Gordon Historical Society hears from Judy Langford
Members of the Gordon County Historical Society heard from Judy Lanford — a Calhoun native, national social policy advocate and former daughter-in-law to President Jimmy Carter — during their meeting last week.
Langford is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Policy in Washington, D.C., after having retired as an associate director for the organization in 2017. She has worked for three decades as a key consultant on child and family issues for foundations, federal and state agencies and private organizations on the development and implementation of family support policy and practice.
Additionally, Langford is the founder and former national director of Strengthening Families, a research-based family development framework adopted by more than 43 states and hundreds of local communities, and a former executive director of the Family Resource Coalition. She’s also worked with the Quality Improvement Center on Early Childhood, the Annie E. Casey Foundation,
the Research Advisory Council for First Five Los Angeles, and several other organizations tackling social issues.
Langford also served as honorary chair of the President’s Advisory Committee on Woman during the Carter administration. She was married to the president’s son, Jack Carter, at the time.
“This is the kind of adventure I started on after I grew up in Calhoun, Georgia,” Langford told the historical society last week.
She said she thinks about history a lot because where one comes from plays a significant role in where they end up. Langford shared some of her own family history, including photos of her grandparents and great-grandparents, as well as one of her mother poolside at the recreation department. The Edna S. Langford Swim Center is named for her mother, who ran the rec department and taught swimming there.
Langford said she’s always focused on working for and with families because that’s where a person’s personal history begins.
“Families are the most important people in children’s lives, and we have to pay attention,” she said.
Langford said she’s also interested in the connection the past and present share, because people today are building what will be the history of tomorrow. She wondered what one could learn from the past that can help shape the future.
“History is not just preserving the past,” she said. “It has to question the present too.”
Even the negative and unpleasant areas of our own histories need to be examined, Langford said. She talked about family histories that might include violence or substance abuse as example, as well as America’s period of lynchings in the South and around the country.
So often, she said, people don’t like to talk about bad things in their own family history, but ignoring those things don’t make them go away. Similarly, few records were kept detailing lynchings, so it becomes difficult to research those.
Still, Langford said, it’s important to learn about these events so that we can learn from them.
“That’s a part of our future, remembering those things,” she said.
Langford also praised the historical society for actively working to preserve local history.