MOULTRIE, Ga. — It’s been delayed for two years, but later this month a Colquitt County native and a local pioneer will be recognized at the Colquitt County Career Achievement Award banquet.

The Colquitt County Career Achievement Award, first awarded in 2012, salutes people who were raised in Colquitt County and attended local schools then left the area to achieve great things in their careers. As part of the annual award, the recipient is expected to address students at Colquitt County High School as a way of showing them what they too can achieve.

Sporadically, the awards committee also presents a posthumous award to a deceased person who they believe is worthy of recognition.

In 2020, the committee was scheduled to present the award to NASA official Roger Hunter and to posthumously recognize W.C. Vereen, but the coronavirus pandemic intervened. The banquet was scheduled for March 12, 2020, but just two days beforehand, the committee announced its indefinite postponement. Hunter lived in California and travel challenges related to COVID-19 would prevent him from attending his own ceremony.

Early this year, the committee decided to resume the awards banquet, according to Chairman Brooks Sheldon. The event will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 22, at the Colquitt County Arts Center. 

Tickets sold for the 2020 event will be honored. That banquet was sold out, Sheldon said, but the committee is adding a couple of extra tables at this year’s event so a few tickets are still available. Contact the Moultrie-Colquitt County Chamber of Commerce to purchase them.

Hunter, currently the program manager for NASA Small Spacecraft Technology, was formerly program manager for the Kepler Mission, a program to determine the frequency of potentially habitable, Earth-like planets. 

Vereen, a native of Cheraw, S.C., came to Moultrie in 1890 and became a major influence on the community. He founded Riverside Manufacturing Co. and was involved in the founding of several other significant local businesses. At various times he was a county commissioner, mayor of Moultrie and the first chairman of Colquitt County’s Board of Education. He was the inspiration for the county’s first hospital, Vereen Memorial Hospital, which later became Colquitt Regional Medical Center.

Sheldon said Vereen will be the first person the committee has honored who has not come through the local school system, but his role in the creation of that school system was deemed worthy of recognition.

Other award recipients through the years include:

• 2012: Wayne Littles, who retired as director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. That year also featured a special recognition of architect Frank McCall.

• 2013: Terry Turner, Ph.D., professor emeritus in urology at the University of Virginia. He is also the author of a number of books under the pen name David Donovan. Turner returned to Colquitt County after retiring from the University of Virginia and now writes occasional columns for The Moultrie Observer.

• 2014: David R. McElroy Jr., project manager for the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• 2015: Owen Smith, an internationally acclaimed guitarist. That year also featured a special recognition for songwriter Boudleaux Bryant.

• 2016: Bob Alligood, a respected engineer who went on to serve two terms in the Florida Legislature. In 2003, he acquired what is now Ice House America, a Moultrie-based company that produces ice vending machines.

• 2017: Reatha Clark King, the first African American female chemist at the National Bureau of Standards. Her research in fluoride flame calorimetry contributed to the Apollo space mission. She served as president of Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and she held executive positions at General Mills.

• 2018: Dr. Charles D. Williams, a nationally recognized radiologist, who in 2016 received the ultimate recognition in his field, The Gold Medal Award from the American College of Radiology.

• 2019: Pete Sayeski, former president of The McGraw-Hill Learning Group, the larges publisher of textbooks in the United States.