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Man dies after vehicle strikes fire taylor from 1A
By Nancy Smallwood
Associate Editor
A 71-year-old man was
killed when the pickup truck
he was driving hit the rear of a
Forsyth County fire engine on
Ga. 400 Sunday.
Jerry Farmer was pro¬
nounced dead at the scene. He
was alone in the vehicle and
had to be extricated.
No firefighters were
injured in the accident,
according to Forsyth County
Fire Chief Danny Bowman.
Dahlonega’s Camp Merrill trains Army
Rangers between assignments overseas
By Pearce Adams
FCN Regional Staff
DAHLONEGA — All that
was needed was a pat on the
head recently for U.S. Army
Rangers to get their feet
on the ground and their minds
on the Middle East.
Around 9 a.m. in a rural
field at the Hall-Lumpkin
county line, almost 100 mem¬
bers of the 5th Ranger
Training Battalion at
Dahlonega’s Camp Frank D.
Merrill took turns riding six at
a time to 1,500 feet above the
ground and parachuting from
a Black Hawk helicopter.
The recent jump, which is
repeated quarterly, allows
members of Merrill’s training
staff to maintain their jump pro¬
ficiency, said Maj. John Lange,
Merrill’s executive officer.
“Unnerving,” said Michelle
Jackson of Cumming as she
stood in a comer of the field,
shaded her eyes and watched
her husband, Sgt. 1st Class Carl
Jackson, jump. It was her first
time seeing him in action.
Seconds before she saw
him, a crew member patted him
on the head. Groups of three sat
in open doors. Their backs to
each other, they rested their
legs on the landing skids.
As the helicopter
approached the field, crew
members used the hand signal
to set the soldiers into motion.
One by one, they disappeared
over the edge and away from
view.
Capt. Kevin Jenrette,
Merrill's air operations officer,
said the jumpers try to focus on
a target while falling from a
helicopter moving at 85 mph. A
line from each parachute
attached to the helicopter’s
frame is used to pull each para¬
chute from its backpack.
The parachute opens six
seconds after the jump, Jenrette
said.
Below, Sgt. Daniel Brown,
22, of Kansas, was busy check¬
ing his rigging that included a
MC1-1 Delta parachute on his
back and an emergency chute
next to his chest.
“I hope everything stays
together and doesn’t fail,” he
said. “I never have had to use
my reserve.”
For more than two hours,
the Rangers floated in groups
of three to the field on Pony
Lake Road.
Brown already knew what
they were experiencing.
“It’s a great rush,” he said.
“You fee) like you are flying for
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“The firefighters that were
on the scene will be emotion¬
ally scarred,” said Bowman.
Just after 10 a.m. firefight¬
ers were sent to the scene of
an incident in which a vehicle
had run off the highway into
some woods between the
Hwy. 141 and McFarland
Road exits on the northbound
side of Ga. 400, according to a
Georgia State Patrol spokes¬
person.
Before the collision, the
fire engine was parked in the
a second. Then you float to
earth.”
Nearby, Staff Sgt. Tony
Barnes, 28, of North Carolina
said jumping from a helicopter
is more fun that dropping out of
a fixed-wing airplane. For him,
he said the pre-jump routine is
the same.
“I pray every time,” he said.
Sgt. 1st Class Chris Flock,
34, of Wisconsin was among
the Rangers practicing, though
he has had experience para¬
chuting with more than 100
pounds of equipment into com¬
bat from less than 1,000 feet.
His first jump came in Panama
more than a decade ago, then
another on March 24, 2003, in
Iraq, he said.
Both jumps were at night.
The planes were taking fire
from the ground, he said.
“In Iraq, I went with what I
needed for eight days and
enough ammunition for 24
hours,” Flock said.
Lange, a veteran of more
than 50 jumps, said he was
among 1,000 Rangers parachut¬
ing from 10 aircraft into Iraq on
March 26, 2003. “The jump
was not much different from
how we train,” he said.
Lt. Col. Doug Flohr, battal¬
ion commander at Merrill and
a veteran of three tours in
Afghanistan since Sept. 11,
2001, said the practice jump
keeps the soldiers prepared.
Army Rangers parachute during recent drills at Camp
Frank D. Merrill in Dahlonega.
“Our people are anxious to
get back (to combat),” he said.
“They want to support their fel¬
low soldiers.”
Pearce Adams is a staff
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grassy area of the emergency
median that separates the
expressway, according to
Bowman.
It was stopped on the
southbound side of the high¬
way and was hit from behind
by the Ford F-150 pickup
truck, Bowman said.
The accident prompted
officials with the Georgia
State Patrol to close the south¬
bound lane of Ga. 400 for
almost four hours from 10:37
a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
\V
t
■
Staff
writer for The Times in
Gainesville.
SPECIAL HOT ICE
CANDIDATE DEEATE
United States Senate Candidates
Al Bartell
Herman Gain
Mac Collins
Johnny Isakson
Forsyth County SheriH Candidates
Gary Beebe
Ted Paxton
TH0RSDAY, MAY 6
6:00 PM
Cumming City Hall
Sponsored by
The Forsyth Couiity Republican Party
The Forsyth County Nows
This meeting is part of a continuing series of Town
Hall Meetings sponsored by the Forsyth County
Yote attend Forsyth Republican and County encouraged Party News. with the ALL to participate, cooperation citizens are regardless of invited the to of
JULY ■ 20 political affiliation. For more information, contact
J,m Harrell «t (770) 887-2927.
possible.”
The commissioner said
board members need to be
compensated.
“It’s tough to be in full
time employment and also be
a commissioner,” he said,
adding it is fortunate
Chairman Jack Conway and
Commissioner Charlie
Laughinghouse — the board’s
two newest members who
were elected in 2002 — are
retired,
Taylor also mentioned con
cems about a questionnaire the
Forsyth County Republican
Party attached to qualifying
documents last week, saying
he wasn’t sure if it was legal.
“At one time, I was asked,
when I ran for school board,
what were my thoughts and
opinions on the abortion
issue,” said Taylor. “I thought,
‘Well what does that have to
do with opinions on the school
system?
He praised candidates who
qualified for taking a stand
against the questionnaire
which included several contro
versial questions.
Brian Tam, who is running
for the south Forsyth district
seat, is one of those who
refused to fill out the form.
Tam said last week that,
while he is willing to answer
questions posed to him in
debates, he took issue with the
form that included questions
such as ranking from most
important to least important
issues such as roads, taxes,
greenspace and homeland
security.
He said he couldn’t rank
any of those as “least impor¬
tant.”
Party Chairman Jim Harrell
said the form was to help the
party determine where candi¬
dates stood on particular
issues.
During his announcement,
Taylor questioned where poli¬
tics in Forsyth County are
headed.
“There’s been a lot of
changes,” he said, adding it
may be “getting to be a little
bit out of hand.”
No charges have been
filed.
The collision is under
investigation by the Georgia
State Patrol Special Collision
Reconstruction Investigation
Team.
. . . . still
ut orities are trying
to determine whether the fire
engine from station 2 can be
repaired.
“It sustained extensive
damage and it is questionable
whether or not the apparatus is
repairable,” said Bowman.
FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS - 5,2004
Also during the board’s
meeting, comments were
made on a couple of stories
and opinions in the Sunday
edition of the Forsyth County
News,
Commissioner Marcie
Kreager, whose district en
compasses the northern por
tion of the county, said she
wanted to clarify her decision
not to seek re-election.
“The real reason I chose
not to run for office is ... I
believe that people should
serve their term and move on
and let others serve theirs,”
Kreager said,
Members of the public,
responding to a newspaper
editorial, asked the board to
keep the county’s cable pro
gramming.
They said the programming
has helped get information to
residents,
Two of the three who com¬
mented on the issue are
involved with the productions,
In other business at the
meeting, the board:
• Postponed approval of a
contract with Adelphia to con
tinue broadcasting programs,
• Postponed approval of
signing a limited membership
agreement with Atlanta Re
gional Commission,
• Rejected a proposal from
a consultant company to help
draft a new Planned Unit
Development chapter for the
county development code,
Gumming
First
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Church
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N IfU " JR.
y O SENfOR MINISTER
770 Canton Hwy
Cumming, GA
For more
information, call
■ (7701 887-2900
PAGE 3A