Year In Review 2012

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SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 2013

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Sunday, January 27, 2013

The Times, Gainesville, Georgia |

the ST B0E f2012

gainesvilletimes com

the best of 2012

published january 3, 2012

In 2012, The Times devoted considerable time and space to covering the people and events that help shape Northeast Georgia. Our reporters and photographers worked tirelessly to find interesting stories about your friends and neighbors.

Today, as has become an annual tradition, we reprint a few of our favorite stories from the past year, in case you missed them.

Enjoy!

INSIDE ARTIST’S EYE

2

Despite her blindness, a Gainesville woman excels as an artist.

IN THE FIELDS

4

A Times reporter joins workers in the field for a day of picking crops in the summer heat.

A MIRACLE

6

The parents of injured Marine Sean Adams talk about his injuries and his recovery.

RIVER RIDING

9

Professor paddles to the Gulf of Mexico as part of a project to study water quality.

MISSILE CRISIS

10

Northeast Georgians remember how close the U.S. came to nuclear war.

AVERAGE JOE Local man starts early-morning workouts to give back to his community.

VALLEY TOWN Residents buy resort to save it from bankruptcy, and now it’s on the grow.

12 12

A SPECIAL WIN

14

Gainesville High’s academic team celebrates a bittersweet win to remember classmate.

BAND OF BROTHERS Oakwood man is the only survivor of five brothers who served in the armed forces.

14

Photos by TOM REED | The Times

Above: Linda Dragonette has been legally blind for most of her life and uses special glasses to do her art. Below: Linda Dragonette talks about one of her works in progress.

A light

in the dark Gainesville artist puts her life on canvas, despite worsening blindness

BY BRANDEE A. THOMAS

news@gainesvilletimes.com The average person may look at the sky and see a solid field of blue. But for an artist, it’s a blanket of interwoven shades of aquamarine and cerulean.

In general, artists have a unique way of viewing the world. Linda Dragonette upholds that theory.

Whereas some people are busy looking at the broader picture, Dragonette’s perspective is more focused. Her unique view is a blend of both creative choice and genetic predispositions.

The Gainesville resident suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative hereditary disease that she says gets worse with age.

“If you have a (computer) screen that’s 3,200 pixels, I’m down to about 300. When I stand back, I can piece things together, but it’s hard for me to understand what I’m looking at anymore,” she said.

“I see things very tiny. It was like looking through a cocktail straw before, but now it’s a bit tinier than that.”

Dragonette inherited the eye disease from her father.

Her sister, nephew and son also have it.

“With retinitis you lose your peripheral vision first. It starts when you’re a child. I had always thought, well that’s OK, as long as I have my central vision,” Dragonette said.

“It’s like you have Vaseline over your eyes. Right now, I’m in the last stages. I can’t see out of my left eye.

“And my colors have grayed.

That’s the hardest thing for an artist to deal with.”

Coping with her increasingly impaired vision may be difficult, but it hasn’t impeded her work. Instead of giving up on the thing she loves, Dragonette has adjusted her artistic style over the last 20 years.

Originally, she would do stippling portraits, which are created my using a series of dots to create a pattern.

“I did those with ink and quills. As my vision worsened, it became too hard. It would take 80 hours to finish one,” Dragonette said.

“Then I started doing the oil paintings. Then I went to pastels.”

Since pastels are pure

pigment and are applied by dabbing the chalk-like forms against the canvas, Dragonette says it became easier to use because the color was at her fingertips instead of the end of a paintbrush.

Over the years, as her vision has diminished, Dragonette has transitioned from literal interpretations to looser, representational work.

“In the last six months, I’ve gotten to the point where I have to accept that I can’t do the detail work anymore because I don’t know what everyone else is seeing,” Dragonette said.

“I thought doing abstracts would be easier, but it’s one of the most difficult things I’ve done. You have to do a lot of technical things to make an abstract painting work.

“I would start doing an abstract, but then I couldn’t help but make it look like (a concrete object). Now I know that what I’ve been doing is called abstract expressionism. It’s abstract, but you can actually have subject matter in it.”

Although a painter, Dragonette’s works are all born from images she captures on her camera.

“For every painting I do, I take pictures first. I’ve been doing that for 25 or 30 years,” Dragonette said.

“I take pictures all around the subject matter and get as close as I can. I take the pictures I like and have them enlarged. My camera captures the details that I can’t see with my bare eyes.”

Her photography methods have also changed over the years.

“Back when I started taking the pictures for my paintings, I’d have this big bag with my camera and all, different types of lenses. It probably weighed over 50 pounds,” Dragonette said.

“Back then it was rolls of film. For every painting I made, I probably took three rolls of film.

“Now, I get the biggest kick out of my little, tiny Canon camera that can hold thousands of pictures.”

Despite her diminishing eyesight, Dragonette’s success as an artist has remained a constant. At one point, her work was displayed in more than a dozen art galleries at one time. She’s a signature member of the Southeastern Pastel Society and has been the recipient of the Pastel Society of North Florida’s Windsor Newton Award.

Dragonette is currently working toward becoming a master member of The Pastel Society of the West Coast. Earlier this year, the organization selected two of her paintings for inclusion in its 25th annual International Open Exhibition.

“These people with the West Coast society are the best in the world,” Dragonette said.

“They’re the ones writing the books, so it really was an honor to be included in their show.”

Not only was she selected to participate, Dragonette’s

“Mexican Sunflower” painting was used on banners to advertise the exhibition at the Haggin Museum in California.

Although that show is over, her “Moments of Color” exhibition is currently on display at the Quinlan Visual Arts Center, 514 Green St. in Gainesville.

The exhibition, on display until Feb. 19, may not have come to fruition if it wasn’t for Dragonette’s doctors at the North Georgia Eye Clinic.

Dragonette has another medical condition that causes the rapid growth of cataracts on her eyes. In the last 17 years, she has had six cataract removal surgeries. Her doctors performed the most recent surgery in June so she could complete the artwork for her Quinlan exhibition.

When her sight became too weak to see the canvas bareeyed, her husband found a special headpiece with multiple magnifying lenses to help her see clearer.

When her trusted brushes moved her paints too far away, Dragonette transitioned to holding pastels in her fingertips and oil paints on palette knives.

“It’s getting more difficult, but you don’t have to stop. I’m having fun with it. I exaggerate color. I do looser figurative paintings and make my subjects more abstract,” Dragonette said.

“You adjust. ... You don’t give up.”

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The Times, Gainesville, Georgia |

gainesvilletimes com

Sunday, January 27, 2013

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CMYK The Times, Gainesville, Georgia |

Sunday, January 27, 2013

gainesvilletimes com

the best of 2012

published july 1, 2012

sun, sweat, fruit Times reporter joins ‘family’ of workers, mostly Latinos, for a day of toiling to pick crops in the summer heat

Immigrant farm labor is a hot-button issue for many, with some farmers lamenting they have no choice but to depend on a largely immigrant workforce because white Americans simply don’t last in the fields, others saying farmers must find other options. On Wednesday, reporter Lee Johnson spent the day working in the fields at Jaemor Farms in Alto, not to find answers to those questions but to see firsthand what life is like for those who work on the farm.

by lee johnson

Y

ljohnson@gainesvilletimes.com

ou can tell a lot about a man by his hands.

Some hang at the waist calloused and scarred. Others take in the world with smooth palms and groomed fingernails.

A newspaper man’s hands, for instance, are coated with the black residue of fresh ink.

However, as I looked down at my hands Wednesday afternoon, I didn’t see the ink I’ve become so used to in my line of work.

I didn’t see my fingers frantically punching away at a plastic keyboard.

What I saw were dust-covered, purple-stained, nicked up and sun-kissed hands.

For the day, I was a farmhand.

Now, I’m no stranger to manual labor. In fact, that is how I made money over the summer as a teenager.

But I have never worked on a farm until Jaemor Farms “hired” me for the day.

So I found my green thumb and set my alarm for 5:30 a.m.

A hard day’s work As the sun was rising, beaming through my car windshield as I drove up Ga. 365, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, or even what I was hoping to encounter.

My tires carved through the gravel drive leading up to the farm, and other cars started piling in to the makeshift parking lot next to the country store. I followed them, parked my car, opened the door and found myself standing with at least a dozen Latinos.

The crew, I assumed.

I was right.

Drew Echols, the farm’s manager, met me behind the store and introduced me to John Gonzalez, one of the two crew managers on the farm and my boss for the day.

John has been with Jaemor for two years and is one of seven full-time employees.

“He’s one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met,” Drew said.

As the crew prepared, John waved me over to a Kubota rough-terrain vehicle. I got in on the passenger side with little idea of where we were going or what we’d be doing.

I soon realized the objective, for at least the morning, was to load up dozens and dozens of flats with blackberries.

As we pulled into the field that hosts the rows of bushes, the crew jumped off the other two trucks. In total, there were 10 to 12 workers.

Photos by Tom Reed | The Times

Top: A group of pickers work a line of blackberry bushes at Jaemor Farms. Middle: John Gonzales carries a stack of boxes of blackberries through the blackberry bushes. Above: Times reporter Lee Johnson stacks freshly picked blackberries in the Jaemor Farms warehouse.

■ Please see FRUIT, 5

‘The truth of the matter is these folks work hard, and Americans don’t want to do these jobs.’

Drew Echols, Jaemor Farms manager

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The Times, Gainesville, Georgia |

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Sunday, January 27, 2013

■ Continued from 4 The guys start grabbing berry flats and homemade PVC pipe stands to hold them. I was handed a metal tray with a handle. It was big enough for two berry flats.

I followed John to one of the rows of berries and he started picking.

I tried to follow along but his hands were almost a blur, pulling blackberries at an astonishing rate.

“Mi amigo,” I said to him. “Estoy nuevo. Necesito ayudo.”

(For Spanish speakers, the correct conjugation is “soy nuevo.”

For those non-Spanish speakers, it means “I’m new. I need help.”)

“It’s easy,” he said in broken English, but more coherently than my broken Spanish. “Pick the big, black ones.”

Like that, I had my instructions and got to work.

It’s easy to pick blackberries at 7:30 a.m. It’s cool, there is a nice breeze and the energy from the iced coffee I made at home was still with me.

So as I filled up my flats with the “big, black” berries, I looked around at my co-workers.

There was Edgar Flores, a recent graduate of Habersham Central High School and an aspiring college student. He’s been working on the farm for two summers and is no stranger to hard work.

“I’d rather be out here working than staying at home, to be honest,” he said.

I was thinking I’d rather still be in bed.

There was Mario and Luigi. Well, they’re both named Mario, but to keep the confusion at a minimum, they’re referred to as Mario and Luigi.

Somewhere in the mix was Leo, who will be a senior at Habersham Central.

Then there was Jonathan Parris, the only other white man and a 22year-old farming hopeful.

“I love it, I really do,” he said. “I grew up on a family farm and my dream is to do something like this.

So I’m here trying to learn, trying to get the experience.”

A handful more worked farther away. I tried to immerse myself in the work. And I tried hard.

After about 30 minutes, I looked down and saw my flat full of berries. I was proud.

Then I looked over at John who had stacked up at least two flats and was well on his way to a third.

I kept picking — and falling further behind.

After an hour and a half, I filled maybe three flats. But somehow the back of the Kubota was stacked full of them.

A diverse family These guys are good. I wondered why.

Is it because they’re used to the labor? Is it because I’m just that slow? Is it because of their ethnicity? Maybe all three.

I asked Drew Echols why the majority of his workforce is Hispanic.

“I think most people know that you have primarily Hispanics working on farms,” he said. “It’s just one of those things that people don’t talk about until it becomes a hot-button political issue. That’s when they start talking about it and throwing Hispanics under the bus about how they’re ‘taking our jobs’ or ‘farmers are addicted to cheap labor.’ And that’s a long way from the truth.

“The truth of the matter is these folks work hard, and Americans don’t want to do these jobs.”

Actually, he said, he’s tried to hire Americans. Most of them he puts in those positions don’t last long.

“A lot of time what happens is someone will come out and do the job for one day,” he said. “It’s easy to come out here and work in the 90-degree weather for one day. But the second day is a little worse and the third day is a little worse, and it snowballs into a whole week and you’re so tired you can’t even stand up hardly, and you got muscles in your body hurting that you didn’t even know you had.”

I can attest to that. It was 11 a.m. and my back was already tightening.

But the job wasn’t done.

As I wiped the remains of a blackberry off my right knee and explained to John that it’s not blood, just fruit, we left the field and headed toward the store.

A tractor-trailer carrying thousands of peach baskets has pulled up, needing to be unloaded. At least we got a break from picking blackberries.

And something else happened. I started to feel like one of the crew.

As we carried baskets back and forth like worker ants carrying their payload up and down a tree, we started to joke around.

“You’re my amigo?” John asked.

“Sure,” I replied.

“Say no,” someone from behind me said. “He won’t be my amigo because I’m Mexican. He only has white friends.”

Thanks for the advice, Leo, who was grinning with the brim of his straw hat flipped up.

I declined the counsel and, for at least the rest of the day, John had another “amigo.”

Just after noon, the never-ending trailer of peach baskets was finally unloaded and as my lungs tried to oust the dust that had made a home

Top: Jaemor Farms employee Mario Perez works among the blackberry bushes at the farm.

Above: John Gonzalez fills boxes with blackberries as he works in the blackberry field.

in them, the sweetest words a man can hear came from the crew: “Lunch time, my friend.”

I stepped inside for a tomato sandwich and some blackberry cobbler, made by “Nana,” and spent some time with Drew and his family.

Jaemor was started by his grandfather, Jimmy, and has been family run ever since.

The importance put on family goes a long way with Drew. So far, in fact, it’s part of the application process.

“I try to hire family-orientedtype folks,” he said.

It’s of the reasons he employs so many Latinos, he said. Well, that, and they seem to hang around long enough for Drew to get to know them.

“From what I’ve seen, since I’ve been managing the farm for the past 10 years, Hispanics are more loyal,” Drew said. “One of the things that really impresses me is the family connection — they really take care of their family. The money that they make goes, first off, to pay for a house, second off, to pay for an automobile. It’s not all the flashy stuff that we’re used to as Americans. A lot of times we’ll go rent movies before we pay our power bill, and they prioritize and take care of their family.”

John knows about that. He had his only son two years ago when he started working on the farm.

He said he works hard to support himself and his wife.

“I’m working out there all day, every day,” John said. “I want work for the boss man. He gave us the jobs. I want every Mexican to work like me — working fast and everything.”

And I may not be Mexican, but John expected the same out of me Wednesday.

After one of the shortest lunch hours of my young life, we hopped back into the trucks and headed back out to the field.

A grueling pace I realized very quickly that a summer morning in Georgia is like vacation compared to the after-

noon.

Again, I loaded up my tray with berry flats.

This time, at least in my opinion, I held my own a little better. Instead of the crew being three times faster than me, they were only double my picking speed.

As we move up and down the aisle of berries, John and I figured out that with his broken English and my poor Spanish, we could communicate pretty effectively.

He’s excited about being a father.

He enjoys working on the farm and working with Drew. He is looking forward to the corn maze in the fall.

He is originally from a city near Guadalajara, Mexico. He is very responsive to “John, una caja” (John passes out the flats, or “cajas,” and loads the Kubota up with the full ones). He can’t wait to take a vacation with his family once the harvest season slows down.

He’s probably not much different than other laborers.

As we talked and joked with other crew members, our flats filled with berries, my shirt became soaked in sweat, my arms and face started to feel the burn from the sun, my back and knees tightened even more — but something about it felt comfortable.

The crew asked if I was working Thursday. I said no, that I would be in an air-conditioned building drinking coffee while they were out there sweating.

“Oh, cafe,” they said, making a dainty sipping motion, pinky extended.

Then, one of them yelled to a younger guy whose name I didn’t catch: “That’s why you need to stay in school.”

A fatherly lesson in the middle of a blackberry field.

That got me thinking, though. If I hadn’t finished school, could I do something like this every day?

The comfort started to dissipate when the realization hit that this is how some of these guys live.

I asked Edgar why they do this every day. Why not work somewhere else, someplace easier?

“It’s harder to find a job somewhere else, and here we have more potential to actually get the job,” he said. “So I think we work harder to try and keep it because we don’t have as many opportunities to work other places.”

This is just a temporary stop for Edgar. He hopes to make it to Savannah and attend Armstrong Atlantic State University.

He said he has the grades but may take some classes locally before making the move. He said Drew has been giving him advice and pushing him to go to school.

Family, right?

But for some other members of the crew, college or a white-collar job may be out of reach. All that’s left is the farm, or something similar. So they make the best out of it, they told me.

“It seems to me that Hispanics work because they have to,” said Jonathan. “If we had to do the same thing here in America, I think you’d see white guys working just as hard as Hispanics.

“They know they have to perform. They know they have to, so they do, and they do a great job.”

Jonathan, who Drew said “works like a dog,” hopes to own a farm one day.

He’s jumping at the opportunity to work his way up on the farm and, he said, by working with the crew, it gives him a better idea of what the work is like.

I asked him, hypothetically, who he would hire on his farm.

He would look to Americans first but would not oppose hiring legal immigrants, he said.

“I’ve loved working with the guys,” he said. “They’re always full of fun and I’d have nothing against hiring them.”

So as we talked and downed bottles of water and Powerade like we’re camels in a desert, we finally finished up the rows of blackberries.

I almost forgot we were picking, even with the constant reminder of sweat beads finding their way into the inner corner of my eyes.

Final count: a conservative 170

flats for the crew.

It was pushing 4:30 p.m. and, as we loaded up the flats into the Kubota, I was secretly hoping we were done for the day. Lady luck was not on my side.

We got a call from Drew who was standing in what appears to be an empty field, lined with rows of what used to be strawberries.

He was pulling up some sort of plastic from one of the middle rows.

“This is the worst part of the job,” he said to me as we get out of the trucks.

As the crew spread out through the field, Drew explained to me that the strawberry irrigation system on eight rows needed to come out so they can till it down to make room for the cantaloupe trailers when it comes time to harvest them.

That meant pulling up hundreds of yards of plastic and piping that was buried in the ground last year.

Over the next hour we (and I can’t take a lot of credit) uprooted the plastic and loaded it on the truck.

It was about 5:30 when we finished and I was drenched in sweat, covered in dirt, exhausted and ready to go home.

As we headed back to the shop, I rode with Drew, who asked me what I thought.

“It’s been good to get out here,” I said. “But don’t expect to see me out here again.”

He laughed and kept driving.

We pulled up to the store and we washed up. The guys punched out and I got a chance to sit down on the nearest thing that looked like it would hold up under my weight.

“You tired?” asked John.

I looked at him and smiled.

“Yeah,” I said. “Vamos a la casa (Let’s go home)” “Tomorrow?” he asked again.

“No.” “It’s too hot?” he asked between laughs. “The work is no good for the gringos. Maybe no (for) Jonathan.

I like the work. For me, it’s easy work.”

I’ll leave it to him and his crew.

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Sunday, January 27, 2013

The Times, Gainesville, Georgia |

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the best of 2012

published july 4, 2012 The early morning phone call shook Tina and Hugh Adams to the core. Their son, Sean, a United States Marine, had been critcally injured. But in the months since, they have watched as their battered and bruised son recovered from his injuries and they gave all their thanks to their faith in God.

‘We witnessed a miracle ’

Tom Reed | The Times

Hugh Adams, right, watches as his son moves off a ramp in the front yard of their home. Baker Pulliam, a family friend and Sean’s former teacher at Chestatee High School, looks on in the background

T

BY JEFF GILL

jgill@gainesvilletimes.com

he life-changing phone call came at 8 a.m. on a Friday morning.

Tina Adams, shaking off sleep, heard the words “your son has been injured and is in the hospital” and quickly handed the phone to her husband, Hugh, next to her in bed.

The news was more than she could bear — it was like waking into a nightmare. She didn’t like Sean’s decision to join the Marines, and the phone call

confirmed her worst fears.

“I was hysterical,” she said in an interview last week. “I vaguely remember it all, but what was going through my mind was I knew something was going to happen. I knew it from day one.

“All parents have fears, but mine was one I just knew something bad was going to come from it, and I couldn’t make anybody understand my fears.”

The West Hall family’s roller-coaster journey of emotions and faith began on Feb. 10, after learning that, the day before, then-Marine Pfc. Sean Adams had stepped on a homemade bomb in Afghanistan while leading a patrol of other Marines.

Injuries included a shrapnel wound to his left eye and bruised lungs. Doctors amputated his right leg above his knee and his left leg past his knee, as well as the pinky finger on his right hand and the thumb on his left hand.

Sean has little memory of the explosion.

He said it “threw me up in the air and then I landed on the ground.”

A Navy corpsman and a friend of Adams’ “came running up and pushed me back down on the ground and (put) tourniquets on my legs and my right shoulder,” he said Adams said he was placed on a Black Hawk helicopter and taken to a hospital, “then I blacked out for five days.”

“When I woke up, I was amazed I did wake up,” he said.

“When I blacked out, the chopper medic put his hand on my chest and told me I’d be all right. I made peace with dying.”

In the months following the explosion, the Adams family has met the president and first lady, made new friendships and watched as area residents rally around the 19-year-old 2011 Chestatee High School graduate.

Most of all, they have watched a battered and bruised Sean, at one time lying close to death in his hospital bed, recover from injuries and start rehabilitation with such speed that, family members have said, is nothing short of a miracle.

“God is amazing,” someone wrote on Sean’s Facebook page.

Hugh and Tina Adams spent a recent afternoon recalling those early days and Sean’s progression during an interview at their home off Trudy Circle.

Sean, home on 30-day leave, was outside in the heat, seated in his wheelchair, talking with other visitors.

Tina recounted that first phone call and the waves of shock that rolled over her and Hugh.

While Hugh was on the home phone speaking with a Marine sergeant, Tina was on a cellphone trying to reach other family members, including their two other sons, Curtis, 26, and Joshua, 28.

“After I told Tina all (the sergeant had said), we were just in tears,” Hugh said. “We didn’t know what to do.”

“It seemed like it took forever for any (family) to get here,” Tina said. “My fears were I thought (the military) was lying to us. I kept thinking they’re lying to me ... and that he had died and they weren’t telling us.”

Hugh said he did thank God that Sean was still alive, “but we later found out that he had died twice coming over from Germany to the United States. Some way, they revived him.

“But he was at death’s door when we walked in that room” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. By early the next week, Adams’ parents had flown to Maryland.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day,” Tina said. “We got there and he was in surgery. I don’t know what they were doing, but we couldn’t see him.”

When they finally were able to see Sean, they had to wear protective clothing.

“He was very contagious. Even the doctors and nurses were wearing it,” Tina said.

Insurgents use chemicals and other toxic materials in putting together the bombs, according to the U.S. Department

of Defense.

“When (a bomb) hits you, you are automatically infected,” Hugh said.

The couple recalled the scene when arriving at Sean’s room.

“He was convulsing,” Tina said. “The whole bed was shaking.”

She said the chaplain entered the room with her and said, “Do anything you want to.”

Tina laid her hands on her son and began to sing “Sheltered in the Arms of God.” “That’s been his song ever since the day he was born,” Tina said. “It’s the song I sang to him when he was in the incubator in the hospital.

“As I sang, it was just like something had calmed him down.

I could hear people talking in the room and they were like, ‘Look what’s going on.’ I heard the chaplain say, “You all are watching a miracle. You’re watching God’s hand at work.’”

Hugh said he wondered what caused Sean’s convulsions.

“He would jerk like he was trying to get out of the way of something. I imagine he was reliving the blast,” he said.

Sean doesn’t remember any of it, Tina said.

“From the moment I got to him, I stayed with him. They would make me — at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning — leave the hospital as best they could without being rude about it.”

Sean’s body temperature stayed at 104.4 degrees for a month, Hugh said.

“He slept on ice. You’d go over and touch him and he was just burning up,” he said. “That infection about got him.”

Finally, Sean’s condition took a turn for the better.

In a March ceremony, President Barack Obama pinned a Purple Heart on Sean while the Marine lay alert in his hospital bed and surrounded by family.

“We witnessed a miracle in Bethesda, Md.,” Hugh said. “He healed in two months what it takes usually six months to attain. The doctors were astounded. If he hadn’t taken this 30day leave, he would probably be walking on his prosthetics.”

As it is, Sean has returned home three times since the accident — the first time over Mother’s Day weekend in May. Arrangements were made to sneak Sean into Hall County on that Saturday night.

On May 13, a Sunday morning, a slideshow featuring pictures of Sean’s progress, from early days at the hospital to his condition that day, was presented to the congregation at Rejoice Baptist Church in South Hall.

Sean was then wheeled into the sanctuary. As he was coming up the aisle, someone nudged Tina to look in Sean’s direction.

Tina hurdled over people to get to Sean, Hugh said, with a hearty laugh.

And then Sean, by now a lance corporal, returned for Memorial Day to a hero’s welcome at Lee Gilmer Memorial Airport in Gainesville.

He served as co-grand marshal of the Paul E. Bolding American Legion Post 7’s annual Memorial Day parade in Gainesville, along with Hall County Sheriff Steve Cronic. He also was recognized during a Memorial Day ceremony at Memorial Park Cemetery.

Sean “always has been very independent — all my children have been,” Tina said. “We’ve always let them make their own decisions.”

As far as joining the Marine Corps, “everybody who knew him tried to slow him down,” she said. “The Marines were pushing and we were pulling him.”

“He was so gung-ho about it. There was no stopping him,” Tina said.

“This kid would put a 60-pound pack on his back and run,” Hugh said.

“Around the neighborhood,” Tina added.

Looking back over the past few months, much like the wrestler that Sean was at Chestatee High, his parents have had to grapple with their son’s choices and new way of life.

“Sean did what he wanted to, and we gave him the permission,” Hugh said. “He’s a grown man. He’s made his decisions and he was hurt in combat. And he fully understands that.

Now, he makes jokes.”

Tina said she “relives everything that has happened.”

“If I could ask God one question, it would be explain this to me,” she said. “Everybody keeps saying there’s a reason for this. I can’t find the reason.

“I know he’s going to go far and he’s going to succeed, but I can’t find the reason. ... We can’t figure out why this has happened.”

She admits to her faith being shaken.

“My prayer every night before bed since the day he joined was, ‘Send him home to me. Send him home somehow.’ And when this happened, I went ‘Whoa, wait a minute. I shouldn’t have asked that one,’ ” Tina said.

“I’ve always been one to believe that you talk to God and he’ll take care of it and, after this happened, I quit.”

Tina worked through that faith crisis, however.

“The Lord himself showed me he has taken care of Sean since he was ... a tiny child,” she said. “I brought him back to you several times then and I brought him back to you several times now. What more do you want? I’ve always said that God talks to me like my father did.”

She doesn’t know where her faith would be if she had lost her son.

“I don’t know if I could have made it through it,” Tina said.

“My children, my husband and this house ... have been my life.”

Sean’s absence from the home “is the hardest time,” she said. “The loneliness and wondering sets in.”

Tina said she is ready for Sean’s permanent return home, after his retirement from the Marines, and beginning the next chapter of his life.

“He’s getting impatient. He wants this behind him. He wants to go on with his life,” she said.

Sean talked about what the future holds.

“From here on and out, it’s going to be more or less about just getting me ready to transition out of the corps, back to home life and getting me up and walking more stabilized than what I am,” he said.

How long that process takes isn’t known.

“Everybody’s different. It depends on how long it takes the person to get their balance back,” Sean said.

The road has been a tough one.

“I still want to get out of bed, like I used to,” he said. “But I ... guess it’s better to happen now than in a car wreck 20 years from now and I (wouldn’t be) able to walk ever again.

“There’s a small list of things I won’t get to do again, but there are so many other doors (that) have opened. There are so many opportunities that have opened up to me,” Sean said.

He doesn’t mind all the publicity that has surrounded his heroism and courage in the face of adversity.

“But I am getting to the stage where I’m just ready to get back to life as it was, the best I can,” he said.

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Sunday, January 27, 2013

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the T S E B0f 012 2

SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 2013 PAGE 9

Riding the

river published september 30, 2012

North Georgia professor paddling to Gulf as part of water quality project

BY SHANNON CASAS

scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Robert Fuller is no stranger to adventure.

It started when he was a child growing up on Tampa Bay in Florida, traversing the bay in well-used boats he and his brother bought for $5 or $10 from local fishermen.

At 17, he joined the Marines. By 19, he was shipped to Vietnam.

One adventure there involved a 75 mm shell landing at his feet.

It didn’t go off.

He also did reconnaissance missions there, a few being not exactly authorized solo missions.

For 24 years, he worked as an engineer, and supervised construction of oil pipelines in Nigeria.

He was a commercial pilot doing aerial mapping, flying all over the U.S. and into Central America.

He also spent some time as a commercial diver, working for two different companies in Florida and doing underwater inspection in Georgia.

His latest adventure, though, may be his grandest.

Big plans Fuller, professor of geosciences and director of the Environmental Leadership Center at North Georgia College & State University, began a trek last Saturday at the tiptop of the Chattahoochee River, hiking along the spring that begins the river system that is vital to Georgia, Florida and Alabama.

He’ll be paddling the river and testing its water quality all the way to the Apalachicola River and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.

And once he’s reached that destination, the focus changes from science to fiction as he researches a novel while paddling along the Gulf then back up the Mobile, Alabama and Etowah rivers home to Lumpkin County.

He’s been on paddling trips of 150 miles or so before. This trip will be about 1,500 miles.

“I really decided for sure to do it about two years ago,” Fuller, 64, said of the trip. That decision came not long after he was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a disease that can be linked to his exposure to Agent Orange defoliant in Vietnam.

He has no symptoms of the slow-moving cancer, but he said it puts life in perspective.

“It has helped me focus on the big things that I want to get done while I still have the ability to do them,” Fuller wrote in his blog detailing the trip. “That is why I applied last year for a year’s professional leave.”

After getting the OK for time off from the university, where he has served a full-time professor for 13 years, he began preparing.

He worked with the Veterans Administration to make sure he could withstand the trip healthwise, and began an exercise plan with a fitness trainer at the university.

“I figured getting myself built up and in shape a little bit would help me weather any disease anyway, and it also would make it easier to do this kind of trip,” he said.

He also began looking at exactly what kind of research he would do during the trip.

“They want you to do something productive that will further the profession,” he said. “And since I do water quality work, I thought, ‘what better thing to do than to follow some water downstream and see what happens to it, see how that water changes over time?’”

He worked for months training faculty and students to take over his other research, which includes water quality research on Lake Lanier as well as heading up the predator beetle lab, a project aimed at saving hemlock trees from the harmful woolly adelgid.

In planning for the trip, he consulted with the U.S. Geological Survey and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division to gather background information and gain a better understanding of the tracing dye he planned to use.

He calculated that he’d need 10 gallons of dye at a whopping $2,400. And he bought a new canoe — a 17-foot, 2-inch long Sea Wind that will carry 500 pounds, including him and his equipment.

A few people along the river agreed to receive shipments of food that Fuller will pick up along the way. He also arranged for a friend in Dahlonega to bring him more dye at some point down the river.

On Sept. 22, the adventure began.

How it works Photo by SCOTT ROGERS | The Times Illustration by R. KEITH HATCHELL | The Times

Fuller set off on foot from Jack’s Gap at Ga. 180 and Ga. 180 spur.

At Chattahoochee Spring, he poured a carefully calculated dose of red dye into the water and then followed that specific

portion of water, tracking the peak of his dye cloud.

“I’m looking at the dye cloud for the mixing characteristics of the river,” he said. “But I’m also following it so I can monitor various water quality parameters of that one mass of water as it moves down the system.”

He takes measurements from the boat, looking to document where the quality of that water changes.

To track his dye cloud, he uses a device called a fluorometer, loaned by the EPD, to detect the dye once it has become diluted.

The dye becomes visible again under that fluorescent light.

Once the water reaches a reservoir like Lake Lanier, Fuller takes a break, only to start over again with more dye below the reservoir.

So far, he’s found that the water coming out of Helen looks fairly clean. Where the Chattahoochee and Soque rivers mix, the Soque carries more dissolved material and less dissolved oxygen.

“I’ll collect all this data when I’m back in December. I’ll start doing the number crunching and try to figure out what it all means,” he said. “And I hope there will be a couple of publishable pieces of data out of this.”

He’s also added a couple of other projects onto the trip.

He’ll look at how the water disperses, when he has time, as a favor to the EPD. For that, he must watch the entire dye cloud pass him. The data then helps the EPD understand what would happen if there were some sort of pollutant spilled into the river — how it would disperse and how far downriver it would still be considered dangerous.

It’s extra time, but valuable data, he said.

Fuller performed that measurement near Smith Island, north of Buck Shoals State Park, watching the water move past him for much of the day.

“And then I had to go catch my dye cloud because now it’s six hours downriver from me,” he said. “So paddle, paddle, paddle like a madman to try to catch up with it and get back ahead of it.”

He said he’ll try to take that measurement at least once per free flowing section of the river.

He’s also collecting water samples for the EPD to analyze for biochemical oxygen demand, a measurement of the material that will consume oxygen, a resource crucial for organisms living in the water.

Traveling the river It’s not all science on the river, though.

Since he’s chosen to travel by canoe, Fuller also is camping along the shore.

Timing on the trip is difficult, and with little idea of where he might end the trip on any particular day, he has not planned exactly where he will camp.

So far, he’s gotten permission to camp at Smith Island and at Buck Shoals State Park, which is closed.

Meals are composed of anything that can be combined with hot water from his small camp stove to create something edible — oatmeal for breakfast, freeze-dried meals for dinner.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but Fuller said he enjoys it.

“Just paddling, being able to sit there and paddle hard for nine hours a day at my age — it’s very satisfying,” he said.

He has encountered a bald eagle, dozens of wild turkeys and a highlight of the trip so far — a bunch of monarch butterflies that flew overhead as he paddled across Lake Lanier, a good omen in Fuller’s mind as the monarch is the emblem used on his brand of canoe.

He’s also made a few human friends along the way, one who helped him through a rough part of the river.

“Having Jerry Taylor ... come out, seeing me struggling in some nearly dry rapids and offering to help was fantastic,” Fuller said.

“And then he invited me into his home and fixed me coffee and just was a great new friend that I met on the river.”

Fuller is not entirely leaving old friends behind. He’s traveling with an iPhone, iPad and a large battery charger. With those devices, he can update his blog of the trip and keep in touch with his wife, Kathy, and others.

“We miss each other. We call each other. I’ve been calling her two or three times a day,” Fuller said.

He hopes to reach the Gulf in about a month and after traveling back up the Etowah river system, be home in time for Christmas.

It’s a lot of work. But Fuller calls that work fun.

“We have a great country, and so many people have built this country up to the point that it’s really not hard to make a living,” Fuller said. “To me, the challenge is doing something that you just thoroughly enjoy doing and getting other people to pay you to do it. And I think I’ve been pretty successful at that.

“I’m 64 years old and having the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.”

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Sunday, January 27, 2013

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published october 21, 2012

Associated Press

President John F. Kennedy, right, confers with his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, at the White House on Oct. 1, 1962, in Washington, D.C., during the buildup of military tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that became Cuban missile crisis later that month.

13 days in October

Remembering when U.S. came close to nuclear war

BY JEFF GILL

jgill@gainesvilletimes.com

Ursula Stewman grew up in Nazi Germany, so she knew the meaning of war.

But nothing had quite prepared her for what would happen during her first trip across the Atlantic Ocean on a troop transport ship. She was with her G.I. husband and two young children.

“When we were within three days of landing in New York we were suddenly surrounded by jet fighters,” said Stewman, now living in Gillsville, in an email describing the event.

“The people on board rushed up on deck to use their transistor radios to try and find out what was happening, and word soon spread that the Russians had placed missiles in Cuba and the U.S. was on the brink of war.”

In an interview later, Ursula said simply: “I was scared to death.”

Fifty years ago this month, fear swept the globe as a nuclear nearmiss played out between the U.S. and Soviet Union, Cold War superpowers and rivals.

The crisis erupted after an American U-2 spy plane had secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviets on the island nation of Cuba.

President John F. Kennedy learned about the missile sites Oct. 16, and the government began internally fretting over how to deal with the situation.

The next day, American military units began “moving to bases in the Southeastern U.S. as intelligence photos from another U-2 flight show(ed) additional sites,” according to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Gainesville’s Jan Waters of those dark times.

Just 5 years old at the time, she said she remembered her father, James Harper Sr., a captain in the Gainesville Police Department and a sergeant in the Air Force Reserve, arriving home from work and going straight into a private meeting with her mother.

After they talked, “he came out of the room, took a shower and changed into his Air Force uniform,” Waters said.

Her mother talked to her and her two siblings, saying their father was leaving for Dobbins Air Force Base — now Air Reserve Base — and “might be gone for a while.”

Waiting to launch Parker Henderson, a Jacksonville, Fla., native, was a Navy pilot assigned to Attack Squadron 64 during those days and was aboard the USS Independence, the first aircraft carrier to arrive in Cuban waters, when the conflict started.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and the ship was shaking all over,” he said. “I went up and looked over the side (of the ship) and we were really making some knots.”

The next morning, the ship’s captain announced to the crew that the ship was about 200 miles south of Cuba.

“From then on, they canceled flying and loaded the airplanes with ordnance, bombs, rockets, napalm and assigned all of us targets on the eastern half of the island,” said Henderson, now 75 and living in

North Hall. “We were in full flight gear, ready to launch at a moment’s notice.”

Henderson’s target was a surface-to-air missile site.

One other sure-fire memory from those days: His 25th birthday fell on Oct. 23 and “I had not been in my bunk to sleep for about a week and a half — just sitting around taking cat naps in the ready room in full flight gear. I said to myself, ‘This is my birthday. I’m going to go, by God, take a nap.’”

Just as he dozed off, a ship announcement ordering pilots to man their airplanes was sounded.

He slipped out of his bunk and headed for his aircraft.

“I just sat there. It was dead quiet,” Henderson said. “We were just waiting for a signal to launch.

We sat there for about 30 minutes and then they canceled the alert.

To this day, I never did really know what happened on the 23rd.”

Fifty years ago today, Kennedy met with Tactical Air Command Gen. Walter Sweeney, who told Kennedy “that an air strike could not guarantee 100 percent destruction of the missiles,” according to the JFK website.

The crisis picked up pace Oct. 22 as Kennedy established a National Security Council executive committee and instructed it to meet daily.

He also notified former presidents Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

Kennedy also wrote a letter to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, saying, “I hope that your government will refrain from any action which would widen or deepen this already grave crisis and that we can agree to resume the path of peaceful negotiation.”

He then went on national TV, revealing in a now-famous speech evidence of the missiles in Cuba and calling for their removal.

Kennedy also announced a naval blockade around the island until the Soviet Union agreed to dismantle the missile sites and ensure that no additional missiles were shipped to Cuba.

Confrontation at sea John Treat of Gainesville was a 3rd class radarman aboard the Navy destroyer USS Vesole, deployed to intercept Soviet freighters leaving Cuba with nuclear missiles aboard being returned to Russia.

“They would not cooperate with our demands to be boarded, and

ing to stay on board and head right back to Germany.’”

Scott Rogers | The Times

Ursula Stewman holds an Army photograph of her late husband, Sgt. Terry Stewman. The couple and their young daughter were traveling to the U.S. on the USS Geiger when news reports came out that the Russians had placed missiles in Cuba and the U.S. was on the brink of war.

the situation almost escalated to the point of them being fired on,” Treat recalled. “We steamed alongside one freighter at a distance of about 100 feet for 24 hours with them totally ignoring our demands to stop and be boarded, and in the dark of night, they constantly kept changing course trying to cause a collision.”

The next morning, “we trained one of our forward gun mounts toward their bow in preparation to fire a shot ... that, if ignored, would result in them being fired on and sunk. Thankfully, the admiral in charge of our task force gave the order not to fire, as that would have had a bad outcome.”

Jimmy Wilkins Jr. of Gainesville was stationed at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento, Calif. He was part of the Air Police Squadron, which was in charge of protecting the KC-135 Stratotanker, a refueling aircraft, and B-52 bombers.

During the missile crisis, “our Air Force Base went on 24-hour alert for 30 days,” Wilkins said. “We worked 12 hours on and 12 hours off. (It was) very much a test for all involved.”

Stewman said that during the crisis she was afraid, with her husband in the military, “that I might be left alone in a strange country.”

“I was so afraid that I told my husband that when we landed (in America) ‘me and the kids are go-

Homefront on alert The crisis also affected the American public at large.

“The enduring image in my mind is the sight of long lines of flatbed train cars rolling through town, headed south and loaded with tanks and other military vehicles and materiel, for use in a possible invasion of Cuba,” said Gainesville lawyer Wyc Orr, who was a high school junior in Tifton at the time.

“And the enduring sound is that of those rumbling, rolling trains, a sound which lingers even today,” he said, “and with it, the sense of danger and risk that was in the air, including the airwaves as President Kennedy made his famous television broadcast informing Americans of the stakes and necessity of bold action.”

Kirk Turner of Dawsonville was 6 years old at the time and living in Atlanta.

“I actually remember the ‘duck and cover’ film and exercises (in school),” he said. “Along with the exercises, one weekend all the students were timed on how much time it took for them to walk home.

We walked from school to our house with our parents and reported the time to the principal.

“The plan was that if a student lived within 20 minutes of home, they would be allowed to walk home in case of a missile launch to be with their parents if a parent was home. If the student lived more than 20 minutes walking time from home or if both parents worked, they would stay at school.”

Diplomacy, mixed with military maneuvers on both sides, dominated the days following Kennedy’s national announcement.

“You are no longer appealing to reason, but wish to intimidate us,” Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy at one point.

According to the JFK website (www.jfklibrary.org), Cuban dictator Fidel Castro implored the Russians to launch a nuclear first strike in case of a U.S. invasion of Cuba.

“I believe that the imperialists’ aggressiveness makes them extremely dangerous, and that if they manage to carry out an invasion of Cuba ... then that would be the moment to eliminate this danger forever, in an act of the most legitimate self-defense,” he wrote to Khrushchev.

On Oct. 26, Khrushchev later offered to remove the missiles in

exchange for the U.S. lifting the blockade and vowing not to invade Cuba. The Soviets, however, stiffened their resolve; the next day, they demanded the U.S. removal of “obsolete Jupiter missiles from Turkey,” the JFK site says.

Nuclear crisis averted The two sides reached an agreement late that night and, on Oct. 27, announced to their respective nations that the crisis was over. The missiles were leaving Cuba.

“Thanks to the leadership, guts, and negotiating skills of President Kennedy, and the expertise of our military, (the U.S.) averted what could have evolved into World War III,” Treat said.

Orr said he believes that when the crisis had been resolved, most Americans probably had no idea how close to nuclear war the U.S. had come.

“But we know now,” he said. “And we should learn from that crisis how presidents must resort to war only as a last resort, after all other options have been exhausted.”

Stewman, whose husband died five years ago, said, “Luckily, by the time we reached New York harbor, the crisis had died down enough that my husband was able to remain with us and introduce his family to our new country.

“We (later told) everyone that we came to America in style, with our own jet escort.”

Jennifer Smith, an associate history professor at North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega, said that panic truly set in for many Americans at the time.

“There were stories of people really thinking this would be the end, taking all of their money out of the bank and deciding they were going to go off with a big bang,” Smith said. “And people wanted to be with loved ones when the event occurred.”

For many in today’s generation, raised in the wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the missile crisis doesn’t hold as much relevance, she said.

“The fear of nuclear weapons is not something they think about very much,” Smith said of her students.

“1962 was not that far removed from 1945, so (nuclear war) seemed like a real possibility at the time and there had been talk of using them in the (Korean War).

“We tend to think that our leaders will be smarter than that.”

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11

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published july 1, 2012

the best of 2012

published MARCH 27, 2012

Photos by MICHELLE BOAEN JAMEON | The Times

A large crowd stretches after a run at 5 a.m. Monday morning during the Average Joe Boot Camp at City Park.

The voluntary daily workout takes place in near dark with a street lamp lighting the parking lot.

Photos by Brandee a. thomas | The Times

Saved from the brink of foreclosure, the mountain resort of Sky Valley has been re-invented thanks to a few determined residents.

A little valley town Residents of mountain resort unite to save it from foreclosure, and now it’s on the rebound

BY BRANDEE A. THOMAS

news@gainesvilletimes.com Where others have fallen short, residents in one Blue Ridge Mountain community are determined to go the distance.

The Sky Valley Resort and Golf Club is the center of the Sky Valley community in Rabun County, which is why several residents decided to band together and rescue the resort with a tainted past from foreclosure.

Now the newly renamed Sky Valley Club is back on solid financial footing with plans to expand and improve in the years to come.

But getting there was no easy task.

“Our No. 1 obstacle was money.

No bank would touch financing a golf course,” said Milt Gillespie, one of the board members of Sky Valley Inc. “There was no reason for anybody to buy a golf course in today’s time, except for the fact that this is the centerpiece of our whole community.

“We only have about 200 registered voters in Sky Valley, but in the summer, the population swells to about 2,500.

This is the gem of Sky Valley. This city could die without it. And would have.”

Skiing to sliding The community was originally a part of the Kingwood Resort, located in Clayton in central Rabun County. Larry McClure and two investors purchased 400 acres of Kingwood to develop into a ski resort in 1968.

With the help of developer Frank Rickmon, McClure’s group carved out Sky Valley, which combined residential and recreational components on the site that blossomed to include 2,400 acres of land.

Although the ski resort — the only one in the state — was popular with visitors, it experienced monetary shortfalls as the national economy suffered through a recession in the early 1970s.

To help generate more income, the investors decided to build timeshare units and condominiums.

“That was kind of the heyday down here when they were selling timeshares and condos,” Gillespie said “You’d come in for a two-day or three-day weekend with free rounds of golf if you’d tour and purchase property. That’s how a lot of our people wound up here.”

In 1978, Sky Valley became an official city. By 1984, McClure decided to bow out of the resort business and sold controlling interests to Dr. Miles Mason, one of the original Sky Valley investors.

Although Mason and his two sons did their best to keep the resort afloat, they ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1987.

By that time, the resort had grown to include the ski operations, a lodge, 18-hole golf course, tennis courts and other plats of land.

From there, the resort passed through several rounds of owners, bankruptcies and new investors.

A group of investors, including David Spears, purchased the property and transformed the fairways. “(Spears) really did a magnificent job,” Gillespie said. “He put millions of dollars into redoing the golf course. He gave us an absolute first-class course.”

Spears’ group ran the resort until 2004, Gillespie says, when it was purchased by Harrison Merrill of the Merrill Trust Group.

“Then in 2009, the economy just imploded,” Gillespie said. “Through no fault of Merrill Trust, the property went into foreclosure.”

After three years with their commu-

Sky Valley Inc. board members, from left, David Goodrow, Frank Norton Sr., Steve Mason and Milt Gillespie stand on the greens of the group’s newly acquired golf course.

nity’s prized amenity sitting in limbo under bank ownership, a group of eight residents decided to circle their wagons.

Forward press “There were a couple of attempts by some other investors to buy it out of foreclosure. The last one was an investment group out of Athens. For whatever reason, they withdrew their contract,” Gillespie said.

“At that time, James Temple called several of us and said, ‘We gotta do something.’”

That “we” grew into an advisory panel of eight Sky Valley residents: Gillespie, Temple, Frank Norton Sr., Bob Larsen, David Goodrow, Hughel Goodgame, Allen Jackson and David Spears.

“This isn’t about eight individuals.

It’s about a community that really came together to make this happen,” Gillespie “The eight of us just happened to be the agitators to pull the community together to get this thing going.”

The brain trust of mostly retirees began meeting in January to hash out ideas to save the resort.

“The biggest obstacle was finding a workable solution that would actually cross the finish line,” David Goodrow said.

“We would meet at Bob Larsen’s house for hours, bouncing ideas off each other. Trying to find one that would work and that the community would support.

“The real linchpin of it was that in those eight people were all of the necessary skill sets. We didn’t have to call in anyone, except a lawyer. We had people with accounting backgrounds, (Norton) with all his experience in real estate, and others with a lot of experience in and around clubs, who knew what it would take to succeed.”

Ultimately, it was Gillespie’s ideas to sell 100 shares of stock in Sky Valley Inc. for $10,000 each that helped the group overcome its financing hurdle, Goodrow said.

“Friends started calling friends and then the snowball effect started kicking in,” Gillespie said about finding founding members to purchase the stock.

That snowball generated enough income so that the incorporated group could purchase the property outright, since bank financing wasn’t an option.

“Every area has people who have more money or who are in better circumstances than others. This commu-

nity is no different,” Norton said.

“But it wasn’t just the affluent who did this. It was the whole community.

“There were people who had the money (on hand) and others who made an effort to raise money, so that they could help do something about this situation.”

Final stretch “The excitement in this community right now is absolutely fantastic,” Gillespie said.

Since finalizing the sale on May 29, the Sky Valley group has been busy planning how to take the club to the next level.

As the superintendent of the golf course, Steve Mason, whose family owned the club until the early 1990s, is charged with keeping the fairways in tip-top shape, while the board of directors sets its sights on growth.

The group is working on a plan to offer social membership packages.

They’re also looking to complete the clubhouse, which is currently just a shell.

“The goal is to have a vibrant, community-based facility that is privately owned, but open for public play,” Goodrow said.

“We want this to be the social hub for Sky Valley and the surrounding community. That desire is what prompted 100 people to put up 10 grand on hope.”

Although the club has a championship golf course, with various tees that can stretch the course from 4,900 to 6,900 yards, that’s not the main focus.

“I’d say no more than 40 percent of our members are golfers. This isn’t about golf. This is about bettering the entire community of Sky Valley,” Gillespie said.

“I’d say the No. 1 (boon) of this is the social life that the clubhouse will bring to this area. Golf just happens to come along with it.”

After seeing the community rally to make the unusual purchase, the volunteer board of directors is optimistic about the community’s future.

“This is going to change the values of property. It’s going to change how desirable it is to be here. It’s going to change the synergy of the community and the people and how they get along,” Norton said.

“After this, there are going to be a lot less can’t do’s and a whole lot more can do’s.

“This is a community that is taking care of its own destiny.”

Average Joe, under the glow

Predawn workouts by light of a street lamp draw several dozen to daily ‘boot camp’

BY BRANDEE A. THOMAS

news@gainesvilletimes.com A new pair of cross trainer shoes will probably set you back $60 or more, but a new lease on life, via the Average Joe Boot Camp, is free.

Well, more or less; it will cost you a few hours of sleep.

A group of around 70 dedicated people meet at 5 a.m.

Monday through Friday at City Park in Gainesville for an intense workout led by Ron Combs and his team of volunteer instructors.

“Every day I walk out here and see all of these people, I say ‘Dang, this is crazy,’” Combs said Monday.

“I started this in September or October. Seven or eight friends came out to work out with me. A guy that goes to church with us talked me into doing a Facebook page.

“We went from maybe 12 folks in December to around 35 in January. When I showed up at the first of this month, there were 93 people in the parking lot waiting to work out.”

There’s sweat and maybe even a few tears, but no sunlight to illuminate any of it -just a few twinkling stars and a couple of nearby streetlights.

“Push it!” one instructor shouted during Monday’s early morning workout.

“You got this,” another yelled on the heels of the first.

In a continuous cycle of movement, each participant — at their own pace — executed a series of stretches, pushups, situps and “burpees,” a four-count movement that incorporates squats and planks.

Then there was the run up the hill on Memorial Drive.

“Come on!” one instructor shouted. “Let’s get it done.”

After completing the run up the hill, with their feet apart, backs straight, knees bent and arms reaching for the sky, a group of participants settled into the chair pose commonly seen in yoga classes.

Unlike the controlled breathing associated with yoga, theirs had a different feel to it. Instead of slow and smooth breaths, the version heard above the early morning din of shouted instructions was more of an exhausted pant.

“This is the hardest thing you’ll do all day,” Combs yelled out, “and you’ve already got it done by 6 a.m.”

Average Joe isn’t just for folks in marathon-ready shape, although they are welcome, too. Instead, Combs says the experience is about meeting folks where they are and bringing them up to their personal best.

The boot campers seem to be motivated by equal parts self-determination and prodding from their instructors.

During Monday’s workout, one woman paused once or twice long enough to vomit in a nearby storm drain. She almost immediately jumped

right back into her burpee reps.

“Show yourself what you are made of,” Combs encouraged everyone.

At the end of the session, he announced that everyone should be proud of themselves. In an hour, they had completed 150 each of pushups, squats and situps. They’d also finished 75 burpees and ran -- or walked or crawled -the equivalent of one mile.

Everyone in the group was there because they wanted to be. Not because they paid or were getting paid.

“This thing works because it is all about accountability,” Combs said.

“I personally have joined every gym in Hall County, tried every fad diet in the world and none of it worked.

I wouldn’t stick to it. I’d find every reason not to.

“What else are you gonna do at 5 in the morning? Other than not being able to find child care, there no excuses for not being here.”

The “no excuses” mantra is paying off for the folks who can stick with the challenging regimen.

Gainesville resident Carl Dylan went from running a 14-minute mile during his initial assessment to finishing in less than 10 minutes a month later. He also lost 35 pounds.

“I was in Austin last week playing the South by Southwest (music festival). I woke up the morning after playing and thought, ‘I have to go for a run,’” Dylan said.

“Who does that? If you’d told me that would’ve happened six weeks ago, I would’ve laughed in your face, but it’s just one of those things that gets in your blood.

“There’s a real sense of community here. It’s much more of a motivation than money ever would be.”

An equally important aspect of the Average Joe experience is nutrition.

“We feel like (nutrition) is at least 80 percent of the total deal,” Combs said. “We teach them how to replace unhealthy things in life with healthier options.”

The experience is just what elementary school teacher LaMonika Hill has been looking for.

“I like that it’s a holistic program. They teach you how to eat healthier and they do grocery store tours to show you how,” said Hill, who learned about the camp from co-workers.

“It’s been great. This is my fourth week and I have a lot more energy (overall) now.”

Newbies are welcome to join in for the last few days of this session, but a new fourweek session begins April 9.

Even though he could be turning a profit from the camp’s popularity, Combs says he’s content to be paid in sweat equity.

“I was a walking stroke victim waiting to happen.

Boot camp literally saved my life,” Combs said.

“This is just paying it forward.”

CMYK the best of 2012

The Times, Gainesville, Georgia |

gainesvilletimes com

Sunday, January 27, 2013

ATTENTION VETERANS “YOU ARE INVITED TO” Join Us On Friday, February 1st

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The Times, Gainesville, Georgia |

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the best of 2012

published March 5, 2012

Photos by SCOTT ROGERS | The Times

Gainesville High senior Academic Team members Isaac Hopkins, left, Cody Stephens, center, and Charlie Bryant recently led the team to a first place finish in the state RESA tournament.

A medal for their recently lost teammate Patrick Kelley hangs from the trophy.

A win to remember GHS academic team celebrates bittersweet victory

BY BRANDEE A. THOMAS

news@gainesvilletimes.com The Gainesville High School Varsity Academic Team is the perfect example of what can happen when preparation meets dedication.

In just four years, the team has gone from nonexistent to state champions.

With the encouragement of former administrative assistant Beverly Nordholz, English teacher Pam Michelsen revived the team in 2007. It took a year’s worth of research and recruiting, but she found a winning combination in team members Isaac Hopkins, Patrick Kelley, Charlie Bryant and Cody Stephens.

At the time, the four were sophomores, but they proved early on that they had the knowhow to achieve greatness.

“They won second in state as sophomores and as juniors they won the North Georgia championship,” said Michelsen, the team’s advisor.

“They made it to the final eight or so last year for the state championships.”

This year more than made up for their past defeats. Their season was literally flawless.

They didn’t lose one of their 21 competitions.

The foursome did suffer one tragic loss: Founding teammate Kelley was killed in a car

accident during winter break, just a few weeks before the Georgia championship.

“I think at the beginning of the year, we were hitting it really hard thinking this is the year.

We’ve got it this year,” Hopkins said.

“With the tragic loss of our fourth teammate right before the state tournament, that really lit another fire under us.”

In the NBA, they give the Sixth Man Award to a player that proves to be an invaluable asset coming off the bench as a substitute. For the GHS team, there could never be a substitute for Kelley, so they decided to look to their missing fourth member for inspiration.

“He was good at just about everything,” Stephens said. “We would keep him in for all of the rounds.”

“Our teammate wasn’t there physically, but he was there in our hearts,” Bryant said. “I think we felt he was smiling down on us, saying look at my team mates go.”

And go they did.

“At the actual final, nine-hour competition, they didn’t lose a single round the whole day,” Michelsen said.

“By the final round, I hesitated to mention it to them, but I said to myself, ‘This one is for Patrick.’ And they blew the other team away.”

The final score was 420 to 240.

The day wasn’t without its challenges,

though.

“When the judges would come up with certain questions, we’d think immediately, ‘That’s a (Kelley) question. He would’ve gotten that,’” Hopkins said.

Each team member has their specialty. Kelley was the math whiz, Michelsen says. “(Stephens) is good at everything. What no one else can remember, he knows immediately,” Hopkins said.

“My strengths are English, social studies, geography and the arts.”

“I definitely hit the math hard and concentrate on the science stuff,” Bryant said.

Having the last three years to learn each other’s strengths gave the team a leg up on their competitors, its members say.

“One advantage that I think our team always had going into the competitions was that we had the greatest sense of camaraderie,” Bryant said.

“That was a huge advantage because we all trusted each other and knew that we’d come through for one another.”

Seniors Bryant, Stephens and Hopkins have been on the team the longest, but there were other contributors to the GHS victory. The other members were Elie Nwefo, William Morris, Alex Longoria, Jorge Gonzalez, John Lee Givogre, Katie Schmid, Chris Kelley, Mar-

tha McKinnon, Brenda Dang, John Stenzel and Anh Nguyen.

The group is coached by Michelsen, with assistance from Sally Jackson and Elie Viviant, “Everybody gets to play in the current events round, but the key players are the individual rounds,” Michelsen said.

“All of the questions are tied into the Georgia Performance Standards. This is heavy duty curriculum they’re covering. It’s not trivia.

“It’s all about being very smart, but also very fast.”

“And sure,” Stephens added.

The group is currently raising money to build a trophy case large enough to house its trophies and future “academic excellence” awards.

“We’re going to put a plaque on it where it is dedicated to Patrick’s memory,” Michelsen said.

Overall, this year and their hard-earned state win has been a bit surreal for the team.

“It was an emotional overdrive. Everything came together in a hazy, golden moment,” Hopkins said of the final tournament.

“I was crying. I went and gave (Kelley’s) little brother a big ol’ hug,” Bryant said.

“Everybody was grinning. It was almost that cliche sports moment where you’ve gone through so much adversity, but it was all worth it for that moment at the end.”

published may 28, 2012

Band of brothers

Oakwood man is the only survivor of 5 brothers who served in armed forces

BY JEFF GILL

jgill@gainesvilletimes.com OAKWOOD — Howard Turner Anderson flies the U.S. flag at his home and is otherwise patriotic, remembering his four brothers, who, like him, served in the military.

All are gone now, each one taken by diabetes, but their service in war and peacetime over a 27-year span isn’t lost on Anderson, 81, especially during such national observances as Memorial Day. “It makes me feel proud,” he said.

Anderson, sitting at his kitchen table across from his wife, Paralee, in their Robinson Drive home, spent part of a recent evening reflecting on earlier days and the lives and careers of his brothers: William Curtis, Kenneth Eugene, Everette Byron and Bobby Ray. He said each one’s march into military service may have been in-

spired by Curtis (as he was called) and himself, each drafted in 1951.

“We were a close family, really,” Anderson said. “We loved each other, that’s for sure.”

The five brothers and two sisters — Lovell Finley and Margie Moore, who are still living — grew up on a farm in North Hall. In 1949, the Andersons sold their farm and moved to Gainesville, where the father started working with the Hall County correctional system.

Anderson remembers the day he was drafted.

He and Curtis “went down for a physical, and they kept my brother but sent me back home because I was married,” Anderson said.

“About three weeks later, they called me (back).”

Howard ended up in Korea and his brother was shipped to the Panama Canal, with both ending their service in 1953.

Anderson struggled to fight back

tears as he recalled his time in service, which included stiff combat.

“You don’t want to hear about it,” he said. “It won’t ever leave you.

You take it to your grave.”

After the brothers were discharged, Curtis went to Chicago, where he lived for a few years. Howard followed, staying for a few years before returning to Hall County, working as a welder for 19 years.

“I traveled all those years, building poultry plants and remodeling the old ones,” said Anderson, who has lived on Robinson Drive since 1964. “I stayed busy.”

“You sure did,” Paralee said.

As for his other brothers, the next in line was Kenneth, who expected to be drafted.

“He volunteered and went into the Air Force (in 1952),” Anderson said. “He spent four years in England, and he was a cook.”

Everette also volunteered, joining the Army in 1951.

SCOTT ROGERS | The Times

Korean War veteran Howard Turner Anderson is the last of five brothers who all served in the military and in different branches.

“Somebody signed for him,” Anderson said, chuckling. “I don’t think he ever told anybody how he got in (the Army).”

Everette ended up serving until 1978, with time spent in Korea, Vietnam, Panama Canal and Italy. After the service, he joined the Gainesville Police Department, working for 13 years.

Bobby Ray served in the Army from 1957 to 1967, spending one tour in Vietnam, as well as time in Germany and Holland. He served in the Army Reserve until 1987.

“He owned a real estate business company for some time,” Anderson said.

Curtis and Everette died in 1998.

Kenneth died in 1992, and Bobby, April 2011.

Kenneth also suffers from diabetes and has had back and heart surgeries and hip replacement.

“I’ve been cut on a bunch, but I’m doing great,” he said. “I feel good

sometimes, but I’m not as good as I once was. Being crazy and goofy like I am helps a lot.”

He and Paralee had five children, including a son who died in 1992.

They also have eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Their youngest daughter, Tara Poole, 46, said she remembered going to her grandmother’s house as a young girl and seeing the pictures of all the brothers in uniform.

“All of us grandkids used to sit and just look at (the display), and it was just a neat thing,” she said. “It just makes you feel good to see all that they did.

“I can just close my eyes and see those pictures on that wall.”

She also remembers the brothers swapping stories when they got together.

“I’m proud of my daddy because I wouldn’t have the privileges I have today if it weren’t for him,” Poole said.

CMYK CMYK the best of 2012

The Times, Gainesville, Georgia  |

gainesvilletimes com

Sunday, January 27, 2013

15

MOORE’S

WEALTH MANAGEMENT “Protecting Your Future�

SCOTT MOORE AWARDED ADVISOR OF THE YEAR AGAIN FOR 2012

Scott Moore, founder and senior advisor of Mooreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wealth Management, has been LQ WKH ÂżQDQFLDO VHUYLFHV LQGXVWU\ IRU RYHU \HDUV DQG KDV KHOSHG KXQGUHGV RI FOLHQWV WKURXJKRXW WKH 6RXWKHDVW 8QLWHG 6WDWHV SUHSDUH IRU UHWLUHPHQW DQG SURWHFW WKHLU UHWLUHPHQW DVVHWV +H KDV D ORZ ULVN VDIH VHFXUH SKLORVRSK\ WRZDUG PDQDJLQJ KLV FOLHQWÂśV UHWLUHPHQW DVVHWV ZKLOH SURYLGLQJ D PD\EH SHU \HDU UHWXUQ RYHU WKH QH[W RU \HDUV ZLWK VRPH RI WKH ÂżQHVW 3ULYDWH :HDOWK 0DQDJHUV LQ WKH FRXQWU\ 6FRWW UHORFDWHG KLV IDPLO\ RZQHG ÂżUP IURP 6QHOOYLOOH WR *DLQHVYLOOH LQ DQG LQ RSHQHG D VHFRQG RIÂżFH LQ $OSKDUHWWD 6FRWW ZDV SUHYLRXVO\ UHFRJQL]HG DV $GYLVRU RI WKH <HDU IRU 1RZ RQFH DJDLQ KH KDV EHHQ KRQRUHG DQG DZDUGHG $GYLVRU RI WKH <HDU IRU E\ RQH RI WKH WRS DGYLVRU RUJDQL]DWLRQV LQ WKH QDWLRQ $FFRUGLQJ WR WKH SUHVLGHQW DQG FR IRXQGHU *DU\ 5HHG Âł7KLV LV WKH ÂżUVW WLPH ZH KDYH ever had a back-to-back winner. Scott continues to stand out amongst our advisors DV ZH HYDOXDWH FOLHQW FDUH DQG VDWLVIDFWLRQ +H WUXO\ XQGHUVWDQGV DQG DFFHSWV KLV UHVSRQVLELOLW\ IRU KHOSLQJ KLV FOLHQWV WR SUHVHUYH JURZ DQG SURWHFW WKHLU ZHDOWK LQ WRGD\ÂśV FKDOOHQJLQJ PDUNHW 0RVW LPSRUWDQWO\ 6FRWW WDNHV KLV ÂżGXFLDU\ UROH YHU\ VHULRXV DQG DOZD\V GRHV ZKDW LV LQ WKH EHVW LQWHUHVW RI KLV FOLHQWV ´ 'UHZ +RUWHU Founder and Chief Investment Strategist of Horter Investment Management LLC VDLG Âł6FRWW KDV DOO WKH JUHDW TXDOLWLHV RI D OHDGHU LQ WKH ÂżQDQFLDO SODQQLQJ LQGXVWU\ WUXVWZRUWKLQHVV WUHPHQGRXV LQWHJULW\ GLOLJHQFH H[FHSWLRQDO FOLHQW VHUYLFH VWDQGDUGV DQG GHGLFDWHG WR GRLQJ ZKDW LV WUXO\ LQ WKH EHVW LQWHUHVW RI KLV FOLHQWV 6FRWW GRHV ZKDW LW WDNHV WR PHHW KLV FOLHQWÂśV QHHGV ´ 6FRWW ZDV D PXWXDO IXQG EURNHU IRU DOPRVW \HDUV EHIRUH EHFRPLQJ DQ LQGHSHQGHQW ÂżGXFLDU\ DGYLVRU \HDUV DJR +DYLQJ EHHQ RQ ERWK VLGHV RI WKH SURIHVVLRQ DQG QRZ DQ (G 6ORWW 0DVWHU (OLWH ,5$ $GYLVRU KH FDQ TXLFNO\ DQDO\]H D FOLHQWÂśV UHWLUHPHQW SRUWIROLR WR GHWHUPLQH LI LW ZDV GHVLJQHG IRU WKH EHVW LQWHUHVW RI WKH FOLHQW RU WKH EHVW LQWHUHVW RI WKHLU ÂżQDQFLDO SURIHVVLRQDO $FFRUGLQJ WR 6FRWW Âł7RGD\ÂśV UHWLUHHV DQG WKRVH DERXW WR HQWHU UHWLUHPHQW QHHG PRUH WKDQ MXVW D %DQNHU %URNHU RU ,QVXUDQFH $JHQW 7KH\ QHHG VRPHRQH WR EH WKHLU ¾¿QDQFLDO FRDFKÂś Âą VRPHRQH WR KHOS SXW LW DOO WRJHWKHU :H DUH SURXG WR EH WKDW ÂżUP DQG SURYLGH WKRVH VHUYLFHV IRU WKH SHRSOH RI QRUWK *HRUJLD ´ 7R OHDUQ PRUH DERXW 6FRWWÂśV SKLORVRSKLHV DQG KRZ KH FRQWLQXHV WR EH RQH RI WKH WRS DGYLVRUV LQ WKH QDWLRQ YLVLW KLV ZHEVLWH DW ZZZ PRRUHVZHDOWKPDQDJHPHQW FRP RU FDOO WR DUUDQJH D YLVLW ZLWK 6FRWW DW RQH RI KLV RIÂżFHV ORFDWHG LQ *DLQHVYLOOH DQG $OSKDUHWWD Investment advice is offered by Horter Investment Management, LLC, a Registered Investment Adviser. Insurance and annuity products are sold separately through Mooreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wealth Management, LLC. Securities transactions for Horter Investment Management clients are placed through Pershing Advisor Solutions, Trust Company of America and Jefferson National Monument Advisor.

Mooreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wealth Management Staff include Scott and his wife Carla pictured in the center, their sons Chris, Brian & Kyle, daughter Michelle, and new to the firm Mark and Liz Peterson.

12600 Deerfield Parkway Suite 100 Alpharetta, Georgia 30004 678-566-3590

210 Washington St NW Suite 106 Gainesville, GA 30501 770-535-5000

www.mooreswealthmanagement.com

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Sunday, January 27, 2013

The Times, Gainesville, Georgiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2C6;â&#x20AC;&#x2C6;|

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the best of 2012

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