Dr. Henry S. Jennings Jr. saw the potential in Gainesville.

Jennings, 94, died Thursday after a long career in the medical industry.

“I did things when they came up in my life that I knew needed to be done,” Jennings told The Times in 2015. “I didn’t care about whether it made me money or lost me money. I just tried to do what was right and what was necessary.”

He was most known for founding the Northeast Georgia Diagnostic Clinic in 1953. The clinic began in a small renovated house on East Broad Street with only four providers, the first specialty providers in Gainesville.

In 1954, Jennings became the first board-certified internist at what would later become Northeast Georgia Medical Center.

Half a century later, the clinic has grown into a multi-specialty practice of 36 physicians and 11 mid-level providers occupying 52,000 square feet of space in the Guilford Medical Complex on Jesse Jewell Parkway in Gainesville, according to the clinic’s website.

Before that, Jennings also worked for Emory University Hospital and became one of 17 founders of the Emory Clinic.

In 2015, Jennings was recognized by the Gainesville-Hall County Community Council on Aging for having a significant, positive impact on the lives of others living in and around Hall County.

“We are a better community because of Dr. Jennings’ contributions,” Phillippa Lewis Moss, director of Gainesville-Hall County Community Service Center, said at the time.

“He has had laser-like focus throughout this community since he was a very young man,” Lewis Moss said. “He simply has an outstanding record of giving and giving and giving some more.”

Not only did Jennings contribute to the health community of Gainesville, but he was also a contributing member to several local, state and national medical organizations.

Over the past 60 years, he has served as chief of the medical staff, president of the Hall County Medical Society, vice president of the Medical Association of Georgia, and president of the Georgia Society of Internal Medicine.