Jones County has been home for most of Milton Appling’s life, and he has been willing to give back his time and service to the community over the years.Appling, 79, grew up in Jones County and attended a church school through fifth grade in Juliette. When the Civil Rights movement evolved and schools for Blacks built, he later attended MaggieCaliff in Gray, graduating in 1962.
Appling’s family lived on a 243-acre farm they rented, though they did very little farming. Appling‘s father, Grady, undertook a variety of endeavors to provide for his family.
“In the early days, he ran a portable sawmill in the woods,” Appling shared. “When that went out, we operated a little store, a small grocery store in East Juliette.
“He also worked as a mechanic,” Appling pointed out. ”He did some carpentry; we used to tear down houses. He did all sorts of things to provide, to get by. He used to shoe horses; he had a blacksmith shop.
“In later years,” his son said, “he worked at the bus lot and became a bus driver; and he was also a mechanic. He actually retired from the Board of Education office, and he was the grand marshal of the parade one year.”
To say the Appling family was large would be an understatement.
Appling was one of 15 children, with 19 years between the oldest, Puella, now 81, and Audrey, 62. Milton was the second oldest. There were two sets of twins, and two of the children have died.
Appling said he does not recall any major problems growing up due to the number of children.
“When you grow up in a huge family, those things rarely come into your mind,” he reasoned. “I don’t even know what we slept on. We lived in a big house, an old plantation house that we had rented. It only had four large rooms.
“Somehow we made it, and I don’t know how we did all that,” he said, noting the effect of the gap in ages.
“I didn’t grow up with a lot of the young ones. They didn’t even know me until I came back home in 1973.”
Following graduation from high school, Appling briefly worked at the Macon hospital before he was fired. He did not hesitate in explaining the circumstances leading to his dismissal.
“Back in that day, Blacks were considered inferior and all that stuff,” he stated. “I refused to say yes sir and no sir to white people. I never considered myself unequal to anybody,” he said. “That’s why I got fired.I wouldn’t be humble.”
Appling pointed out that he was only 16 at the time. He decided to enter the Air Force but could not until January after he turned 17 in December.
“I stayed in the Air Force three years, 11 months and 15 days“ he said with certainty, hinting at the preciseness of the length of service time.
After leaving the Air Force, Appling went to Michigan to check out opportunities and see relatives there. Shortly after arriving, he went to work with Bell Telephone (Bell South, AT&T) in 1967. He was able to get a transfer back to Georgia in 1973 and ultimately retired with 30 years of service in 1996. While in Michigan, though, he met his future bride, Verneda.
“I was a telephone repairman at the time, and she lived in the apartment building in my district. I was working on the phone in the lady’s apartment across the hall from hers, and when I came out, she claimed her chime was not working, so she wanted me to look at it.
“That’s how we met,“ he said. “I always tease her about making that up. I told her she only did that to try to entice me to come see her. It worked.”
The couple married in 1969.
When Appling was contemplating moving back to Georgia, he asked one of his sisters to try to find him some property to purchase.
“She was looking in the paper and found this property where I am living now. She and my dad came out and looked at it and liked it. I said ‘OK if you guys like it.’ So, I sent them some money, and that’s how we got the land. I didn’t even know where it was until I had been in Macon for a year and came out here to look at it.”
They built and moved to Jones County in 1975.
“It took a little while to get used to at the beginning,” Appling noted. “My wife grew up in the city. I had a cousin to come visit, and she said ‘It’s dark out here. There’s no light out here.’“ Appling said that he told his wife he wanted her to stay at home with the children until they were in school. That led to a new business.
“We bought a house in Macon and converted it into a daycare center,” he said. “She operated the daycare center for a number of years until the kids were of school age.”
When the children did start school, Verneda began teaching and retired as an assistant school superintendent. The Applings pointed out that five of Milton’s sisters retired from school systems, one as a bus driver.
Among his brothers, one retired from the Air Force, one from the Navy, and one from the Marines. One retired from the Jones County Board of Education as a teacher and one from Tri-County EMC. The other brother still works as a supervisor for Hanson Aggregates in Bolingbroke.
Appling has always been busy away from his professional career. He has served on no less than 17 different boards since returning to Jones County. Most were non-paid, and many were related to local government.
One of Appling‘s more visible positions was as a member of the Board of Tax Assessors, on which he served from the late 1980s until the mid-2000s. At one point, he became chairman of the board, but problems led to his resignation.
“I had some issues with the commissioners,” he recalled as to his departure. “The administrator would cut our budget by some percentage, and when I came before the board, they would say, ‘We approved the budget you sent.’ I told them that was not my budget.
“I didn’t inflate the budget,“ Appling declared. “I asked for exactly what we wanted. And I told them, ‘If you want to cut it, that is your choice. But don’t cut it and act like it is my budget.’” Other boards or commissions Appling served on include: the community planning organization PLAN (People Looking Ahead Now), Jones County Planning and Zoning Commission, the Board of Elections, Board of Equalization, Georgia Special Olympics/Jones County, Jones County Training Center, the Middle Georgia Consortium, and the Democratic Party of Jones County, in addition to the Board of Trustees of St. Paul AME Church.
He is currently on the Board of Directors for Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit and the Macon/ Bibb County Hospital Authority.
As a member of PLAN, Appling was not merely a participant. He provided entertainment to help attendees enjoy conferences over the years. He used his personal van to haul a sound system complete with large speakers that allowed him to play whatever music the crowd wanted to hear.
“I never called myself a DJ,” Appling declared, “because, first of all, I never liked DJs. They play the music whatever they wanted to hear. I figure my job, if you want to hear music, is to play the music you want to hear, not what I want.”
Appling provided the music at just about every PLAN conference and said he used his equipment for at least 20 years, playing mostly for weddings and parties as well as some functions around the state.
“I played one time inside the stadium in Atlanta, where they have the club named for Hank Aaron. I went up there for a wedding and played.”
The retiree said he keeps up with what’s going on in the county, noting he hasn’t seen that much change in the overall character of Jones County and Gray.
“We don’t have any growth, any industry to keep children here,” he assessed. “Neither of my children lives in Jones County anymore because there are no jobs here unless you’re teaching school or you are going to work at McDonald’s or Dairy Queen or Ingles, something like that.”
Appling believes there is not an impetus for change.
“Jones County has always been pretty much been a bedroom community, and that’s the way most people want to keep it,” he reasoned. “They don’t really want an industry here.
“The problem we have with people coming into Jones County now is you’ve got to work somewhere else. There’s no place here for them to work. I don’t really have an answer for Jones County now. But,” Appling continued, “Obviously it’s doing well. It’s not suffering, is it?”
