Anne Dodd Warren Thomas

Anne Dodd Warren Thomas of Gainesville was never one to sit around and let somebody else do all the work.

                “At Good News Clinics each year,” Cheryl Christian said, “she wanted to serve staff at the annual staff luncheon—she would bring desserts and serve employees. When the clinic moved into the larger building in 2005, she volunteered and helped staff answer phones.”

                Anne died Friday, March 21, following a brief illness. She was a resident at Lanier Village Estates.

                Cheryl Christian, retired executive director of the Good News Clinics in Gainesville, knows Anne’s contributions first-hand. Anne supported the clinics financially and in person for many years. Although she was a quiet benefactor, it’s common knowledge that Anne donated money to establish the Green Warren Dental Clinic at Good News. The clinic, named in memory of her father, has enabled Good News to serve thousands of dental patients. She enjoyed leading tours of the dental clinic, and Cheryl said she “loved to hear her say to the visitor, ‘This is my daddy’s clinic—let me show you.’” 

                One day, while at the clinic to help, she saw a diabetic patient whose old, worn shoes had caused blisters on his feet. While the patient saw a physician, Cheryl said, Anne bought new shoes and socks for the patient.

                Anne was compassionate, sincerely caring about her community, but she also wanted to get involved in the day-to-day operations of the agencies she supported. As honorary co-chair of the Good News Clinics’ endowment campaign, she was always thinking of who might be able to help the GNC meet its goals.

                She asked complex questions of the agencies she supported, wanting to make sure they were adequately serving the people they were supposed to serve.

                And she was there privately for her friends. “In the years I have known her,” Cheryl said, “she was always the first to be there with a dish of food when there was an illness or death.”

                Born on October 1, 1930, in Atlanta, Anne moved to Gainesville in 1956 after her husband, George Thomas, completed service in the U.S. Air Force. He became a partner in a tractor business that became known as Boyd-Thomas Tractor Company and eventually founded Georgia Foam Company.

                “I never thought I’d leave Atlanta,” Anne said at one time, always ready with a witty comment, “but I’m glad I did. Traffic is terrible there. Here, you can go to a filling station and fill up your car without somebody hitting you.”

                Anne liked to tell stories about her parents, Irene and Green Warren, being good friends with the famous golfer Bob Jones and his wife, Mary. Her father and Jones were best friends.

                “One time I was coming home for Thanksgiving,” Anne recalled, “and my mother said, ‘We’re not going to be there.’

                “What do you mean you’re not going to be there? You’re my mother, and I want to come home for Thanksgiving.

                “She said, ‘Mary and Bob asked us to go to Augusta with them, and President Eisenhower is coming.’

                “Well,” Anne said, “I can’t keep you from President Eisenhower.”

                George and Anne treasure a gift from Bob Jones: one of his putters, which he called “Calamity Jane.”

                Anne graduated from Washington Seminary, now Westminister High School, in Atlanta and from Mt. Vernon Junior College in Washington, D.C. She also attended Agnes Scott College in Decatur.

                She served as president of several organizations, including the Northeast Georgia Medical Center Auxiliary, the Chattahoochee Ladies Golf Association, the Highlands Country Club Ladies Golf Association, and the Atlanta Debutante Club. She served on the boards of Gainesville’s First Presbyterian Church Foundation, Good News Clinics, the Northeast Georgia Speech School, and the Elachee Nature Center Foundation. She also was a member of the Gainesville Junior League and The Book Club.

                Anne has received a number of awards over the years. The Gainesville Rotary Club named her “Woman of the Year” in 1975, and in 2006, she received the Mary Mildred Sullivan Award of the New York Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an honor that recognizes a spirit of helpfulness “and awareness of beauty and value of the intangible elements of life.” That same year, Presbyterian Women of the Presbyterian Church (USA) presented her an honorary life membership.

                In 1980, Anne and Jane E. Carter, former director of Volunteer Services for the Northeast Georgia Medical Center, led the way as the Medical Center Auxiliary began a holiday project called the Love Light Tree. Anne was former Auxiliary president and founding chair of Love Light.

For decades, people throughout Northeast Georgia have made contributions to Love Light in memory or in honor of friends and family members, then gathered each Christmastime to sing carols, sip cider or cocoa, and light the Love Light Tree.

In 2007, the Brenau Association of Nursing Students recognized Anne for “her support of Brenau University in educating and equipping students with the needed skills and expertise for patient care, comfort and healing. …”

                The North Georgia Community Foundation named Anne and George Thomas “Philanthropists of the Year” in 2009, and in 2014, Brenau established the “Anne Warren Thomas Professorship in Nursing and Health Care Leadership.”

                In their younger years, she and George enjoyed traveling and playing golf together, especially in Highlands, North Carolina.

                If you asked Anne about the best part of being married to George, she would say, “George was easy to live with. He put up with me.”

                Anne was the mother of two children, the late Warren Thomas, and Irene Thomas, of Isle of Palms, South Carolina, who survives. She is predeceased by her husband, George, who died Nov. 28, 2017; her parents, Dr. Green Dodd Warren and Irene Thomas Warren; and a sister, Florence Hendree.

                Services will be held at 2 p.m. Friday, March 28, 2005, at First Presbyterian Church of Gainesville. The Rev. Lee Koontz will officiate. A reception will follow in the parlor that Anne donated.

                In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Good News Clinics or to First Presbyterian Church.

                Little-Davenport Funeral Home is in charge.