IT IS “WOW!” NEWS to learn that Greater Rome has its first enterprise with a billion-dollar annual revenue expectation. That would be Floyd Medical Center, which projects gross patient revenues of $1.14 billion for fiscal year 2013, which begins this Sunday.

Not only that — and Floyd County has some rather large “players” in its economy — it should have been noted that the people of this community and not Wall Street “own” this enterprise and started it, with revenues of $0, back in 1942.

Of course, grains of salt are wise to sprinkle even on this community’s largest current employer, what with the storm clouds gathering over the affordability of health care generally and so forth. As Kurt Stuenkel, FMC president and CEO was quick to point out: “That’s what we charge, not what we collect.” True enough, as is that FMC if valued in 1942 dollars would now actually be a $160 million operation.

Nonetheless, this a considerable achievement and asset for the Greater Rome community, created by citizens having been willing to invest in themselves. In fact, it is now “the biggest thing in town.”

There’s probably still a lesson to be learned in that today. Not as regards “bigness” but rather in citizen willingness to invest in their community in what, at the time, appears to be the smallest of ways.