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6B I DAWSON COUNTY NEWS I dawsonnews.com Wednesday, January 4,2023 Dawson doctor helps minister to Ukrainians Photos submitted to DCN Dr. Larry Anderson, right, visits with the medical director, left, and assistant medical director, center, at a hospital in Kharkiv. Photo submitted to DCN. Above left,This Ukrainian checkpoint during Anderson's trip sports a type of structural ghillie suit to disguise the shape and make of the building so it can't be easily targeted. Above right. During his trip, Anderson visits a 20-by-40-foot, 24/7 Ukrainian warming tent that's fit for about 100 people standing and usually visited by about 500 people a day. By Julia Hansen jhansen@dawsonnews.com After previously helping Ukrainian refugees who’ve fled to northern Georgia, one Dawson County doctor recently traveled to the Eastern European nation to help people in need there. About a month ago, Dr. Larry Anderson returned from a two- week trip to Ukraine to help jumpstart chaplain programs for law enforcement offices across that country. Chaplains are essentially lay church representatives who, in the United States, are often attached to institutions like fire or police departments or the mil itary. Anderson, who started a local family medicine practice in 2005, is also involved with the Rotary Club of Dawson County. Members of the Dawson chapter have been working with area churches to help local Ukrainian refugees since the Eastern European country’s war with Russia began in February. Specifically, Anderson has helped provide refugees with the church with medical care during their first month in America. Anderson also heads the coun ty’s health board and serves on the board for the local Good Shepherd Clinic, which provides healthcare for those in need. Likewise, he serves as a Presbyterian church elder. The longtime doctor said the opportunity to help on the ground in Ukraine “kind of came secondary"’ for him. “It was dealing mainly with how to help the Ukrainian refu gees and then, ‘How do I help Ukrainian refugees back in their country?’”, Anderson said. His avenue to help came from his prior contact with Ukrainian chaplains. Anderson’s trip lasted from Nov. 27 until Dec. 10. The chaplain efforts began with a two-day meeting in Warsaw, Poland, before he and his col leagues for the trip split and trav eled to different parts of Ukraine before meeting up again. For Anderson, he was able to go to Lviv (pronounced Luh- veev), Kharkiv (har-kiv) and Kyiv (Kuh-yeev) as well as three to four other cities. While Ukraine’s military and judiciary have chaplains, Anderson explained that the law enforcement, who are all under the national police, do not. During his time there, Anderson met with about 30 other chaplains and chiefs of police in six major cities to dis cuss chaplain services. He would suggest different organizational techniques and ways to develop chaplain training programs. “The other thing I did is I met with the medical chiefs of staff for two different hospitals and went into the wards to see wounded soldiers. I met with them to discuss the needs and care that they received,” Anderson said. After speaking at three differ ent churches via interpreters, the doctor described favorable responses from attendees at those locations. “People would come up and say ‘Thank you for being here. You give us hope,”’ Anderson added. “It was a way to boost morale and let them know that the world was watching and helping them.” Anderson’s trip to Ukraine was actually his second time in a war zone but his first such occa sion as a civilian. During the Vietnam War, Anderson served as a soldier in the U.S. Army’s 1st cavalry unit riding on Chinook helicopters. For his Ukraine trip, he and his colleagues ventured further east in the country, coming with in six miles of the Russian bor der. While most of the fighting is still generally concentrated in Ukraine’s southeastern region, home to areas like Crimea, trav eling to that region is still precar ious. Anderson said he knew the risks. Despite the wartime environ ment, he said he still saw Ukrainians’ overall resilience to fight for their country clearly on display, with checkpoints cov ered in camouflage materials called a ghillie suit and road signs with words spray-painted black so that Russian military, who use the same language, couldn’t find their way around Ukraine. He noted how many of the checkpoints had at least half women guards, with others hav ing all female personnel, and Anderson wondered if that was intentional. “They said ‘No, this is us looking at who’s the most quali fied person regardless of gender to do this job, and this is the way it came out,” he said. Anderson also mentioned a Ukrainian Rotary chapter selling shell canisters online to raise money for food and clothing for refugees. He recalled a mix of stories about often-scheduled blackouts for sometimes half or whole cit ies that left people for days or weeks on end without water, electricity, heating or elevator service. That left Ukrainians there to plan ahead for how they would cook, eat, do laundry or simply stay warm, perhaps with specific shelters, during the dead of winter, Anderson said. “Everyone had a very positive attitude in fighting this war. I saw no one complaining about the inconvenience,” he added. In the future, Anderson hopes to get several more automated external defibrillators to nurses over in Ukraine, who tend to serve in a similar role as social workers. He’s also working on medical cases for a few Ukrainian patients or people he knows about, and there’s also a project with a Ukrainian Rotary chapter on the horizon for him. “I’m very fortunate and very blessed to be able to go over there and do that,” Anderson said of his trip. Just as his experiences will stay with him, Anderson was also given multiple meaningful mementos to remember his time in Ukraine, such as an American flag that, until its discovery, was buried under the rubble of a fourth grade English class at an elementary school hit by a Russian missile attack. Another gift was an artwork of a Ukrainian woman carrying a rifle given to him near the end of his stay. The vibrant artwork fea tures amber at its top that was mined in Ukraine and a unique phrase included at its bottom to pay homage to Ukrainian wom en’s fighting spirit. “I’ve had several Ukrainians loosely translate it for me who all said it [reads as] the same thing,” Anderson said. “It basi cally says ‘Even pretty women fight.” Handful of new laws to take effect in Ga. this week By Dave Williams Capitol Beat News Service Most bills the General Assembly passes each year take effect on July 1. But a smattering of new laws enacted during the 2022 legis lative session will kick in this Sunday, Jan. 1, including a bill making it easier for food trucks to do business and several new or expanded tax credits. The food truck legislation does away with a current requirement in Georgia law that food truck operators obtain a permit and inspection in every county where they do business. “Almost all food trucks oper ate in multiple counties,” said Tony Harrison, board president of the Food Truck Association of Georgia. “That means multi ple permits and fees. It’s just insane.” Under House Bill 1443, which members of the General Assembly passed unanimously last March, food truck opera tors need only notify county health departments when they open for business in their com munities. “We do not have to go through all the paperwork and fees,” Harrison said. “We’ve already seen an increase in food trucks popping up before the law has even taken effect.” While the tax credit bills technically became effective last summer, they don’t really become reality until New Year’s Day, the beginning of the tax year. Three of the measures create new income tax credits. House Bill 424 will provide a tax credit to Georgia taxpay ers who contribute to nonprofit organizations that help foster children about to age out of the foster care system. More than 700 young men and women age out of the system each year. Senate Bill 361, which was championed by Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, will provide a dollar- for-dollar income tax credit on contributions to public safety initiatives in the taxpayer’s community. Law enforcement agencies will be able to use the money for police officer salary supplements, to purchase or maintain department equip ment and/or to establish or maintain a co-responder pro gram. Senate Bill 87, the Jack Hill Veterans’ Act, honors the late state Sen. Jack Hill of Reidsville, who died in 2020. It provides income tax credits in exchange for contributions to scholarships for service-dis abled veterans through the Technical College System of Georgia Foundation. The General Assembly also expanded Georgia’s rural hos pital tax credit through House Bill 1041, which increases the annual statewide cap on the credit from $60 million to $75 million. Rural hospital admin istrators and the program’s leg islative supporters originally sought to raise the cap to $100 million but were forced to set tle for the lower figure. Fiscal conservatives in the General Assembly have launched efforts in recent years to bring closer scrutiny to Georgia’s tax credits to ensure they’re worth the hit to state tax revenues. But tax credits that incentiv- ize taxpayers to contribute toward popular causes that need financial help have tended to survive unscathed, said Kyle Wingfield, president and CEO of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. “There don’t seem to be a whole lot of problems with them,” Wingfield said. Another bill that will take effect on Sunday, Senate Bill 332, also known as the Inform Consumers Act, is aimed at preventing criminals from sell ing goods stolen from retail stores on any online marketing platform. It establishes finan cial and contact information requirements for high-volume sellers to online marketplaces and requires such platforms to establish an option for con sumers to report suspicious activity. “Here in Georgia, we will do everything possible to curb crime and make life difficult for those who break the law,” Gov. Brian Kemp said last May as he signed the bill. “We’re dealing another blow to the organized gangs that steal from Georgia shops and stores by making it much harder for them to profit from their heists.” This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
