Newspaper Page Text
Sports
MP’s Wilds,
MA’s Ursitti
honored
Page 1B
Inside
Buffalo’s
now open
in Forsyth
See page 6A
Deaths
Shedrick W. Jones
Gerald Freeman Butler
Margaret Lindsey O’Neal
Jeffrey Alford
See obituaries
page 2A
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My property’s worth what?!?
The collective groan heard
around Monroe County
Saturday was the sound of
taxpayers getting new tax
assessment notices in the
mail.
“A lot of old-timers are
going to be hurting,” said
Fletcher Anderson, a Hwy.
42 property owner who set
up an appointment with the
assessors to discuss his 30-
percent increase in taxable
value on Monday.
The county-wide reassess
ment was performed by
Technical Appraisal
Services of Georgia. The
county hired the firm last
year to revalue all the
parcels in the county after
the state put the county
under a consent order to
revaluate all properties. The
consent order requires the
county to get property
assessments in line with
actual sales. Property val
ues have been steadily
increasing, but that had not
been reflected on tax bills,
says chief appraiser Alveno
Ross.
But Anderson said he
thinks the county went too
far. He said he bought his
property just five years ago
for $95,000, yet now its
taxable value is
$126,000. He noted it’s
a 30 percent increase
in just five years.
See TAX page 5A
Ariyl Fuentes with husband Phillip and daughters Ruby and Sarah. Below, Ariyl as a girl with head
covered at the House of Yahweh, a cult in Texas whose leaders now face polygamy charges.
Forsyth woman thought
she’d put House of Yahweh
cult behind her, until it hit
the national news with
polygamy charges last week
BY WILL DAVIS
A riyl Fuentes of
Forsyth still
feels such
oppressive
guilt when she
celebrates Christmas that
she can't even leave up a
Christmas tree. She hears
voices of condemnation if
she allows words like
"happy," "good," or "kid" to
roll off her lips. It's still
strange to listen to a
preacher who doesn't yell
or scream or bang on the
podium.
Ariyl and her family
came to Forsyth a year
ago, in part to get as far
away as she could from
Abilene, Texas and the
House of Yahweh cult her
family had joined when
she was in eighth grade.
She thought she had
buried those abusive
years into a dark vault in
her memory. But now the
House of Yahweh cult is in
the national news, as
leaders, including her ex-
husband, face charges of
bigamy, sexual abuse and
welfare fraud. When an
attorney for cult leaders
went on national TV to
proclaim their innocence,
Ariyl said she felt com
pelled to share her story
of a hellish adolescence
inside the House of
Yahweh.
"It's a cult," said
Fuentes. "I was there, I
lived it, and I escaped it."
Ariyl's family moved into
the House of Yahweh
when she was 14. She said
her mom, whose mother
was Jewish, was searching
for truth and when she
stumbled onto the House
of Yahweh, she felt she
had found it. For one, the
religious group observed
the sabbath on Saturday,
like the Jews. Secondly,
they observed strict Old
Testament laws: Members
couldn't eat pork, men
struating women were cut
off from contact, and
words like good, happy
See CULT page 7A
was there, I lived it, and I escaped it.
99
- Ariyl Fuentes
m e m'<3iu A L DAY
SALUTE
|k Left
as a
boy...
Jack Fletcher examines the number-coded map he and his
mother used during WWII to notify her of his location in the
South Pacific. His Purple Heart rests on top. (Photo/Will Davis)
...returned
as a man
BY WILL DAVIS
Forsyth native Jack Fletcher was an 18-year-old
freshman at Georgia Tech in 1943 when Uncle Sam
dialed his number.
His ROTC leader told him it was time to ship off
with the U.S. Army. Thus began a tour of duty in
World War II that shaped Fletcher’s life and the lives
of an entire generation.
Americans from coast to coast are asked to reflect on
the sacrifices of veterans and especially the war dead
on Memorial Day this Monday, May 26. As members
of the Greatest Generation fade from the scene in
increasing numbers, there’s a sense of urgency to the
task of recording their stories for posterity.
Fletcher sat down with the Reporter on Monday to
share memories of his World War II service.
A mere teenager from a small Georgia town,
Fletcher soon found himself crisscrossing the country
from Gulfport, Miss, to Salt Lake City, Utah to
Stockton, Calif., training with the Army Air Force to
replace weary soldiers in the Pacific.
See FLETCHER page 5A