The Banks family will long remember Jan. 3, 2012. They will remember it as the day their twin girls, Gabrielle and Adrielle, were born.

They will remember how nice the staff at the hospital was to them. They will remember their stay. And they will remember that they were presented with a slew of gifts from more than 70 businesses from around the area just for having been fortunate enough to have the first babies born at the hospital in the new year.

But it was a day that could have been painted drastically different. That delivery could have happened in another place. Perhaps it would have been at Vaughan Regional Medical Center in Selma as the couple lives in Uniontown. They could have delivered those babies at any hospital in the area.

But they could not have had the same experience. The Banks family left Bryan W. Whitfield Memorial Hospital knowing they were cared for by a caring staff.

That experience could very easily have never happened. Had the doomsday prophecy of the spring of 2011 come to fruition and the hospital’s Labor and Delivery Department shut down, the Banks family would have a decidedly different recollection of the first day of their twin daughters’ lives.

But, thankfully, the City of Demopolis and the Marengo County Commission along with a host of concerned individuals got together and made sure that never happened. It is fitting that as 2012 opens, one family’s big day is owed, at least in part, to the best decision local officials made in 2011.