Tugalo Harvie Risner (1884-1954)

Portrait from the Georgia Official and Statistical Register.

   One of the truly unusual names to be found on a roster of past Georgia state senators, Tugalo Harvie Risner had served three terms in the Georgia House of Representatives from Hartwell prior to his Senate election in 1953. Risner's term in the Senate proved to be short, as he died a year into his term in June 1954. The son of Robert and Martha (Suit) Risner, Tugalo Harvie Risner was born on November 28, 1884, in Hart County, Georgia. The origins behind Risner's unusual name remain unknown but may have a connection to the Tugaloo River, a waterway that flows near a once existing Cherokee Indian town, also called Tugaloo. Several sources give the spelling of Risner's first name as "Tugaloo" (including a bridge named in his honor), and he himself spells his name as "Tugalo Harvie Risner" on his 1917 draft card. It is that name spelling that is given here.

  A student in the Reed Creek schools at Hartwell, Risner married on November 15, 1908, to Clara Mackey (1891-1963), to whom he was wed for nearly fifty years. The couple would have seven children, Lowell Garrett (1910-1982), Herndon Eldridge (1911-1991), Leon Tugalo (1914-1991), Marene Martha (1916-1997), Catherine (died in infancy in 1921), Yona (1924-1986) and Burt Cleveland (1930-2007). 

   Following the completion of his schooling, Risner was employed as a barber for a time (listing that as his occupation on his 1917 draft card) and during the 1920s and 30s was engaged as a wildlife ranger in the Georgia Game and Fish Department, serving under commissioners Peter Twitty and Zach Cravey. Prior to his government service, Risner also worked as a traveling salesman, a vocation that is briefly mentioned in his Georgia Official Register biography.

From the 1952-53 Georgia State Register.

  Elected as Hart County's representative to the Georgia Assembly in 1946, Risner proved to be busy as a first-term legislator, and during the 1946-48 session was named to the following committees: Auditing; Conservation; Corporations; Enrollment; Excuse of Members Absent Without Leave; Game and Fish; General Agriculture, No. 1; Georgia School for the Deaf; the Georgia State Sanitarium; Insurance; Invalid Pensions and the Soldiers Home; Mines and Mining; and Public Property.

  Risner won two further terms in the house in 1948 and 1950, and in 1952 was elected to the state senate. Taking his seat at the start of the 1953-54 session, Risner sat on the committees on Highways and Public Roads, Insurance, Motor Vehicles, Penal Institutions, State of the Republic, Temperance. Sadly, Risner's term in the Senate was brief, as he died at his Hartwell home of a "heart ailment" on June 20, 1954, a year into his term. He was survived by his wife Clara, who, following her death in 1963 was interred alongside her husband at the Reed Creek Baptist Church Cemetery in Reed Creek Georgia. Three years following his death, the "Tugaloo H. Risner" Memorial Bridge was dedicated in his honor, which still exists today.