Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Editor’s Note: This feature originally ran on February 26, 2025 in the 2025 Progress edition (Chambers County Is…). The Progress edition is a publication produced annually by the Valley Times News. If you would like to pick up a copy of the 2025 Progress edition, please visit our office at 4002 20th Ave Suite E in Valley.

People may be surprised to find out that Dr. Joe Downs is not originally from West Point. The longtime doctor, Chattahoochee Hospice founder and West Point council member was actually born in Newnan and spent the first few years of his life in Hogansville, at the other end of the county.

“Both my sisters and my brother were all born here, but I was born in Newnan…I don’t remember any other place,” Downs said laughing. 

After graduating from West Point High School, he attended the University of Georgia. He studied Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta where he stayed for his residency in Internal Medicine. While there he and his wife, Debra, had two children. 

When residency wrapped up the family had to make a decision.

“We looked at other places, my wife and I. But over the years of our marriage, she had come to like West Point. We had so many friends, and she loved my parents, so we moved right across the street from my parents in West Point, raised our children there and became grandparents. So that was fun,” the doctor said.

“I thought, well, my mom and dad had a lot of friends, and maybe somebody would come to me, you know, as a doctor. It ended up working out.”

It did indeed. Downs worked in all of the healthcare settings the area has to offer. He worked out of EAMC-Lanier, and he has served as the medical director of multiple palliative care and nursing home facilities. 

“When I moved here to practice in 1981 it wasn’t like you practiced in the hospital or the nursing home. You went everywhere. Okay, I went to people’s homes. They came to my home. I saw them in the carport.”

Downs recalled a time when a West Point ambulance called in the middle of the night to pronounce a man deceased. The family didn’t want him taken all the way to LaGrange, so they took the ambulance to the Downs’ residence.

“So I did. I went out there in my bathroom robe and did that, and then my wife in the morning, she said, ‘Did I dream this?’… And she said, ‘We don’t need to be doing that here.’ 

Slowly, he found himself at the nursing home often, both for personal and professional purposes. As he saw his patients and his community age, Downs saw a gap in the Valley’s healthcare.

Perhaps he is most known for his role as medical director and one of the original founders of the Chattahoochee Hospice Organization in 1983. 

Moving into geriatric care was natural for Downs. 

“We wanted that option for people at the end of life. I got to the end of life with a lot of people.”

“There was a need in the community and in the medical world for end-of-life care, hospice and end-of-life care and palliative care were not recognized in the community and in the country at that time,” Downs said. “[Patients would say] ‘I don’t want to go to the hospital. I don’t feel comfortable there. If I’m in my last days, I want to be home’.”

End-of-life care is a different ball game to primary care, said Downs. 

“One of the doctors that was already practicing here when I came he gave me two pieces of advice: He said, ‘If you ever send anybody to another doctor, they’ll never come back’. So don’t ever send anybody to a specialist or another doctor. And he said, ‘If you lose a patient if the patient dies under your care, the family will probably leave’.” 

He continued, “Well, both those things I found to be incorrect. I sent people everywhere, all over the place, to different specialists that I liked and I felt like would help them, and those people were appreciative of going there, and always came back….When I would work with a family and a patient through death, through the end of life, a lot of times I would meet family members that would later become my patients.”

His calling to healthcare, and specifically to those at the end of life, started early in his life. Growing up his parents took in his grandmother and later his great aunt. During the interview he spoke at length and always fondly of the two women. Downs said their outlook and quality of life they had at the end had given him a blueprint. 

“When [my grandmother] sold her house in South Georgia…she said she didn’t know whether it was her car or her house, and she wasn’t sure whether she was selling it or giving it away,” he said. “But she was happy to be doing whatever she was doing with whatever she was doing it with…That’s a wonderful way to be at the end of your life.”

Downs has become known in the community for his boisterous laugh. The doctor said laughing often and loudly is good for you. Joy, said Downs, has an important place in end-of-life care. 

“You need to have some enjoyment at that time….I’d like to see more joy integrated into life and more laughter in the end of life, not to laugh at it, but to laugh with, to laugh so that everybody can laugh.”

Despite being “retired,” Downs still helps out at a local practice and serves as the hospice’s Medical Director. He jokes doctors never really retire. 

“I’ve taken off this smartwatch,” Downs said showing the watch on his wrist, “and put it on somebody else so I could see what their heart rate was…I don’t guess you get to completely retire as a doctor if you’re in your hometown.”

Healthcare has changed throughout his career, which Downs says is important. 

“We have a lot better home monitoring…healthcare has bounced back to the individual a little bit more. You don’t go to the doctor for your healthcare. You do your own healthcare every day,” he said. “You get your rest, you get your exercise, you get your sugar and blood pressure monitoring, you eat what you’re supposed to eat, you keep your appointments with the doctor because they’re really just supervising the things that you’re doing.”

He hopes to see this monitoring extend to palliative and nursing care, through home health aides. Through his work in geriatrics, he knows there is a strong desire for older patients to receive health care from their homes. 

“The big challenge with all that is the people that don’t have a home,” he said. “There are increasing numbers of homeless people and economically destitute people in our community, in our country, And so how are we going to serve that community?”

Downs considers these areawide issues as his other role, councilman. He has served as a West Point council member since 2002. 

“I was writing my letter or announcement of my candidacy. I was typing that in the doctors’ lounge at the hospital and watched the Twin Towers go down in 2001… And I actually paused and thought, “I’m not so sure it’s such a good idea to be involved in [politics]…but maybe it’s that’s a sign that it’s time to get involved.” 

He attributes his desire to get involved to his parents.

“My parents were kind of joiners and mixers and minglers. And my dad was in public relations. He kind of developed the field of public relations for the West Point company…My mother was a community person. She was the chairman of the West Point School Board, and she was all involved in education and helping people,” he recalled. “So my parents were involved all the time, and they really encouraged me to do it.” 

Over his almost 23 years on the council, he has witnessed the ebb and flow of the city. 

“It’s an exciting time [for West Point]. We’ve been transitioning from this textile industry, which was a highly manual labor type industry, to this robotic automotive industry,” he said. “We’ve got technical schools that are begging for young people…We’ve got all the services of food and restaurants and education and everything that can be provided in West Point in this community. We’re on the highway to everywhere. We’ve got all sorts of educational options in our neighborhood.”

The councilman spoke passionately about the need for a cohesive community. 

“The social workers [at EAMC-Lanier] said that West Point had some of the most fortunate people and some of the least fortunate people…We have a challenge, how to reach out to those people that we have that need our city assistance,” he said. 

Downs advised young people to get involved with as many groups and organizations as possible. He has seen firsthand the benefits of being in a diverse community. He and Debra volunteer for Ready-Learn-Grow at West Point Elementary School, where they help students learn to read. 

“If it’s in the classroom, people that they meet, or people on the school bus that they get to ride with, I think all of that is educational for children and can be a real building, growing, learning experience,” he said. 

From his personal experience, he knows the importance of kids learning from older generations. 

“It’s rejuvenating for older people to have kids around, and it’s educational for kids to be around older people…I feel it was a good thing for my children to live across the street from their grandparents and their great grandmother and their great aunt.”

As the city is growing, Downs said the challenge is to keep up with the growth. 

“West Point’s a full-service city…We have fire, we have police, we have water, sewage, electricity, all that’s provided by the City of West Point. So we have a challenge just to maintain that whole network of everything,” he said. “We’re trying to fit in all this development and keep that part of our population that needs the most help, and get them that help.”

Downs said there are many people who have and currently are working to make the area better.

He said one of his “heroes” is Sandra Thornton, his fellow council member and also featured in this year’s progress. Another Sandra, Sandra Glover was mentioned for her work with kids in the area. Helen Ferguson instituted Meals on Wheels in West Point, which the Downs volunteer for. He ended with one last person: his mother, the “community person.” Downs seems to fit in that mold as well.