Education
Willis attended Bingham Military School in Asheville, North Carolina, and later moved to Knoxville, Tennessee where he became involved with a patent medicine firm.
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George Willis
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Career
Willis began to sell and promote the medicines. He sold his firm in 1922 but then made another fortune with Zonite, an antiseptic preparation based on Dakin"s Solution, widely used in World War I.
In 1922, as head of its finance committee, Willis led a $2 million fundraising drive for Georgia Technology Willis was also active in real estate development in the Atlanta area.
Willis commissioned the 1917 Druid Apartments at the corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and Highland Avenue in Atlanta"s Poncey-Highland neighborhood, now the site of the Briarcliff Plaza, Atlanta"s first shopping center.
In 1924, he purchased the town of Ingleside, Georgia, just east of Decatur and there built the new planned community of Avondale Estates, Georgia. Willis sought input from internationally known city planners.
Avondale Estates was the first documented planned city in the Southeastern United States. In 1928 Willis introduced a new medicine, Sargon, and became president of the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association.
