75 CENTS
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2014
COMING SUNDAY: Local florists gear up for Valentine’s Day
Milestone mark? Lady Knights try to capture Region VI-3A for 3rd year B1 SERVING SOUTH CAROLINA SINCE OCTOBER 15, 1894
Tigers get homecoming welcome 79th squadron returns from its Middle East deployment BY BRISTOW MARCHANT bmarchant@theitem.com
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ou haven’t seen your loved one in almost half a year, so what do a few more hours matter? Not much, if you asked the families of the 79th Fighter Squadron, who stayed up late Thursday into Friday morning to welcome their loved ones home from a long deployment to the Middle East. The lateness of their flight back to the States didn’t deter families from crowding behind a rope about 3 a.m. on the landing strip at Shaw Air Force Base. INSIDE Even small children weren’t bothered to stay Find more up well past their bed photos of the time, knowing daddy Tigers’ would soon be back from homecoming his trip. welcome on “She’s very excited,” page A6. said mom Stephanie Austria of her 5-year-old daughter, Reagan, who squirmed in a stroller inside the Shaw air hangar. “She’s talked about this for days and days.” Austria also brought her baby daughter, Alexandra, to meet her father, Eric. She was only a few weeks old when he deployed with about 200 other members of the “Tigers” squadron to an air base in Jordan. Five-year-old Danielle Sullivan got the day off school so she could meet dad, Matthew, on the tarmac, and stayed up all night so she could hold up her welcome sign as his transport plane touched down after a 15-hour flight. This was not the first time Danielle has waited on her father to come home. Matthew Sullivan had just come back from a seven-month deployment early last year when the squadron flew out again. His daughter was already brainstorming ideas for what she wanted to do once her dad got back. First she told her mother Beth she wanted to go to McDonald’s, then remembered she wanted to go to the EdVenture museum in Columbia, then came up with another idea on the spot. “I want to go bowling,” she declared. Beth Sullivan had less-grand plans after the early morning flight. “This early, I just want to go home and go to bed,” she said, “but later, they’ll
SEE TIGERS, PAGE A6
PHOTOS BY MATT WALSH / THE SUMTER ITEM
Senior Airman Cam Glowacki and his wife, Rikki, embrace early Friday morning after his 5-month deployment to Jordan with the 79th Fighter Squadron. “This is all I’ve been waiting for,” he said of hugging his wife. Family members line up on the tarmac of Shaw Air Force Base in pajamas and sweatshirts to greet the Tigers.
Alannah Oliver, at left, stands with her mom, Cassie, and brother, Brandon, as the 79th Fighter Squadron “Tigers” land on the tarmac of Shaw Air Force Base after a 5-month deployment.
Penny tax project list taking shape
Dozens of people came out to walk Friday for the last day Sumter Mall would be open early. Many had come for more than 10 years. JADE REYNOLDS / THE SUMTER ITEM
County schedules slew of meetings for next week
Mall changes hours for walkers Standardization upsets decade-long fellowship BY JADE REYNOLDS jade@theitem.com It’s standardization, and it’s breaking up a family. Starting Monday, Sumter Mall will open one hour before the opening of the shops. That is 9 a.m. during the week and 11 a.m. on
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Sundays. It used to open at 7 a.m. Monday through Saturday for the Heart & Soles Mall Walkers. Between 30 and 50 people came in to walk and say goodbye Friday between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. The corporate owners, Hull Storey Gibson Cos.,
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said it is all about safety and consistency. “I want to first make a distinction that operational hours will remain the same, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on
SEE WALKERS, PAGE A8
BY BRISTOW MARCHANT bmarchant@theitem.com Maybe it’s because meetings for the last week of January were canceled because of the winter storm or because looming projects on the list for the new penny tax require approval, but members of Sumter County Council are scheduled to spend a lot of time early next week in a string of meetings. Six meetings are set for Monday and Tuesday, half involving the full council and half being meetings of select committees on one topic or another.
DEATHS, A7 Mildred T. Allen Dale W. Player Geneva R. Smith Jerome King Jerome Holiday Lawrence E. Gross
Jason T. Green W. Meredith Manning Ella Mae Smith Mary E. Sargent Johnté Shaheed Holliday Angel R. Demery
In addition to council’s regularly scheduled meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday, members will hold a special meeting an hour earlier to discuss potential projects for the new penny sales tax before a final list goes to the voters in November. The full council will likely consider proposals from the “lead groups” working on the penny tax project that were reviewed by council’s ad-hoc penny tax committee last Monday. The public may have to wait a little while for the full list to become public. The ad-hoc committee met in a closed executive session last week, and officials want to keep some
SEE COUNTY, PAGE A7
WEATHER, A8
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A LITTLE RAIN
2 SECTIONS, 16 PAGES VOL. 119, NO. 98
Morning rain with partly cloudy skies tonight and chilly. HIGH 55, LOW 36
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