, didn’t have the luxury of a bathroom in either of the first two houses in which his family lived.
“We didn’t have a bathroom when I lived in Clinton. We had an outhouse,” he commented last week.
That didn’t change when Roberts and his parents, Corbin and Sara, moved next to Cleo’s, the restaurant on Macon Highway his dad bought from his uncle, Cleo Roberts, when he was six or seven.
That house next door originally didn’t have a bathroom, either.
“When you wanted to take a bath, you had to walk down there (to the restaurant) and walk back up in the middle of the night. Daddy added a section to the house that included a bathroom.”
Roberts said living adjacent to the family restaurant was not a problem for him.
“It was good for me because we had curb service back then, and when I was 11, 12, 13 years old, I’d catch curb. I had some money in my pocket when I went to school,” he laughed.
The restaurant burned down, however. Though it was rebuilt, that cut into the young entrepreneur’s business.
“It was when I had gotten to be 15 or 16, when you really needed some change in your pocket.”
Roberts had other income, though.
“I would sell peaches every summer, and then at Christmas time, I would order firecrackers. I found some old checks, where I was in the sixth or seventh grade, and I had written some to the firecracker company.”
The teenager didn’t stop there, however. He got into the cattle business.
“Daddy bought me three young heifers,” he recalled. “Then those three cows bred, had calves. Daddy had a farm with about 200 cows on it, and I put mine over there. I had about 20 cows,” Roberts said, then added there were hogs as well.
“I’d have my hogs in one place, and he’d have his in the big pen,” Roberts recalled. “The deal was, I’d have to slop his hogs and my hogs because I was eating their food, the restaurant food.”
Roberts’ dad had a contract with Merita Bread, and in that day, the floor sweepings of dough and flour were put in a 55-gallon drum.
“About twice a week we’d go down and get those drums. We’d take some back and get full ones and just feed the hogs off that. You get a bunch of new pigs and you feed them some of that yeast, and they get drunk. They would just sit down on their haunches,” Roberts said with his well-known laugh.
The future successful businessman was introduced to his other profession early in life as well. Candidates for statewide political offices were often in the Middle Georgia area, including Jones County.
“Before the first Cleo’s building burned,” Roberts shared, “Herman Talmadge, when he was governor and running for governor again, used to stop by and see daddy, and he would get a barbecue sandwich and a Schlitz beer. I was just a little boy and would just sit there with Daddy and him. They would have some good conversations, and he would say (in that South Georgia drawl), ‘Well, Corbin, I will see you next time.’” Later, Roberts continued, “When Marvin Griffin was governor, on Saturdays he would have stump gatherings across the state. When he was in Swainsboro, Walter Williams would call daddy and say ‘Marvin Griffin is having a rally down there, and we need to go down there and have a good crowd.’ I’d go with them and just listen to Marvin Griffin do a stump deal.”
When Carl Sanders was running for governor, Cleo’s furnished the barbecue for a rally at Porter Stadium in Macon.
“I remember Carl Sanders coming by; he recognized daddy, and said, ‘Corbin, what are you doing here?’ Daddy said, ‘I’m feeding ya’ll.’
“Things like that just created a little interest for me,” Roberts explained. “Different times over the years, different people involved.”
Roberts graduated from Jones County High in 1957 and went to junior college.
“I graduated from Middle Georgia and went to Georgia (UGA), and I started having a better time. I never graduated. I had four years of college but only had three years of credits,” he chuckled.
Roberts returned home in 1961, and he and his high school sweetheart, Frances Varner, married in June. They would go on to have two children, Sara and Cynthia, and now have three grandchildren.
Roberts had worked at Strietmann Biscuit Company (now Keebler) during the summers while in college, and he started there when he left UGA. He stayed there three years before opening the Handy Andy convenience store in Gray. That was the beginning of his long and successful business career.
Among the properties he bought was what was the post office and the building that housed Joe Briley’s law office, the car wash property behind the Crossing convenience store, the house adjacent to it on East Clinton Street, the building adjacent to the existing City Hall complex, and a car wash site in Gordon. He still owns most of them. Roberts operated Handy Andy for 33 years before leasing it out.
The Crossing property at the intersection of East Clinton Street and the Eatonton Highway has been owned for years by the Morton-Johnson Scholarship Fund. While Roberts operated the Crossing and spent thousands of dollars improving it, he was never able to purchase it. However, current fund administrator Patsy Childs was appreciative of his efforts, he remembered.
“She told me several years later, ‘We used to have one child on scholarship for several years, but since you’ve had it, we’ve had 10 to 12 children on scholarship every year,’ because I was paying what I supposed to pay, paying on time, and taking care of the problems.”
Four years after going into business for himself with the Handy Andy, Roberts decided he wanted to enter the political arena he had witnessed as a youngster. In 1969, he ran for the City Council of Gray and was the top vote-getter among the candidates for the five seats, earning him the position of Mayor Pro Tem.
When Mayor Len McClure decided to retire two years later due to his wife’s health issues, Roberts ran in May of 1972 for the seat. He was unopposed in that election and never had opposition in any of his five terms in office.
“I was always interested in politics,” Roberts said. “My daddy was always interested in politics and got into it. So, I decided to run for City Council in 1969 and continued on for 20-something years.”
Corbin Roberts served 12 years as a county commissioner and three terms as state representative.
Roberts said obtaining funding for the building referred to as the D.V. Childs Civic Center was one major accomplishment during his reign as mayor. However, he pointed to another key city improvement.
“Even though we are still short today, we got two or three 200,000 gallon reservoirs for water,” Roberts said, adding that the city entered into an agreement with the county for the construction of a water line on Lite-N-Tie Road that guaranteed Gray its pro rata share of the water if needed.
Roberts also pointed out that when he became mayor, the municipality didn’t even own its building or the parking area.
“They authorized me to get in touch with the people that owned it. And I bought City Hall and all that parking out there.”
While in office, Roberts served as president of the 11th district of the Georgia Municipal Association as well as chairman of the Board of Directors of the regional planning commission on two different occasions. He was also the recipient of the prestigious Sam Nunn Award of the same organization one year and named the Man of the Year in 1993 by the Gray-Jones County Chamber of Commerce.
The former mayor said he got his share of telephone calls.
“More than I would like to have had, but I reckon that’s part of the deal,” Roberts recalled. “Most of them were about garbage and dogs,” he laughed. “We got most of the garbage problems solved when we went to the Herby Curbys, and I reckon they have the dog problem figured out now, but darn if I could.”
The retiring mayor’s accomplishments did not go unnoticed by his peers.
The City Council in 1993 honored him by naming the city office property the James C. Roberts Municipal Complex. When asked about his tenure, Roberts pointed out he missed three meetings, two for trips outside the country and one due to a back operation.
Roberts and his family loved Georgia football and held season tickets for more than 30 years. He decided to give his up, but his trips did not stop. Local veterinarian Dr. Berry Moore was also an avid Bulldog fan. His wife, Sara Jane, decided in 2009 she had had enough of the treks to Athens and told him she was not going anymore.
“She told Frances one day at Ingles, Berry would not speak to her for three days, and finally he said ‘I’m going to call Jimmy Roberts.’ He called me, and he and I went for 11 years.”
Roberts said Moore was not feeling well early in 2020, the final year they went before his death, and he was unable to attend a game.
“He told me that was the first home game he had missed since 1954.”
They had fun, Roberts recalled. Frances would help prepare the food and other necessities.
“We would just let the tailgate down in my truck, get the chairs down, and have a good time. He enjoyed it, and I did too. But,” Roberts added, “I did it to help him because I had just about run out of it myself.”
