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PAGE 12A
FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS Sunday, May 20,2001
The Forsyth County News
Opinion
This is a page of opinions - ours, yours and others.
Signed columns and cartoons are the opinions of the
writers and artists and may not reflect our views.
Community
proves size
of its heart
Spring has become the giv
ing season in Forsyth County.
In an area where charity
begins at home on a year
round basis, the sunny spring
time weather brings an espe
cially noticeable bloom to the
flower of generosity.
For the past several weeks,
virtually each edition of this
newspaper has included some
recognition of benevolence,
benefit golf tournaments being
among the local favorites but
also school fundraisers, church
yard sales, special exhibitions,
programs and events, all
staged to raise money for one
worthy cause or another.
The photographs of giant
checks being passed from
hand to hand for the benefit of
a particular disease, an obvi
ous social need or a worthy
cause are commonplace this
time of year.
This weekend is particular
ly noteworthy of all the many
charitable undertakings. The
annual Relay for Life event
draws hundreds of participants
Letters
County employees
deserve praise
In reply to Mr. Hungerford’s let
ter of May 13th “Abuse of Power”!
My family escaped from Fulton
County four years ago. I am awed at
the level of service provided by
Forsyth County employees in all
areas of government. My experience
has been they are unfailingly polite,
well trained, efficient and knowl
edgeable.
The Sheriff’s Department has
answered several questions for me,
giving me both answers about local
law and sound advice. I got lost,
too. My officer told me he was
going my way and when he put on
his brakes and pointed, I was to turn
there.
I’m sorry Mr. Hungerford had a
bad experience, but let’s not paint
the entire Sheriff’s office with the
same brush. It just isn’t so.
(Thanks to all the officers who
work school traffic, rain or shine,
freeze or fry. You do a great job!)
Linda L. Brown
Alpharetta
Be concerned
about kids on bikes
To parents in Forsyth County: Do
you know where your child is going
when he or she takes off on that bicy
cle? Let me tell about two I saw today.
My husband and I were heading east
on Buford Dam Road at 5:30 p m. In
the stretch between the lights at
Sanders and Knuckles roads, we came
upon two children of 9 or 10 years.
The boy was pushing his bike west up
a hill on the right side of the road. The
girl was heading west on the road furi
ously pedaling up the hill in the mid
dle of the right lane. Were these your
beloved children? What were they
doing on Buford Dam Road anyway?
We were appalled. It brought to mind
several other sightings of children on
bikes on busy roads. I’ve seen boys on
bikes on Hwy. 9 across from the
Forsyth County Board of Education
building. I’ve seen children on
Antioch and Mountain toads riding
(ikes. Busy roads are no place for
of all ages and generates hun
dreds of thousands of dollars
for the American Cancer
Society.
In addition to the money
raised, the Relay for Life
weekend serves as a reminder
of the incredible number of
people whose lives are touched
in some way by cancer, and of
the advances being made in
combating that disease.
Relay has become an
incredible national phenome
non, with thousands of people
working together to raise mil
lions of dollars each year for
cancer research.
But nowhere is the spirit of
giving more obvious than here
in Forsyth County.
Ours is a community filled
with caring people and it is
impossible not to witness
events such asthose of this
weekend without being
reminded that the elusive qual
ity of live for which so many
search is best improved by the
quality of the people around
us.
children, much less children on bikes.
In addition, none of these children I’ve
seen had helmets on.
Forsyth is no longer a rural county.
It is one of the fastest growing coun
ties in the country. Do you trust that
every driver on its busy roads is pay
ing close enough attention to the road?
Do you know where your child is
going when he or she takes off on that
bicycle?
Amy Dyer
Cumming
Parents should
teach respect
This is written in response to Mr.
Routt’s letter about lunch room pro
tocol. I am a parent of children in the
Forsyth County school district. I
started out as an everyday volunteer
in my child’s third grade classroom.
My husband and I were co-presidents
of the PTO the following year, during
in which time I was also a teacher’s
assistant, as well as a substitute
teacher. I have been a substitute
teacher for the past four years, and I
have worked other positions as well.
I love the job that I do, but have
often wondered what is happening to
the behavior of our children. Mr.
Routt, the behavior and manners of
the children as a whole have very
much deteriorated. Please don’t
judge everything you see on a one
day visit just at lunch. Go all day and
volunteer for a week, or offer to
watch all the children for a week at
lunchtime to give your child’s
teacher a break. In other words, walk
a mile in their shoes before you start
casting stones.
I would like to see your response
to food flying through the air, or a
noise level so high you can’t hear the
person next to you talk.
Our children are a reflection of
us, the parents. Let us all do a better
job in what we teach our children so
the teachers can do what they are
meant to do in the first place: teach.
Then, hopefully, we will see more
respect for the people who are trying
so hard to help us bring up produc
tive citizens for the future.
Cathy Clark
Cumming
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A statue for Ernie is long overdue
The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation
will award Atlanta Congressman John Lewis a
special Profiles in Courage award on May 21
for his participation in the civil rights struggle
in the 19605. The award coincides with the
40th anniversary of the Freedom Riders’ foray
into the Deep South to end segregation at bus
stations and other public facilities.
Lewis, a member of that intrepid band, was
beaten to within an inch of his life when he
tried to use “white only” facilities along the
route taken by the Freedom Riders.
Participating in the Freedom Rides was only
one perilous episode in the life and times of
Lewis, now 61 and in his 14th year in the
House.
When the final roll of great civil rights
leaders is called, Lewis’ name will surely be
right up there with Martin Luther King Jr.,
Andrew Young and Ralph David Abernathy.
Indeed, over the years, those men have been
recognized repeatedly for their great deeds.
But one man —a white public official
has never been given his due for what he did
during that turbulent era.
S. Ernest Vandiver, now 84 and living in
retirement in Lavonia, served as governor of
Georgia (1959-1963) during the most perilous
times this state has seen since the Civil War,
and he served with bravery and distinction.
The anniversary of the Freedom Riders
brought back memories.
When the Freedom Riders crossed the
South Carolina line into Georgia in 1961, Gov.
Vandiver ordered the State Patrol to provide
security for the group and allow them to travel
unmolested anywhere they wished.
The South at the time was afire with hatred.
But the Freedom Riders, under the watchful
eye of state troopers, passed through Georgia
without a single incident of violence. Trouble
erupted only when they crossed into Alabama.
Trying to go nuclear proves a challenge
WASHINGTON ln the days
preceding Thursday’s unveiling of
his energy program, President
George W. Bush round himself in
a peculiar situation.
His attempted revival of
nuclear-generated electricity to
combat a national power shortage
is backed by his old enemies in
the labor movement arid hampered
by bureaucrats in his own govern
ment as well as Republican allies
in Nevada.
On Monday afternoon, repre
sentatives of 22 labor unions
backers of Al Gore against George
W. Bush last year went to the
White House to be briefed on
nuclear power and other energy
policies that they like.
Seven blocks away at the
Environmental Protection Agency,
Clinton holdovers were pushing
regulations to undermine the new
president’s position.
And across the continent in
Las Vegas, Bush political allies
readied an anti-nuclear campaign.
Going nuclear isn’t easy, even
during an energy crisis. Since hys
teria was spawned in 1979 by the
Three Mile Island nuclear incident
at Harrisburg, Pa., and Jane
Fonda’s anti-nuclear film “The
China Syndrome,” 103 plants pro
viding 20 percent of the nation’s
power have operated without trou
ble. 4
Still, not one new reactor has
Bill
Shipp
In the current political and social climate,
one is tempted to shrug off Vandiver’s act as
routine and “the only right thing to do.”
At the time, providing state security for
civil rights demonstrators was about the worst
thing a white politician in the South could do if
he valued his career.
Every Southern governor, including
Vandiver, had railed against the U.S. Supreme
Court and the federal government for their
efforts to end racial segregation.
A white officeholder in the South who was
not a firebrand segregationist was out of step
with his constituency and might soon find him
self out of office.
Vandiver had run for governor on a “No!
Not one!” platform, vowing that not a single
black person would be admitted to Georgia’s
white public schools. Before the state would
allow desegregation, the public schools would
be closed, Vandiver and his friends declared.
The candidate promised to use “the State Patrol
and National Guard troops if needed to main
tain segregation.”
As campaign rhetoric, those comments
were very effective. Vandiver won 80 percent
of the popular vote and 404 county unit
votes in his 1958 bid for governor.
Test time soon came. The courts ordered
Robert
been licensed by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
Disposing of nuclear waste
thrown off by the power reactors
has been a major obstacle. A pro
posed repository at Yucca
Mountain, Nev., a former weapons
testing site 90 miles northwest of
Las Vegas, has been blocked by
environmentalists and Nevada
politicians backed by the gam
bling industry.
That was enough for President
Bill Clinton to stop Yucca
Mountain, but his successor sees
nuclear as a clean, safe alternative
power source that no longer can be
sacrificed at the altar of environ
mental correctness.
The energy report by Vice
President Dick Cheney’s task
force released Thursday calls for
both speedier NRC licensing and
an approach to Yucca Mountain on
the basis of science rather than
politics.
Based on science, the Energy
Department said the repository
probably wouldn’t release radia
tion for 10,000 years.
Nuclear support is building
more than two decades after Three
Mile Island. A Gallup Poll last
week showed 48 percent support
for using nuclear power with 44
percent opposed.
Environmentalist Sen. John
Kerry, a prospect for the 2004
Democratic presidential nomina
tion, still resists opening Yucca
Mountain but said April 27: “I
will not dismiss the potential for
technology to solve the existing
problems with nuclear power.”
A possible rival, Sen. Joe
Lieberman, said April 29 thal
nuclear power “should be part of a
balanced option.”
Nuclear got another boost two
weeks ago. A secret visitor to the
White House was Martin J.
Maddaloni, president of the
United Association of Journeymen
and Apprentices the plumbers
and pipe fitters union. Building
nuclear plants would mean jobs
for his members, and he made
clear that his was one union that
would be very grateful.
Maddaloni was among the
labor leaders not including
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
brought into the White House
Monday to meet with Cheney.
Included was Teamsters President
James P. Hoffa. Not many of his
members would get jobs from new
nuclear power plants, but he told
me: “We’re for it. America has
been scared off this idea.”*
Atlanta’s public schools desegregated. After a
series of public hearings, the Vandiver admin
istration decided on peace in their time. With a
minimum of protests, the schools were deseg
regated and kept open.
Later, much more painfully, came desegre
gation of the University of Georgia. Other
racial incidents during the Vandiver years
included sit-ins, the beginning of the Albany
Movement, the arrest of King and so on.
Acts of violence, including church-burn
ings, also occurred. But Georgia experienced
relatively little of the turmoil suffered in
Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina.
Oddly, Vandiver receives little credit or
blame today for maintaining peace and pro
moting progress in race relations. He created
an atmosphere of moderation that has helped
Georgia grow and prosper for four decades.
In his day, most of the newspaper coverage
of his administration centered on Vandiver’s
sweeping reform of the state’s mental hospitals
and his campaigns for honesty in government
and economic development.
Governors who came after Vandiver Carl
Sanders and Jimmy Carter deservedly
receive accolades for their records in bringing
black citizens into the democratic tent.
But Vandiver broke ranks with his fellow
Southern governors at a time when it took con
siderable political courage to do so.
Eugene Patterson, then editor of The
Atlanta Constitution, wondered in an editorial
near the end of Vandiver’s tenure why no statue
had been erected in the governor’s honor. Forty
years later, that question is still on the table.
Bill Shipp is editor of Bill Shipp’s Georgia,
a weekly newsletter about government and
business. He can be reached at P.O. Box
440755, Kennesaw, GA 30144 or by calling
(770} 422-2543, email: bshipp@bellsouth.net,
Web address: http.7Avww.billshipp.com.
The National Academy of
Sciences last year said there was
no scientific basis for the EPA’s
suggestion that stored nuclear
waste would poison the groundwa
ter in Nevada. But in what one
administration official called “my
worst nightmare,” the EPA’s
Clinton holdovers this week were
trying to talk Administrator
Christie Whitman into approving a
groundwater radiation standard for
Yucca Mountain. Former New
Jersey Gov. Whitman is alone,
surrounded by officials hostile to
her administration. Not coinciden
tally, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada,
the Senate Democratic Whip and a
fierce foe of Yucca Mountain, has
frozen confirmation of Bush’s
EPA nominations.
Nevada Republicans are just as
hostile. GOP Gov. Kenny Guinn is
pushing for at least $lO million
$5 million from the state govern
ment *— to fund a nationwide
media campaign against transport
ing waste to his state. Advising
Guinn in the anti-nuclear crusade
is Sig Rogich, the Las Vegas pub
licist who was a close adviser to
the elder George Bush and a finan
cial supporter of his son. Casino
owners who think that nuclear
waste even 90 miles away might
scare off gamblers are more than
disinterested observers.
Robert Novak is a nationally
syndicated colurrmist.