Newspaper Page Text
VOLUME 17 No. 852
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Denzel Washington stars in
Spike Lee’s He Got Game * 1B
Countysinks
Morris hotel
campaign
Frederick Benjamin sr.
AUGUSTA FOCUS Staff Writer
AUGUSTA
At the conclusion of a boisterous county commis
sion meeting on Tuesday, businessman Paul Simon
had heard enough. He couldn’t raise the necessary
six votes to propel his
Anicle 0‘ An is dream of a new riverfront
hotel and a greatly ex
. panded convention center
& [nwrpmmmn at the Riverfront
Radisson, so he an
nounced that he was taking his marbles and leaving.
Simon is the spokesman for a group of developers
organized as Augusta Riverfront Limited Partner
ship. The power behind the partnership is local
media magnate William S. Morris 111, owner of The
Augusta Chronicle. For several months, Simon had
been honing his presentation, confident that by
doingalittle tinkering here and there, he could make
the city an offer they couldn’t refuse.
Not only did the commissioners refuse the pro
posal, which asked the city to forgive the balance of
a $7.5 million loan the partnership had borrowed to
build the Radisson, they sent it to the bottom with
Titanic-like swiftness.
And while the 6-4 defeat seemed final enough,
keen.political .observers have predicted a speedy
resurrection of the wreck. Simply put, Billy Morris
will eventually get his plumb. The question is, will
other parts of the city get their fair share of the
detelopment pie?
History tells us that political loyalties on the
Richmond County Commission are fleeting. This is
not the first time a Billy Morris venture had been
scuttled at the hands of the county commissioners
only to rise from the ashes moments later. It hap
pened before a few years ago (pre-consolidation
Richmond County) when the county commissioners
voted not to move the Discovery Center from Fort
Gordon to downtown. A couple of weeks later, the
commission did a giant flip flop and Morris got his
way. ¢
And while the partnership’s hotel proposal ap
pears beached like a whale whose sonar has gone
screwy, the political tides will likely carry it back to
sea, and viability, because none of the commission
ers are anti-development. Most of the black commis
sioners, however, feel that, just because Morris’s
deal is massive and he’s got a lot of money, he’s no
more entitled to be forgiven a loan than any of the
smaller minority businessmen who operate smaller,
but no less viable, enterprises than does Mr. Morris.
See HOTEL DEAL, page 3A
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Sening Metropolitan g?ugulsm, South Carolina and the Central Savannah River Area
. . . Soul on earth
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Former Black Panther Eldridge
Cleaver, shown in this Feb. 15,
1997 file photo, helped the Earth
Day Conference on Saturday,
April 18, 1998. “I've gone be
Former Black Panther
joins environmentalists
PORTLAND, Ore.
(AP) Former Black Panther mili
tant Eldridge Cleaver no longer
sees the world in terms of black
and white. He’s gone Green.
Cleaver joined Jack Ward Tho
mas, former chief of the U.S. For
est Service, in opening the Earth
Day Conference in Portland on
Saturday.
“I’ve gone beyond civil rights
and human rights to creation
rights,” Cleaver, 62, told The Or
egonian on Thursday.
“I am appalled that man is wag
ing war on creation, that we have
There is nothing as gratifying to behold as
Senior swimmers
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Mr. Lott, 69, shows off his smooth stroke at the Belle Terrace Swim Center. Photo by Charles Jones
By Mark Oliphant
AUGUSTA FOCUS Correspondent
: ~ AUGUSTA
After holding on to the edge of the swimming pool at
the Belle Terrace Swim Center for almost a month,
Willie Mae Sturgis, for the first time in her life,
managed to conquer her fear of water and the pool in
South Augusta and can now swim up to 10 laps.
R Rl
yond civil rights and humaon
rights to. creation rights,”
Cleaver said in the Friday, April
17, 1998, Oregonian. (AP Photo/
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Tom Zasadzinski)
poisoned the water, broken the
food chain, put holes in the ozone
layer and sent bulldozers into the
rain forest. What we aré doing is
harming tomorrow.”
Cleaver gained notoriety in 1967
as the Black Panthers’ Minister of
Information. His 1968 book Soul
on Ice,became a campusbest seller.
But after a shootout that year
with Oakland, Calif., police, he
fled abroad with his family, living
in Cuba, Algeria and France.
In 1975, he turned himself in,
See CLEAVER, page 2A
So what’s the big deal? Ms. Sturgis is 62 years
young. ' A
“Ilost 14 1/2 pounds since I started swimming and
I still eat the same junk food I usually eat,” Ms.
Sturgis said with pride as she emerged from the pool
and . . . reached for her walking cane!
“I can’t feel the arthritis in my right knee when
I'm swimming. Its painful only when I walk on
land,” Ms. Sturgis added.
Ms. Sturgis is one of over a dozen senior citizens
GBI returns to
killing ground
By Christy Allen
and Frederick Benjamin Sr.
AUGUSTA FOCUS Staff Writer
AUGUSTA
Residents of Apple Valley, the
residential area catapulted intothe
city’s consciousness following the
killing there of Alfaigo Davis on
February 20, awoke on Tuesday to
find GBI and FBI agents scurry
ingabout the site where Davis was
fatally wounded. Investigators
from the elite law enforcement
agencies were going about reen
acting the final moments of Mr.
Davis’ life before he was gunned
down by sheriff’s deputies who
defended the killing by saying they
feared for their lives. Many Apple Valley
residents don’t believe the deputies be
cause witnesses say that Mr. Davis was
attempting to give up when he was gunned
down.
Residents who called Augusta Focus were
suspicious df the proceedings.
“I think what they are doing is illegal,”
one Apple Valley woman said. “How can
they say they are going to reenact the
shopting when they don’t have that boy
they killed there?” she said.
Others merely wondered why it took
nearly nine weeks for such a reenactment
to take place.
John Seay, special agent in charge of the
Man wins nearly $1 million in police suit:
PHILADELPHIA
(AP) A federal jury awarded nearly $1
million indamages toablack Chester County
man who complained that his rights were
violated when two white police officers ar
rested him at his house four years ago.
Tracy Garner, 36, of Chesterbrook and
his wife, Dale, said Tredyffrin Township
police officers Lawrence Meoli and Gerald
McTear tried to search their home without
a warrant and arrested him when he re
fused to allow them to enter on June 29,
1994. .
The officers were responding to a
neighbor’s call about a disturbance in the
Garners’ condominium.
Though Garner had told police he was the
only one home, the officers insisted on en
tering and uttered racial slurs and assaulted
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The GBI Crime Lab in Augusta is located in the
inner city on Eighth Street. Most city residents
are unaware of its existence. Often there is a
single car in the parking lot. Could it be that the
GBI is understaffed? Photo by Christy Allen
Georgia Bureau of Investigation in the
Augusta area, told Augusta Focus that
investigators hope to make a video of the
reenactment.
For many, though, seeing the investiga
tors cover old ground confirmed fears that
the report will be delayed even further.
The latest projection given by any law
enforcement agency indicated that the
probe would conclude by the end of April.
With barely a week left to go, even those
projections appear unrealistic. :
The GBI had been saying all along that
they were only waiting for results frore
See GBI PROBE, page 3A
him in the process, according to court docu
ments. Garner also alleged that the police
brought unwarranted charges against him
to justify their entrance.
The officers have denied the charges.
“We all believe that the jury’s verdict
properly reflected their anger at the police
officers’ activities in this case, which we
think we showed to be improper and intol
erable in our society,” said Jeffrey Cooper,
the Garners’ attorney.
Initsdecision last week, the jury awarded
the couple about $246,000 in compensa
tory damages, $500,000 in punitive dam
ages against Meoli and $250,000 in puni
tive damages against McTear. Garner had
said Meoli was more abusive than McTear
See POLICE SUIT, page 2A
throughout metro Augusta who
resents the idiom that their life is
“drawing nigh” and believes its
just beginning by taking swim
ming classes for senior citizens at
the South Augusta facility.
The classes are one of many ac
tivities sponsored by the Senior
Citizens Council of Greater Au
gusta and the CSRA and facili
tated by the Augusta Recreation
and Parks Department. Thoufn
the concept beganin 1991 at High
land Pool, it has become a full
scaled program since the opening
of the new, state-of-the-art indoor
pool last summer. The pool con
sistsof many features such as water
heating for year-round swimming
and an elderly/handicap-accessible
ramp.
How do most of these seniors get
the nerve to take a dip in the pool
after living over half a century as
a non-swimmer? Peer pressure,
something you would think only
applies to adolescents.
“Of course it was ditficult to
convince them to swim,” says
“1 lost 14
1/2 pounds
since |
started
swimming
and | still
eat the
same junk
food |
usually
eat,” —
Wiilie Mae
Sturgis said
with pride
as she
emerged
from the
pool and...
reached for
her walk
ing cane!
Maggie Gant, program director of the Belle Terrace
“Senior €enter. “Seeing their peers in the pool eased
their fear and made them believe that if their peers
can swim, so could they.”
Similar testaments have been expressed by other
local retirees and elder youngsters of the aquatics
program which many are discovering to be the true
home remedy. The program has relieved some from
See SENIOR SWIMMERS, page 6A
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