Happy New Year wishes everyone. Did you make resolutions? We did not — it’s fruitless because it’s impossible to keep them for more than a day or two. The one thing we promised ourselves is to stay healthy, exercise more (which is now non-existent) and back away from sweets.
We began the New Year reading “The Reckoning” by John Grisham, an excellent novel. We became acquainted with Grisham’s legal thrillers reading his first best seller “A Time to Kill” in the early ‘90s followed by “The Firm.” A real page turner. In fact, our nose was in that book all the way from stepping on board a Southwest Airlines jet in Birmingham flying non-stop to Houston to visit daughter, Helen. I read it every chance I could grab during that visit even while traveling through Texas from Austin to Fort Worth and beyond. Grisham’s other novels have been good. but the newest one mentioned above is another page turner.
So, there we sat on New Year’s Eve at the midnight hour with one eye on the telecast of the ball drop count down in Manhattan’s Times Square and the other on the Grisham thriller while others were partying the night away and there was plenty of that going on right here in Sumter County.
The Windsor Hotel’s New Year’s dinner-dance that has become an annual affair was a big success, drawing a large crowd that enjoyed dining at Rosemary & Thyme and then dancing to the music provided by Miss Parks and the Wrecks band.
Some of the partygoers there, including Charles and Kim Christmas, also ventured over to the historic Lee Council House for the New Year’s celebration presented by Sumter Historic Trust’s board of directors that was also a big success and attracted a large crowd of festively dressed partygoers.
Organized by Angie Flegel, the circa 1902 house was beautifully decorated by Bunny Byrne, Meredith Owen, and Amanda Kutzler. The dining room table was laden with a multitude of appetizers prepared by board members and the Anderson Band had the crowd dancing through the midnight hour. Sponsors were The Look Salon, 13th Colony, and the Huss Foundation.
Meanwhile, some Americus residents welcomed in the New Year elsewhere including Randy and Nancy Jones, Sparky and Allene Reeves, and Stick and Elise Miller at Amelia Island Plantation. They enjoyed warm, sunny days of golfing and rang in 2019 at the Amelia Island Plantation Club where they enjoyed a delicious buffet dinner and dancing to the music of the Faze Band from Jacksonville, who played lots of Motown. And the midnight hour was struck at 9:59 p.m. — as Sparky says, “it has to be midnight somewhere.”
John and Tiffany Dean and daughter Mary Cathryn Dean had a wonderful time Christmas week sailing the Caribbean on a Carnival Line cruise to the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands, as well as Curacao and Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, while Andy and Lori Shivers enjoyed New Year’s weekend with Guy and Janie Holloway at their home in metro Atlanta.
Lilian Lopez enjoyed having her daughter, sons and families during the holidays that include Connie Lopez Gomez, her husband David Gomez of Tampa and his mother Leslie Gomez of Maryland; Freddie and Nancy Lopez of Albany, twin sons, Eric and Adam and daughter Megan Lopez; David Lopez and his wife, Gracie of Denver; Daniel and Sherry Congdon Lopez and children, Alex, Anna Lee, Mary Frances, and Lyle, and Sherry’s mom Connie Congdon, all of Cummings.

Leila Sisson Case lives in Americus.