New members join Hospital's Board of Directors for 2008-09

Five new members have officially joined the Highlands-Cashiers Hospital Board of Directors.

New faces on the board include a Cashiers educator, a former executive with Georgia Pacific and hospital CEO, a well-known leader in various Highlands civic organizations, and the new chairman of the Highlands-Cashiers Hospital Foundation. Lynn Dillard, Ronald P. Hogan, Frances Oakley, and Earle Mauldin are all joining the hospital board for the first time. Cashiers family physician David M. Wheeler, MD, returns to the board by virtue of his position as the new chief of the hospital’s Medical Staff.

While there are number of new faces around the board table for the coming year, the board’s officers remain unchanged for another year. Bud Smith of Cashiers remains chairman. Vice chairman Donald C. Mullen, MD, of Highlands, and Secretary Brenda Stewart, of Cashiers, were also re-elected to their leadership posts.

Dr. Lynn Dillard of Cashiers spent her professional career as an educator. She earned her Ph.D. at Emory University in Atlanta in 1993, where she had also earned her master’s degree some 19 years earlier. Prior to retiring in January of 2007, she was an adjunct instructor at Western Carolina University and director of the Exceptional Children’s Program and Coordinator of Student Support Services for Highly-At-Risk Children in the Jackson County School System.

During her distinguished career she served a number of professional organizations, most recently as a director of the state board of the NC Association of Alternative Educators. She was named Educator of the Year at different points by both the Cashiers Area Chamber of Commerce and the Jackson County Chamber.

Dr. Dillard has also been active in many state, regional, and local civic organizations. She was named Woman of the Year two years running by the Jackson County Community Development Council, and has served as president of the Cashiers Community Council, the Jackson County Community Development Council, and the Blue Ridge School PTO in the past, as well as being a board member of a number of county and Cashiers area charities. In fact, in the late 1980s she served on the steering committee for the campaign of the new Highlands-Cashiers Hospital.

Ron Hogan, who divides his time among Highlands, Atlanta and Naples, FL, spent 27 years with Georgia Pacific Corp., one of the country’s leading manufacturers of forest product products. He joined the company’s sales department in his native Houston after graduating from the University of Houston in Business Administration. He worked his way up the corporate ladder, becoming President and COO in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before retiring as the vice chairman of the company’s board of directors in 1992 to run his own real estate investment company in Atlanta. However, while serving as a volunteer board member of St. Joseph’s Health System in Atlanta in 1995, he was persuaded to come out of retirement to be the organization’s president and CEO – a position he held until 2002.

He currently serves on the board of Georgia Mutual Insurance and is a past member of the board of Wachovia Bank of Georgia. In addition to belonging to a numerous professional organizations, he has been active in community affairs in both Atlanta, including being vice chairman of the board of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and vice chairman of the board of the Atlanta College of Art. He is a trustee emeritus of Westminister Schools in Atlanta.

A former stock broker with Dean Witter, Frances S. Oakley and her husband Obie now operate a commercial printing brokerage business in Charlotte. Born in Charlotte, she has been coming to Highlands since the 1930s when her grandmother first bought a summer home here. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a member of the History Honors Society.

In addition to serving currently as president  of the Highlands Community Child Development Center, she is also a member of the executive committee of the Highlands Biological Station Foundation. In the past she has served as chairperson of the HCCDC Building Campaign and as a board member of Highlands Country Club. Previously in Charlotte she was president of the local chapter of the National Alzheimer’s Association and a member of the Junior League.

Earle Mauldin, who divides his time among Highlands, Atlanta and Ponte Vedra, FL, is a former president and CEO of BellSouth Enterprises and vice chairman of BellSouth. In addition to chairing the Bob Jones Golf Tournament Committee at Highlands Country Club, he also serves as a member of the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Board of Directors, and, as of Oct. 1, chairman of the Highlands-Cashiers Hospital Foundation board.  He joined the hospital’s Foundation board two years, and has also served on the hospital board’s Finance Committee for the past year.

He is a former chairman of the board of trustees of the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and former member of the board of the Atlanta Community Foundation.

As the new Chief of the Medical Staff for the coming year, family physician David Wheeler, MD, has served several terms on the hospital board in the past, both as a voting and non-voting member. He served as a regular voting member from 1993-97 and again as a voting member when he represented the Medical Staff’s Medicine Committee several years ago. He has also served as a non-voting member under the old board structure by virtue of previously being Chief of Staff. Under the new board structure implemented two years ago, the Chief is now a full voting member.

Dr. Wheeler earned his medical degree from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, TN, before undertaking his residency in family medicine at the Mountain Area Health Education Center in Asheville. After completing his training, he joined Dr. Mark Heffington in Mountain Area Family Medicine in Cashiers, where he has practiced for the past 20 years. He is certified by the American Board of Family Practice, and a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Southern Medical Association, and the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society.