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Published Saturday, December 27, 2008 in Business

Entrepreneur locates biosciences company in Newnan

By Jeff Bishop

The Times-Herald

Newnan may seem like an unlikely place to start a biosciences technology company, but to Tom Gordy, a Newnan native and CEO of CeloNova, it seemed like there's no better place to be.

"We looked at that whole corridor in Atlanta," he admits, "but really, when we bring in employees to work at our company, where are they going to want to live? Newnan seemed much more attractive."

Gordy grew up, as he describes it, "on the wrong side of the tracks," born in 1951 to a family that had supplied the area with a long line of potters, builders and people who worked with their hands.

"Newnan in those days was truly a small town," said Gordy. "My father was a furniture maker and a home builder. But the way he built homes, it was like art. Anybody who needed mill work, they came to him."

Herbert Gordy worked on many of the most famous historic homes in Newnan, he said, and was ultimately recognized by the Georgia Trust For Historic Preservation for his lifetime contributions.

"But he wasn't a businessman," said Gordy. "He did it because he loved it, but he was not a rich man. There was no real profit in that business. He loved his work and people loved him for it, and that was enough for him."

His mother's side of the family were the Whittens, who had a farm on Sprayberry Road. One of Gordy's first jobs was delivering fresh eggs to the more affluent families in Woodbine and Rockingwood.

"One of our customers was the former governor, Ellis Arnall," he said. "I'd deliver eggs to the back of his house every Saturday morning."

There was a real chasm between the haves and the have-nots in Newnan in those days, he said.

"My family was part of the service class," said Gordy. "No one in my family had ever been to college."

His recognition of that fact made him shy in school, he said, until a teacher, Marjorie Dunaway Hatchett, realized his potential and pushed him to come out of his shell.

"She taught my speech class in the ninth grade," Gordy said. "It was a required class. If it weren't required, I wouldn't have been there."

Hatchett told him on a Thursday to have a speech ready for delivery the following Monday on "Patriotic Citizenship -- What it Means to Me."

"I told her I didn't know anything at all about writing speeches," said Gordy. "But I went home and used our World Book Encyclopedias that my mother had scraped to be able to have for us."

And not only was he ready to deliver his speech on Monday, but before he knew it he was delivering the speech to the Optimist Club and the Kiwanis Club, and he found a spot on the debate team and a role in the school play.

"Mrs. Hatchett had a way of making her students emerge," said Gordy. "I think she always knew I loved her, but I regret that I never told her just how important she was to me, and what an influence she had on me."

Now Gordy is the president and CEO of his own Newnan-based company, CeloNova BioSciences, and his new cutting-edge polymer-based products are being marketed worldwide.

His company's Embozene Color-Advanced Mircospheres, just approved for marketing by the FDA, may even help doctors starve tumors.

"I'm really proud of CeloNova," said Gordy. "I just wanted to be in a position to make a difference."