Getting to Know the Mayor of Lovejoy, Bobby Cartwright

Special City of Lovejoy

LOVEJOY, ATLANTA — The Mayor of Lovejoy, Bobby Cartwright, calls himself an “old school farm boy”. He served the US military for 13 years before starting his political career back in 2001 when there was a vacancy on the city council.

“I was a new guy in town running against a citizen that had been there forever,” he said. “I beat him by six votes.”

Today, he owns several companies and has been the mayor of Lovejoy since 2012.

Lovejoy is a city just south of Atlanta with about 6,500 residents, and keeping its small-town charm is high on Cartwright’s priority list. “It’s probably the last Mayberry in the world,” Cartwright said, referring to the setting of The Andy Griffith Show.

“I don’t have a time limit on how long you speak at the city hall. But I don’t need a public forum to do my job. If you call me, I will take care of it that day,” said Cartwright, who takes pride in being one of the few elected officials to post his cellphone number publicly.

While Cartwright has many achievements to list, he says he is the Lovejoy’s Community Garden is his proudest accomplishment. The 14-acre garden was once Cartwright’s passion project when he was just a city council member. Its humble beginnings were just a few odd hours of gardening for the mayor, and it is now an integral part of the city and Cartwright’s lasting legacy.

During his time as a council member, Cartwright saw that residents could not afford healthy food options due to other necessities, and he saw an opportunity to help. “My theory was that our folks in the city had to choose between quality food and medicine,” he said. “And I fixed that.”

Accomplishments aside, Cartwright gives credit to his staff and the residents of Lovejoy.

“Forget who Bobby Cartwright is. Let me give you a list of people that you sit down and interview face to face and watch an 80-year-old woman cry because I’ve helped her feed her grandkids,” he said. “My greatest success ever was putting the plow in the ground there. [The garden] has changed a lot of lives, and it will for forever.”

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