When Mack Wood came home to East Ellijay after retiring from a long career with General Motors, he intended to take it easy for a while.
That lasted about three years, until the East Ellijay native became the city’s planning and permitting official. For almost 23 years, he’s overseen East Ellijay’s commercial and residential development.
“General Motors had a 30 and out program, so I retired from there when I was 52,” Wood said. “My wife and I wanted to come home, and I didn’t really have any plans beyond that.”
Wood recently celebrated his second retirement, this time from East Ellijay City Hall. He officially retired as city planner June 30.
“I wouldn’t do (this) in Jasper or Blue Ridge. I was raised here, and East Ellijay is a part of me,” he said.
Before working on the GM assembly line at the Lakewood and Doraville plants, as well as the Delco Remy parts plant in Albany, Wood served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. His four years in the military included a year in Vietnam.
“I’d never heard of Vietnam till I got orders to go over there,” he said.
Wood later studied machinery at Pickens Tech with help from the GI Bill. That machine shop training and the building of base structures he did while in the Air Force served him well in his later career.
“I’ve just always had a knack for building,” he said. “(In Vietnam), we ran the flight lines and built flight lines and buildings and things like that. That’s where I got a lot of building experience. Then, when you work in a machine shop, you’re always working with and looking at all sorts of diagrams.”
Wood’s early projects for East Ellijay included drawing up plans for its current City Hall, then getting the plans approved and the facility built.
For years, City Hall had been in an old schoolhouse that once stood within walking distance from the current City Hall on Oak Street. The city staff and police department had outgrown the building, and then-Mayor Mack West was looking to have a new City Hall built when Wood came on board.
“He’d been wanting a nice, bigger City Hall. They were going to a have one built, but the plans weren’t going to fit us. I told the mayor I could fix what we wanted,” Wood said. “I wanted the police department to have their own section, so we made it a story and a half. We were also able to put a training room in the upstairs part.”
An auto union rep for GM, Wood represented the company in various ways including at the national auto show in Chicago, Ill. The people skills that experience helped build also came in handy when working with the public as city planner.
In working with builders, contractors and business owners, Wood said he always tried to bring more humanity to the process.
“I’ve been told over my life that I’m a pragmatic person. I like to think through stuff before I do it. I had three brothers, and I was the oldest, so I’ve always just took care of things,” he said. “When I was (with) the union, I learned to get both sides of the story before taking action. (As city planner), I always tried to work with people and treat people like they would want to be treated. I just enjoyed interacting with people without being elected. I don’t deal with (whether someone is) Republican or Democrat. I just served people, and I treat everybody the same.”
The time in which Wood worked for the city was one of extensive growth, mostly in the commercial sector. By the time Highway 515 opened to traffic in the late ‘80s, chain restaurants and big box stores like Walmart, McDonald’s and Ingles had begun coming to East Ellijay. In the early 2000s, the commercial development that had previously been centered around Maddox Drive and Yukon Road expanded to what is now the Highlands shopping area along 515.
“Walmart had been where Ingles is now, and Ingles was where the (Black Bear) antique store is right now. Walmart built the supercenter and moved, and we got Lowe’s,” Wood said. “The highway changed the complex of Gilmer County. That opened it up, and when we started getting (more commercial growth), everybody started coming. As it grew, we decided the 515 corridor was going to be commercial and no houses or apartments would go up along that corridor.”
Wood wasn’t all that surprised by some of the big businesses wanting to set up along 515, which was built to connect the metro Atlanta area to Georgia’s mountains. Several retailers or chain restaurants with locations in Cherokee County decided to skip Pickens County and build here, he noted.
Wood remembered how one well-known restaurant decided to build in East Ellijay somewhat by chance.
“I was at a meeting in Dalton, and some guys from Ruby Tuesday’s were there. I told them how we’d like to have a Ruby Tuesday’s, and they said ‘Longhorn owns our business,’ but they would find out,” he said. “They called back the next week and said they were interested.”
Wood had announced that he planned to retire shortly before the unexpected passing of longtime mayor Mack West earlier this year. West was older than Wood by a few years, but the two Macks both grew up in East Ellijay and knew one another in their younger years. Later in life, they would reconnect as government officials in their hometown.
Wood remembered how West asked him to consider working for the city shortly after the passing of previous code enforcement officer James Weeks.
“The mayor asked me to come help out, and my job just sort of evolved,” he said. “I started doing the land disturbing permits, then everybody would call me because they had to do their plans. (Eventually), I was doing code enforcement, permits and inspections.”
At Wood’s last city council meeting in June, Mayor Don Callihan expressed his and the council’s appreciation for Wood’s service to the city.
“He’s been here a long time, and he’s seen a lot of growth and issued a lot of permits. We do appreciate it,” said Callihan. “He’s also offered to come back and help us any time we need him.”
Wood is happy to take calls from the city staff or give advice if asked, but he’s planning on staying retired this time around. His wife, former East Ellijay City Clerk Linda Wood, also retired last year.
“It’s what they call life in the slow lane. I’m enjoying it already,” he said.