Athens loses an advocate

E.H. Culpepper, a visionary Athens businessman and activist, died Monday at age 69.

Culpepper would take on any civic project, big or small, with a grin on his face. A Cordele native who came to Athens to attend the University of Georgia, he fell in love with his adopted hometown and would do anything he could to help it.

"I've never seen anybody who had the community spirit quite like E.H.," longtime friend Loran Smith said.

Culpepper's biggest success was the Classic Center. He served on a study committee that recommended the new civic center and helped defeat a flawed, too-small modernist design in favor of the facility that stands today. He also served on the center's governing authority, then took a position as development director, raising money for the Classic Center Foundation.

Culpepper picked up Paul Cramer at the Atlanta airport when Cramer arrived to start his job as the Classic Center's executive director.

"He drove me to town and introduced me to everybody I needed to know," Cramer recalled.

Culpepper had suffered from cancer for several years. Cramer said he had not been able to work in the Classic Center's development office for about a year, but still dropped in regularly to visit at the facility.

"He was like a father to me," Cramer said. "We were just really, really close."

Culpepper himself said his greatest civic accomplishment was his role in creating the Classic Center.

"To see how it has succeeded beyond anyone's expectations and to see how it has given this area a sense of community and given the people a center for culture and entertainment has been extremely rewarding," he once told the Banner-Herald. "Also, I'm proud of the fact that it has been a catalyst for other economic development and investment around the center."

Not all of Culpepper's causes have come to fruition, such as a passenger train from Athens to Atlanta and a Northeast Georgia regional airport. But he never gave up, continuing to advocate for those projects long after many people wrote them off.

"I always saw him with a positive, can-do attitude, no matter how hard the task or how grandiose the idea might be," UGA Community Relations Director Pat Allen said.

When Culpepper had an

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