EAST METRO’S BEST
WELLNESS
YOUTH
Here is your chance to nominate the people and places you feel deserve a pat on the back, in the 2011 Best of East Metro Peoples Choice Awards. The nomination form is on pages 8&9
Berries of all shapes and colors are among five super foods that studies show taste great and help fight cancer to boot. 11
When members of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity realized the staggering number of DeKalb students who are homeless, they felt they had to help. 13
Nominate your favorites
Copyright © 2011 CrossRoadsNews, Inc.
Foods that pack a punch
January 15, 2011
Excellence in face of turmoil
Volume 16, Number 38
Winter storm dumps snow and ice By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
Nearly a week after the Jan. 9 winter storm dumped snow, sleet, freezing rain and ice on metro Atlanta along with frigid temperatures, residents are still digging out. For most of this week, Atlantans were imprisoned in their homes, warned by authorities to stay indoors and avoid highways and streets made treacherous by ice and arctic temperatures that plummeted into the teens overnight Wednesday and Thursday. The weather closed schools and roads, shuttered malls and other businesses, grounded public transit, and hampered the U.S. Postal Service. Most metro school systems, including DeKalb’s, were closed all week. Life simply ground to a halt. The winter storm – the second in three weeks – was forecast a week ahead and showed up on cue at about 7 p.m. Sunday. The snow painted everything
Henry Dorsey of Decatur shovels snow from his driveway on Monday morning.
Curtis Parker / CrossRoadsNews
picture-postcard white. Then the ice also had snow on Christmas Day. Up to 8 inches fell in some parts came. It’s the first time in 16 years that the of metro Atlanta, and the National metro area has had two snowstorms within weeks of each other. The area Please see WINTER, page 4
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Celebrate the Dreamer Today is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. On Monday, metro Atlanta and DeKalb County will join the nation in celebration of his ideals of service on the 25th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Celebration events, page 6
Tom Scott Memorial Garden Feb. 1 benefit will raise funds to maintain site By Jennifer Ffrench Parker
Four years after his death, friends, supporters and DeKalb residents will honor the late DeKalb County Tax Commissioner Tom Scott at a dedication ceremony naming the I-285/Memorial Drive interchange after him. Jacquie Scott, his widow and a former DeKalb County District 3 commissioner, said the naming ceremony will be held on March 3, his birthday. The resolution to name the $54.8 million Tom Scott interchange that was completed last year the Tom Scott Interchange was sponsored by state Reps. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield, Randall Mangham, Billy Mitchell, Michele Henson and Stan Watson in 2008. Stuckey Benfield, who represents House District 85, said they were waiting for the construction. “We got it on paper but we wanted it to look nice before we started talking about it,” she said. Stuckey Benfield said the idea for naming the interchange for Scott came from community activist Joe Bembry. “Joe called me about it and I called Jacquie to make sure the family was in support
Jennifer Ffrench Parker / CrossRoadsNews
Jacquie Scott and son J.T. discuss the memorial garden that is going on Memorial Drive to honor her husband, the late Tom Scott, who was DeKalb’s tax commissioner for 14 years.
of it,” she said. A check with the Georgia Department of Transportation revealed that the interchange also didn’t have a name. Stuckey Benfield said everyone supported the resolution. “It was pretty easy to get it done,” she said. “There was no opposition to it. It is just a great way to remember Tom for his decades of service and his office was just right up the street from there too.” Jacquie Scott said this week that Stuckey
The interchange was built to alleviate congestion on the busy Memorial Drive business corridor. It includes two new overpass bridges, widening of Memorial Drive to three lanes in both directions, and widening and extension of the entrance and exit ramps onto I-285. It also includes sidewalks, pedestrian crosswalks and bike lanes, and a closed-circuit television traffic monitoring system. DeKalb County’s Natural Resource Management Office already has planted cedar and crape myrtle trees on the property. Jacquie Scott, who was married to Tom Scott for 37 years, said her family, which includes their three children John Thomas, Christopher, and Susannah and granddaughter Parker, will maintain the garden once it’s in place. To raise funds for its maintenance, Scott is holding a Feb. 1 benefit at Parker’s on Ponce in downtown Decatur. She said friends and DeKalb residents can make donations to the garden during the 5:30-to-8 p.m. reception. “We are not asking for a specific amount,” she said. “People can give what they are comfortable with. The money will be used to pay for maintenance and the marker.” Tom Scott, who was 66, died on Oct. 23, 2006, after a six-month battle with leukemia. He was on his fourth term in office and had served 14 years as DeKalb’s tax commissioner. During his tenure, Scott modernized the department into Georgia’s most technologically advanced tax collection agency. When he took office in 1992, the county
Benfield also got the county and the DOT to donate the less-than-an-acre lot at the corner of Memorial Drive and Northern Avenue for a Tom Scott Memorial Garden. The vacant lot housed construction trailers during the three years of work on the mile-long interchange project, which began in summer 2006 and was completed in October 2009. “We will have a granite or field stone marker engraved with Tom’s name,” she said. Please see GARDEN, page 4