April 3 Germantown Weekly

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Thursday, April 3, 2014

GETTING INTO GEAR The Collierville Civitan Club will hold its 10th annual Tour de Collierville fundraising bicycle ride Saturday at W.C. Johnson park. Page 9

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HOT RODS IN GERMANTOWN The Kiwanis Club charity car show is Saturday morning at The Shops of Forest Hill.

Germantown Weekly GERMANTOWN

Board reviews school policies Enrollment, transfer concerns addressed By Jennifer Pignolet pignolet@commercialappeal.com 901-529-2372

JIM WEBER/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL

Dan Legere, maintenance supervisor for Germantown Presbyterian Church, seals the ashes of six church members who were interred in the new columbarium at the church’s memorial garden after a dedication ceremony at the church last Sunday.

GERMANTOWN PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Ashes to ashes Germantown church dedicates Memorial Garden and columbarium

see ranked below the national rate at 31.7 percent, according to the Cremation Association of North America, but the number of people choosing to be cremated is steadily rising. “It’s far more accepted and economical,” Russell said. “With in-ground burial, you have to buy a casket, embalming, a plot at the cemetery. Here you can literally be taken directly from your deathbed to the crematorium and you just get returned in your urn.” Dr. Will Jones has served as pastor of Germantown Presbyterian for three years, and said the construction of the columbarium fit in with the church’s master plan, along with its architecture and character. “Churches like ours have been building memorial gardens, places for the remains and loved ones, now for several years,” Jones said. “In addition to a place of worship like a church, on a campus like ours you can

By L. Taylor Smith Special to The Commercial Appeal

Members of Germantown Presbyterian Church, seeing a trend toward more cremations, last Sunday celebrated the opening of the church’s Memorial Garden and columbarium. A columbarium is a structure with compartments called niches, where urns containing cremated remains are placed. The one at the church has 95 wall niches and 30 in-ground niches in a raised bed. “There’s a Southern thing about being interred at your church,” said Melinda Russell. “This is kind of a circling back of how it used to be.” Russell, a member of the church since 1999, chaired the panel that spent three years designing and constructing the garden and columbarium. In 2012, the U.S. rate of cremation was 43.2 percent, almost double the rate in 2000. Tennes-

The Germantown School Board waded through dozens of policies during a work session March 26 and debated whether to give Germantown residents a guarantee they can attend Houston Middle School if they want to. The policies ranged from accommodations for homeless students to allowing employees leave for jury duty. The meeting was the first since the board passed an interlocal agreement with Collierville to allow current students at Houston middle and high schools who live in Collierville to stay in their school through their exit grades. Board member Ken Hoover said that since the agreement, he has heard from Germantown residents who are unhappy that Collierville residents have a guarantee, while Germantown families are still waiting to see if their transfer requests will be approved. “If we don’t come out and say, ‘Germantown residents are guaranteed a seat at Houston Middle,’ then I feel like we have put Collierville residents ahead of Germantown,” Hoover said. Board President Lisa Parker disagreed. “We’re not adding any more Collierville students,” Parker said after the meeting. “They were there. We gave them the right to finish out their years at their school.” Hoover suggested issuing a guarantee that all Germantown residents who want to attend Houston Middle,

See ASHES, 2 See SCHOOLS, 2

COLLIERVILLE

Inside the Edition

Gift cards uplift cancer patients

SCHOOL FUN RAISER Tara Oaks Elementary annual Spring Fling Carnival and Silent Auction draws lots of support. SCHOOLS, 4

Survivor’s charity pays it forward By Lela Garlington

BRAVO IN THE BIG APPLE Houston High’s top two concert bands, Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band, head to New York to perform at Carnegie Hall. A&E, 3

SNAPSHOTS Collierville softball coach Mike Bradley wins his 800th career game. SPORTS, 11 The Commercial Appeal © Copyright 2014

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garlington@commercialappeal.com 901-529-2349

A moment of kindness and a restaurant gift card proved to be a powerful combination for Emily Tickle Thomas and her husband, Joel, of Collierville. Pregnant with her fourth son, Emily Thomas was undergoing oral cancer treatment at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in 2007. Friends called a Mexican restaurant in Houston.

A $50 gift card was waiting for the couple after her outpatient treatment. Between that and helping a friend with cancer afterward with gift cards, Thomas saw that other families needed what she got and began to pay it forward. She realizes the gift of cards won’t cure cancer, but “it’s tangible. They can get something they need.” Looking back at what her friends did for her, she pointed out on her website: “To this day, that simple gesture of kindness and generosity stands out in my mind more than any of the 2 years’ worth of CT scans and doctor’s ap-

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MIKE BROWN/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL

Emily Tickle Thomas runs Cancer Card Xchange from a bedroom closet in her Collierville home. To date her organization has donated more than $86,000 in gift cards to 873 cancer patients.

pointments.” Through her self-run Cancer Card Xchange nonprofit organization, she is now reaching out to others on a national scale. Now going into its third year, the CCX has sent just over $86,000 in gift and gas cards to 873 people with cancer from Hawaii

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