TIFTON — Through the efforts of their descendants and many people of the Friendly City they founded, Henry and Bessie Tift have made their way back home.

Members of the Downtown Development Authority and the Tifton Council for the Arts had the honor of unveiling and dedicating a pair of statues of the city’s founders June 14 to stand between the library and the Syd Blackmarr Arts Center as a celebration and preservation of their impact upon the city for its residents, both today and for some time to come.

Spearheaded by the DDA and the City of Tifton in an effort to bring more art with ties to the city’s culture and history to the downtown area, the statues come in the wake of the installation of the statue of Harold Harper on the corner of First and Main streets in 2021.

Susie Chisholm, the artist behind both the Harper and Tift statues, noted that the depictions of Henry and Bessie Tift are meant to be looking towards the future, watching over the city they created as it continues to grow.

The pair had initially been planned to be placed at the corner of the Tift County Courthouse, but were moved to the Syd on account of the courthouse’s ongoing renovation efforts.

During the dedication ceremony, Bruce Green, executive director of the Tifton Council for the Arts, spoke on the serendipity of the relocation, noting the poeticism of how the statues had been placed and the direction in which they faced — Henry standing next to the Syd, formerly one of the churches he helped build, Bessie next to the library, the original of which she helped found in Tifton, and both looking in the direction of Albany, the city with such deep ties to both of their roots.

“They are standing there, looking back from whence they came,” Green said. “Poetic? Coincidental, but poetic.”

Green shared many other anecdotes of chance encounters or events he’d experienced in the days leading up to the unveiling, feeling that they were further proof of the statue’s placements being meant to be.

This included a shared sentiment of “this is the right thing to do” regarding the statues from a letter to a local newspaper and a woman he met in front of the base prior to their installation, a discussion with a young student taking part in an art program that perfectly understood the Tifts’ connection to the city after only the briefest of explanations, and an act of generosity he expressed to a man he had met only hours before the ceremony, out of a sense that it was what Bessie Tift would have done.

Many current members of the Tift family were in attendance of the dedication, proud to see their ancestors being immortalized in the city so close to their hearts. Several had also contributed to the project, called to action by Mike Brumby, a great-grandson of the Tifts, to donate and support the initiative.

“[These statues] are a great representation,” said Roy Rankin, another great-grandson of the Tifts on his mother’s side. “I hope they’ll be preserved for a long, long time.”

Mayor Julie Smith expressed her honor for the opportunity to take part in the dedication and bring these statues to Tifton, speaking on the efforts of Henry Tift to build the city up from a sawmill and village to a thriving community and Bessie Tift to strengthen and support the institutions of that growing community, their hard work and dedication being the foundation of what has become the community she and her fellow residents are a part of today.

She asserted that the statues will represent the contributions the two had made to Tifton and the legacy they left behind, and she hoped that they would continue to serve as a symbol of Tifton’s spirit and history for generations to come.

“Let these statues not only honor the past, but ignite in each and every one of us a renewed commitment to the future of Tifton,” Smith said. “As we enhance our downtown with more public art, let us draw inspiration from Henry and from Bessie. Their legacy is to continue building a city that is prosperous, compassionate, and forward-looking.”