Born in Griffin, in Spalding County, on August 29, 1945, Wyomia Tyus was the first person to win consecutive Olympic gold medals in the 100-meter dash.  Her father, dairy farmer Willie Tyus, encouraged his only daughter to compete in sports, although her mother, Marie, felt participation in sports was unladylike. Tyus began her high school sports career playing basketball. She enjoyed the competition so much that she decided to try the high jump for the track and field team.

Pictured here in 2003, native Georgian A. D. "Pete" Correll joined Georgia-Pacific in 1988 as a senior vice president. He also served as an executive vice president and chief operating officer before becoming chairman and chief executive officer in 1993. Courtesy of Georgia-Pacific The New Georgia Encyclopedia does not hold the copyright for this media resource and can neither grant nor deny permission to republish or reproduce the image online or in print.

The New Georgia Encyclopedia (NGE) is the nation’s first born-digital state encyclopedia. Since 2004 it has provided ready access to authoritative scholarship on a wide variety of topics. All of its entries are written and reviewed by scholars, fact-checked by reference librarians at the University of Georgia, and updated regularly to reflect new information and recent developments. Nearly twenty years after its launch, the NGE remains committed to the notion that history and culture are public resources that should be freely available to one and all.

Albert B. Saye, professor of political science at the University of Georgia (UGA), was one of the most well-known scholars of Georgia history and politics. He was the author of twelve books, six of which focused on Georgia history. Among his top-selling books were his Handbook on the Constitutions of the United States and Georgia (1946), which was revised eleven times, and Principles of American Government, which sold more than 200,000 copies.

Alfred Uhry, a playwright, lyricist, and screenwriter, is best known for his play Driving Miss Daisy, which premiered in New York in 1987 and was later adapted into a film. Uhry has received a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, and several Tony Awards for his work—the only playwright to win all three awards. Education and Early Career Alfred Fox Uhry was born in Atlanta on December 3, 1936, to a prosperous family of German-Jewish descent.