Newspaper Page Text
Commentary
www.starnewsgaonline.com StarNews October 15, 2023 Page 25
Grandparents Day: Creating a legacy and celebrating God s goodness
Duane
hack
West Georgia Right to Life
PRESIDENT
“The Heartbeat of Georgia”
Duanehack46@gmail.com
470-370-2452
I read an article recently about the role that
we, as grandparents, play in the lives of our
grandchildren. National Grandparents Day, a
day established to honor Grand (and Great-
Grand) parents was recognized this past
September 10, 2023. The special day is the
Sunday after Labor Day each year. Grandpar
ents’ Day was founded by Jacob Reingold and
Marian McQuade in 1973. Because my wife
and I have been a grandparent for over 17
years, it’s become a special part of our lives!
Let’s talk about the role that we as grandpar
ents can make in the lives of our loved and
cherished grand and great grandchildren.
The purpose of Grandparents Day is for
older adults to share valuable wisdom, varying
perspectives, to teach and emulate values and
morals with young people, starting with their
grandchildren, on this day and into the future. In
our current culture, just as the personhood of
the prebom is being denied, the God-given life
of our elderly population is being devalued and
laces the real potential of experiencing the same
vulnerability as the prebom.
So, how can we as Christ followers honor
grandparents all the time, not just on one day?
We can celebrate and support the relationship
between grandparents and their grandchildren
while acknowledging the joys, triumphs, chal
lenges, and difficulties of this multi-dimen
sional relationship. The Bible has a lot to say
about grandparents and their grandchildren. In
fact, over 100 Bible verses exclaim God’s glory
about this sweet relationship. And why not?
“One generation shall praise your works to
another and shall declare your mighty acts. I
will mediate on the glorious splendor of your
majesty, and on your wondrous works” KJV
Psalm 145:4,5. “But the mercy of the Lord is
from everlasting to everlasting upon them that
fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s
children” KJV Psalm 103:17. What an oppor
tunity, obligation, and responsibility each of us
grand and great grandparents have in being an
example to those who watch and emulate our
every move!
A growing trend: grandparentsraising their
grandchildren - Did you know that according
to a report from AARP Public Policy Institute,
approximately 2.7 million grandparents in the
United States are raising their grandchildren-
and this number is on the rise? There is a pleth
ora of reasons for this growing trend, including
parental neglect, abuse, abandonment, addic
tion, mental health issues, incarceration.
In a recent West Georgia Right to Life
Founder’s Day event and outreach, WGRTL
had an opportunity to have “Life Dialogs” with
100s of attendees. We had conversations with
grandparents who adopted their respective
grandchildren due to circumstances listed in
the previous paragraph. It’s unfortunate that the
least protected in our society today, the chil
dren of America, are the ones who suffer the
most and least protected! Thankfully, for every
child that is in the foster care system, there are
about 25 children being raised by grandparents.
Families raising a grandchild save the taxpay
ers over $6 billion each year by keeping chil
dren out of the foster care system.
Biggest challenge is a financial dynamic:
approximately 21% of grandparents who are
taking care of their grandchildren are living
below the poverty line. In addition to raising
their grandchild, they can be saddled with per
sistent family problems because of missing
parents, legal hurdles, and brokenness. Across
the U.S., more than 13 million children are liv
ing with their grandparents, who are the sole
parental influence and may have no one to turn
to for day-to-day emotional support.
How can the community come alongside a
grandparent raising a grandchild? Here are a
few suggestions: Commit to praying for all
families with grandparents raising grandchil
dren, share any resources that might be helpful
to the grandparent(s), start a prayer group for
grandparents, drop off a meal periodically and
offer childcare, if needed.
See DUANE HACK page 30
Oak Mountain Academy's academic journeys
| ^ r p ATRICK
Yl 1 RAN
^Headmaster
10AK MOUNTAIN
^ACADEMY
Oak Mountain Academy has an impressive
61-year legacy of overall excellence. This
excellence is a direct result of our faith-based
educational programming, dynamic opportuni
ties in the arts, athletics and student leadership,
and in the safe, family environment on the
campus. However, the crown jewel in our leg
acy of excellence is the academic program.
When asked about The Academy, one of the
first things mentioned is our long-standing
track record of student’s academic success.
Almost every year on average our test scores -
ERB, SAT, & ACT - out score not only the
state average, but also the national average.
Over the past five years our graduating seniors
- with an average class size of 12 - have earned
over S10 million dollars in academic scholar
ship offers to colleges and universities of their
choice. It is without a doubt that our academic
program is a standout for our families on The
Mountain. It is this reason that we have identi
fied several Personalized Academic Journey
opportunities for students to experience at Oak
Mountain Academy.
The Academy’s Personalized Academic
Journeys are intentional educational structures
that include a rigorous academic course of
study and authentic contextual learning experi
ences designed to prepare students for college
and beyond. These journeys include the
Advanced Placement (AP) Scholar Journey,
the Entrepreneur Scholar Journey, the World
Language Scholar Journey, and the
Customized Academic Scholar Journey.
The AP Scholar Journey is designed to pro
vide students with a clearly defined AP curricu
lum track to earn a series of distinctions upon
graduation. The AP Scholar Journey enables
academically prepared students to pursue
college-level studies while still enrolled on The
Mountain. The journey consists of college-
level courses and corresponding exams that are
administered in May of each year. Currently,
OMA offers 17 AP courses in five subject cate
gories. Participating in this journey can help
students stand out on college applications.
Students participating in the journey have an
opportunity to earn an AP Scholar Seal which
serves as a signal to colleges that a student is
prepared to handle the rigor of college-level
course work and is awarded to seniors at
graduation who have completed a series of
accomplishments.
The Entrepreneur Scholar Journey is
designed to provide students with a clearly
defined curriculum-based track to acquire
essential knowledge and skills for success in
business and leadership. Critical areas taught
along this journey include the following: iden
tifying entrepreneurial characteristics, selecting
a value proposition, and business model devel
opment; recognizing a business opportunity
and starting, operating, and maintaining a busi
ness; and analyzing an entrepreneurial venture,
strategic planning, expanding product line, and
pivoting to improve market shares and revenue
streams. Students participating in the journey
have an opportunity to earn an Entrepreneur
Seal which serves as a signal to colleges that a
student is prepared to participate in a business-
related field of study and is awarded to seniors
at graduation who have completed a series of
accomplishments.
The World Language Scholar Journey is
designed to provide students with a clearly
defined curriculum-based track to acquire
essential knowledge and skills for success in
See PATRICK YURAN page 30
A new word for English to adopt? Vilomah
Bill
BOURIS
digi@mindspring.com
In English, we have the word “orphan”,
meaning a child whose parents have died. But
there is no equivalent word for a parent whose
child has died. Because, in recent years, there
has been a major loss of life, mostly among the
youth and due to drug addiction, there are
many grieving parents who feel that such a
word would help them, spiritually, socially, and
therapeutically.
If you google something like “what do you
call a parent whose child has died?”, you will
discover the Sanskrit word “vilomah” and the
Hebrew word “shakul”. At this time, it seems
that vilomah is the leading candidate for adap
tation into English. Personally I prefer shakul,
but, there are good reasons for vilomah. n
Sanskrit, it means something like “an upset of
the natural order of things”, and the proponents
of “vilomah” feel it therefore recognizes the
genesis of the parent’s grief.
Margery is part of a group of childhood
friends from Macon. That group goes as far
back as the early 1940s. So, with such life-long
connections, you can understand our sadness
when we learned that a daughter of one of this
group had died. Recently that mother, among
Margery’s earliest friends, stayed with us in
Whitesburg. She told us of her emotional state
and of her communicating with other parents
who had lost a child. Although her daughter
did not die from the possible effects of drug
addiction, the overwhelming majority of those
parents whom she met and commiserated with
were grieving from that particular reason, drug
overdose due to addiction, and it was at that
time that she learned of the lack of a specific
word in English. That’s how Margery and I
became aware of it.
By googling “What languages have a word
for a parent that has lost children?” I found a
Reddit forum that had exactly that for a sub
ject. People from several areas of the world
participated. Several languages, like Greek,
Gennan, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Japanese,
Portuguese, and Tagalog (Phillipines) use
expressions like “bereaved parents”. But as
was pointed out by the discussion-leader, these
were “expressions” and not an individual
word, as might be illustrated by the word
“orphan” (versus the expression “parent-less
(vi-LO-ma): parent whose child has died
child”). The only languages mentioned that
had such a word were Hebrew, Arabic, and
Classical Chinese.
Since Hebrew and Arabic are part of the
family of Semitic languages, their words for
the parent who has lost a child are rather simi
lar. The Chinese pictograph, that signifies such
a bereaved parent, was lost when that language
had its writing system “modernized”, accord
ing to that contributor. That’s why “vilomah”
(possibly to be followed by “shakul”) is the
leading candidate for adaptation into English.
All of this leads me to the question: Why?
How come, with only a hint from Classical
Chinese and Semitic languages (like Hebrew
and Arabic), was such a word dropped and for
gotten?” I’m assuming that many if not all lan
guages had such a word. For what it’s worth,
here’s my opinion:
In ancient times, there had to be a period
when human societies began to first organize
themselves into larger, much larger, units, like
“kingdoms”. This passage away from “family-
tribe” could not have succeeded if there hadn’t
been a parallel development from tribal-related
fighters into larger organizations, integrating
many such groups of fighters into the first
armies.
Take Phillip of Macedon, as a late example
of this process. He conquered the highly devel
oped societies to his south, Athens and its cul
ture being the great prize. When his son
Alexander took over the enterprise, he then
organized all of Greece into an empire whose
anny conquered Asia as far as India. In order
to establish local dynasties that would be loyal
to Greece, he had his Greek officers marry into
local royal families. So far, this kind of history
is well-understood (as evidenced in the movie
“Alexander the Great”).
What I want to add is mention of the honor
that is given to the individual for giving their
life under such a development. In other words:
To make a mother feel that her son’s death was
“worth it”, which did not happen in the next
valley, but thousands of miles away, the new
rulers also had to take over the role and the
responsibility of the “grief-stricken parent”. In
other words, as nations and empires developed,
so did a certain local word disappear, for a par
ent who has lost a child. Now, the state and
nation grieved the loss of its fallen heroes
instead.
Here’s an interesting development: In Israel,
“shakul”, the Hebrew word for a grieving par
ent, is increasingly being used for the parent
who has lost a child, militarily!
This is all very complicated, but it leads me
to another question: Why is this search for the
proper word happening now?