Newspaper Page Text
Page 4A
& EDITORIALS
Declare among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard;
publish, and conceal not. - Jeremiah 50:2
2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 winner: Editorial Page excellen
2019, 2018 winner: Best Headline Writing
2019 winner: Best Community Service
2019 winner: Best Layout and Design
2019 winner: Best Serious Column - Don Daniel
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
DRAWING ON THE NEWS by AF Branco
Student loan bail
out is a big scam
HART
To the Editor:
P eople who qualify for
federal student loans
are not guaranteed
jobs by
the Federal Gov
ernment, indus
try, business or
American taxpayers
who will provide
compensation to
repay the loan. The
person securing the
loan is responsible
to research expected
compensation for
the career that they pursue.
Industries and businesses are
highly competitive. Employ
ee compensation is based
on profit and productivity,
not on employee invest
ment in a college degree.
The institutions of higher
learning are responsible for
exorbitant tuition paid to
secure a college degree that
guarantees nothing. Those
seeking relief to pay their
loans should approach the
College or University from
which they received their
degree. These institutions
have provided an over priced
college degree that will not
generate enough revenue to
cover the cost of the
degree. The Ameri
can taxpayers should
not be accountable
for Federal student
loan failure. There is
too much Govern
ment intervention
and regulation in pri
vate sector business,
and our personal
lives. The institutions
of higher learning should
be regulated by the Fed
eral Government to require
reasonable tuition rates in a
ratio of degree investment to
expected degree compensa
tion. Colleges and Univer
sities unfortunately only
provide theory and idealistic
rhetoric, not results. Appar
ently Colleges and Universi
ties need the extra income to
pay the football coach. His
degree has definitely paid off.
Edd Hart
Forsyth
Bulldog athletic
facilities need help
To the Editor:
I attended the Mary Persons game this Friday night at
Peach County and it is officiaL.Mary Persons now
has the worst sports facilities in the region. The new
facilities at Peach County are a great indicator of how
far behind we are. I am not just talking about football
facilities. Dan Pitts Stadium was probably a state of the
art high school stadium when it was built, but it is in need
of an total upgrade. I understand that you may not want
to put turf on Dan Pitts but maybe turf a soccer field that
could double as a practice field? Turf the baseball field
so that our kids don’t have to find other fields to train on
while they seed the baseball field. Fast year our baseball
field was shut down for ten weeks due to seeding the field.
That has to be the longest delay in the country. This year
it was shut down on Sept. 30 and the back stop replace
ment and seed process did not start until Oct. 14.
Our schools are doing great academically and Mary
Persons is competitive in athletics despite the lack of facilities
and the lure of private schools nearby. Maybe with top facili
ties we could attract more kids to participate and keep kids
from leaving Monroe County to attend other schools? It is
not just the fields but the training facilities as well. Fet’s build
a better weight training facility and hire a full-time strength
and conditioning coach so that ALF sports can benefit. If
you want top atMetic programs...facilities are a big part of
that. If you do not think we are falling behind drive to Peach
County or visit the facilities in neighboring Butts or Famar
County. I am not sure what the solution is but as a resident
and a parent I am happy to help try to find it.
Tim Christman
Forsyth
is published every week by The Monroe County Reporter Inc.
Will Davis, President • Robert M. Williams Jr., Vice President
Cheryl S. Williams, Secretary-T reasurer
OUR STAFF
Tammy Rafferzeder
Business Manager
business@mymcr.net
Diane Glidewell
Community Editor
news@mymcr.net
Amy Haisten
Creative Director
mymcrgraphics@gmail.com
Official Organ of Monroe
County and the City of Forsyth
50 N. Jackson St., PO Box 795 • Forsyth,
GA 31029 • Periodicals Postage Paid at
Forsyth, GA 31029* 994-2358
SUBSCRIPTION RATE: In County: $50 • Out of County: $60 • Single Copy: $2
Deadlines noon on Friday prior to issue. Comments featured on opinion pages are the creation of
the writers, the do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Reporter management.
Publication No. USPS 997-840
Will Davis
Publisher/Editor
publisher@mymcr.net
Steve Reece
Reporter
stevereece@g ma i I .co m
Donna Wilson
Advertising Manager
ads@mymcr.net
1 t
T JF
Americans for Limited
Government
i£>2022Creators, com
THE ECONOMY
IS STRONG
AS
I'FL HAVE
WHATEVER
HE'S DRINKING
REECES PIECES by Steve Reece
Nash was a flapper
Grandma
S he lived through two world
wars, the Korean Conflict, and
the Vietnamese War. During
that time, she raised a son with
out a father who became a Marine, and
a daughter who became my mother.
Our cowboy president, Theodore
Roosevelt was in office when my
grandmother Tettie Mae Nash was
born in Oklahoma on Oct. 6,1903.
The first-ever World Series was played
during the week of her birth and just
over two months later the Wright
Brothers took flight for a few seconds
at Kitty Hawk.
When Grandma Nash passed away
84 years later two days before Christ
mas 1987 in North Carolina, she had
lived through 20 presidents, had seen
a man walk on the moon and had
watched the Challenger explode over
Florida.
She was born into the aptly named
Greatest Generation and saw hardships
few today can imagine. She told me she
once escaped the Oklahoma dust and
hitchhiked all the way to Chicago and
tried the life of a flapper. For all you
non-boomers, a flapper was a fashion
able young woman during the 1920s
who flouted conventional standards
of behavior. She said it wasn’t for her
and soon returned home. I can’t begin
to tell you how difficult it is to imagine
my grandmother as a stylish woman.
When I first met Grandma Nash, she
was already ancient at 60. In
all the years I knew her, I never
saw her appearance change
even a little. Hard work in the
cotton fields had hunched her
over and given her deep wrin
kles on her face. She was prone
to wearing shawls, home
made clothes, and old
lady stockings that always
seemed to be sagging. She
was so old-fashioned that
she even made her own underwear by
hand. I know this because my brothers
and I used to throw them at each other
when we occasionally saw them drying
in the sun on her outdoor clothesline.
She was stooped over and small, but
she was mean and was quick to grab a
switch and use it on my brothers and
me.
When my dad married my step
mother, who eventually adopted his
five children as he adopted her daugh
ter, Grandma Nash came with the
package. After my parents’ marriage,
she moved from Olustee, Oklahoma,
a little town of less than a thousand
inhabitants, to nearby Altus where my
dad was stationed at the local Air Force
base. Always the dutiful son-in-law, my
dad enlisted his three oldest sons (of
which I was the eldest) to help haul all
of grandma’s junk to her new digs just
a few blocks from where we lived.
It continued that way from then on.
No matter where we moved, Grandma
Nash was always close at hand. When
ever my old man found us a better
place to live, he always made sure she
had a suitable place nearby as well. He
probably thought it preferable to hav
ing her living with us.
Grandma Nash couldn’t do many
things for herself, so my brothers and
I would take turns staying the night
with her to do her dishes and chores
like removing the pile of newspapers
from beneath her bed where she threw
them every night after reading before
going to sleep. The bad part about that
job was that her big six-toed cat
she called Boxer thought the
pile of newspapers was a better
place to use than a litter box.
Grandma couldn’t reach her
toenails, so we took turns with
the nasty chore of trimming
them.
She was terrified of
tornados. Many times,
the sky would turn
green, and my dad and
I would rush to pick her up, bring her
home, and we would all hunker down
in the backyard storm cellar. During
Oklahoma farm house during the
Dust Bowl
one particularly active storm, I was
helping her down the front steps to my
dad’s truck where he was waiting with
the engine running. It was raining so
hard, it hurt my skin. She suddenly
stopped on the last step. “My cat! You
forgot Boxer!” I finally got her to the
truck and ran back for her stupid cat.
Lightning was popping.
I went inside, found Boxer, and just
as I was struggling to lock the door
with a huge cat in my arms, lightning
struck a transformer directly across the
street. The boom was enormous, and
Boxer lost it. All 12 claws of his two
front feet slashed repeatedly through
my wet shirt deep into my chest. Final
ly, he bounced off me and ran under
the house and I stumbled back to my
old man’s truck a bloody mess. When I
got in and closed the door, my grand
mother asked me, “Well? Where’s my
cat?” My dad took a puff on his pipe
and said, “Better go get him, boy’
We left Oklahoma when my dad
was transferred to North Carolina. He
drove 1,440 miles in an old Oldsmo-
bile packed with a wife, six kids, his
mother-in-law, and her fat cat who
slept on his lap the entire distance. Still,
he guided us halfway across our nation
to do his duty to his country, his family,
and Grandma Nash.
Steve Reece is a writer for the Report
er and a known crime fighter. Email
him at stevereece@gmail.com.
CAROLYN S CORNER by Carolyn Martel
Our nation needs our prayers
T here’s one inescapable truth
that is staring America
squarely in the face. What
is it? It’s the stark reality that
our nation is in a spiritual, cultural,
social, and financial tailspin! If we ever
needed to pray, it’s now! It is
becoming more evident each
day, that our nation has lost its
moral foundation and is suffer
ing a crisis of faith.
IN 1863, President Abraham
Lincoln signed a presidential
proclamation calling
for a National Day of
Prayer. His timeless
observation has come
full circle. He wrote:
“We have been the recipients of the
choicest bounties of heaven. We have
been preserved, these many years, in
peace and prosperity. We have grown
in numbers, wealth and power, as
no other nation has ever grown. But
we have forgotten God. We have
forgotten the gracious hand which
preserved us in peace, and multiplied
and enriched and strengthened us;
and we have vainly imagined, in the
deceitfulness of our hearts, that all
these blessings were produced by
some superior wisdom and virtue of
our own. Intoxicated with
unbroken success, we have
become too self-sufficient
to feel the necessity of
redeeming grace, too proud
to pray to the God that has
made us!”
WE ARE at a critical
juncture in our history.
Government spend
ing is out of control.
Our borders are
being overrun with illegal aliens. An
estimated 4000 thousand babies are
aborted everyday-most for the sake
of convenience. Some statistics show
America as one of the largest exporters
of pornography in the world. Consid
er once again the words of Abraham
Lincoln, “We have forgotten God.”
More spending and more taxes are
not going to solve our problems. We
need God’s wisdom, guidance and
intervention. We also need God-fear
ing men and women in positions of
leadership. “When the righteous are in
authority, the people rejoice: but when
the wicked rule, the people groan”
(Proverbs 29:2 NRSV). Never have
these words been more applicable
than they are now!
MY CONFIDENT hope and
trust is in Almighty God and in His
merciful appeal: “If my people, who
are called by my name, will humble
themselves and pray and seek my
face and turn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven, and I
will forgive their sin and will heal their
land” (2 Chronicles 7:14 KJV). I’m
convinced, this is what is needed to
turn our nation around!
Carolyn Martel of Forsyth is the re
tired long-time advertising manager for
the Reporter. Email her at caroiynmar-
teil @bellsouth. net.