A Jones County 30-year veteran of the telecom industry is not hard to reach, but many in today’s world of technology may consider her options of contact limited.
Earlene Hamilton (also known by many as ‘Earl’) uses only a flip phone. Asked why she hasn’t switched to the more modern smartphone, she had a ready answer.
“What do I need it for? My little phone rings and talks. I don’t Facebook, I don’t tweet, I don’t Twitter, I don’t Instagram, I don’t I do any of that stuff.”
Hamilton, 74, retired after 30 years from what was originally Southern Bell in 2002, but she still works full-time and serves on local government and historical preservation boards. When it comes to social media and communication patterns, she questions some folks’ priorities.
“I don’t understand. I don’t feel compelled to tell people what I’m doing every minute of every day. I mean, I just… I don’t have that need, and I don’t need to know what they’re doing every minute of every day.
“And if I want to find out what somebody’s doing,” she declared, “I’ll call them, or I’ll sit down to lunch with them, or I’ll drink a glass of wine with them and look at them. People seem to have forgotten how to carry on a conversation and look at each other.”
Hamilton, the only child of Earl and Annie Bowen Hamilton, was born in 1950 prior to the introduction of much of the technology used today and, in fact, most of the time did not have access to what most families today would consider essential.
“Mama wouldn’t have a TV in the house until I graduated high school,” Hamilton recalled. “She wanted me read a book, and it paid off. I mean, I’ll reach for a book before I reach for anything that has to do with the television.”
She did note that she was able to watch television on the weekends sometimes at her grandmother’s house.
The small community of Clinton has been a part of Hamilton’s life since her birth, literally, she commented.
“They bought the house in Clinton in May, and I was born in June. I came from the hospital in Macon to that house.”
Annie Hamilton was a co-founder of the Old Clinton Historical Society and a long-time advocate of the organization. She was its first president, and her daughter has held that title since the early 2000s.
Hamilton graduated from Georgia College in Milledgeville with a B.S. in math and went to work for Southern Bell in Atlanta in engineering in 1972. That is where she got the name most people use.
“I became ‘Earl’ like a month into my Southern Bell career,” she said, “because there weren’t very many women in engineering. In fact, I was one of the first three hired at Southern Bell in Atlanta, and the guys immediately shortened Earlene to Earl. Now,” she added, “90 percent of the world calls me Earl.”
Hamilton moved back to Jones County in 1991.
“I was able to get a job in Macon and come back at the same pay grade level, and then I retired in 2002,” she recalled, but added she has never stopped working.
Following two years of odd jobs, Hamilton returned to Bellsouth on a contract basis for two years. She then joined Georgia Military College as an alumni coordinator.
“I met a lot of interesting folks in that job,” Hamilton said. “There were a lot of amazing people that went to school at GMC: ambassadors and generals and the former United States Secretary of Labor William Usery. I got to be really good friends with him and his wife.
“I got to go to Washington one of Fourth of July,” Hamilton shared. “We were on a GMC trip, and Mr. Usery hosted a big party at his condominium, which overlooked the Pentagon. We got to stand out on his balcony and watch the Fourth of July show from his balcony, which was amazing.”
Hamilton said she was “restructured” out of that position in 2016 but found a new job shortly thereafter.
“I currently work for the Georgia Department of Defense. I’m still working to support two old houses and all my critters!
“I work in a program called Georgia Youth Challenge,” she explained. “I’m a community outreach coordinator. I travel central Georgia and right now, southwest Georgia, trying to share information about the program with the families in the area.”
The two houses Hamilton referenced are the one in Clinton where she spent her childhood and the one off Eatonton Highway on about 150 acres where she now lives. Hamilton purchased her current home and land in 1987 while she was still living in Atlanta. She refers to it as Cats’ Lair Farm, and the home has been on the Kiwanis Club Tour of Homes.
“When I came back from Atlanta, I had six horses and a ton of cats and dogs, and my folks still alive and living in Clinton,” she recalled, “so there was no place for me and all those critters.”
Hamilton is an avid horse lover and currently has two. Interestingly, that passion influenced her choice of colleges.
“I went to Georgia College as a day student so I could stay with my horse. Seriously.”
She got her first horse when she was a child.
“Mama said, when I was a baby, before I could even talk, when I would see a horse, I would point, and I was just fascinated with him, and I kept asking for him.”
Her father grew up in the northeast in major cities, “so he was not a country boy, and he didn’t want me to have a horse,” Hamilton recalled. Her mother, though, felt differently. “For my 10th birthday, she put her foot down, and she got Mr. Lucius Allen, who she worked for at the agriculture office here, to help her find me a horse. And that was my first horse, Smokey.”
When Hamilton graduated from college and moved to metro Atlanta, she didn’t leave horses behind and, in fact, had six when she moved back in 1991.
“The horses over time have all died,” she pointed out. “I never got into buying and selling. So everything I ever had lived with me till it died.”
Once Hamilton returned to her home base, she ended up getting involved in community affairs. She accepted a position on the Jones County Planning and Zoning Commission more than 20 years ago and is now the chairperson. That board has merged with the Board of Appeals and Adjustments. She is also a member of Jones County History and Heritage. She was that organization’s 2022 recipient of the Hamilton-Williams award for her preservation efforts.
The Old Clinton Historical Society celebrated its 50-year anniversary in 2024. Hamilton said, based on what she has been told, her cousin, Billy Cawthon, a student then at UGA, kept telling Clinton residents that the community needed to be preserved.
“Billy kept saying, ‘we need to do something to save Clinton because it’s important. It was the county seat, it was this, it was that.’ And so the idea kind of caught on,” Hamilton related. “There just got to be some synergy there about the idea of saving this little piece of what was left. Because we have original streets. We’ve got 13 original antebellum structures that are there, and it was the county seat of Jones County. So it just kind of took on a life of, you know, that this just could be really important.”
Hamilton noted that the widening of the Macon-Gray Highway divided Clinton geographically, and some of it, including the Clinton Female Seminary site, was lost. Efforts are underway now, however, to make more of the area attractive for tourists. The Society has bought land that is designated as green space, and a recreational trails grant is being sought.
One offshoot of the organization is Old Clinton War Days in May, with the 45th annual Battle of Clinton re-enactment scheduled this year. The Old Clinton Historical Society co-hosts the weekend event with the 16th Georgia re-enactment unit.
“They manage all of the soldiers, the cannon, the battle outlines, the battle plans, that sort of stuff,” Hamilton explained. “The Historical Society manages the modern food vendors, the craftspeople; we take on trying to get sponsorships for the event and do all of the behind-the-scenes stuff.”
Hamilton stressed the event is a significant economic impact for Gray and Jones County.
“All those people that come in here buy gas. They buy food. Nobody camps out anymore. So, they eat in all the restaurants. They fill up the hotel up there. They buy supplies at Ace and the grocery stores’ snacks. Old Clinton Gas gets a huge bump because it’s walking distance. Old Clinton Barbecue gets a huge business.”
Hamilton noted the full War Days event was not held two years due to the pandemic, though memorial services were conducted then.
“I ran into a guy in the grocery store the second year of the pandemic,” she recounted. “And first thing he asked me, because this was rolling into April, ‘Are y’all gonna have war days?’ And I said, ‘No, not this year.’ He said, ‘Good, that means I can find beer for that week. When y’all have war days, there is no beer.’
“Now, if that’s not economic impact!”
