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who was a redhead. It is a trait that has carried over into the current generation.

Hibby graduated from the University of Georgia where he played football for Vince Dooley his freshman year. While at the university he met and married Barbara Witt. After graduation he attended Mercer University’s School of Pharmacy in Atlanta. In 1975 he returned to Vidalia and took over Vidalia Pharmacy from his Uncle Herbert Bedingfield. Hibby and Barbara have one daughter, Laura Kay, who is a lawyer and lives in Atlanta with husband Russ and their three sons.

David graduated from Florida State and played baseball and was the editor of the school newspaper, he finished law school at Emory University, met and married a British girl, and eventually moved to England where his wife is a solicitor and he is a barrister. David was recently appointed as a judge, which Bill said is rare for a U.S. citizen. “He has been there for 30 years,” Bill said of David’s residency in England. David is also a published author, having written a legal book on childhood law. Interestingly, after he moved across the pond, David met a Bedingfield relative who was in a branch off the original family tree. The distant relative, Christopher Bedingfield, took a real shine to David. Christopher was also a lawyer and the very wealthy owner of a castle in Chester which David visited several times. When Christopher passed away, David was notified that he was listed in Christopher’s will, but what sounded too good to be true actually was too good to be true. It turned out that the estate was included in a trust which provided for the education of lawyers. “Technically, England would have to cease to exist as a country before I will inherent anything,” David told his brothers.

Nonetheless, the Bedingfield family is deeply rooted in England’s past, and a family estate in the shire of Norfolk is proof. (See the Oxburgh Hall sidebar article.)

The youngest of the Bedingfield brothers, Sidney, has also traveled an extraordinary road. He graduated from Florida State, where he was the editor of the college newspaper, became a journalist, and eventually a vice president at CNN USA. “He produced shows and worked with Ted Turner, left there and got hired to manage two public TV stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He taught in South Carolina, and later wrote a book titled, Newspaper Wars, about race relations and black newspapers from Reconstruction forward,” Bill said. Sidney earned a doctorate and is now a tenured professor at the University of Minnesota, and living in St. Paul. His daughter, Kate Bedingfield, was President Biden’s White House Communications Director until she stepped down from the post recently. A Road Less Traveled Made All the Difference After graduating from Vidalia High School in 1970, Bill enrolled at the University of Georgia where he planned to study medicine and follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. But he discovered the passion was just not there while sitting in chemistry class one day. “There were 150 people in this chemistry class and the professor asked how many wanted to be doctors. After almost all of us raised our hands, the professor said that only three in that class would make it to medical school. I decided I wasn’t one of them,” Bill recalled.

While he had a blast at UGA, Bill later transferred to Georgia Southern College, as it was known before becoming Georgia Southern University, where he buckled down to earn a bachelor’s degree in economics. He may not have realized it then, but that degree would serve him well in the future. Things have a way of working out.

While at Georgia Southern, Bill took a little detour that ended up paying off in multiple ways. It was a fluke, really, that he discovered he had musical ability; no one in his family sang or played an instrument, so he had never thought much about it. Later, Bill would spend 33 years in the Presbyterian Church choir, and also sang tenor in a barbershop quartet. “I am not only a tenor, I can be a first tenor,” Bill claimed.

Bill said his first musical venture was facilitated by a friend, Wes Wood, who played guitar and was in a band in which all of the musicians were students. As Wes and others were driving through Vidalia with Bill, a song came on the radio, “Precious and Few,” by Climax. Bill,

MOM AND SONS — Martha Bedingfield, two of her sons, Hibby and Bill, and the family pet, pause for a photo on the lawn outside their home in the 1950s.

BABE IN ARMS — Dr. Bedingfield holds Bill outside the Vidalia hospital in 1953.