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Patty tells
\ ■
of ordeal
See page 3
Mothers-to-be
can attend GHS
Miss Anne Hill Drewry lias resigned
from the school board.
Unwed mothers can attend Griffin
High.
The Griffin High athletic department
has been reprimanded.
More students can have free lunches.
A new Griffin High School principal
was elected.
These were some of the subjects
brought up at last night’s Griffin-
Spalding School Board meeting.
In what Chairman Henry Walker
termed a sad duty, the board voted to
accept the resignation of Miss Drewry.
She stated in a letter she was resigning
for reasons of health.
Walker and Supt. D. B. Christie
praised Miss Drewry for her work on
the board.
Christie, who was principal at Griffin
High when she taught there, called her
“one of the greatest teachers any
where.” He said he had never seen
anyone more knowledgeable than Miss
Drewry.
Mr. Walker said he had known her as
a teacher, as well as in church and civic
affairs, and the loss would be felt both
by the school system and the whole
community.
Miss Drewry has held the post two
27 nursing homes overbilled state
ATLANTA (UPI) — A three month
audit released by state Auditor Ernest
B. Davis cites 27 Georgia nursing
Man of year
nominations
due by Feb. 27
The Griffin Exchange Club today
called for nominations for the “Man of
the Year” award.
Letters of nomination should be sent
to the Chamber of Commerce by 5 p.m.
Feb. 27.
James Fortune, Jr., president of the
Exchange Club, said the selection of the
1975 Man of the Year would be an
nounced March 2 at 11 a.m. at the
Chamber of Commerce.
The presentation will be March 16 at
the Exchange Club meeting at the Elks
Club.
i mM
! 1
It was
go weather
Sr*
Miss Anne Hill Drewry
position for 11 years. Her third term
would have expired Dec. 31.
Chairman Walker appointed Russell
homes for “consistent” overbilling of
the state for care of Medicade patients.
Twelve of the homes cited in the audit
are owned, operated or managed by a
company headed by Dean Fowler,
secretary of the Human Resources
Board, Davis said Monday.
The state auditor told the full House
that Medical Investments Corp.,
headed by Fowler, “locked together” 17
nursing homes and ran them in away
that “has the effect of raising costs.”
In some cases, he said, homes under
Fowler’s corporation pay rent above
the market value.
“He’s wrong,” Fowler said from his
office in Montezuma. “We’re paying
fair market rental-value.”
Sam Thurmond, director of Medicaid
for Department of Human Resources,
said he “wouldn’t comment on whether
Mr. Fowler is making an excessive
profit from Medicaid until I analyze the
report.”
Davis released the results of an audit
It was such a pretty day that Joey Thacker (front) and Charles Evans couldn’t resist going
for a spin in their homemade go-cart racer on South Sixth street.
GRIFFIN
DAI LY# NEWS
Daily Since 1872
Smith and Bill Westmoreland as a
committee to make a recommendation
on filling the vacancy.
Following recommendations by the
state Professional Practices Com
mission in Atlanta, the board voted to
change two policies, concerning unwed
mothers and disciplining of Griffin
High athletes.
Until now, pregnant students and
unwed mothers were required to with
draw from regular classes and continue
their studies at the Educational Op
portunity Center.
The Griffin League of Women Voters
and some parents complained to the
commission about the policy. After
receiving the complaints, a study was
conducted and it was determined the
policy was not consistent with either
constitutional provisions or state board
policy.
The commission recommended
unwed mothers be allowed to choose
whether they wish to remain on the
campus in regular classes or transfer to
the Educational Opportunity Center.
All members, except Russell Smith,
voted to accept the recommendation. It
will become effective next quarter.
Mr. Christie explained the program
at the Educational Opportunity Center
(Continued on page two.)
of 85 selected nursing homes
participating in the Medicaid program
during fiscal 1975 to the House and
Senate Appropriations Committee. He
said 60 per cent of the homes audited
appeared to have overcharged the
state.
The audit showed “a consistent
pattern of charging nonallowable
expenses” in the homes operated for
profit, Davis said. The questionable
claims by 27 homes included rental
payments, equipment purchases,
medical and other personal expenses
for nursing home owners and outrof
state trips by nursing home owners.
“I’m not suggesting that there’s any
violation of the law. Nursing homes
haven’t been told these things are
wrong,” Davis said, but added the
items do violate federal standards.
“They (the DHR) have failed totally
to lay down sufficient guidelines as to
what nursing homes may rightfully
charge the state,” he said.
Griffin, Ga., 30223, Tuesday Afternoon. February 10,1976
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Moving day
at hospital
Droughts endanger
U.S. food supplies
By JAMES F. WIECK
United Press International
A winter drought could bring disaster
to much of America, endangering the
nation’s food supplies and bringing
higher prices.
The grain belt needs water. So do
California’s fertile valleys.
A drought is threatening disaster to
grain farmers in the Great Plains, the
vast area that stretches from
Minnesota and the Dakotas down along
the Rockies into New Mexico and
Texas.
In California, the nation’s largest
food producing state, the disaster is at
hand. Farmers already have reported
losses of $310.5 million — and the losses
are still climbing.
In Washington, Don Paarlberg, the
Agriculture Department’s chief
economist, said it would be at least
another month before an assessment
could be made. Paarlberg said fall
planted crops such as winter wheat
“got off to a poor start” but “they can
make a substantial recovery” if there is
moisture in the spring.
Californians fear the worst. In the
usually fertile San Joaquin Valley,
grain crops have refused to come up
and cattle have been sent to markets
‘Bonzo’ harasses
GOP candidates
DURHAM, N.H. (UPI) - Bonzo the
Chimpanzee has swung back out of
Hollywood history to haunt Ronald
Reagan in the New Hampshire
Republican presidential primary. The
beast gives President Ford equal time.
Reagan made a movie called
“Bedtime for Bonzo’’ two decades ago,
a comedy about raising a chimp as a
child. One of the activists in the
People’s Bicentennial Commission, a
small but noisy band whose counter
celebration includes damning big
business and harrassing primary
candidates, has taken to wearing a
hairy Bonzo costume to primary
rallies.
The primary primate made his debut
at a Reagan appearance at Dartmouth
University last week, but the candidate
managed to remain the event’s top
Weather
ESTIMATED HIGH TODAY 70, low
today 37, high yesterday 61, low
yesterday 28, high tomorrow near 70,
low tonight in upper 40s.
EXTENDED FORECAST: Chance of
showers Thursday. Friday mostly fair
and mild. Increasing cloudiness Friday
night followed by chance of showers
Saturday.
Pharmacist Kline Berry (1) and Administrator Carl Ridley watch moving operations at the
Griffin-Spalding emergency room. The long awaited and much delayed move got underway
today. The emergency room facilities will be the first to go into the new wing of the building.
underweight for lack of range grass.
“We have been forced to resort to
feeding our cattle with hay at $95 to SIOO
a ton and liquid supplements,” said
Coalinga cattleman Darrell Zwang.
“And we are shipping cattle to
slaughter at 500 pounds rather than the
normal 700 pounds, losing money on
that end too.”
Things aren’t that bad in the Great
Plains, although much of Texas hasn’t
had a good rain since before Halloween.
The drought in some areas of Texas,
agriculture officials said, “verges on
disaster.”
In the Texas Panhandle, dry north
winds have blown soil from around
stunted winter wheat. In the south,
ranchers are hauling water and hay
much as in California.
Wheat farmers in the western two
thirds of Kansas said the potential for
crop loss is severe.
In Kansas, Oklahoma, eastern
Colorado and New Mexico farmers are
reporting dry conditions.
Oklahoma, where the wheat crop is
described in poor to fair condition,
received some moisture in recent days.
But John Cochrane of the Crop and
Livestock Reporting Service said that
“with this cold weather it really isn’t
helping much at all.”
banana. Sunday, at a University of New
Hampshire appearance in front of 3,500
students, Ford found one of the
questioners at the audience microphone
was Bonzo.
Gonzo Bonzo beat his chest over a
question condemning big business.
Ford, like Reagan, apparently decided
the only thing to do with a chimp in the
crowd was to pretend chimps are
people.
Ford simply remarked he could not
understand one of Bonzo’s words, got
Bonzo to repeat it, and answered the
question.
The Country Parson
> ~
“You’ll usually find folks who
are fun to be around with folks
who are fun to be around.”
Vol. 104 No. 34
News
summary
By United Press International
Patricia testifies
SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) - Patricia
Hearst Monday admitted she helped
rob a bank, fired a machine gun at a
Los Angeles sporting goods store,
helped kidnap a high school student—
and did not try to escape from her
Symbionese Liberation Army captors.
She also told of being locked in closets
for weeks on end, being raped by
various SLA members and punched by
William Harris. She said she was kept
from trying to escape for fear that
either the SLA or the FBI would kill
her.
Ford SS tax hike
WASHINGTON (UPI) - President
Ford has requested Congress for an
increase in Social Security taxes and a
boost in Medicare costs.
The plan, which Ford said would
protect the system’s financial status on
one hand and protect the aged and
disabled under Medicare against
“catastrophic” medical costs on the
other, is under attack.
Some congressional members want
to dip into general revenues to help
finance Social Security, but the
administration does not approve even
limited use of the funds. And of the
Medicare increase, Bert Seidman, the
director of the AFLCIO Social Security
Department, said: “...It appears to us
as an obvious political maneuver to win
favor with the high income elderly in
presidential primaries at the expense of
the nation’s elderly poor and sick.” —
Death toll climbs
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala
(UPI) — The number of victims of
earthquakes in Guatemala have
reached overwhelming proportions.
The dead number 16,032, 54,825 have
been injured and there are 1,044,441
homeless, according to the National
Emergency Committee.
But others, not included in the official
figures, are those stunned by the events
and in despair over their helplessness.
One of those, a dark-skinned woman,
lines carved in her face, stood before
her husband’s tomb chanting an Indian
lamentation. Slowly, she dropped
bracelets and necklaces into his casket.
Capital overrun
LUSAKA, Zambia (UPI) — Unless
the pro-Western troops in Angola
receive massive supplies of
sophisticated arms, the coalition could
collapse within the next few days,
military experts said.
The pro-Western capital of Huambo
has been overrun by thousands of
Cuban combat troops and the supply
base of Silva Porto is the next target in
what could be the final offensive of the
civil war.