‘He loved his job.’ Macon’s beloved EMA chief who led city through Flood of ’94 dies
Johnny Wingers, the ever-cheerful, on-the-spot former director of the Macon-Bibb County Emergency Management Agency, who guided the city through some of its most devastating natural disasters, including the Great Flood of 1994, died Monday. He was 84.
Wingers’ steadfast preparedness and exuberance seemed to come naturally, making him a perfect fit in trying times, which came soon after his spring 1993 appointment as director.
Barely a year into his tenure, when Tropical Storm Alberto stalled over Middle Georgia in July 1994, dumping record rainfall and swelling the Ocmulgee River to record flood levels that swamped Macon’s water plant, the city was without water service for the better part of three weeks.
Early on, Wingers set up water stations and brought in emergency supplies to keep hospitals running.
Meanwhile, his easy manner and telegenic charm kept locals informed as the floodwaters receded but taps were slow to flow.
Ten days into the Alberto-wrought water outage, Wingers told The Telegraph, “I think we all are getting a little bit on edge. You can’t take showers or wash your clothes, but we’ve got to be tough.”
In the years that followed, on through his retirement in 2009, Wingers, a 1957 graduate of Lanier High School who had been a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, oversaw the implementation of life-saving warning sirens and led the response in the wake of the 2008 Mother’s Day tornadoes.
“That job came first,” Paula Wingers, his wife of 63 years, said Tuesday. “He loved every minute of it. ... He just loved the city. Period. And he didn’t want anything to happen to it.”
She recalled that in the wake of the Mother’s Day storms, with relatives visiting from out of town, “we didn’t see him the rest of the day. But that was Johnny. ... He was looking out for people.”
Former Mayor C. Jack Ellis recalled Wingers as “a great American” who “always found a way forward.”
Robert Reichert, another former mayor who worked with Wingers, described Wingers as “a lifelong, dedicated public servant.”
“He laid a foundation for the EMA network that I think is one of the state’s best,” Reichert said.
As violent storms and occasional sprinkles of snow came and went — sometimes even when they never materialized — Wingers and his charges stood watch. He would often tell reporters how, when a storm missed us, the city had “dodged a bullet” or “gotten lucky” and how, even so, he hadn’t slept for 48 hours or, sometimes, longer.
“He was a son of this area,” retired television news anchor and reporter Ron Wildman said of Wingers on Monday. “He was the go-to guy for everything.”
In 1999, when Hurricane Floyd forced coastal residents inland, Macon housed many of them at the Coliseum.
When it was over, a woman who’d brought a cat with her was for some reason not allowed to take the animal on the bus home.
So Wingers took it in.
He and his wife kept the cat for years.
Wingers, in honor of the storm that had brought the pet into his life, named it “Floyd.”
Funeral arrangements are pending.
This story was originally published December 5, 2023 at 1:48 PM.