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Page 4B - The Lee County Ledger, Thursday, October 4,2001 COUNTY INVITATION TO BID PARTIAL RENOVATION OF THE HISTORIC LEE COUNTY COURTHOUSE The Lee County Board of Commissioners is accepting sealed written bids from profes sional and qualified contractors to par tially renovate the historic lee County Courthouse in accordance with the con struction plans and specifications pre pared by Stantec Architecture Inc. This partial renovation project generally con sists of the following: Building a ramp on the north side of the building for handicap accessibility. Converting the existing public restrooms on the first floor into handicap acces sible. Building new public handicap acces sible restrooms in the Magistrate Court area. Repointing the exterior bricks to avoid water penetration. Reglazing all windows. Repainting the entire interior and exterior paintable surfaces. Removing the entire old jail area and constructing anew first floor courtroom in its place. Upgrading the building to current life/ safety and fire codes. Construction plans and specifications are available at the lee County Clerk's Office, 104 leslie Highway, leesburg, Georgia 31 763 or by calling (229) 759-6000 Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. for a deposit of $75.00 per set. The deposit is fully refundable fo each responsive bidder if returned in good condition. In addition, the plans and specifications for fhis project are also available in the Dodge Room located at 1216 Dawson Road in Albany (436-2458). If you choose fo submit a written bid on this project, your sealed bid must be marked, "Sealed Bid - Courthouse Renova tions" and delivered to the lee County Clerk's Office at 104 leslie Highway, leesburg, Georgia 31 763 no later than 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 9, 2001. All bids will be opened during a public bid open ing at 4:05 p.m. on Tuesday, October 9, 2001 in the County Clerk's Office. You are invited to attend this bid opening. No bids shall be withdrawn for a period of 60 days offer the bid opening. There will be a pre-bid conference held on Tuesday, September 25, 2001 at 2:00 p.m. in the second floor courtroom of the Lee County Courthouse. Attendance at this conference is MANDATORY for any General Contractor intending to bid on this project. Other interested parties may attend if they so desire. The Owner and Architect will be present to answer ques tions that the bidders may have regarding the contract documents, plans, and specifications. Bids will not be accepted from those General Contractors not repre sented at the pre-bid conference. Each bidder must include in their sealed bid, a bid security in the amount of 5% of fhe bid amount payable to the lee County Board of Commissioners from a company authorized to do business in the state of Georgia. In addition, the success ful bidder must submit a 100% perfor mance bond and 100% payment bond. The Board of Commissioners will consider awarding the bid to the lowest responsible bidder during the commission meeting of Monday, October 15,2001 beginning at 6:00 p.m. The successful bidder will have until March 31, 2002 to complete this project or face $100 per calendar day in liquidated damages. The terms and time of payment will be monthly. The Lee County Board of Commissioners reserves the right to accept or reject any or all bids received and/or disregard informalities or irregularities in the bids received. 9/13, 9/20, 9/27, and 10/4 The Lee County Ledger Your Source of Local News Bereaved Partners Left With Hardest Question: Who Am I Now? By Myra Christopher (KRT) You think that their dying is the worst thing that could happen. Then they stay dead. “Distressed Haiku,” written by Donald Hall shortly after the death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon. No one who knew Bonnie and Bud Story was surprised when, after Bud was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1992, Bonnie quit teaching and dropped everything to devote all of her energy to her husband's care. After all, she had taken care of Bud most of her life. Their grandfathers had gone to business school together and had been friendly competitors in the small town of Charleston, Mo. Their mothers had been pregnant at the same time and had joked about which of them would be born first. Bonnie won, by four days. They napped in the same crib. Growing up. they played together and were in the same classes. They dated off and on in high school and married before they finished college, settling in Charleston and raising crops and four children. For the 18 months that Bud fought for his life, Bonnie did what everyone knew she would. Whether at home, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., or at an alternative cancer treatment clinic in Mexico, she knew exactly how to be Mrs. Albert Loebe Story Jr. She learned quickly how to be a caregiver and an advocate for her hus band. After Bud died, she didn’t take to her next role quite so quickly. “For a whole year all I wanted to do was sleep and stare at the television.” Bonnie said. “I don’t even like television. I was numb. I just didn’t know what to do. “I was so busy searching for something — what to do, where to go. For the first time in my life I felt completely alone and without direction — rudder less.” Members of their close-knit community were stunned when Bonnie not only didn’t go back to teaching after Bud died, but picked up and moved from Charleston. First she moved to Cape Girardeau, Mo., 40 miles away, and then to Martha’s Vineyard to work in a seaside gift shop. “It was an attempt to leave my hurt behind,” she said. It turned out that when she lost Bud, Bonnie had lost many of her friends, too. Couples they had been friends with for years stopped calling, she said. She thought people wanted to avoid her. “It was like my pain was too much for them,” she said, “or that maybe it was contagious.” In her new surroundings. Bonnie found new friends — “divorcees and other women I would never have been friends with before.” Bonnie’s experience isn’t out of the ordinary for the 1 million Americans who are widowed each year — and those numbers are growing fast, fueled by the ubiquitous Baby Boomers. The Social Security Administration projects that by 2010, nearly 1,050,000 Americans will lose spouses each year, and by 2030 that number is expected to grow to more than 1.5 million. And these figures don’t factor in deaths of partners in committed non-traditional relationships. Those left behind face redefining their lives to deal in new ways with family and friends, as well as unresolved feelings and regrets left over from marriage, according to Dr. Morton Lieberman, director of the Aging and Mental Health Program at the University of California at San Francisco, in his book. “Doors Close, Doors Open: Widows, Grieving and Growing.” A brochure provided by AARP’s Grief and Loss Program advises, “As time progresses, you will feel less intense pain, but you will not forget. You will never be your old self again (you have had a major life change), but you can be a different self who is ‘okay.'” Statistically, the job of rebuilding is left to wives. Sixty-nine percent of people left behind when a spouse dies are women. And the numbers play havoc with the image of the City of Smithville City of Smithville is accepting applications for full time police officer. Must be P.O.S.T. certified. Contact Chief Causey at 846-2101 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ATTENTION LEE COUNTY CITIZENS The gate across the road that used to go to Burke’s Ferry has been removed by temporary restraining order. This road has been abandoned by the county for almost 40 years. This is known by the people who live in the area. Anyone that is concerned about the treatment of Lee County citizens and taxpayers in this situation should contact their commissioner and voice their opin ion. What is happening to the landowner in this situation can and may happen to you!!! Wake up Lee County and know the truth. Paid for by Lee County citizens who know that this has not been handled fairly by our local government. frail, elderly widow. According to the National Vital Statistics Report, there are currently 500,000 widows under the age of 45 in the United States, many with children, leading to more complex issues. Shellie Gill is one of them. Shellie was only 36 when her husband, Joe, died suddenly of a rare strep infection in Febru ary, leaving behind their daughter, Madeline, 7, and 3- year-old son, Stephen. A few weeks after Joe's death, Shellie described their children as “the only bright spot... the reason I make myself get up in the morning; the reason I make myself eat and dress and bathe. It’s good that I have them. “We balanced each other,” Shellie said. “Joe brought something to the kids that I don’t think I can. I am the serious one — ‘brush your teeth, drink your milk’; he brought them laughter and fun. He made us a family. “I know how to turn off the water and light the pilot light, but I don’t know how to comfort Maddie when she says, ‘My Daddy will never see me in braces.' Or what to say to Stephen when he cries at night and says, ‘But my Daddy wants to come home.’” At night when the children go to sleep, Shellie faces her own grief. She desperately misses the way “Joe felt — his eyebrows and his hands.” A few weeks after Joe’s death. Shellie found a tape recording of Joe and Stephen singing “Tomorrow” from the musical “Annie.” “I just lost it,” she said. Because Joe's death is so recent, Shellie is just beginning to reach out for help. “I realize I need help and want all of it I can get,” she said, so she is seeing a professional counselor and takes the kids to Solace House, a grief and bereavement program for children and their families in Kansas City, Mo. Older widows with little education or financial means sometimes surprise themselves and everyone around them by bucking the odds and starting over. Six years ago, when Teresa Serda lost her husband of 42 years, their 16 children were grown, and she was a long way from Mexico, where she had grown up “very, very poor.” When they married, he was widowed and had six children. She was only 21. Teresa knew that she would have to support herself when her husband died and that it would not be easy. She had no formal education and couldn't drive or read. So her dying husband was surprised when she told him she planned to get a job, and didn't want “to cook or to clean.” It was a bold idea for a woman who had never gone to the grocery store without her husband. But within a year she was true to her word. Teresa now works at a community center that provides social services to Spanish-speaking people. She lives alone with her dog, Maggie, and her parakeet, Charlie. “I started working and working every day. And my son can't believe it that I work. He said, ‘Oh, Mom, why do you work?’ I use him for my ride and sometimes I don’t have a ride and I pay a cab. ... If I am not sick, I’m here every day ... and. you know, my life gets better and better and better.” One of her daughters recently gave her the highest praise: “I think Dad is proud of you.” Men who are widowed face a different set of stresses, proven by their death rate, which is three times higher than that for women in the same circum stances, according to the AARR Typically, men have two things working against healing: They don’t expect to live longer than their wives, and their socialization and training tell them that they should be strong and silent. Often they have lost the only person in the world to whom they are comfortable confiding their feelings at a time when it is critically important to have someone to talk to. When Michael Goshorn’s wife was diagnosed with cancer in late 1992, the couple found plenty of information online about her disease and support groups. So, when she died in January 1993, he turned to the Web again, but this time he didn't find what he needed — information that addressed specific issues about widow hood for men. When he couldn't find the resources he needed, he created them in the form of www.WidowNet.org, a compre hensive site that provides practical information and self- help. The site includes a message board and sections with titles like “Dumb Remarks and Stupid Questions” and “Getting Through the Holi days,” as well as links to help men grapple with their new identities. Building a new life or finding new meaning sometimes requires just taking another approach to your “old” life. After Bonnie Story moved from Charleston, she got help from a professional counselor who helped her deal with intense feelings of anger, a feeling many widows say takes control of their lives. “I wasn’t angry at God, and I certainly wasn’t angry at Bud,” she said. “I was just angry — angry at everyone and about everything.” The counselor helped her to realize that her feelings “weren't weird, that I wasn’t going crazy.” Counseling and reading gave Bonnie some ideas about how to find her new self: Bonnie without Bud. Bonnie began to realize that “you have to find some major reason you are still here.” She found that reason in the life she had lived before Bud died. Two years ago, Bonnie moved back to Charleston and started teaching again. “To impact the lives of thirteen or fourteen kids each year — that's important enough.” Recently, she had a two-hour lunch with a friend from whom she had felt estranged since Bud died. She now believes they will build a new friendship. “I know that I will never get over my loss,” Bonnie said. “But I've found ease in my heart and freedom in my life.” Myra Christopher is president and chief executive officer of Midwest Bioethics Center in Kansas City, Mo. For more resources and contacts on end-of-life issues, go to www.findingourway.net LCMS Teacher Feature Leslie Reese is a seventh and eighth grade teacher at Lee County Middle School. She has three years of teaching experi ence, all of which has been in Lee County. This her first year of teaching at Lee County Middle School. Mrs. Reese has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Special Edu cation - Intellectual Disabilities from Georgia Southwestern State University. Leslie Reese and her husband, Dean, reside in Albany. Mrs. Reese’s hobby is finding bargains on e-bay. In her spare time, she likes to go shopping and be with family and friends.