The Luce Legacy©

Last week I needed a “heart tune-up” and my cardiologist chose to do it at the A.L. Luce Heart Institute which is part of the Navicent Facility in Macon. I was delighted about that choice. Let me tell you why.

First of all, it is a state of the art facility with equipment and health care… Maybe I should say “Heartcare”,  providers that are true professionals as well as compassionate servers. The Institute has been serving patients since 2008, and is named for Albert L. “Buddy” Luce, Jr.  who contributed $3 million toward the construction of the Institute.  He donated to the project just weeks after receiving heart treatment himself at what was then known as The Medical Center of Central Georgia.

I had a special relationship with Buddy because I worked for Blue Bird for 30 years while he was president and CEO. My very first recollection of Buddy was interviewing with him and his brothers, George and Joe, in the winter of 1971. I was working for Dodge truck at the time during a very cold Detroit winter. I must have done ok in the interview because my next recollection was trading in that Detroit winter for middle Georgia peach blossoms when I first reported to work in May 1971. We thought we had died and gone to heaven as the saying goes! 

During those 30 years I managed four different assembly plants in two countries. And for six of those years I was even next door neighbors to the Luces. If there was an inconsistency in their ethics I would have seen it. But there wasn’t. We were taught by their example that the “Golden Rule” (treating others the way we wanted to be treated ourselves) was the way we should do business with employees, customers and the community.  

Here’s just a little snippet of how Buddy chose to treat his employees. For many of those years I worked at Blue Bird, I would get a phone call from Buddy on Christmas morning asking how our day was going and asking specifically about our children by name! And I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. I believe Buddy chose to use his Christmas morning every year calling a whole list of employees he cared about deeply to wish them a Merry Christmas in a very personal way that was far and away more impressive than any Christmas card! That is very humbling to me and set a lifelong example for me of how to put others ahead of self. 

Charitable giving was an integral part of the Luce legacy long before the first shovel of dirt was turned for the Albert Luce, Jr. Heart Institute in Macon. As impressive as this facility is, I believe it doesn’t stand quite as tall as the much lesser known house that Buddy had built for an employee years ago outside Ft. Valley so he wouldn’t have to walk to work and back every day from Marshallville. That story, and many others like it that will never be published, will perhaps leave a bigger, if quieter, legacy. 

All of us in Middle Georgia, and especially seniors, are blessed by the legacy Buddy Luce and his family left to us. Not only with a heart institute but as an example of how to “Do life.” 

Thanks for reading All About Seniors… see you next week!

Bill Milby is a Director of Visiting Angels® of Central Georgia, a non-medical, living assistance service for seniors. If you have questions or comments about this column you can reach him at william.mercylink@gmail.com or search for us at https://www.facebook.com/VisitingAngelsofCentralGA

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