Dawson County news. (Dawsonville, Georgia) 2015-current, October 19, 2022, Image 7
PAGE 7 A Send a letter to the editor to P.O. Box 1600, Dawsonville, GA 30534; fax (706) 265-3276; or email to editor@dawsonnews.com. DawsonOpinion WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2022 This is a page of opinion — ours, yours and others. Signed columns and cartoons are the opinions of the writers and artists, and they may not reflect our views. Remembering a group of heroes I met in Iraq It seems like a lifetime ago and in some ways it was. It has been 17 years this week since I was in Iraq with the men and women of Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. Even today, it is an experience seared in my brain. How I ended up there was due to my fried Bill Stewart of Brunswick. A former chief of staff to Georgia’s U.S. Sen. Mack Mattingly, Stewart suggested to a one-time staff member of his that he should invite me to Iraq for a visit. That staff member hap pened to be the now-Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of the 48th BCT. Much to my surprise, I got an email from Gen. Rodeheaver shortly thereafter and an invitation to come over and see things for myself. Sharing the invitation with some of my media colleagues, I was advised to turn it down. I was told that public information staff would keep tight reins on me and I would see only what they wanted me to see within the Green Zone, a relatively safe area (if there was such a thing) in that war- torn region. That prompted me to email the general back and say in effect if that was the case, I would pass on the opportunity. I did not intend to hang around the pressroom all day and pretend I had witnessed the war. I received assurance from him that I was free to go wherever I wished and without any handlers. Gen. Rodeheaver was true to his word, although I suspect had I pushed the limit too far, he would have changed the rales quickly. Generals can do that kind of thing, you know. I did see the war up-close and personal and a bit too up-close for comfort. I wan gled an invitation to join a convoy of Humvees as they swept through the notori ous Triangle of Death - so called because of the terrorist activity in the area between the cities of Mahmudiayah, Yusifiyah and Lucafiyah - looking for IEDs. That is mili tary jargon for Improvised Explosive Devices or simply, bombs. We found one. Right under the Humvee in which I was riding. The IED detonated on my side of the vehicle and just behind me. Sparks, smoke and asphalt were every where. Had we been going a few seconds slower or had the bad guys been a little faster on the draw, we might not be having this conversation. Viewing the scene upon our return from the mission, it was amazing to see how large a crater the bomb had made in the road. I still have the photograph of the inci dent to remind me that war is real and peo ple do get killed. We were lucky that day and may I never forget it. The 48th Brigade Combat Team is a part of the Georgia National Guard, a group of citizen-soldiers from across the state who leave jobs and families to serve their coun try. In this case, in Iraq. Lt. Col. Tom Carden gave me a succinct description of their duties there. “What we do is find out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys,” he said, “and then we get rid of the bad guys.” Today, Maj. Gen. Carden is Adjutant General of the Georgia Department of Defense. At the same time they were fighting the omnipresent terrorists, members of the 48th BCT were employing their back-home skills helping construct bridges, repairing dams, installing power lines, running medi cal clinics and showing the best of us to a people who had known only the brutality of a despicable dictator. Today, I wonder what has become of this special group of people. I do know that in addition to Gen. Carden, Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver is retired and living in Eatonton. I still correspond with him on occasion. Colonel and later Major General John King is Georgia’s able Insurance Commissioner, appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp and currently running for a full term in office. But there are all the others with whom I spent perilous days and nights that I don’t know about. They hailed from across our state: Places like Statesboro and Montezuma, Palmetto and Gray, Dublin and Brunswick. Back home they were mechanics, firefighters, schoolteachers, postal workers, doctors, nurses, correctional officers, police officers and the like. Your friends and neighbors. But for my short stay in Iraq, they were my Band of Brothers and Sisters. Seventeen years later, they are still my heroes. I hope they are well. You can reach Dick Yarbrough atdick@dick- yarbrough.com; at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA 31139; online at dickyarbrough.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dickyarb. I was a newspaperman — and always will be Steaming mug shak ing slightly in an already over-caffeinated hand, unfiltered Lucky Strike dancing to word tunes as he talked, the second publisher for whom I ever worked once told me that since I neither drank cof fee nor smoked cigarettes I needed to get out of newspapers as I obviously had no future in the business. It’s taken me nearly half a century to heed that heart-felt advice, but the time has come to get out of the news paper business. Or at least day-to-day involvement in the news gathering and publishing process. That particular owner/publisher was a short feisty firebrand with a TNT temper who never dodged a good political fight and frequently made enemies faster than he made friends, which didn’t help his attempts at selling ads or keeping the business open. On more than one occasion I had to accompany him on collection rounds so we could get paid that week. But he was a “newspaperman” through and through, one of many from both genders with whom I’ve been fortunate enough to work in the 51 years since my first bylined story- filled with typos and lousy writing- graced the sports page of the local paper and started a life-long fascina tion with the inexact process of mix ing events, words and readers. How do you say goodbye to a love affair with a career that started with a naive teenager whose first editor came to the high school in search of some one to write sports stories, and ends with a well-worn graybeard leaving behind millions of words offered for public consumption in multiple mar kets across the state of Georgia? A rotund, sleepy-eyed county com mission chairman, upset over some thing written about the South Georgia government he headed, ended a harangue about the story by saying to me “I know you have to write the truth, but do you have to make it sound so damn true?” Among the millions of words that have found their way from keyboard to the public, I hope a lot of them have made things so damn true their signifi cance couldn’t be avoided. More importantly, I hope I’ve helped others to cultivate the same mindset along the way. I’ve been fortunate to have a career that has spanned what likely are the twilight years for the romanticized notion of newspapering. The need for information is always going to be prevalent, but the delivery methods are rapidly changing. The idea that a printed newspaper so “hot off the press” the ink will smear is essential to the news stream will soon become as quaint a notion as those old IBM Selectrics, whose rat-a-tat-tat pounding of type balls once filled newsrooms with a back ground sound most noticeable when it was absent. Whatever the process involved in delivering news to the public, the importance of the job will remain, and a whole new generation of talented, committed younger journalists stand ready to do it. Looking back, there are so many memories of important stories, amaz ing interviews, crazy coworkers (trust me on that one), long hours, hard work, and communities made better by the fact they were served well by a local newspaper. It’s been a great career, one only slightly marred by two lingering regrets. From the very beginning, in every market in which I’ve worked, there have been painful stories dealing with racial conflict — inequality, bias, prejudice, hatred, confrontations. Having seen “white” and “colored” water fountains and restrooms as a child, I know full well how far we’ve come. But I also know how far we still must go. I had hoped that by the time my career ended this particular story line would be one with which a new generation of reporters would never have to deal. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. The second major regret is that, as a profession, we haven’t done a better job of making the public understand the importance of a free press, and how vital its existence is to the future of our nation as a functional republic. That a certain former president would refer to the press as an “enemy of the people” makes obvious the lack of understanding of the role played by credible, professional reporting. We’ve failed to explain that social media platforms do not have reporters and do not generate news content. Rather, they steal from traditional media companies, repackage stories done by others, and feed them to the masses based on satisfying personal preferences rather than providing unbiased information. If you want credible local news to continue to be available, you have to invest in it. The way to do that is to buy a subscription for a printed news paper or a digital product produced by a traditional media company. If those companies fail, none of us are going to be accurately informed about any thing, and our future will be bleak indeed. As for myself, I’ll be joining the ranks of the “semi-retired.” No longer involved in the day-to-day operations of any single newspaper for the first time in five decades, but still working a bit behind the scenes at the corpo rate level, trying to help keep media operations financially viable and sus tainable. And if, perhaps in some shady bar or at a social event, someone happens to ask what I once did for a living, I’ll tell them I was a newspaperman. And I’ll say it with such pride that they will know for sure it is a claim that is not just true, but damn true. -30" NORMAN BAGGS General Manager When Doodle barks, she means business In the history of the little pittie-mix. Doodle has only barked about twice. She’ll yelp when she hurts herself, like if she steps on a sharp rock. She’ll scream when she sees the treats left on the counter and no one gives her one. But barking — actually trying to warn someone she means puppy busi ness — she’s only done a few times. The first time was at my Mama. She had seen Mama before, so her protest at her presence was a surprise. When she first met Mama, she was terrified of her, namely because she heard Mama snoring. It wasn’t the first time Mama’s snores had terrified a dog; Pepper used to be quite alarmed by it. and that evil beagle feared nothing. I had fallen and broken my elbow - an experience as delightful as it sounds - and since I had never broken a bone before, Mama and Bobby rushed up here to check on me. I assured them I was fine, but when they arrived Bobby’s first concern was that I couldn’t possibly cook so he had Lamar and Cole take him to the grocery store so he could buy every piece of chicken the deli had fried. My family thinks fried chicken cures just about everything and can maybe even heal broken bones. Mama stayed with me. When I left the room, Mama told me Doodle barked at her. “She did?” “She did!” Mama exclaimed. “She’s never barked at anyone. Are you sure she barked and didn’t just ‘oooooo?’” “It was a bark,” Mama insisted. Doodle positioned herself by my feet, squared up her squatty little body, and let out a low but deep bark. “See,” Mama stated. “Well. Mama, you should feel spe cial. Boo has never barked at anyone.” Mama took great offense at this though. She couldn’t understand why Doodle, who had met her before, would even bark at her. “Maybe she thought I was injured and she had to be protective?” I wondered. “But what is she protecting you from? Me?” “Who knows what goes through her head,” I said. I sure didn’t. Eventually though we gained some clarity. “You tell her I'm coming to get her,” Mama said one day on the phone. “Even if she does bark at me.” “Mama, that’s it. Doodle thought you were going to puppy-nap her!” I said. “Why would that upset her? She wouldn’t want to go home with me?” “She knows she’s got it good here,” I said. “She’s got her people and her pack; she was scared you were going to take her. That’s why she barked.” It was a relief to get to the bottom of this barking mystery. The next time she barked was at a utility worker who somehow walked up in the yard one morning. Since he had not pulled his truck down our driveway - probably a smart move, given how the terrain is a bit of an off-roading adventure - Doodle let him know she was aware of his presence with a bark that sounded like it belonged to a much larger dog. “Was that Ava?” I asked Lamar. “No. Doodle.” “Well.” I commented. “She’s found her voice.” Those were the only times she barked, at least until recently that is. Until suddenly, she started barking whenever Cole’s friends came over. It was so odd because the rest of the girls didn’t - Pumpkin was thrilled to have someone new to love on her and Mia thinks everyone is here to adore her. But Doodle started having a fit. Cole’s friends tried giving her treats to show they were not a threat; she gobbled them up, softening the bark in between bites. “Doodle wants everyone to think she’s the boss applesauce,” I said, try ing to understand her puppy logic. It seemed fitting. The girls didn’t seem to care about pack dynamics of who was alpha - but Doodle wanted them to know if it came down to any major serious stuff, she was in charge. “You’d think she’d be used to them by now,” Mama commented. I agreed. Then last week, she was more bois terous than usual, barking like mad when one of his friend’s came over. Then it hit me. “Where was Mia?” I asked. “I was working her,” Lamar said. “So she was outside of the fenced area when Cole’s friend got here?” Lamar nodded. “She thinks someone may puppy-nap Mia! Think about it - she didn’t bark at Mama until Mama started saying she was going to take her. She thinks when ever someone comes over here, they may have intentions to steal what she thinks is her baby.” Before we had Mia, Doodle would normally be shy and sweet. Now she’s trying to let people know she is protect ing the German shepherd she considers to be her baby. It made perfect sense to me, and I bet it made perfect sense to Doodle too. Sudie Crouch is an award winning humor columnist and author of "The Dahlman Files: ATony Dahlman Paranormal Mystery." SUDIE CROUCH Columnist Letter policy Letters should be limited to 350 words and may be edited or con densed.The same writer or group may only submit one letter per month for consideration. Letters must be submitted by noon Friday for midweek publication. We do not publish poetry or blanket let ters and generally do not publish letters concerning consumer com plaints. Unsigned or incorrectly identified letters will be withheld. Mail letters to the Dawson County News, RO. Box 1600, Dawsonville, GA 30534, hand deliver to 30 Shoal Creek Road or email to editor@dawsonnews. com.