By Kelly Simmons
UGA Media Relations
simmonsk@uga.edu
A few years back retired Moultrie physician Dr. Perry LaConte was invited to contribute to a scholarship fund that would pay for a Colquitt County student to attend UGA.
While he had lived and practiced in Moultrie since 1975, Elberton was home.
He and his wife, Juanita, had graduated from Elberton High School and had been members of the First United Methodist Church in Elberton.
Both of their children, Margaret and Len, had been baptized at that church.
“I talked to my wife and said, why don’t we do that?” LaConte said. “Why don’t we set up a scholarship for Elbert County people? Elbert County schools were good to us.”
In March, LaConte and his wife made a generous gift to UGA’s Georgia Commitment Scholarship program, which matched the gift dollar-for-dollar.
Earnings from the endowment will provide a $5,250 UGA scholarship each year for four years to an Elbert County high school graduate, in perpetuity.
The L. Perry LaConte, M.D., and Mrs. Juanita G. LaConte Scholarship Fund is in honor and memory of Olivia McCalla Smith, LaConte’s maternal grandmother and Melvin C. and Jewell Smith Gorman, Juanita’s parents.
For many years during his youth, LaConte lived in other states and other countries.
Because he was the son of a career military officer, his family moved often — to California, Oregon, Kansas and Germany — sometimes as often as three times in a year.
From time to time his parents would send him back to Elberton to live with his maternal grandmother.
“She was my mother and father all wrapped up into one,” LaConte said.
When it was time for him to attend high school, the family was in Germany. His parents had planned to send him to German schools so he could learn the language.
In the end they decided he would be better off completing four years of high school in Elberton.
It was a fortuitous move for LaConte, who, as a freshman, met his future wife.
After graduating from UGA in 1958, he returned to Elbert County High School, where he taught chemistry and physics.
Juanita had graduated from Lander College in South Carolina and already was teaching at the high school.
They were married later that year.
LaConte was Teacher of the Year in 1959-60.
But the recognition was bittersweet as his draft number was up.
The draft board in Elberton told him he could join the military branch of his choice or be drafted.
He enlisted as a candidate for officer’s school in Fort Lee, Virginia, and was accepted.
Upon graduating as a second lieutenant, he was assigned to a teaching command at Fort Lee, which was near where his father had finished his military career and had retired.
In 1961, LaConte returned to Elberton and was rehired to teach chemistry and physics.
Juanita, who had taught while they were in Virginia, also returned to Elberton High School to teach home economics and general science.
During the summer breaks from teaching, LaConte worked in the local granite industry.
In 1964, LaConte’s grandmother died. He and Juanita moved to Augusta, where he enrolled in medical school at the Medical College of Georgia.
After earning his MD in 1968, he spent time thinking about what he wanted to practice.
He was in his early 30s, older than most new doctors, one of the oldest in his senior class at MCG.
“I needed to find an area where I could practice until I was 70 or 75,” he said.
He liked anatomy, and decided to do a residency in diagnostic radiology.”
He did a one-year rotating internship at the University Hospital in Augusta, a three-year residency in radiology at Augusta’s Talmadge Memorial Hospital and was a radiology instructor at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital there.
“I always thought about moving back to Elberton,” LaConte said. But the practice he was considering was downsizing.
He and Juanita moved to Colquitt County, where he launched a private practice, Radiology Associates of Moultrie, Georgia, where he would later be joined by four other diagnostic radiologists.
The couple had two children, Margaret and Len, and made their education a priority.
Both graduated high school as class valedictorians.
Both also earned undergraduate degrees from Valdosta State University, and went on to UGA for advanced degrees.
Margaret earned a JD from Georgia Law, while Len earned a Master of Computer Science.
Margaret now is an assistant district attorney in south Georgia with three children.
Len is a computer programmer in Wilmington, Massachusetts, with two children.
When LaConte turned 65 in 2000, he retired from private practice, but continued working parttime.
By the time he reached his late 70s, he said “that’s enough.”
He spends his time now with family, enjoying his five grandchildren when he can, and helping plan others’ futures, including some fortunate high school seniors in Elbert County.
Dr. Perry and Juanita LaConte