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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 lEYU SET IbTHAT, W 1 . J# mkyiweto f fl take care or am F WARMINGFIRST. U 'tsfe / 431 J 3 S ' —Xa/ r ~ /a ■ • 1 I' 1 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.