Newspaper Page Text
Forsyth County News- Sunday, March 28,1999
Forsyth Life
Bee a
charmer -
keep your
honey
- Laura jKJ|&
Lavezzo
Wouldn’t it be great if people were
more like insects? I don’t mean the
biting, stinging or icky aspects of
bugs - I’m talking about the amaz
ing evolution the insect world has
undergone, creating societies of ants,
bees and wasps that woik like well
oiled machinery.
Think about it. One ant speeding
across a sidewalk may look pathetic,
but she has hundreds of thousands of
friends and relations depending on
her somewhere to do her little job.
It’s the same with bees. The next
time you see an inebriated-looking
bee hovering drowsily over a flower
- as if he had a few too many sips of
nectar- watch more carefully. It may
be a honeybee. And where there’s a
honey bee, there’s honey!
According to "The Biology of the
Honey Bee,” by Mark L. Winston
and the Harvard University Press,'
“honeybees probably originated in
tropical Africa and spread from
South Africa to Northern Europe and
West into India and China. They!
were brought to the Americas with
the first colonists and are now dis
tributed world-wide.” The earliest
fossil evidence for honeybees dates'
to about 40 million years ago. So,
they’ve had plenty of time to perfect
their incredible system of social
classes, communicative “dances”
and other behaviors which allow'
them to live so efficiently.
One of the most fascinating courses
-I took in college was Beekeeping
101. On campus, the apiary was
located just outside the football stadi
um - little did anyone know there
were hundreds of thousands of bees
within only several feet of the stands.
That many bees in one spot sounds:
like a horror film to some folks
(especially those who have allergies).
But honey bees are fairly docile in
the most common species.
As a honeybee returns to the hive,
which it shares with about 20,000
ether friends, it tends to “dance,” or
make signals to the other bees about
where it’s been collecting pollen and
why. The brightest flowers and the
• biggest lumps of pollen have won
the bee’s attentions, and part of the
social circle in the bee organization
includes sharing this information.
“The orientation of the bee’s move
ments and the frequency of her
vibrations indicate the direction and
distance of the flowers from the hive.
Thus other bees, observing her
dance, will know where to find this
wonderful source of food.”
They wear their emotions in their
dance, so to speak.
h Whether you’re the queen, a drone
or a worker bee, you would know
where you fall in the system. Your
responsibilities are outlined for you,
and your future laid out Os course,
there are some downsides to being i
bee. There’s only one queen - ever.
And if you ever get any crazy ideas,
the queen controls you with a blast
of that powerful pheromone of hers
a chemical she secretes to keep the
drones at bay. So there’s not a whole
lot of freedom. But imagine if people
could communicate as well as they
do. World leaders would get through;
peace talks much quicker, with better
results and less protocol. Marriages
could be saved because all that open)
dialogue that’s missing from die rela-j
tionship would be taken care of.
Now, I don’t watt ants living in my
sugar bowl, and my younger brother
has a dangerous altetgy to bees, but
in the great scheme of things, the
role such tiny creatures play is.
impressive.
; Believe it or not, Forsyth County
has its own beekeeping group. The
Forsyth County Beekeepers periodi
cally hold hands-on classes. For
more information, call Jan Payne,
president of the association, at (770)
781-2959.
-Y • 1
Photo/Cheryl Vaughn
Lifelong volunteer Ann Crow has earned the Jean Harris Award,
a national Rotary Club distinction.
Corbett Thigpen: The passing of a good
By Cheryl Vaughn
Features Writer
It is doubtfill that Dr. Corbett Thigpen is sit
ting around strumming a harp now that his days
on earth have ended. The retired Augusta
physician enjoyed his days full speed ahead,
infusing more life into his 80 years than others
could have squeezed from an entire family tree.
Last weekend, he moved on to his next adven
ture.
Psychiatrist, hypnotist, magician, teacher,
author, celebrity - and one of the few personal
friends of ultra-private Atlanta author Margaret
Mitchell, Thigpen is probably entertaining the
saints with his favorite quarter and thimble
trick, baffling a new throng of delighted
onlookers.
It had been many years
since his stomping
grounds were Atlanta,
back in the days when cin
ema and its celebrities
inspired national frenzy.
As a young medical intern
at Georgia Baptist
Hospital, he first met
“Gone With The Wind” author Mitchell when
she was in for some diagnostic work, and they
soon became friends.
“My job was to give all IVs during the lunch
hours and she liked the way I did it, so she
requested me each time she needed one, three
times a day, even if they had to call me at home,
off-duty,” recalled Thigpen during an interview
with this reporter last year.
“One day, her husband, John Marsh, was
there with her and after we had talked awhile,
she asked him, ‘You approve?’ He said yes and
so that meant I was accepted as one of their
friends. She was very particular about their
friendships.”
Thigpen was old, and getting around was not
nearly so easy as it once had been, but the men
tion of Mitchell inspired him. Moving slowly
from roan to room, he sifted through the bodes
lining his walls, selecting a boxed double-vol
ume set With a touch approaching reverence,
he lifted the top volume carefully, turning to the
book’s inside cover.
“She had stopped autographing editions by
the time she gave this to me,” he said with
regret “She was very funny about that kind of
thing. She had quit and wouldn’t make an
exception, even forme.”
Inside the cover is printed: “This, the first
two-volume edition of ‘Gone With The Wind,'
issued Dec. 1, 1939, in appreciation of
Maigaret Mitchell’s magnificent work in com
memorating the life and times of the Old South,
is limited to 1,000 copies, of which this is Copy
No. 797.”
Thigpen shrugged and remarked, “She had
two rales: if I ever write you a note or letter,
you destroy it and not keep it She even signed
her personal letters ‘MMM’ to avoid auto
graphing. She said it was because she had prob
lems with her arm, which she carried around on
a pillow.
“But I always thought she couldn’t write
because, as she said, ‘l’ve written the book sec
ond only to the Holy Bible, so why should I
write again?"’
Unfolding another finger, he continued,
chuckling. “Her second rale was never, ever ask
about “Gone With The Wind.’l never brought it
■ t
up, but I guarantee if you were around her long,
she’d bring it up.”
Recounting some of her reflections about the
movie, he smiled. “She thought Mammy
; (Academy Award winner Hattie McDaniel)
i was the best actress in ‘Gone With The Wind’
, and she thought the black man who rescued
i Scarlett from the white trash was superb,” he
said. “She thought that Prissy represented accu
rately the negative aspect of the black race but
praised her acting highly.”
, “At the premiere, John sat next to Vivian and
I she sat next to Clark Gable,” he added,
t “Margaret said she had pictured Scarlett as
! being more robust than Vivian Leigh. Os
course, Margaret was a little bitty thing herself,
I a little chubby, but she had more charm and
charisma than anyone I’d
(He was] one of
the few personal
friends of author
i Margaret Mitchell.
i ago, explaining, “Margaret didn’t like pho
tographs taken of her, but she consented to this
one with our 3-month-old son, Wayne, because
i she had agreed to be his godmother. A few
months after that, a taxi pulled out and killed
her.” j
Though Thigpen achieved his own worldwide
renown penning a book with his partner, Dr.
Hervey Cleckley, it was after Mitchell’s death.
“She died several years before ‘Three Faces
, of Eve’ was even thought of,” he said. “So she
I never got to read it"
The book detailed the therapy and subsequent
• diagnosis of Eve Black, a patient who exhibited
signs of multiple personalities. Videotaped
t copies of an original therapy session with Black
display a dramatic
’ transition during hyp
i nosis as she emerges;
from one somber per
sonality to another:
more flamboyant, the
trail of tears still fresh
on her cheeks. Clearly
surprised to find her
face wet, the alter per
sonality laughs, oblivi
ous to the cause of the
tears.
It is the same taped
session reviewed by
actress Joanne
Woodward as she pre
pared for her portrayal
of the patient in the
I 1957 movie based on
the book. Woodward
1 received an Oscar for
best actress, making it;
only the second'
i Academy award-win
ning movie in history
to premiere in Georgia - i
The Wind” is the other.
Catapulted to international acclaim after the
movie’s success, Thigpen was nonchalant
about the accolades and seemed just as excited
to still be able to turn a magic trick or two.
“I grew up in Macon during the Depression
A lifelong volunteer
Crow wins Jean Harris Award?
By Cheryl Vaughn
Features Writer
Ann Crow of Cumming loves
puzzles. For her, that fancy
applies to most things in life.
Business. Relationships.
Gardening. Volunteering. Her
ability to tackle and resolve those
challenges well has garnered her
one of the national Rotary
Club’s highest honors, the Jean
Harris Award. She is delighted.
“For me, I know a lot of the
members of the Rotary Club,
people who’ve made a difference
in this community,” she says.
“For them to honor me makes
me very, very proud.”
She smiles, adding, “There is a
second reason which makes this
very important to me. My father
has been a Rotarian for a long,
long time and he was recognized
in Athens for a similar award, so
I’m proud that I would be hon
ored for the same thing as him.”
The Jean Harris award was cre
ated by the Rotary Club
International to honor women
who are not members of a rotary
club but have made significant
contributions for women in their
community. Local Rotary offi-
ever met. She also had a
sharp tongue, and if she got
mad at you, she’d cuss you
out in no time flat She was
a very interesting person,
full of life, and she had lots
of tales to tell.”
Thigpen proffered a photo
graph his first wife took long
ironically, ‘Gone With
cials credit Crow’s leadership in
making their recipient choice
; easy this year.
“Ann is certainly the type
woman that Rotary had in mind
when this award was originated,”
says Bill Thornton, chairman of
the Jean Harris Award commit
tee.
A lot of people
play golf or tennis
- we volunteer.
99
; Crow’s parents, she readily sug
gests, were the foundation behind
her own sense of community and
I civic involvement.
i “A lot of people play golf or
tennis - we volunteer,” she says
of her own family. “Roger and I
have always been into communi-
> ty things. I was one of seven chil
i dren and my parents taught me to
give back to the community. My
great-grandfather settled in
Midtown and my grandfather was
at one time the state superinten-
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and it was hard for everybody, so I learned
magic," he recalled. “Times were harder for
some than others -1 can remember tossing an
apple core on the playground and a little gid
chased it and ate it, even the seeds.”
His early distaste for school formed during
those tough times. “Everybody was trying to
Internet makes the “
world seem smaller
RAGE 2B rn
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dent of schools, so I grew up in<\
home where several
were active in everything.”
It pointed her toward a
ing future of civic responsibility.*
and volunteering.
“When my husband, Rogejv
came to Cumming as president
the Bank of Cumming, no#»
Nationsßank, it was the
move we ever made,” she say*.*.
“We’ve been here 15 years
that was back when there
probably 45,000 residents in tn(J»
whole county. You could go in®>*
Parsons or the grocery store
know everyone. It was the frien&S
liest place to live.”
That positive attitude in
community, she says,
into a group of individuals
were always willing to pitch in pJS
improve their county.
“Part of the fun of being a vo£%
unteer is when you can ge£»
together with a lot of differed*
personalities and use
skills to make something con»*
together,” she explains. “LiKr*
putting pieces of a puzzle togetp\»
er.” -V
y.
See CROW, Page
Photo/Cheryl Vaugtoji
N
Cv
Above, “The Thres
Faces of Eve” auths
Corbett Thigpen will b£
remembered for marfy
things, including his;
friendship with felloMK
Georgia author Margarpt
Mitchell. Left,
with Thigpen and hftr
then 3-1/2-month-ofcl
child, Wayne.
I
get something to eat,” he said. “I just doMr
think anybody bothered to be interested in w
at school and so I hated grammar and hifo*'
school.”
A traveling magician came to town
See THIGPEN, Page &
4 w