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News 2,3,5,9
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Opinion 4
Around the County 6
Calendar 8
Sheriff's Report 10
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Sports 11-12
Inside
Catcher Abby Jones is
the only senior on this
year's OCHS softball
team, but she's sur
rounded by experience
on the girls basketball
team.
... Page 12
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The Oglethorpe Echo
Volume 149, Number 41
July 13, 2023 ■ Oglethorpe County, Georgia
$1
LANDEN TODD/THE OGLETHORPE ECHO
Paul Thiel, who graduated from Oglethorpe County High School, steps into the role of director of operations for the school system.
Thiel moves
Longtime school
# - employee is first
into new role director of operations
Sheriff is
investigating
antisemitic
notes in bags
By Julianne Akers
The Oglethorpe Echo
Lexington’s Bob Henkel was on his
morning walk where Old Stephens Road
becomes Gilmer Street on July 4, when
he saw the first bag.
“Then, I turned left onto Boggs
Street, and I saw another one there.
And then as I wandered up and down
Church Street, I saw them over there as
well,” he said.
Small bags filled with graphics resem
bling antisemitic symbols and links to
websites related to white supremacy have
been scattered throughout driveways and
yards in Oglethorpe County this month.
The bags contain paper printed with
phrases like “It’s okay to be white,” and
were filled with wood pellets, which
Oglethorpe County Sheriff David Gabri
el said he thinks were used to weigh them
down.
The other side of the note includes the
name of a group: Aryan Freedom Net
work, a neo-Nazi group based in Texas,
and a website URL.
It was thought the baggies were filled
with rat poison, but the contents proved
to be wood pellets. Gabriel added that lit
tering is the only charge his office would
be able to give the disseminators of the
bags.
“It’s just the topic of it. It’s concern
ing,” he said. “We want to find out what’s
See ANTISEMITIC, Page 2
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Bags filled with hate messages and
weighed down by wood pellets have
been found in driveways around Lexing
ton and other parts of the county.
By McCain Bracewell
The Oglethorpe Echo
Paul Thiel describes himself as a technol
ogy specialist, farmer and philosopher.
He works for Oglethorpe County Schools
in the day, tends to his family’s cattle on
TLC Ranch in Colbert in the afternoons and
enjoys studying new technologies, educa
tional research, philosophy and trends in the
cattle industry in his freetime.
“And then I pretty much go to bed and I
wake up the next day,” he said.
Thiel’s mother, Corrine Thiel, owns the
ranch. They moved there in 1991 from Mi
ami Beach.
“People always ask me what (TLC)
stands for, but it all depends on the time
of day,” Thiel said. “It could be tough luck
charlie or tender love and care or Thiels
Limousin Cattle.”
Thiel, who attended Oglethorpe County
High School and has worked for Oglethorpe
County Schools since 2004, is moving into a
new role as the director of operations for the
Inside
Zachary Holtzclaw is Oglethorpe
County School System's new direc
tor of transportation.
... Page 2
school system.
He will oversee the maintenance, tech
nology, custodial, transportation and finance
departments within the school system as the
director of operations. Thiel will report di
rectly to Superintendent Beverley Levine.
“That’s the joke, right? Somebody will
manage special education and someone will
manage instruction and I’m going to man
age everything else,” Thiel said. “We’ll see
how that goes.”
He earned his undergraduate degree in
early childhood education and a master’s
degree in instructional technology from
the University of Georgia. He said he was
among one of the first technology special
ists in 1998.
He taught in Athens-Clarke County for
six years before moving to Oglethorpe
County in 2004. Thiel was the technology
coordinator after the previous coordinator
retired last April.
The idea for the new position started af
ter the central office flooded last December.
Thiel said Levine realized she didn’t have a
point person to handle crises like that. There
was no one to address communication be
tween the insurance company, the mainte
nance crew and the custodial crew.
The board approved the new position,
but Levine had full charge over who she
appointed. The board was informed Thiel
would take the position in the May 23 per
sonnel report.
Thiel said Levine offered him the posi
tion, but he turned it down at first. There
were several people who applied and inter
viewed for the position, but those applicants
See THIEL, Page 2
Broadband installation slowly expanding
By Julianne Akers
The Oglethorpe Echo
Broadband internet installation in
Oglethorpe County — deriving from the
$7.9 million in funds Spectrum received in
January — is in the “very early stages of
engineering,” said Oglethorpe County Dis
trict 4 Commissioner Will Brown, who is
chair of the Economic Development Au
thority.
Spectrum received the funds — in part
nership with the county — from Georgia’s
Capital Projects Fund Grant Program to
provide broadband internet to 2,972 loca
tions in Oglethorpe County, 55% of which
is without broadband.
“If anybody sees a Charter/Spectrum
vehicle around looking at telephone poles
and whatnot, they’re trying to map out ev
erything, determine all the costs, figure out
how they’re gonna bring the wire to every
body’s house...,” Brown said.
He said Spectrum hasn’t given the coun
ty a specific date when the project will be
complete, but he expects that it will be
near the deadline of Dec. 31, 2026.
“They're not sure which other coun
ty they're gonna start on, or what the plan
exactly is. They've got other projects in
the county that were awarded to them via
RDOF (Rural Digital Opportunity Fund),”
Brown said. “That’s a FCC program. So
they have to weed some of those in there,
too.”
Brown reminds residents that commu
nities across Georgia received funds from
this grant, meaning it might take a while
for installation to begin.
“It's not just Oglethorpe, it's the whole
state that got a lot of funding. So they're
stretched pretty thin, I'm sure,” he said.
“We told them (Spectrum) that we'll do
whatever we can to speed up the process
and not hesitate to reach out to the county.
We'll do what we can.”
Coverage areas
He said the locations were determined
by the Georgia Technology Authority, and
“all the bidders for that grant had to bid
based on the fact that they would supply to
every single one of those locations.”
“The majority of this will cover the
south and west sides of the county,” Brown
said. “So that top northeast quadrant of
the county is more sparse, and won't be as
covered in this particular grant.”
Future expansion
Residents might have also seen Ki
netic by Windstream trucks around the
See BROADBAND, Page 5
DINK NESMITH/THE OGLETHORPE ECHO
Arthur Burt works in a Kinetic by Wind-
stream truck in Oglethorpe County earlier
this month. Kinetic workers are installing
optical fiber in Crawford and Lexington.
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