It was after 10 p.m. in the mid-1990s when Tom Cousins called me to say how conflicted he was by all the attention he was getting for his plans to renovate the East Lake Golf Club and to redevelop the East Lake Meadows public housing project.
He quoted from the New Testament’s Book of Matthew: “When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
(A thank you to George Wirth, Cousins’ pastor, for helping me identify that passage.)
That was Cousins in a nutshell. He was a humble man who was dedicated to making the world a better place. But he did not want to be recognized for his good deeds.
At the time, I was the lead business columnist for the Atlanta Jo