State Representative Tom McCall, who has served Georgia’s House of Representatives since 1994, has been sworn into office a number of times during his 24 years on the job. This is the first year, however, that his ceremony took place from a hospital room.
 
Representing District 33 in Elbert and Lincoln counties and parts of Madison, Wilkes and Columbia counties, McCall has been at Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center since last week, recovering from open heart surgery. Although his recovery has been going well, he knew he’d be unable to make it to today’s inauguration ceremony held in Atlanta.
 
Instead, Piedmont Athens Regional staff worked with McCall and his wife to host the special ceremony, which needed to take place today, at the hospital.
 
Minute before his own swearing in ceremony, McCall and his wife Jane watched the inauguration of Brian Kemp as the governor of the state of Georgia from an iPad in McCall’s hospital room.
 
McCall was then joined by both Jane and his son Alan “Al” McCall, as longtime friend and colleague Chris Phelps, Superior Court Judge in the Northern Judicial Circuit, completed the ceremony as McCall was sworn in once again.
 
After the ceremony Renea Anderson, RN, a clinical manager at Piedmont Athens Regional, presented McCall with a gift: a Georgia sign with a heart engraved in it, representing his successful heart surgery.
 
Each of the providers, nurses and other staff members caring for McCall during his hospital stay added their signatures to the sign to thank him for letting them be a part of the special ceremony as well as to wish him well on his recovery.