Opinions

4/24/02

The True Citizen
P.O.Box 948
Waynesboro, GA 30830
(706) 554-2111

Making A Point
For 24 hours during the weekend of April 13-14, three of Burke County’s 12 fire stations were out of service and five ambulances were parked – because there was not enough manpower to keep these stations operational.

We believe this actually was a protest by the employees of the Burke County Emergency Management Agency to call attention to the manpower shortage and the fact that to keep all stations active every 24 hours means many of them have to work countless hours of overtime. It has finally caught up with them and they just can’t keep on working the long hours. When the duty chief was trying to fill the vacancies at the various stations many of them he called said, “No.” We can’t blame them.

We believe, too, that these employees were sending a message to the Burke County Commission that while pay and benefits are a big part of the shortage … leadership is also playing a role, and something must be done to remedy both problems.
The men and women in the EMA have been working all this overtime for many years, much of it because of dedication and yes, because of the extra money. But there comes a time that money is not everything and family must take priority.

Earl Porterfield, the chief of the EMA, has molded the agency in its 15 years of existence into the best in the state of Georgia and in the Southeast.

Pay and benefits always have been problems, and Porterfield has warned the county commission on many occasions that something had to be done. While they were always in agreement, little has been done except for the costs of living increase for the past several years.

But still, Porterfield must shoulder some of the blame for the problem that exists today. Despite the shortages the chief, to our knowledge, has not come into the stations to work overtime and relieve other officers. Because the leader doesn’t exhibit dedication, we believe many of those who have been dedicated are now fed up and feel something should be done.
Last week, Merv Waldrop, the county administrator, presented a pay proposal for the EMA that would not go into effect until the next budget period. Porterfield turned it down saying it was inadequate and would not solve the problem. Waldrop’s proposal would give an average of an 8.9 percent increase with the idea of trying to retain the more experienced EMA personnel.

Porterfield has a proposal of his own which he wants implemented May 1 and would cost the county $29,000 a month to finance. It would increase salaries drastically.
Porterfield told the commission if they accepted his proposal and implemented it immediately, he could “turn things around,” and if he could not then he would submit his resignation at the end of the year.

The committee did not comment on the proposal but are scheduled to meet today (Wednesday) to consider it and other alternatives for the EMA.

Harold Rowland
A Nation On The Move

Scanning the weekend’s accumulation of e-mail I ran across some old geezer’s recollections of remarks heard 45 years ago. Stuff like, “If things keep going it won’t be long before you can’t buy a week’s groceries for $20.” There was speculation that spiraling costs would make even a used car cost $5,000. “If cigarettes get any higher I’m gonna quit. A quarter a pack is ridiculous.”

Well, it got me to thinking. Those of us who remember 45 years or more have lived through a remarkable age of change, perhaps more than any other generation to date. I particularly thought about the changes we have seen in transportation. On Saturdays in the late 1930s, when farm families came to town to do their week’s, sometimes their month’s shopping, many of them made the trip in two-horse wagons. When I was in high school I worked in a grocery store. The farm families still came to town on Saturday but in stake-bodied trucks.

Mass transit in those days was a whole crowd of folks packed in the back of a farm truck. They may have been on the way to a country baseball game, Sunday School, or a watermelon patch to gather the harvest.

Model A Fords were common in my childhood. I remember when Dad traded ours for a 1935 Plymouth coupe. I had hoped to lay claim to that vehicle on my 16th birthday but Dad sold it to an uncle for a couple of hundred dollars.

It was just as well, I suppose. Had I become the proud owner of that Plymouth I would have been the only kid in high school with a car. Well, Hoyt and a buddy had an old Model T they had salvaged and got to running. Schwinn was the most popular mode of transportation for high school students in my day. Mine was used and had no ten-speed transmission.
I remember the Turners’ big Packard. That was the luxury auto of those days, along with Miss Mary Emma’s Lincoln Zephyr. Course there was always the goat man who came through town every few years with his little steel-wheeled wagon pulled by a herd of goats. I did see a Tucker, the automobile of the future that never made it on the roads of America. Studebakers and Edsels and Henry J’s, even an old Pierce Arrow, a 12-cylinder brute of a car, are all part of my memories of America on the move. Man, what I wouldn’t give to have my Model A back. I bought it for $110 while I was in seminary. I used it on Saturday to deliver Fuller brushes I sold during the week. The passenger seat folded up and made lots of room for merchandise. I sold it for $100 when we left Ft. Worth to return to Georgia.
Americans love their vehicles and now everybody has at least two. In the south one of them has to be a pickup. You can tell the genuine good-old-boy by the gun rack over the rear window.

I’m a little ashamed to admit that up until about six weeks ago I had no idea what the Relay For Life was. I also only knew Gloria Shivers in passing. Since that time, I have become more than acquainted with both.
I have the numbers to Gloria’s home phone, pager and her cell phone. Not that I need them, she calls a couple of times a day and normally stops by once or twice a week. When I come in from lunch, I usually have a message to say she has called. And more than once, before I could return that call to her, she has called again to say, “I’ve been waiting on you to call me back, where have you been?”
When the Relay wraps up on Saturday, I just might find myself going through withdrawals. In truth though, this community owes Gloria and her fellow coordinators (there are too many to name!) a huge debt. They have taken on quite a task, but one that certainly deserves Gloria’s diligence and determination.

Cancer is a hell of thing. It is an illness that can attack the body in any number of ways and locations. And it cares little for the color of your skin or the size of your bank account. There is no way to control or prevent it; and while you can adjust your lifestyle to “reduce the risk,” the risk will always remain.

All proceeds collected from the Relay are sent to the American Cancer Society. Forty percent of those funds go towards research for a cure that is desperately needed. I would encourage you to come to Friday’s event, if you can make a donation, it will be much appreciated. If nothing else, come and show your support to those who have fought this illness and to those who are fighting it even now. Just about all of us know someone who has dealt with cancer in some shape or form.

Some of you may remember my grandmother, Myrtle Mills; she passed away when I was pretty young and I’m left with only a few faded memories.
The clearest of those is of trips we would take with my mother, brother and sister to MCG in Augusta. My brother and sister both have a protein deficiency that has dictated their diets since the day they were born. (There’s nothing really wrong with them — not that you could tell without growing up in the same house with them, anyway.)
I’m not sure what exactly these doctors did, but I distinctly remember that it took forever. A little boy can only read so many Highlights magazines with his grandmother before he starts climbing the walls, literally.

So we would ride the elevator downstairs to the vending machines and get us a coke and a pack of toast-cheese crackers. The kicker was though, there wasn’t anywhere to sit and eat and you couldn’t take the stuff back upstairs.
There was a hospital pharmacy right next door to the vending machines, and it had a long row of chairs against the wall, where you could sit and wait for your prescriptions to be filled. Here’s the part I remember best, there were signs in the pharmacy that specifically said “No food or drinks.”

Guess where we sat and ate our snacks? And not once did anyone ever ask us to move or take our food outside.
My mother and uncles took her to Emory in August of ’83, where she was diagnosed with liver cancer. She died less than three months later at Emory, never returning to Munnerlyn or Burke County. I was 8 years old.
On Jan. 3, 1998, I flew from Atlanta to Seattle, Wash., to begin work on a merchant ship off the Alaskan mainland. Shortly after I left, my father’s mother was diagnosed with lymphoma. I am the oldest of eight grandchildren on that side of the family. It is a well known, but little talked about, secret that I am also her favorite.
I can honestly say that my grandmother and I are truly friends, and that friendship is very dear to me. Because of this, she knew just how much I wanted to go to Alaska, and so she forbid my family from telling me about her illness. Even though she knew that if things went badly, we might never have the chance to talk face to face again.
This is merely the type of woman she is. I arrived home in April, and on the way home from the airport; my father explained her condition and why I had not been told. I was livid, not only with my family, but with my grandmother, as well. She simply shrugged this off as well, pointedly saying, “If I had died, what good would it have done for you to come home? Neither one of us would benefit from that.”

The cancer was confined to her spleen, which doctors removed with surgery. They then put her through two rounds of chemo for good measure.
Last weekend she walked in the Survivors Walk at the Relay For Life in Albany. It’s been four years and three months since she was diagnosed with the cancer, but you’d never know it from talking to her.

There will be a luminary lit for each of my grandmothers on Friday night. A candle will honor the memory of one, and the spirit of another.

Bill Shipp is editor of Bill Shipp's Georgia, a weekly newsletter on government and business. He can be reached at P.O. Box 440755, Kennesaw, GA 30144 or by calling (770) 422-2543,
e-mail: bshipp@bellsouth.net, Web address: http://www.billshipp.com