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Health district gets new director
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SAVANNAH — Diane Z. Weems, M.D., who has served as health director of the Coastal Health District forthree years, retired at the end of last month.

Lawton C. Davis, M.D., the health director of the South Central Health District, was been named as her successor.

A board-certified pediatrician, Weems began her public health career at the Lowndes County Health Department in 1986 and moved to the Chatham County department in 1987 as a staff physician. In 1993, Weems became the chief medical officer for the health district and served in that position until being appointed director in February 2013.

She served as a governor’s appointee and vice chairwoman of the Public Health Commission in 2010. Its report was instrumental in supporting the establishment of an independent Georgia Department of Public Health.

Weems’ awards include the 2011 Georgia Public Health Association’s Sellers-McCroan Award and the Al Dohany Award for community service.

Davis has served as South Central director for 18 years. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Furman University and a medical degree from the Medical College of Georgia. He practiced internal medicine for 13 years and worked full time as an emergency room physician for two years in Dublin before joining public health as the district health director in January 1998.

Davis has served as the chairman of the state’s technical review committee (onsite sewage disposal) since its creation in July 1999.

"Dr. Weems has made significant and lasting contributions during her 30 years of service to public health," Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, Brenda Fitzgerald, M.D. said. "She has served as a dedicated public health ambassador on local, regional, and state levels and is truly representative of what is good about public health leadership in Georgia.

"Dr. Davis brings a wealth of public health experience and his own unique perspective and leadership style to the Coastal Health District. I am confident that under his guidance the district will continue to be proactive in preventing disease and promoting good health among its residents."

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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