As much as us suburbanites

hate to admit it, we are dependent upon Atlanta.

No, we do not depend upon

Atlanta for our quality of life - Lord knows, most

of us have it better than those folk who live in the

crime-ridden and congested inner city or, even,

traffic-snarled and polluted Buckhead.

Indeed, by most any

standard of measurement, the folks who live in the

suburbs have it better than the folks who live in the

city.

(Obviously, that is why so

many of them are trying to move out here among us!)

But, we are dependant upon

Atlanta for one simple reason: If it was not for the

booming Big A, there would be no booming Fayette or

Coweta counties.

Oh, sure, there would still

be a county called Fayette and another called Coweta.

But, we'd all still be dirt

farmers - though we would probably have to have a

day job to support our addiction to the land.

And, that is the point: We

would be hard put to find that day job in Fayette or

Coweta County or anywhere else around here if it wasn't

for Atlanta.

Atlanta grew and so did we.

But, why did Atlanta grow?

Today, we can look around

and cite a hundred different reasons, all of which are

valid.

Atlanta grew, we point out,

because of its location and its people who have an

infectious, rambunctious spirit that refused to be put

down or kept down.

Look at what happened after

the late, great tribulation, that War of Northern

Aggression which some newcomers now refer to as the Civil

War.

Whether it was General

William T. Sherman's determination to punish Southerners

who burned Atlanta - or Southern defenders who

burned it to keep its wealth and produce from falling

into enemy hands - look what Atlanta's people did in

the years after that fire.

The rest of the South was

being trampled down by Yankee occupation forces, but

Atlanta was coming back, rebuilding, and becoming the

centerpiece of the New South.

Yes, Atlanta grew because

of its people and their spirit which refused to be

defeated.

Or, we might say that

Atlanta grew because it was not afraid to try something

new.

After all, we were built as

a hub for the railroads at a time when many towns were

refusing to let the steel rails be laid which would have

brought those mighty Iron Horses to town.

And, in the 1920s, it was

the vision of our political leaders who jumped at the

chance to turn a deserted racetrack into an airstrip and

lay the basis for Atlanta's becoming an aviation town.

Yes, we were never afraid

of reaching out to something new.

But, I believe there is

another reason Atlanta grew and why it still grows.

Back then, Atlanta was just

another sleepy, Southern town - not any bigger than

Memphis or Birmingham.

However, our leaders made a

conscious decision nearly four decades ago which has made

all the difference in the world.

We decided to accept the

change that was being thrust upon our region and our

nation and to work with the forces of revolution and

renewal, rather than against them.

As former Atlanta

Constitution editor Gene Patterson once pointed out, we

learned that "in order to keep the black man in the

ditch, we had to jump in and hold him down."

"That was just too

high a price for Atlantans to pay," Patterson said.

Our reward for doing the

right thing in the Sixties was the economic boom of the

Seventies, the Eighties, and the Nineties.

It was the relatively

peaceful change - especially when compared to places

like Birmingham with their dogs and their fire hoses

- from a racist society to one where worth was

decided by qualifications, not color, that made it

possible for Atlanta to become the economic and political

center of the South.

Those thoughts may have a

somewhat ironic ring to them when one looks around the

county we call home and sees the disparate ratio between

the number of minority citizens and the number of county

employees of color.

But, the truism is still

true: Do the right things and growth will come.

[Lee N. Howell is an

award-winning writer who has been observing politics and

society in the Southern Crescent, the state, and nation

for more than a quarter of a century. He lives in

Griffin.