Funding for the digitization of this title was provided by the 2016 Spalding County SPLOST via the Flint River Regional Library System.
About Griffin daily news. (Griffin, Ga.) 1924-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 15, 1977)
Accident victim Marty Elliot’s story is of determination BY KEVIN COOK McDonough, Ga. The story of Marty Elliott’s tragic accident on July 23 of this year is an incredible-but-true one. And, too, it is a study of a brave young girl’s uncanny determination. Returning from her summer job at Green Valley Golf Club on that fateful July 23rd, Marty mounted a friend’s horse for a relaxing ride. Going to the edge of the driveway, Marty halted the horse because an automobile was approaching. She then pulled the steed’s reins to resume the ride, and the horse suddenly reared on its hind legs, sending a startled Marty sprawling to the ground. The horse lost its footing on the loose gravel and, like its rider, plummeted to the ground -- onto a still-stunned Marty Elliott. Marty was promptly taken to the McDonough office of Dr. G.R. Foster, who diagnosed that her pelvis was fractured in four places on the left and in one location on the right, with two additional floating bones on Marty’s left side. Emergency hospital care was imminent, and the teenage girl was rushed to Georgia Baptist Hospital for treatment. In Georgia Baptist’s emergency ward, it was necessary for pins to be inserted into Marty’s knees. Then, she was put in traction: 15 pounds on her right leg; 15 pounds on her left in a straight position and four additional pounds at an angle. She remained in traction for five weeks. “People were constantly coming by to see me, fascinated by the way I was in traction,’’ recalls Marty, a junior at McDonough Christian Academy. "Everyone that came was so nice, always bringing candy or flowers.” When Marty first arrived at Georgia Baptist, she was told she would not be able to return home until February of 1978. But, the steel-tempered will of Marty Elliott was something medical science had not reckoned with, and the physicians changed the release date to December of this year, then to November, and finally to August -- Thursday, August 24, to be exact. But, before her release, Marty had to undergo numerous phases of therapy that would enable her to walk as well as she could before the accident. The pins in her knees were removed a week before her release, and therapy sessions (consisting of exercises designed to build Marty’s muscles and to aid her in bending her long-immobile knees) began. Marty was to first try sitting up on one day, standing on the next, and finally attempting to walk. “When I sat up, I felt like a baby,” says Marty. “Then, when I stood up, my feet felt tlngly, but not bad enough that I couldn’t walk on them.” And walk she did, with persons supporting her on either side. Marty again defied the laws of science by moving from a walker to a wheelchair to crutches in record time. She employs crutches at school but moves around unaided at home. But the clencher is that Marty (a cheerleader at MCA for two years) was leading cheers for the Chargers at last Friday’s pep rally and on the field during the game. What’s more, she attended the victory dance and had a few steps on the floor! (Actually, Marty returned to school August 31st in a wheelchair, using that conveyance for only the first day. “Moving around on crutches at school made me tired,” she says, “but I was determined to make it.” And she certainly did.) Not once during her ordeal did Marty think of not ever being able to walk again. “No, I never thought about that. My mother had polio when she was a child, and I figured if she could recover from that, I could recover from my accident,” reports Marty with that everpresent air of determination. Her parents are Mr. and Mrs. Charles Elliott of McDonough. “I was always correcting people in the hospital," laughs Marty. "They’d tell me I couldn’t pick my legs up and I’d do It anyway. I’m kind of bull-headed when someone tells me I can’t do something.” "Cheerleading means a lot more to me now I OPENING OCTOBER 1 st | Mcknight grain elevator SENOIA, GEORGIA I A Modem Grain Purchasing Facility H /'**■'*' ■ Jn —»—■ mm Jr.- />»»* «■. I S I On October Ist we will open one of the most modern groin processing facilities in I the West Georgia area. 'I McKnight Grain Elevator will purchase your Grain (Corn, Soybeans, Wheat or Rye) | at latest Chicago Board of Trade quotations. | Custom cleaning and drying your crops for your own use will be a specialty. | Our modern grain sampling, weighing and unloading facility will have a capacity of | 4,000 bushels per hour to insure fastest possible handling of your crop. | With over 40 years experience in serving the agri-business operations of this area, I we look forward to the opening of this facility. FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL: I Mcknight grain elevator B Senoia, Georgia 599-6738^ Marty Elliot because it’s something I’ve never thought about not being able to do,” muses 16-year-old Marty. “Right now, I just cheer and go through the arm motions, but I’ll be able to do the whole bit by November, basketball season.” Since she was not able to attend Cheerleader camp, those that did go dedicated the ribbons they won to Marty. The ribbons hang in the front lobby at MCA with an official dedication to Marty. Marty says she only experiences some pain in her knees now, but that you simply cannot get people to believe that. “The biggest problem is people. They say, ’Marty, don’t do that, you’re going to hurt yourself.’ and my friends are always helping me down the hall and carrying my books. They’re real sweet about it," says the personable young lady. “Marty’s a very outgoing kind of person with tremendous enthusiasm and this is shown in her activities,” comments Dr. Paul Davis, headmaster at McDonough Christian Academy. “I got so nervous last Friday at the pep rally where she was cheering when she should have been taking it easy that I said who’s looking after Marty. Well, Marty said, ‘Nobody needs to look after me!’ She’s got tough spirit.” Dr. Davis notes that Marty has always presented herself as a remarkable young lady since her enrollment at MCA seven years ago. “Marty was probably cheering as well as the varsity cheerleaders before she was even in high school,” he says. “Marty’s well-liked by the students and faculty members,” Dr. Davis continues. “I doubt if there are many things that could prevent her success in whatever she decides to do.” Lastly, there is an anecdote that clearly typifies Marty’s character. * While going to the hospital in an ambulance on the day of her accident, Marty was under the influence of pain-reducing drugs, and asked one of the attendants in the ambulance for some water. “They told me they didn’t have any water, yet they put a wet rag on my forehead,” Marty recalls. “I was very groggy, but I still managed to say hey, I thought you didn’t have any water in this place!” Determination.JThat describes Marty Elliott. Fayette BPW will hold festival The Fayette County Business and Professional Women’s Club will host its second Fall Festival on Saturday, Sept. 24. The festival will be held on the Fayetteville courthouse square just 20 miles from Griffin. The festival is held every year to sponsor a scholarship fund. The fund is used to help send a Fayette County girl to college for a year. It will include artists selling their crafts, homebaked goods, plants, a rummage sale and much more. Anyone wishing to participate in the festival by selling crafts or other goods should contact Louisa Melton, P. 0. Box 96, Fayetteville, Ga. 30214. Everyone in Spalding County is invited to come and share in the festivities. Mrs. Glasgow is delegate Mrs. Charles Glasgow of Griffin has been named an Easter Seal delegate. She will represent Division Seven of the Georgia Easter Seal Society at the state annual meeting on Thursday and Friday at the Century Center Hotel in Atlanta. U-Pick-Um Muscadines Small 25c per lb. Large 40c per lb. Ison’s Vineyard Hwy. 16 West 12 Miles Phone 599-6970 Miss Lillian Gloria is proud of her mother By Ellie Grossman NEW YORK (NEA - Ooo eee. that Miss Lillian’ Like a tonsillectomy, she's apt to cut you up before she coddles you with ice cream. I call her vinegar and sugar and never the twain do meet." says her daughter Gloria Carter Spann, laughing heartily if somewhat humorlessly. and vaguely resembling her brother, the President. Actually, just the other day, she says. "Jimmy said, you know. Gloria, we were looking at pictures of Mother when she was 52 and you look so much like her. And 1 said. Jimmy, if you had told me that before I wrote the book, I would have said. I don't want to LOOK like her or BE like her," she whoops. That was before she came across the box marked “letters from India' in her closet last year. Then she reread the hundreds of letters Miss Lillian wrote when she was a Peace Corps nurse near Bombay in '67- 68 when she was 67. and suddenly Miss Lillian wasn’t just her sharp tongued mother anymore. “I did not know my mother as a person until 1 edited this book (‘Away From Home: Letters to My Family’ by Lillian Carter, published by Simon and Schuster). Now I'm just so proud of her.” The letters made her laugh and cry and hurry up the road in Plains a mile to Miss Lillian’s house, “to make sure she was really back and see if she needed anything. I wanted to wait on her hand and foot.” Ten years after the fact, she had finally grasped the physical deprivation Miss Lillian suffered; the homesickness and exhaustion from overwork; the heartache passing a leprous woman on the road every day who drank from mud puddles, whom she couldn’t help and who just wouldn’t die. And Miss Lillian’s joy among the darkskinned people she cared for, who came to care themselves for the old woman with the strange white skin. Those letters should be published, she told Miss CAIN’S SPECIAL SALE! lit 25 diagonal jj | I Solid-State Detent Finely detailed f| jl _ |C *: I HSI 111 Tuners -for reli- Mediterranean | j j | gjgpp ||| ability and quick, styling to enhance ll f ; A j | — 111 accurate channel your home. Model | j Color jjj|p Videomatic Electronic Eye - I watches tor changes in room light ReQ UIQT and automatically adjusts the picture so it's never washed out $769.95 in a bright room, never glares in a dark room. On Sale 598 CAIN'S i iu a jst Solomon St. Piione 227-5575 Page 19 'i ' ~ w y. /.. y-. GLORIA Carter Spann: “I did not know my mother as a person until I edited this book.’’ Lillian. "And she said, well, you realiy have got so sweet lately from reading them and you don't get mad anymore like you used to at what I say. If they can do that for the rest of the family, go right ahead!” Everyone loves the book, Mrs. Spann says. Miss Lillian. Jimmy. Even her second hus band, Walter Spann, the soy bean and peanut farmer she’s been married to for 27 years, had a whale of a time with it and he doesn’t read much. “He told me, this thing you call a book,” she drawls, delighted, “it kept me up until two in the morning because I wanted to find out how it turns out!” And here he knew all the time. She lights another cigarette and reheats the coffee the St. Regis sent up and says her life is an open book. She’s just Gloria Spann — the publisher stuck “Carter” in there on the book cover. In fact, in Plains, she’s “Gogo”. “Jimmy called me that when — Griffin Daily News Thursday, September 15,1977 1 was born. He was two and couldn't say Gloria.” She’s just a dirt farmer's wife who gets up at seven every day, puts the three rat terriers outside and makes breakfast, washes clothes, cleans, watches some TV game shows. “And I go to the grocery store about ten miles away in my little red Datsun — vroom! — which I just love!” And she visits with Miss Lillian and late in the after noon she and Walter get on their motorcycles and zoom around the back roads, com muning with nature and feel ing part of things. “We love motorcycles and the people that ride them. We go all around the country. Motorcycle people are so friendly, it’s almost a brotherhood because other people just don’t like us,” she laughs. Then there’s Union Life, the religious brotherhood she and Walter belong to, which she doesn’t really want to discuss because she’s not a proselytizer It’s just a family of people all around the coun try. all kinds of people, she says, "who have come to the realization that we don't have to control our lives God does." Miss Lillian believes that, too. And that "you should love everyone not in spite of what they are but because of it.” And you should be just who you were meant to be and don't worry if some people don’t love you back There's her only child. William, but — "he doesn't really come into this." she snaps. William. 32. is serving five years to life for armed robbery in California, but she told all about him in a magazine once and that was enough. Still, she did say her life was an open book, and if Miss Lillian is such a source of strength, she must have helped her cope with the situa tion. “Let’s put it this way," she says coldly. "When we were adjusting to being a President's family and having these things come out. my mother's letters were a cons tant strength to me. Is that okay 9 Thank you." A moment later, she’s hap pily confiding that she tells the tour bus in Plains to stop at the big house nearby because her own “isn’t feasi ble for the sister of a President!” Then, as she explains how she lives day to day and doesn't ever look back or ahead, her eyes get soft and she says, quietly, "My son is in jail for a purpose ” Roberts. Ogletree, Jr. 629 W. Taylor St. Griffin, Ga. “LIFE insurance, too! Call roe for details.” trail raaaa j Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. State Farm Life Insurance Company Home Office Bloomington. Illinois
