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Career, marriage
By MA Y WINGFIELD MELTON
Trellis Weldon Burks successfully
combined a career and marriage in
Spalding County for about 50 years,
> convinced that the reason it worked so
well for her was because she always put
her husband and her family first.
She and William Jeremiah (W.J.)
Burks celebrated their golden wedding
anniversary here on January 29 and she
has been active in the nursing
• profession here for most of those 50
years. She retired about two years ago
and is enjoying some leisure time at
( their home on the Walker Mill Road.
The Burks reared two daughters,
Mrs. Harold Hagins and Mrs. Craig
Marsh, both of Florida, who like their
’ mother are combining careers with
marriage. Both of the daughters are
teachers.
• “Marriages work only if each of you
learns to give as well as take,” says
Trellis, and “it is important to get along
, with your in-laws”. She thinks girls of
today are too independent for their own
good as far as marriage is concerned,
and does not believe in teen-age
marriages.
Trellis and W. J. have spent most of
their lives in the Cabin Creek district in
Mountaineers accused
of setting some fires
GAINESVILLE, Ga. (UPI) -
Mountaineers protesting blocked
access to a corridor of the Chattooga
River set many of the weekend fires
which destroyed some 3,800 acres of
forest land in three north Georgia
counties, according to a U.S. Forest
Service supervisor.
Supervisor Pat Thomas Monday
blamed arsonists for 30 to 40 per cent of
the fires which caused some $50,000 in
damage in Rabun, Tattnall and Dawson
counties last weekend.
He said the fires in the Chattahoochee
National Forest were among the worse
since 20,000 acres were destroyed by
flames 20 years ago.
Thomas said attempts by mountain
people last fall and the previous spring
to set fires failed because of rain. It has
been unusually dry this season.
He said setting fires in protest of the
restrictions imposed by the UJS. Forest
Service and the Georgia Game and Fish
People
—and things
Youngsters returning to school this
a.m., their Monday holiday over.
Small foreign car scooting back
wards to avoid long line on North Hill
street waiting for freight train to clear
railroad crossing.
“Nick” sitting in sun outside his
Army surplus store on Broad street.
Mrs. Burks
After 50 years of both, Trellis Burks says, “Marriages
work only if each of you learns to give as well as take.”
the first brick house built on Walker
Mill Road. He has always farmed in
this district, first with cotton, grain,
com, and pimento peppers, and now
with cattle and pine trees. They recall
that in 1925 after farmers were en
couraged to begin planting peppers that
the crop did so well the canning plant
here could not take all the peppers.
The Burks roots here go deep. One of
Trellis’ ancestors, William Weldon,
came down the Mclntosh Trail in 1823
and W. J.’s grandfather walked through
here on his way home to Alabama
following the Civil War and decided to
stay and settle. Trellis was bom on the
comer of the old McDonough Road and
Dutchman Road, and W. J. was bom at
the old Locust Grove hotel that his
grandmother Mitchell was running. At
that time the hotel was an important
railroad stop for drummers and
traveling salesmen in this area and his
mother went to Locust Grove to be with
her mother for the birth of her child.
Trellis is a few months older than her
husband and she says he never lets her
forget it. When she was born her future
mother-in-law walked several miles to
see her because she and Trellis’ mother
were friends, even though she was
division is an historic tradition of the
mountain people.
“If you got a grudge against the
forest service, the best way to attack
them was by burning a fire,” he said.
Thomas said the mountaineers
sometimes “goof and set a fire in the
wrong place with the right weather
conditions and it can get out of hand. It
could become a holocaust that could
bum down national forest land and
private land, too.”
Thomas said the mountain people
became bitter when officials closed off
many local roads in 1974 after Congress
designated the Chattooga River a Wild
and Scenic River.
“The local people historically have
driven their four-wheel drive jeeps into
those areas, and before that their
wagons,” he said. “When they lost that
privilege, it kind of disturbed them.”
Thomas said the service anticipates
more protest fires.
“We’ll be ready for them next
weekend,” he said.
The service has called in 40
smokejumpers from Montana to fight
more fires and a military bomber has
been converted to drop fire retardant in
the area, he said, adding two more
planes are on the way.
Last weekend’s fires were battled by
about 300 firefighters from Georgia,
North Carolina, South Carolina and
Virginia.
Thomas said no arsonists have been
arrested but the service has “several
leads.”
DAILY
Daily Since 1872
Theft fight
How Roswell, Ga. does it
ROSWELL, Ga. (UPI) - A Citizens
Band radio installed in your car on
Monday probably will be stolen by
Friday in Atlanta, according to police
statistics there. If the theft occurs in
this North Fulton County suburb, the
recovery rate can be less than three
hours.
“We’ve started something unique in
Georgia,” said J.M. Thom, director of
the Roswell Crime Prevention Bureau,
“and I suppose one of the first in the
nation: CB registration.
“We know this will work because
we’ve already caught some guys with
stolen CB’s we had marked. There was
one case recently where we had two
boys in custody, and the CB returned to
the owner, identifying him through our
pregnant with the child that would later
become Trellis’ husband.
Walking was the main means of
transportation at that time and Trellis
remembers walking to Sam Bailey
School and the old high school when she
was a girl from further out the Jackson
Road than the Jackson Road
Elementary School is now. One year
when a caravan of automobiles was
going from New York to Florida, they
toured by the high school so the
students could see the cars.
Trellis said from the time she was a
little girl that she wanted to be a nurse
and entered training at the Flagler
Hospital in St. Augustine, Florida when
she was 18 years old. She planned to go
to Buffalo, N. Y., for post graduate
work in surgery, but says she has never
made it. W. J. Burks persuaded her to
remain in Spalding County.
The city county hospital at that time
was located on Meriwether Street
where Haisten Funeral Home is now,
and Trellis remembers that so often in
those days doctors were paid in hams,
chickens, eggs and vegetables from
home gardens. With twinkling eyes she
said she was sure doctors now would
like to get some hams.
“What he hears usually
doesn’t disturb a fellow as much
as what he overhears.”
Pot plane
abandoned
in Crisp
CORDELE, Ga. (UPI) - A
converted World War II bomber landed
perhaps a ton or more of marijuana
here and then was abandoned by its
crew when law enforcement officers
moved in.
The old 826 twin engine plane landed
at the Crisp County Airport during the
weekend and the contents apparently
were unloaded into a truck. Police
found five bales of pot weighing in all
about 100 pounds in a roadside ditch
about a mile from the airport and
believe they fell off the truck.
Sheriff Bob Vinson said today he had
taken custody of the plane which U. S.
Customs officers had wanted to fly out.
Vinson said he would not give it up
without a court order.
GRIFFIN
Griffin, Ga„ 30223, Tuesday Afternoon, March 2,1976
registration files, before he even knew
it was gone.”
Since 1970, Roswell’s population has
more than tripled as the upper middle
class moved north to escape Atlanta’s
rising crime rate. Crime followed
afluence. The statistical picture is
common, but the response of a youthful
police department is changing it.
Newly appointed Police Chief Terry
Joyner, 29,,returned from a seminar at
the University of Louisville National
Crime Institute with a plan to engrave
the valuable personal belongings of the
city’s nearly 20,000 residents. He
appointed Thorn, a 36-year-old
patrolman, to head the project.
Atlanta has had a similar program
for the past year.
“As far as I know, none of those
showing our Project ID stickers have
been robbed, although we do know
places on either side of our locations
have been robbed, so it is a good
deterrent,” said Atlanta police Sgt.
H.L. Johnson of THOR (Target
Hardening Opportunity Reduction).
“Our figures indicate a 14 per cent
decrease in burglaries in Atlanta
(during 1975), and we feel we had to
have something to do with that.”
Thom said some residents of his quiet
rural community did not believe a
crime problem existed. The feeling was
shared by affluent newcomers who
work in Atlanta, but who fled to the
suburbs to escape crime.
Recent increases in household
insurance rates raised Roswell and
other metropolitan area communities
to the same rates charged in Atlanta.
“The insurance companies were
getting killed,” Thom said. “They were
really too slow to react to the increased
population and crime out here.”
Thom enlisted 15 high school students
as teen-age volunteers to go door-to
door with electric engraving pens. This,
incidentally, improved relations be
tween the city’s youth and the police.
“Our goal is to hit 100 per cent of our
homes,” he said. “I figure by May we
will have completed the city.”
Then signs will be posted in
residential areas and at the entrances
to the city to warn burglars that
Roswell is prepared.
“Burglary has been our major crime
problem,” Joyner said when asked if
Thom’s approach really can reduce the
rate to zero. “I think he can do it.”
“I intend to try things that just make
horse sense,” Thom said.
“Crime is just a big game of roulette
people play with themselves. There are
very few pure burglaries, and in most
cases I can show the victim where it
was more of a giveaway. Most burglars
are not the dummies we like to think
they are. They watch for you to make a
mistake, and then they capitlize on it.”
Assistant City Administrator Joseph
S. Brewster Jr., 27, said the city is
pleased with Thom’s approach.
“We haven’t had much of a crime
problem in the past and believe it is
better to stop it before it gets out of
hand,” Brewster said. “Jim is dedicat
ed and enthusiastic. He has involved all
areas of the community. My hat is off to
anybody like Jim who can bring the
youth, the blacks, the civic
organizations and the police together in
something positive.”
Thom says he will continue trying
new and sometimes even more radical
approaches.
Bids opened
on resurfacing
project here
The Georgia Department of Tran
sportation opened bids last week on the
resurfacing of 3.9 miles of U.S. High
way 19 between Milner avenue in
Griffin and the U.S. Bypass south of the
city.
The apparent low bid of $77,820 was
submitted by Ledbetter Brothers, Inc.,
of Rome, Ga.
NEWS
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Dr. Woodroof: most active ‘retired’ person around.
Dr. Woodroof
Man of Year
Dr. Guy Woodroof, internationally
known food science research man who
is an active civic and community leader
in Griffin and Spalding County, has
been named Man of the Year for 1975.
Ron Franklin, vice president of the
Griffin Exchange Club, announced his
selection today at the Chamber of
News
summary
By United Press International
Mass, primary
President Ford and Ronald Reagan
faced each other in their second
primary of the year in Massachusetts
today, however, because neither were
campaigning, interest focused on the
Democratic ballot.
Filipino nurses
DETROIT (UPI) - Two Filipino
nurses have been named by federal
prosecutors as being under
investigation in connection with 40
cases of breathing failure, 11 of them
fatal, at the Veterans Administration
Hospital in Ann Arbor last summer.
Rees case
DALLAS (UPI) - Officials of the
Dallas Times Herald said Norman
Rees, who was found shot to death after
the newspaper published a story
revealing he had given oil secrets to the
Soviets, said Rees was interviewed of
his own volition and knew the paper
would identify him.
New proposals
SALISBURY, Rhodesia (UPI) -
Nationalist sources said Monday
Rhodesia’s white minority government
has offered new significant proposals
on the question of majority rule for
blacks.
They would not give details but
reported the proposals as “a
breakthrough” and may speed up talks
on the question.
Vol. 104 No. 52
Weather
ESTIMATED HIGH TODAY 78, low
today 49, high yesterday 80, low
yesterday 53, high tomorrow in upper
70s, low tonight near 50.
EXTENDED FORECAST: Variable
cloudiness with a chance of rain west
and north on Thursday and over most of
the state on Saturday.
Commerce office.
The Exchange Club sponsors the
project each year.
Dr. Woodroof will be honored at the
March 16 meeting of the club.
One of the letters nominating him for
the honor said he was one of the most
active “retired” people in the com
munity.
Among the things cited to his credit in
1975 were:
—President of the Griffin Kiwanis
Club and its fair association.
—Chairman of the Spalding Health
Board and leader in an effort to get a
mental health complex located in the
old post office building.
—Chairman of the executive com
mittee of the Flint River Baptist
Association and a life deacon in the
Griffin First Baptist Church. He’s a
Sunday School teacher there, too.
—District director of the Georgia
Agriculture Alumni Association and
presided at the meetings.
—Chairman of the American
Legion’s Oratorical contest, locally and
district wide.
—American Legionnaire of the Year.
—Received Distinguished Service
Peanut Award for service to the peanut
industry.
—Member and past president of the
Spalding Farm Bureau.
—Went to Mexico to study coconuts
and fruit production and to gather
material for another book.
Authored three scientific books in
1975.
—Organized and became first
president of Griffin Association of
Retired Persons.
—And went to Paris to share in
chartering a Kiwanis Club.
Dr. Woodroof headed the Food
Science Department at the Georgia
Experiment Station before his so-called
retirement a few years ago.
He was named Distinguished Food
Scientist upon his retirement from the
Experiment Station.
Dr. Woodroof was president of
Abraham Baldwin College at Tifton,
1933-34.