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March 2006
Pair don’t rise to cab ‘driver’s’ race bait
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
They asked the taxicab driver to take them to a restaurant that came highly recommended.
Cheryl Sadoti and Paige Hilliard Powers of Gwinnett settled into the back seat. Suddenly, the white cab driver launched into a tirade about Arabs. He said he despised them and wished they’d go back to where they’d come from.
Sadoti and Powers, in Savannah for a meeting of the Georgia Association of Realtors, didn’t bite.
“I have Arabs that are agents in my office, and they are wonderful people,” said Powers of Snellville. “So you just can’t say all Arabs are bad.”
Sadoti chimed in.
“I am married to a Sicilian,” the Suwanee woman said, “and if everybody was sent back, I wouldn’t have my three precious children.”
Strange cab driver. Stranger conversation.
All caught on hidden cameras and microphones. In truth, the driver was an actor hired by ABC News. The network was doing a segment to see how fares in New Jersey and Savannah would react when confronted with racist slurs.
John Quinones, an anchorman for ABC’s “Primetime,” had been in a panel truck trailing the taxi that February night in Savannah. When the cab stopped, he told the befuddled women what was up.
My guess is the producers chose a Southern city in hopes of capturing blatant racism. What they taped in Savannah was no more profound than what transpired in Jersey.
Down South, though, they did strike gold with a white male who fit the role of a “Deliverance” extra.
“Well, I like to go target hunting, you know — Mexicans, Puerto Ricans,” he told the white cabbie.
In the four days of the taxicab test, “Primetime” picked up 49 passengers. Only seven challenged the drivers’ racist diatribes, according to a story posted on the ABC News’ Web site.
Two of them were Powers and Sadoti.
“I just expressed what my mommy and daddy taught me,” said Sadoti, a North Carolinian who oversees the Duluth office of Keller Williams Realty Atlanta Partners. “We are a country of opportunity. Some people take advantage of it and run with it. Others don’t, no matter what the color of their skin or heritage.”
Powers, an Atlanta native, manages Keller Williams’ North Gwinnett office. Colleagues of Arab descent tearfully thanked her after the segment aired. A black male real estate agent told her she’d made him proud.
“I said what was in my heart,” Powers told me. “I am who I am.”
The segment that featured them — “Dealing with Racist Cabbies” — aired last Thursday. You can watch a Web cast of it online at ABCNews.go.com/Primetime. I missed it when it came on TV. Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway didn’t. He was so touched by the women’s response that he called to tell me about it. See, Southerners get sick and tired of seeing their home branded racist. Sure, you can find it here. We don’t hold the patent on it, yet the stereotype, sometimes self-inflicted, festers.
So we react with pride when, in racist situations, people respond like Powers and Sadoti. Cameras or no cameras. They spoke from the heart.
The morning after the segment ran, Conway sent Powers, a friend, some flowers. He also called her and left a message to say he was bursting with pride.
That makes two of us.
‘Truckload Bunch’ winning war against illegal signage
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
They call themselves the “Truckload Bunch.”
Their mission is noble, and in Gwinnett County, some might say a necessity. This informal volunteer corps spends weekends and evenings collecting signs that are posted illegally in the public rights of way.
They stay busy. But the volume of signs they remove is nowhere near what it used to be.
Paul Allen of Norcross started snatching up signs four years ago. He’d travel between Pleasant Hill and Indian Hill roads removing signs hawking everything from real estate to foreclosure assistance.
“When I first started, I usually would have to go unload my car and start all over again,” he said. “I’d easily get 100 each weekend. “Now, I’m lucky if I get a half-dozen.”
No one knows the exact number of sign snatchers. Their network stretches far, wide and deep. Hundreds of signs are being removed and thrown in Dumpsters across the county.
The volunteers have a Web site (www.truckloadbunch.org.) that lists sign laws for the county and some municipalities. Sign grabbers can post comments and ask questions. Illegal signs are photographed and posted as the “hemorrhoid of the month.” Repeat offenders make the site’s “hall of shame.”
And when shame doesn’t work, the court system steps in.
Three years ago, an insurance company that was a frequent offender was prosecuted in Recorder’s Court.
Judge Patti Muise fined one insurance agent $1,000 and another $2,000, a ratethat equates to a grand per sign.
Most times, though, a courtesy call can stop the practice. Businesses are contacted by phone or e-mail and told they are breaking the law. Sometimes the violators are cordial. Sometimes they get nasty.
“I just tell them that I saw their signs this weekend, and that I was so impressed I collected them,” Allen said, jokingly. “You get a range of ‘I’ll kick your butt,’ to ‘Gee, I didn’t know it was legal.’
“Others want to tell you the signs are protected under free speech, but commercial speech is not protected by the U.S. Constitution.”
Even before he became a county commissioner, Bert Nasuti picked up signs in Norcross. He learned that Allen, who also works to combat graffiti, did the same thing. Nasuti let Allen and his colleagues use a Dumpster in the back of his law firm.
“I think they had it filled almost every Sunday,” said Nasuti, who has returned to removing signs after having hip replacement surgery last year. He considers the work of the Truckload Bunch vital. To see what the community would look like without it, he suggests I take a ride up Peachtree Industrial Boulevard to McGinnis Ferry Road.
“When you cross the river into Forsyth County, there’s an immediate flood of illegal signs,” he said. “It’s outright visual blight. The folks putting up the signs in Forsyth are many of the same ones that used to put them up in Gwinnett. “They now know they can’t get away with it in Gwinnett.”
You can help keep your little corner of the county clean. The law allows citizens to remove and destroy illegal signs. It’s considered roadside trash. Allen and his colleagues aren’t trying to hurt businesses. There are simply other ways to advertise.
Posting signs may be cheap. But it really is like throwing money in the trash particularly if the Truckload Bunch gets hold of them.
Because that’s exactly where they’ll end up.
Fixing eyesore is no small task
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It used to be an Eckerd Drugs store.
Before that, it was a business that sells lawn mowers — Turf Machine Company Inc.
“I bought one of my first lawn mowers from them,” Gwinnett County Commissioner Bert Nasuti said. “Now they’re on Indian Trail Road” in Norcross.
Just off Jimmy Carter Boulevard, we take a left off South Norcross Tucker Road and pull into the shuttered Eckerds. Two men who appear to be day laborers mill around. Nasuti nudges his red Corvette to the back of the building.
“Look back here,” he told me, gesturing toward the litter. “Somebody didn’t buy that 12-pack here, but they stood here and drank it.”
This is Nasuti’s district, which takes in everything east of I-85 and west of Singleton Road. It encompasses some of the county’s most unkempt strip malls and standalone commercial property. Nasuti can recall when many of the malls first went up. He’s seen some of them transform from sparkling retail strips to recycled, run-down complexes.
On Thursday, we spent nearly two hours surveying this asphalt jungle. Some centers, like Wellington Square on Indian Trail Lilburn Road, are well-maintained. Others, well, I don’t have to tell you. You see them.
The question is what can Gwinnett do to make the owners and landlords tidy up. Turns out it’s not as easy as you’d think. Many of the property owners are absentee landlords. And sometimes the property owner is listed as an investment firm on the county tax rolls. The address might be a post office box.
“Who are we going to call and complain to?” Nasuti asked rhetorically. “We have to find a human being, and sometimes that can take days.”
Then there’s this little thing called due process.
Say someone lodges a complaint with the county about the Eckerds off South Norcross Tucker Road. One of the county’s 12 code enforcement officers would inspect the property and document violations. He’d make a report, then send a certified letter that outlines the violations. The owner would be given a certain amount of time to make corrections, depending on their severity.
Assume the deadline passes and the owner hasn’t officially responded. Then, an inspector has to return and note that the violations remain. At that point, a citation would be issued and mailed to what the county hopes is the right address. The owner or the tenant would be given an arraignment date to appear in Recorder’s Court. That date could be four to six weeks after the notification. If the owner or his representative shows up in court, he can pay a paltry fine or plead not guilty. If he pleads not guilty, a trial date gets set, probably 30 to 45 days out. The eyesore, meanwhile, festers with graffiti and graft.
All the above assumes that the county has identified the correct owner and has the right address.
There’s got to be a better way. Nasuti may have one. He’s proposed that the county adopt a comprehensive ordinance that addresses the condition of residential and commercial buildings, everything from paint to siding, gutters, litter and landscaping.
And here’s the part I like.
Nasuti wants to play hardball with those absentee owners or landlords who are given the chance to do right but refuse. Their property would be declared a public nuisance and condemned. The county would put a lien on it, clean it up, then pass the costs of the clean-up to the owners.
“That would be a last resort,” he said. “But there needs to be some real teeth in the comprehensive code to put owners on notice that there are standards and standards must be maintained.”
Nasuti also has ideas that would make it easier to track down property owners. He wants to require absentee owners to keep on file with the county the name and contact information of someone responsible for dealing with code violations.
Wonderful ideas. I hope the rest of the commissioners see the need for them.
Their respective districts may not have the eyesores that Nasuti’s has, but they could in another five to 10 years.
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875. Or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
Lilburn man discusses ‘Black.White’ appearance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If Brian and Bruno ever get together again, they’ll be cordial, then do what most of us do:
Not talk about race.
“That’s one subject we can’t deal with,” Brian Sparks said. “We bumped heads quite a bit.”
The Sparkses, of Lilburn, took part in “Black.White.”, the FX show in which a black family becomes white and a white family becomes black. Amazing what makeup can do.
The Sparkses are the black family that became white. The Wurgels (and boyfriend Bruno Marcotulli) of Santa Monica, Calif., are the white family that became black. The six-episode reality series airs Wednesdays.
Sparks was surfing the Internet when he came across an ad for the show. He submitted a family photo. They werecalled up for three interviews. He had to talk his wife, Renee, and their son, Nick, into doing the show.
Of the three, he says, Renee had the toughest experience. She experienced two of the rare instances of overt racism on the show.
In a focus group, while she was in white makeup, a young white man told her his parents taught him to either wipe or wash his hands after shaking a black person’s hand.
And in a scene that takes place in a bar where Brian Sparks works as a white bartender, a patron told Renee that blacks segregate themselves by not wanting to fit in, that they are proud to be dumb.
“She’d be the first one to say that she wouldn’t do this again,” said Sparks, 41.
He, on the other hand, would relish the chanceto trade races. He likens it to being a fly on the wall.
“There are plenty of situations where you wish you could see what the whites are saying in a particular situation,” the computer networks specialist said. “This was my chance.”
Sparks thinks the Wurgels had a tougher time swapping races than his family did. Blacks, he said, are used to adapting and conforming.
“We play America’s game,” he said. “When you’re white, you can go all your life and never have to live black culture, or any other culture, for that matter.”
It’s no one’s fault. Confusion, clichés and flat-out misunderstanding reign on what it means to be black (or white, for that matter) in America. It’s a situation that can lead tofaux pas.
Like the one that occurred in the second episode of “Black.White.”
The Wurgels go shopping for clothes to wear to a black church service. Carmen Wurgel gets a dashiki. Sparks tells her it isn’t proper attire. Onscreen, it’s a nice exchange. Off camera, Sparks said he was vehement to the family and the show’s producers.
“I told them I would not let them disrespect the African heritage like that,” he said. “I wouldn’t go to Japan and throw on a kimono.”
I know what you’re thinking: angry black man. Maybe so. Don’t dismiss him so quickly.
He wants the rest of us to do what he and Bruno can’t do. Talk about matters of race.
“Long as people watch the show and walk away with that, my job is done,” he said.
“And that’s what I want everybody to do.”
Me too.
Her eyes on on the prize of weight loss
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s that time of the year.
Almost three months ago, many of us made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight and get fit. Desire and motivation typically wane this time of the year. Results aren’t as forthcoming or as measurable as we’d like.
Too much pain. Too little gain.
So many of us quit the weight-loss battle. Gyms thin out. Those cheery new faces that were abundant in January disappear.
“Maybe next year,” we say.
This year, it’s different for Tashae Barber of Stone Mountain. She’d resolved to drop about 30 pounds, and she’s sticking to it. Her eyes are on the prizes (more on that later).
Before college, she was petite.
Barber lived in a dorm and ate campus meals her first year at Middle Georgia College in Cochran. She moved off campus to an apartment the next year. Her roommate enjoyed cooking. Barber liked to eat. By the time she graduated with an associate’s degree in criminal justice, she’d ballooned to 150 pounds.
Barber, 22, wants to be a homicide detective. She plans to get a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Georgia State. She knows the sad truth. No matter how smart you are or what your qualifications, first impressions count. Her weight, she reasoned, might be a hindrance.
“People shouldn’t look at your weight,” she said.
“But they do. So my career is my motivator right now. If you don’t feel like you look good, how can you go into a professional office and feel confident? I have that confidence in me. I want to look like I do, too.”
Losing weight takes time. So far, Barber has dropped about nine pounds. But she’s sticking with it. Most don’t.
Experts say 50 percent of people who begin an exercise regimen don’t sustain it. It’s ditched within a year. It’s hard work, and it can be boring and repetitious.
“After about two months of really working hard, people give up,” said Trey McNease, a personal fitness instructor. “It could be that they are doing the wrong exercises and eating the wrong way. There are a lot of facts the general public doesn’t know about that can help people reach their goals.”
Barber wants to be “the biggest loser.” She signed on as one of seven contestants in a 12-week program called “Weight in Gold,” at Gold’s Gym Lilburn. The person who loses the most weight gets goodies like $1,000 worth of massages and a full body makeover. The contest is in its third week.
And like the reality TV show “The Biggest Loser,” the person who loses the least amount of weight is sent packing.
“I don’t want that to happen,” Barber said, laughing.
So she does cardio, crunches and jumping jacks and lifts weight three times a week. She bought a George Foreman Grill that she uses to prepare healthy meals. This girl loves chocolate. Occasionally, she rewards herself with a Reese’s peanut butter cup.
“If you strip away all the food that makes you happy, it’s going to be hard for you,” she said. “That would drive a person too hard and make them want to give up.”
A halter top and a pair of jeans hang in Barber’s bedroom. She eyes the outfit everyday. She can’t fit into it yet. She has the resolve to, though. Give her a few more months.
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Resolution strong three months later
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s that time of the year.
Almost three months ago, many of us made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight and get fit. Desire and motivation typically wane this time of the year. Results aren’t as forthcoming or as measurable as we’d like.
Too much pain. Too little gain.
So many of us quit the weight-loss battle. Gyms thin out. Those cheery new faces that were abundant in January disappear.
“Maybe next year,” we say.
This year, it’s different for Tashae Barber of Stone Mountain. She’d resolved to drop about 30 pounds, and she’s sticking to it. Her eyes are on the prizes (more on that later).
Before college, she was petite.
Barber lived in a dorm and ate campus meals her first year at Middle Georgia College in Cochran. She moved off campus to an apartment the next year. Her roommate enjoyed cooking. Barber liked to eat. By the time she graduated with an associate’s degree in criminal justice, she’d ballooned to 150 pounds.
Barber, 22, wants to be a homicide detective. She plans to get a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Georgia State. She knows the sad truth. No matter how smart you are or what your qualifications, first impressions count. Her weight, she reasoned, might be a hindrance.
“People shouldn’t look at your weight,” she said.
“But they do. So my career is my motivator right now. If you don’t feel like you look good, how can you go into a professional office and feel confident? I have that confidence in me. I want to look like I do, too.”
Losing weight takes time. So far, Barber has dropped about nine pounds.
But she’s sticking with it.Most don’t.
Experts say 50 percent of people who begin an exercise regimen don’t sustain it. It’s ditched within a year. It’s hard work, and it can be boring and repetitious.
“After about two months of really working hard, people give up,” said Trey McNease, a personal fitness instructor. “It could be that they are doing the wrong exercises and eating the wrong way. There are a lot of facts the general public doesn’t know about that can help people reach their goals.”
Barber wants to be “the biggest loser.” She signed on as one of seven contestants in a 12-week program called “Weight in Gold,” at Gold’s Gym Lilburn. The person who loses the most weight gets goodies like $1,000 worth of massages and a full body makeover. The contest is in its third week.
And like the reality TV show “The Biggest Loser,” the person who loses the least amount of weight is sent packing.
“I don’t want that to happen,” Barber said, laughing.
So she does cardio, crunches and jumping jacks and lifts weight three times a week. She bought a George Foreman Grill that she uses to prepare healthy meals. This girl loves chocolate. Occasionally, she rewards herself with a Reese’s peanut butter cup.
“If you strip away all the food that makes you happy, it’s going to be hard for you,” she said. “That would drive a person too hard and make them want to give up.”
A halter top and a pair of jeans hang in Barber’s bedroom. She eyes the outfit everyday. She can’t fit into it yet. She has the resolve to, though. Give her a few more months.
Duluth teens campaign for own skateboard park
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
They just want a place to skate.
A public venue to perform their twists, turns, flips and dips. A concrete shell with ramps, pipes and stairs in Duluth, their hometown.
Thanh Le, a Duluth High senior, is spearheading a campaign to get a skateboard park. He and four friends are collecting signatures to present to city officials. He’s written City Hall as well as AJC Gwinnett News.
“We are tired of being chased out of parking lots, cited for trespassing and hit by cars,” he wrote.
Le began skateboarding three years ago, when he was a freshman. He likes the adrenaline rush the extreme sport gives him. He claims he loves the pain that comes from a spill.
And he has one other reason for loving the sport. “The girls dig it,” Le told me.
His campaign for a skateboard park arose out of an assignment in a political systems class. Students were told to write about something they’d like to change. Le took it beyond the classroom.
“I’ve always been taught to make a difference,” he said. “Now, it’s just become a habit. I feel strongly that this will bring the city of Duluth together. Maybe the city will give us some land. Help us out.”
Without an established venue, Le and his crew “catch air” wherever they can. The town’s curbs, sidewalks and parking lots become their playgrounds. Any place with concrete and edges. You might see street skaters in and around the Duluth Town Green. It’s fun. It’s also illegal. The cops show up and tell them to split.
My sense is that Le and his pals dislike being outlaws. If they did, they wouldn’t take such a diplomatic and democratic approach to finding a solution.
Last summer, some teens made sport out of spray-painting graffiti on buildings in Norcross and Lilburn. The taggers were brazen enough to contact me via e-mail to say their desecration served a purpose. It delivered a message, that they lacked a place to hang out. Odd thing, though: Their graffiti never said such a thing.
In Gwinnett, we have two skateboard parks. One is at Ronald Reagan Park between Lilburn and Lawrenceville. The other one is at Pickneyville Park in Norcross. Two other county-run parks are in the works in Suwanee and Dacula. And of course there’s the private facility — United Skate Park at Discover Mills. But skating there will cost you.
The location of the public parks and the expense associated with the private one keep Le and his friends away. They want something closer to home. Something free. Something they can call their own.
“Our effort in this is 110 percent,” Le said. “I would really like to see this become a reality.”
Then Le said something profound. If your city doesn’t have a skateboard park, he said, then your city IS a skateboard park.
That’s something for Duluth officials to ponder.
Want mixed use? You’ll have to pay
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You expect Wally and the Beav to bound out the front door. If nothing else, Aunt Bea, Opie and Barney ought to be sitting on the front porch, listening to Andy strum his guitar.
This isn’t a sitcom, though. I’m in Suwanee Town Center, the mixed-used development that’s probably the envy of cities across Gwinnett. It’s a live, work and play community designed to, well, let residents live, work and play. Luxury single-family homes and townhomes in the complex have sold like hot cakes. And the retail shops are to open sometime this summer.
Suwanee Town Center epitomizes “new urbanism,” the idea that communities should be built around mixed-use neighborhoods, with housing, jobs, stores and services within walking distance. By doing so, cars are taken off congested highways and people relate in ways that were common back in the day, but have usurped us in the 21st century.
The county’s most intriguing experiment in new urbanist planning may be Suwanee Town Center. Right now, it’s more construction site than community. Crews of landscapers, builders and cabinet and flooring installers blanket the development. They’re completing residences and working on retail/office space. Shadowbrook at Town Center — the residential anchor — looks like an ideal place to film a sitcom. It looks fake. Traditional, yes, but an aesthetic fabrication of Main Street USA.
Looks like somebody is trying really hard to sell a concept. Mailboxes are in the backs of houses. Streets have names like Savannah Square Street and Charleston Avenue. Only thing missing is the picket fence.
It’s hard to build character from the ground up. Constructing luxurious dwellings with traditional accoutrements near a retail complex doesn’t cut it. Looking old doesn’t equate to character. You’ve got to have soul, and for that, it takes a diverse socioeconomic group of people.
Speaking of which, I don’t think you’re going to find any waitresses buying in Shadowbrook. They can’t afford it.
According to fliers I picked up Wednesday, Shadowbrook townhomes start in the low $200,000s. Two houses on the market were listed at more than $250,000. A sign in the sales center said that only 15 homes remain.
“And then we will be ‘Gone With The Wind,’ ” the chalk board states. I never liked that movie. Although I respect the concept of a live-work-play community, the way it’s unfolding in Gwinnett bugs me. Too elitist. The very people who could benefit the most from living in a complex with access to shops and, possibly, employment, can’t bear the sticker shock.
Houses in Lum Howell Park, a project in downtown Norcross, will sell for $380,000 to $450,000.
In Duluth, lofts near the Town Green sell for several hundred thousand dollars. Developers, investors and civic leaders claim mixed-use projects will benefit everybody. They say they’ll help change the face of this suburb for the better. Maybe they’ll change life for those who develop the projects, and if market value climbs, the people who live in them.
The rest of us will just have to make do with what little we got — or what we can afford.
Candymaker finds blessing after Katrina
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
She was mixing up a batch of pralines when the telephone rang. It was a friend in Chicago who’d been watching coverage of Hurricane Katrina. She was calling Daisy Angelety to tell her to get out of New Orleans.
“I didn’t even have the television on,” Angelety said. “We’d grown so complacent.”
Fortunately, she took her friend’s advice. She packed up shorts, jeans, sandals and T-shirts. She called her son and daughter, both of whom live outside New Orleans, and told them about her plans. She finished making the candy, dropped some by her son’s barbershop and headed for Centreville, Miss., her hometown.
“I thought I’d stay till Sunday and come on back home,” Angelety, a retired schoolteacher, told me. “Under no circumstances did I think that I’d be homeless.”
She had lived in a house on Iroquois Street, in the upper Ninth Ward. Flood waters rendered it uninhabitable. Angelety lost valuable keepsakes. The only possessions she salvaged were the clothes she’d packed to leave town.
Before Katrina, Hurricane Ivan had been the only other storm that had compelled Angelety to evacuate. She rode that one out in Centreville, too. It was on that trip that she met Jeffery Wayne of Gwinnett County. They became friends and have stayed in touch through the years.
In New Orleans, Angelety’s life had centered around her church, New Life Ministry, and her pralines project. She made the candy at home and sold it to clients in the city. Her minister had been her taste-tester.
“My pastor told me that I was going to go far with this candy because it is anointed,” she told me. “But it didn’t happen until Katrina.”
Days after the storm, Wayne called to check on his friend. She told him the news — that her house was unlivable and that she’d lost everything.
“Usually after a storm, they could go back home,” said Wayne, a loan officer. “This time, they couldn’t. I told her she should come on down.”
Angelety, a native of New Orleans, definitely did not want to live in small-town Mississippi. So she moved to Atlanta and eventually settled in Lawrenceville.
One day, she felt like making candy. She didn’t even have a set of pots.
“I went to a thrift store and bought a pot,” she said. “I’m still making candy in this pot.”
What started out as a hobby in New Orleans has blossomed into a full-fledged business. Last month, Angelety started selling pralines from a kiosk on the first floor of Gwinnett Place mall. Bags of chocolate and coconut-covered ones go for $2.50.
She gets her pecans and candy bags shipped in from New Orleans. If you’ve never had a praline, she’ll give you a free sample. She’ll tell you hers are made from scratch and that she perfected her recipe in the Crescent City.
And if talk turns to hurricanes, she might tell you Katrina was a blessing.
“It got me out of my complacency,” she told me. “There are times you might catch me when I am down, and I’ll shed a tear or two about some of the stuff I lost. But I’m not sad. I didn’t lose my family. I’m safe.”
And for that, she’s grateful.
Baby steps to recovery
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
He hasn’t returned to school yet.
When he does, it’ll be in increments. One class at a time. Baby steps.
That’s all Trevor Sanford takes these days. Back in December, the Meadowcreek High sophomore was attacked by two male students after a basketball game. The suspects have been disciplined by the school district, but their punishment cannot be disclosed. They were arrested and charged as adults and their court cases are still pending.
Trevor spent two weeks in the brain trauma unit at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite. He’s undergone 45 days of outpatient therapy.
And he’s still not back.
“Sometimes he talks like a 7- or 8-year-old,” said Tim, his father. “Some days, you almost have to lead him by the hand.”
Trevor didn’t know the boys who jumped him or why they chose to. Not that it would matter. How do you justify something like that? Crazy.
Last week, I got an e-mail from Sue Faina of Concord, Calif. She’d read my columns about Trevor online and wanted to share a similar story.
In February, two boys blindsided her 18-year-old son with a skateboard, hitting the high school senior on the left side of the head. He has facial damage that’s healing. The spirit, though, is another matter.
“As we have found out, something like this affects so many,” Faina wrote. “Our community is rocked by this vicious attack because everyone knows it could have been their child.”
Yours. Maybe mine. So we care.
Trevor has had to relearn some things. To dress himself. To brush his teeth. On a good day, he might chat with friends on the phone or listen to music. He’s even doing a little schoolwork at home. His cognitive skills are way off, though, so he’s enrolled in an aftercare program.
He wants to return to Meadowcreek, to be a Mustang again. His parents won’t let him. Berkmar High maybe, but not the ‘Creek.
When he does return to school, he’ll have to work his way up to a full schedule.
Baby steps. Giant heart.
Lawmakers should stay out of fat fight
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Students at Nesbit Elementary School hop off the bus and head to the track.
Every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday morning, a group of 50 or so walk or run as many laps as they can before class. Nesbit also has a rockclimbing club that meets twice a week. These are just two of the ways the school tries to instill healthy habits. Even recess has moved beyond free play.
“We have teacher-directed activities,” Principal Cecilia Garcia said. “There’s a lot of organized games, and when you play, it’s a wonderful time to learn social skills and problem-solving.”
We’re the richest country in the world. We’re not the healthiest by a long shot. In the South, especially, we take the cake and eat it, too. The Trust for America’s Health issued a 2005 report that ranked Georgia 12th in its number of obese adults.
Our children play lead roles in the fat epidemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that, nationally, 16 percent of 6- to 19-year-olds are overweight. That’s triple the proportion 20 years ago. Caloric intake apparently has ballooned. Physical activity has bottomed out.
The Georgia Legislature has laced up forthe obesity fight. Lawmakers are considering the Student Health and Fitness Act. The original measure would have forced schools to give elementary students at least 150 minutes of weekly P.E. and middle school students 225 minutes a week. It was revised. Fine arts and music teachers told legislators the provision would infringe on their programs.
Now, House Bill 474 would require school systems to submit a report on their physical education and health courses. They also would have to estimate how much it would cost to implement weekly P.E. standards.
In principle, House Bill 474 sounds great. In theory, it’s got more holes than a box of Krispy Kremes.
Our schools consist of a captive audience.Because of that, there’s a tendency to promote social change on campus. But schools can’t do it all — at least not in a six-hour day.
Yet they continue to get saddled with legislative mandates that pile on added responsibilities but have little to do with reading, writing and arithmetic. Thatlawmakers want to address the fat epidemic is noble. But I’d rather see bills crafted that help Johnny read or Susie become a scientist.
Principals and school boards don’t need a legislature to fight fat. They can schedule exercise activities any time they want to.
Like at Nesbit, my son’s school. The campus recently hosted a family program that dealt with healthy diets. Parents got to take part in a P.E. class with their kids.
The running club is in its second year. Another day has been added in which students have to run without walking at all.
“We just started it today,” Jerry Tew, the P.E. instructor, told me Wednesday. “They have to run at least two laps — a half mile. Those who are coming are improving their endurance. It’s not where it needs to be.” It’s getting better.
Strip mall central needs caring leaders
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I thought Lilburn Square was bad.
Gwinnett Station, off car-clogged Pleasant Hill Road in Duluth, might give the square a run for its money. The Station’s saving grace is its brown, bricklike facade. Makes it look sophisticated — from a distance.
Pull in. Look closer.
What we got here is just another bad-looking strip mall.
In August, Kroger bailed for Reynolds Crossing, a spark-ling center off Steve Reynolds Boulevard. Plywood covers up the oval Kroger sign in the Gwinnett Station marquee. Someone paid attention to detail:The plywood fits the oval perfectly.
Now ifonly someone would pay equal attention to the strip mall itself. The bays in the parking lot where Kroger customers returned their shopping carts are still intact. So are a few shopping carts. The interior of some of the vacant suites looks like someone took aim with a sledgehammer.
Supercuts has relocated. Gone, too, are a music store, a tailoring shop, a Mexican restaurant and an interior design business. Gone, I’d imagine, for the same reason as Kroger — for space that’s bigger, brighter and, possibly, in a better location.
Michelle Iordache owns K&S, a tailoring and shoe repair business that relocated from Gwinnett Station to Reynolds Crossing.
“Kroger moved. So I moved,” she told me.
Gwinnett Station is hurting primarily because a big-box retailer (Kroger) jumped ship. Other businesses in the complex followed suit. It’s an exercise of the free market that strip malls in the western part of the county keep falling victim to.
Unfortunately, the people who could help stop the hemorrhaging — chamber officials, developers, investors and our government — are looking farther north and east. They’ve turned a blind eye to troubled commercial areas in Norcross, Duluth, Lilburn and Lawrenceville.
Even if they attended to those areas, we still might have a Gwinnett Station. It wouldn’t linger, though, and there wouldn’t be so many of them around here. If leaders cared, the departure of a big-box retailer wouldn’t necessarily signal doom for any strip mall in the western part of the county.
And if they cared, we wouldn’t need community improvement districts, those associations trying to enhance areas like Gwinnett Place mall and Gwinnett Village, which takes in a larger number of some of the most run-down strip malls in the county.
But the reality of it is that, in Gwinnett, aka strip mall central, they don’t care. So we need community improvement districts. Somebody’s got to step up. Look at our community. Too often, we are left with eyesores such as Gwinnett Station and Lilburn Square.
Dozens of others exist, and readers have helped me compile a list of our county’s dingiest and dirtiest mini-malls. I plan to write about them periodically during the year.
Iordache, the owner of the tailoring and shoe repair business, said she has no regrets about following Kroger’s lead.
“Gwinnett Station looks horrible,” she told me. “I feel so sorry for the people who are still there.”
Me, too.
In the presence of living history
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bernice Bailey has come across some impressive people while volunteering at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
But one person impressed her the most: Coretta Scott King — the King family matriarch. She was a portrait of dignity. Day in. Day out. It didn’t matter who you were or what you did for a living.
“Mrs. King was always very pleasant whenever I spoke with her,” said Bailey, who has volunteered at the Atlanta nonprofit for nine years. “I’ve been in her presence many times. She had a warm, graceful spirit about her.”
The late widow would host thank-you dinners for the volunteers after they helped run grand events like the “Salute to Greatness” dinner. Sometimes the soirees took place at the King Center. Other times, it was Paschal’s Restaurant.
During the dinners, Mrs. King would graciously pose for photos with volunteers. Her demeanor was so approachable and unassuming that Bailey, as well as others, brought family and friends. They wanted people to see for themselves that the persona was genuine. Mrs. King would pose with them, too.
“She wasn’t pious or anything,” said Bailey, a flight attendant who lives in Lawrenceville. “Real down to earth. I have had lots of conversations with her, but one thing she said that stuck with me was this: ‘If the heart is right, the mind and body will follow.’ “
Another Black History Month has come and gone. Bailey’s story would have been a perfect one to run during those 28 days of observance. I chose not to tell it then. I didn’t want to marginalize Bailey’s thoughts on Mrs. King, and to me, telling them within the confines of a designated month cheapens them.
Her story deserves better. Just like black heritage deserves something besides, or in addition to, a month of history. It needs to be treated as a truly integral part of the school curriculum.
Most of Bailey’s volunteer hours were spent in the office of the King Center’s events director. She answered the phone, made copies — whatever needed to be done.
“I remember ordering Mrs. King’s corsages for her once,” Bailey said. “I can’t recall the name of the florist, but I remember she wore white ones that particular year.”
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent approach to civil rights appealed to Bailey’s father, Willie Frank. He spent time with the civil rights icon at the Atlanta YMCA. When King was assassinated, the Bailey family stood in line to view his body at Morehouse College.
Five years ago, Bernice Bailey’s father died. Mrs. King provided comfort.
“She was so sincere,” Bailey said. “I was able to relate to her as if she were my own parent.”
Bailey considers herself fortunate.
“When you do volunteer work, you don’t often think about the things you might get out of it,” she said. “It was very rewarding to actually see and be in the presence of Mrs. King. It was history.”
And Bailey was a part of it.
Jet-setting life can lead to gum decay
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Please son, never steal a jet.
I don’t know how I’d react.
One thing’s for certain, though. I wouldn’t be waging a battle with the county’s top cop over dental floss. Or the lack thereof.
Flossgate is brewing in Gwinnett. It pits our bushy-eyebrowed sheriff against the father of an alleged jet thief.
Scott Wolcott’s 22-year-old son sits in jail. He’s accused of stealing a $7 million private jet and flying it from St. Augustine, Fla., to Gwinnett County Airport/Briscoe Field.
Daniel Andrew Wolcott has been held since October in lieu of a $175,000 bond. While he awaits trial, a toothy subplot has emerged. It’s a flap over gums. Back in November, Andrew’s father started asking why inmates didn’t have access to dental floss. He suggested that deputies dispense floss, supervise its use, then trash it.
Nah, said Sheriff Butch Conway.
The jail is short-staffed as it is, he told the elder Wolcott. Besides, used floss is a biohazard.
Andrew has developed gingivitis and gum pockets. Leave that stuff to fester, his dad said, and he might contract full-blown periodontal disease.
Last week, Andrew had an appointment with an outside dentist to remove his wisdom teeth. His father showed up at the dental office with some Vicodin. He says a deputy escort asked him to leave, and wouldn’t let his son eat some fast food before taking the medicine.
After Andrew’s wisdom teeth were removed, Conway had an epiphany. He had Andrew moved to a cell in pod K to bunk with Bart Corbin. He’s the Dacula dentist facing murder charges in the death of his wife.
No way around it. Conway is being a smart aleck. Wolcott’s rash of harsh e-mails and phone calls have pushed him to the brink. He’s even suggested that the sheriff resign. Over floss!
Remember what got us to this point, though. An apparent joyride in an airplane. An expensive airplane. And it allegedly wasn’t Andrew’s first time.
Three years ago, he rented a Piper Cherokee, paid for a local flight out of Briscoe, then abandoned the plane in Chattanooga. His father disputes that claim, saying that inclement weather caused Andrew to ground the plane in Louisville. Wolcott said he paid to have two pilots fly to Kentucky and retrieve the plane.
According to a three-year-old FAA report, he was the pilot of a single-engine Cessna trainer that struck a flock of geese. He was preparing to land the plane in an open field over Alabama but balked at the last moment. The left wing of theaircraft hit a tree. Andrew’s father has said the FAA found no grounds for discipline.
Now, you have this most recent incident.
Andrew apparently stole a jet and flew it to Gwinnett, where he picked up five friends. He flew a plane low on fuel, and experts suspect, deliberately chose not to engage the device that tracks the aircraft’s speed and altitude. He endangered lots of lives — his, his passengers and other people in the air and on the ground. His parents say they are baffled by his actions.
Their actions are just as befuddling. Maybe there’s a connection here.
If my son did something like this, I’m not sure a dentist is the kind of doctor I’d want him to see.
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