Newspaper Page Text
Page 4— Wednesday, September 14, 2022, The True Citizen
OPINIONS
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
The Pledge Of Allegiance
1 pledge, allegiance, to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which
*it stands, one Nation under
God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
LOOKING BACK
{this week in Burke County history}
10 YEARS AGO - SEPTEMBER 19,2012
John Oliver Jenkins, Jr. and Ciscero Rodriguez Watson
were both sentenced to 15 years in prison in connection to
the death of Verdre Lamont Scott. Scott was an innocent
bystander when a gunhght broke out at the Club Paradise
on Bates Road in October, 2010.
It was learned that the City of Waynesboro’s natural gas
provider, Kinder Morgan, had accidentally overcharged the
city by $150,000 and would be issuing a refund.
The Burke County Bears won an important AAAAAA
football game against Coffee County. Junior quarterback
Donquell Green rushed for 246 yards on 28 carries and
completed eight of nine passes for 133 yards.
25 YEARS AGO-SEPTEMBER 17,1997
Estelle Jones of Waynesboro was declared to be the oldest
person in the county at the age of 115. Her age was confirmed
by a University Hospital affiliate.
Burke County Commissioners authorized County Attorney
Preston B. Lewis, Jr. to draft an ordinance which would allow
the county to develop regulations in connection to the pos
sible construction of a 10,000 head hog farm in the county.
More than 60 local residents graduated from Augusta
Tech’s Certified Manufacturing Specialist (CMS) program.
50 YEARS AGO-SEPTEMBER 13,1972
A groundbreaking ceremony was held for the new sanctu
ary at Crossroads Baptist Church, located on Winter Road.
Pastor Gene Baxley turned the first shovel of dirt.
Weldon Lodwick was installed as the new president of the
Burke Association of Educators. He succeeded Jesse Gray.
M.W. Sessions and Mrs. K.C. Childers, both of whom were
retiring, were recognized for their years of service.
70 YEARS AGO-SEPTEMBER 18,1952
Roy Evans of Keysville escaped injury when his 1947
Cadillac blew a tire and plunged down an embankment on
Peach Orchard Road. He was thrown from the car, which
caught fire and burned.
Joe Collins, a former official at Knox Industries and a
former vice-president of the Bank of Waynesboro, accepted
the position of executive vice-president and cashier at the
Bank of Barrow in Winder.
Advertisers included Evans Hardware, Parker-White Mo
tors, Cotton Producers Association, First National Bank and
Burke Truck and Tractor Co.
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Don Lively
We had heard the stories.
We had even re-told and em
bellished the stories.
We were just kids but we
knew that there were unmarked
graves all over the cemetery at
our little country church. We
were told by the older boys that
some of the unmarked graves
held the bodies of long dead
Confederate soldiers whose
spirits, due to their guilt over
having lost the war, sometimes
roamed around the grounds,
moaning and groaning. When
ever we would venture out
among the tombstones, after an
evening church service, while
the older folks gathered on the
porch talking, we would do
our best to scare the mud out
of each other with tales of the
souls buried where there were
no markers.
Yes, we knew there were
unmarked graves.
We just didn’t know where
any of them actually were.
Until the day we moved the
church.
Sometime back in the 60s the
church leaders decided that we
needed to relocate the church
building out of the middle of
the graveyard to a better spot
across the road. Back then we
would occasionally see small
houses being moved down the
road with flagmen in front and
back and with one fellow on top
of the house with a forked pole
that he used to raise up the sags
in the power lines as the house
passed below. I always wanted
to be that guy, riding around
on top of a house. I suppose
during those years, moving a
house was less expensive than
building a new one, so, seeing
the very slow progress as the
houses made their journeys to
new locations was not all that
unusual.
But seeing a building as large
as our church being moved was
quite unusual.
The day of the big move was
an exciting one in the com
munity.
Of course, it was much more
than a one day undertaking for
the crew that did the moving.
As I recall, it took several days
to get the building, one that was
nearing a hundred years old,
jacked up a little at a time, to
get the moving girders placed
underneath, and to then ease
the church back down onto the
multi-wheeled frame.
We didn’t watch all that.
But there was a crowd there
that day watching the short, fifty
THAT DAY WE MOVED THE CHURCH
yard move to across the road.
The crowd included me and
my siblings as well as several
cousins, some of the very same
ones who had been telling ghost
stories about the cemetery for as
long as I could remember.
As the huge, ancient looking
truck that had been attached
to the church began to inch
forward, we weren’t thinking
about unmarked graves or
spooks. We were too awed by
what we were seeing.
Our Mamas and Daddies
made sure that we were stand
ing a safe distance from the
moving building.
“If that thing turns over on
you it’ll bust you wide open!”
To my young, impatient
mind, it seemed to take hours
for the church to cross the
dirt road and then have to be
gradually turned 180 degrees,
backing up, pulling forward,
backing up again...until the
building finally arrived at its
permanent resting place, where
it sits to this day.
Once the excitement of the
move was all over, some of us
went exploring.
The spot where the building
had rested since 1875 covered
with decades old accumula
tions of spider webs and other
sundry trash, but it wasn’t the
bare ground that caught our
attention.
There was the hole in the
ground near where the church
had been.
One of tires supporting the
massive load had made the hole.
It was one of those long-
talked-about unmarked graves.
Because boys will be boys,
we had to see what was in
the hole but we were all a bit
cautious about approaching it.
When we finally did, there, ap
proximately six feet below the
surface, were the white skull
and scattered bones of some
long dead person. It was the first
time any of us had ever seen
such a thing and we gathered
around the hole gawking down,
wide-eyed and tongue-tied.
The stories were true.
We immediately began to
adolescently theorize about
who the remains had once be
longed to.
One of those dead Confeder
ates?
Maybe a misplaced dead
Yankee?
A murder victim?
Obviously, we never found
out and shortly after we dis
covered the hole the Mamas
shooed us away and the Daddies
brought in some dirt to re-cover
the departed’s exposed skel
eton.
That’s what I remember about
the day we moved the church.
Michael N. Searles
In baseball, the rule is three
strikes and you are out. It took
a while for baseball to settle on
three strikes and four balls but
once it was decided in 1889,
it has not changed. The three
strike concept has been used
in reference to three mistakes,
transgression or issues as the
justification for disciplinary ac
tion or dismissal. Three strike
laws also have been instituted
in the legal profession. In
law, a person who receives a
third felony conviction for a
serious or violent crime can be
sentenced to life.
Three seems to be a magical
or mystical nature. In numerol
ogy, the number 3 is charac
terized by its pragmatism, its
utilitarian, sagacious, dynamic,
and creative capacity to ful
fill itself. The number three
stands out as one of the most
prominent numbers featured in
Scripture tending to symbolize
harmony and wholeness.
In politics, there are no limits
as to how many mistakes can
be made before the person is
out of the game. Some politi
cians have made one mistake
and that mistake has ruled them
out. Others make multiple
mistakes without measurable
consequences.
Strike-One was abortion, a
highly contested issue in Geor
gia and the nation. In 2019,
the Georgia legislature wrote
a law titled the Living Infants
Fairness and Equality (LIFE)
Act that banned most abortions
once fetal cardiac activity is
detected, usually after about
six weeks into a pregnancy and
before many women realize
they are pregnant. Once Roe
v. Wade was overturned, the
LIFE Act signed and supported
by Governor Kemp became the
toughest abortion law in the
country.
Under the provisions of the
law, both the women and her
doctor could face criminal pen
alties for any abortions even if
a woman did not learn about
her pregnancy or if a medical
procedure led to a spontaneous
THREE STRIKES YOU'RE OUT
abortion. This “heartbeat” law
was not popular among Geor
gians with 49% opposing the
law versus 44% who supported
it. While the particular features
varied, 70% of Georgians sup
ported abortion access.
Strike-Two involved Geor
gia’s Constitutional Carry law
that allows the carrying of
firearms in public without a
permit, effectively eliminating
the background check to carry
a concealed firearm. Geor
gia law enforcement officials
warned against the Constitu
tional Carry law that was op
posed by 70% of Georgians.
Law enforcement officials
across the country raised an
alarm as to the impact of these
laws, warning of the greater
challenge they faced in uphold
ing standards of public safety
and in combating gun violence.
Governor Kemp proudly
signed the bill in April 2022
with his wife and two daugh
ters and touted the benefits of
Constitutional Carry to the
citizens of Georgia. This was
done without a single reference
to the danger it placed upon
the police.
Strike-Three involves the
critical state of our medical
facilities. Recently, the Atlanta
Medical Center, a 460-bed hos
pital in downtown Atlanta an
nounced it will close its doors
November 1, 2022. AMC, a
major trauma center, serves
140 emergency visits each day
in the Fulton and Dekalb coun
ties where 200,000 uninsured
residents live. In the state of
Georgia, 1.5 million people
currently are uninsured. The
closing will affect the lives,
employment, and healthcare for
a significant number of citizens.
The irony in closing the
Atlanta Medical Center is that
it is avoidable. The major deficit
AMC faces is the cost of indi
gent care. This issue could be
resolved if Governor Kemp and
the Georgia legislature adopted
Medicaid expansion. Politics
has been the driving force in
refusing to protect the health
of 1.5 million Georgians. The
closing of local and rural hos
pitals and the imminent closing
of AMC is the sad, tragic, and
inexcusable actions of a politi
cal system that places political
party over people.