MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — Every time Fielding Whipple visits the business he has owned for more than 50 years, he passes just a few yards away from a plaque that bears his name. 

After half a century of servicing typewriters, copiers and other machines at Milledgeville’s Whipple Office Equipment Company while serving his community as a member of the Milledgeville Rotary Club, the 95-year-old Whipple has gained a well-earned reputation as one of the city’s most respected figures. Recently, the club unveiled a bench outside his business in honor of more than 50 years perfect attendance to Rotary meetings, in the hope that future generations may be aware of his impressive feat.

“Rotary has a system where if you miss one meeting, there are little towns all around you that have Rotary Clubs too,” said Whipple when asked how he has managed such a streak. “We meet on Thursday, and the Tennille club meets on Tuesday, so I’ve made up most of my meetings over there in Tennille.”

In his many years of serving Milledgeville and the larger world, Whipple has compiled an impressive resume even without his perfect streak. After serving as a naval communications officer in World War II, Whipple earned a journalism degree from the University of Georgia and began what he thought would be a long career at the Thomaston Times. When the war in Korea called him back to the military as an air intelligence officer though, Whipple lost his job as a journalist for good and returned to Georgia. 

“My brother had an Ollivetti franchise selling typewriters, calculators, and things like that, and I got to know the Ollivetti District Director for this area,” he said. “He came to me one day and told me that he had a vacancy in Milledgeville and that he needed an agent. He made me an offer and I accepted it, and I came into Milledgeville in 1964 without knowing a soul.”

Although he didn’t know anyone in Milledgeville at the time, Whipple soon found Lee Dennis, one of his roommates at UGA, operating a furniture store in town. Himself a member of the local Rotary, Dennis brought Whipple to one of the club’s meetings and got Whipple involved in the local chapter. Unbeknownst to him at the time, Rotary would also play a role in courting his wife of more than 40 years.

“One of my favorite stories was when I finished a Rotary meeting one hot August afternoon at the country club, where we always used to meet,” he said. “I was driving back into town right past the tennis courts when I saw a pretty young lady out there playing tennis who I’d eaten breakfast with frequently at a restaurant downtown. I didn’t have anything planned for that night, and on the spur of the moment I stopped, parked on the grass, and went over to the tennis court, where she had just won her match. I asked her for a date for that night, and she said yes. I had an idea before I asked her that she was the girl for me, and the next Thursday night I proposed to her and she said yes.”

Marrying in 1971, Fielding and Harriett will have been together for 46 years this month. A professor emerita of biology at Georgia College and creator of the university’s Academic Outreach program, Harriett has since retired as one of the college’s longest-tenured and most respected professors. For his part, Fielding has given up many of the supply company’s day-to-day responsibilities to his nephew, Miles, who also runs his own business out of the Hancock Street shop. After 50 years of serving the community in Milledgeville, as well as building a Rotary attendance record that may never be broken, Whipple said he maintains a positive outlook on life.

“Pretty much, pretty much,” he said, on whether he felt people are the same now as they were before he began his streak. “You’ll have problems come up, and you’ll always try to find solutions. The solution is always there.”