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May 2006
Deep relationship between owner, pet proven by hardship
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Toby, a black-and-white Shih Tzu, came to the family when he was a pup. He was loyal and his love steadfast, very unhumanlike.
For a while, he was the closest thing to family Matt Ammons had.
“I went through a pretty rough time,” he said, noting the devastating divorce of his parents.
Three years ago, the 24-year-old Knoxville native moved to Gwinnett. He’d been hired as the music minister at Victory World Church in Norcross. Toby, a gift from a cousin, moved with him.
On May 18, Ammons and Toby took their usual morning walk around the neighborhood. He put the dog back in the townhouse he shares with two housemates and headed to work. Somehow during the day, the nearly blind 12-year-old pooch got out.
After work that night, Ammons spent hours searching for Toby. He canvassed his neighborhood off Sugarloaf Parkway and Old Norcross Tucker Road. No Toby. He went back to the church that night and printed out 100 “lost pet” fliers. He checked the animal shelter.
Nothing.
The bond between a pet and its owner is just as strong as that of a parent and child. A friend of mine, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist John Grogan, says people can learn a lot about life from their dogs, stuff like loyalty and devotion. He ought to know.
He wrote a memoir about a Labrador retriever that he and his wife, Jenny, brought home before they had three kids. “Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog,” makes burly men cry. It’s a New York Times best seller and may be turned into a movie.
Ammons understands why the tale of Marley resonates with so many people.
“They say dogs are man’s best friends,” he said. “That’s definitely a fact. Anytime I was down or hurting or anything, Toby would be there to love on and to hold. You definitely build a relationship with them. A lot of times people aren’t there for you when you need them. I can say that I could always rely on my dog.”
Three days after Toby vanished, a roommate found the canine near a lake, in a spot that Ammons had searched the day Toby first went missing. I saw photographs of Toby’s condition. Poor dog. Someone had apparently tried to burn him. Parts of his rear and back legs looked like charred marshmallows.
“There were rolled up newspapers that had not burned all the way,” Ammons told me. “There’s no way he made it to where he was found alone because the path to get there was even difficult for me. He probably went into shock and more than likely died there.”
Ammons is trying to find the miscreant(s) who did this. A colleague has put up a $500 reward for information. The sordid tale of Toby makes me think of a line from a Curtis Mayfield song. “If there’s a hell below, we’re all gonna go.” Well, let’s hope not.
But I’d imagine that, somewhere, there’s a special place for people who would torture an animal to its death.
If you have information about Toby, please contact Matt Ammons at 770-597-9972.
Man says our government has betrayed Americans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s not about who speaks English and who doesn’t.
And it has little to do with fears that Latinos are taking over.
For Thomas J. Mullarkey, immigration’s tipping point starts and ends in Washington, D.C. It’s the inaction from Congress and the White House, the tepid, wink-and-nod approach to the issue that he equates to malfeasance.
“People go to jail for that,” he told me.
Mullarkey outlined his position in an essay that he e-mailed to me last week. “This is the last Memorial Day,” he wrote. “The reasons are sad and profound. This is the Memorial Day that my federal Senate betrayed our nation and our people. Senate Bill 2611 is a stab at the heart of the essence of what America was, and will be no more, and it betrays us completely.
“It betrays the tens of thousands of people waiting for their opportunity to gain the American Dream, and insults their patience in following the hard rules. Perhaps those who follow the dictates of the law are too qualified, too earnest, too interested in being an American in the Senate’s new America?
“It betrays the generations of blacks and original inhabitants who have only just begun to realize the dream after generations of servitude and Jim Crow.
“It betrays the children whose quality of life will be reduced so the privileged federal multinationalists can have a broader range of peasantry from which to draw their power and wealth. It betrays the rule of law that is the essence of our Constitution.
“It betrays all Americans because what has happened over the past 30 years is our federal government and the executives have ignored the law. They have collectively been guilty of the worst malfeasance and have established their aristocracy.
“I weep for this nation on Memorial Day.”
Mullarkey, a 57-year-old licensed contractor who lives in Duluth, has no patience for the peripheral issues that scapegoat illegal immigrants.
We get mired in arguments over what language they speak. Or don’t speak. We fret over the cultural cadence that creeps into our neighborhoods, changing it. And when costs rise in education and medical care, we lay fault at the feet and hands of illegal aliens.
Without question, these are legit concerns.
Mullarkey, though, has chosen to aim his daggers at someone besides the visible targets, those stuck at the bottom rung of the conundrum. He vents about the suit-and-tie set, the politicians, the ones who are highly unlikely to live next door to a single-family home that’s rented to a dozen or so single men.
“This is not a Democrat or Republican issue,” he said. “It’s not a racial issue, and I think too much is made out of the fact that they’re Latinos. The people don’t see how this problem has highlighted the inadequacy of our government.
“The politicians have not done their jobs. They’ve committed malfeasance.” Mullarkey plans to pen another essay.
This one will be sent to governors in the United States. He wants them to call for a constitutional convention. He wants all the politicians — “clowns,” he called them — thrown out of office.
“I could not be more upset about my federal government,” he said.
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MTV’s ‘My Super Sweet 16’ show leaves sour taste
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mandisa’s parents threw her a masquerade-themed party for her 16th birthday.
The girls wore gowns. The boys donned tuxedos. Mom and Dad rented a facility in a local park to host the coming-of-age celebration. The deejay played old-school grooves from the ’70s and ’80s, nothing obscene.
Mandisa Surpris’ father, Renald, wore a tux with tails. Her mother, Mary, prettied up, too.
“We were all dressed sharp like that,” said Mr. Surpris, chuckling. “And the kids had a ball. Everybody came in with a mask on, and I treated Mandisa to a limousine that dropped her off at the party.”
I was invited to the party for the Parkview High sophomore. Mr. Surpris said he wanted me to see how some decent, level-headed teens bide their time. I couldn’t make it, but it was good to hear about parents setting limits in a society where $3,600 high school prom dresses and materialistic excess rules.
Speaking of crazy excess, have you seen MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16”?
Now in its third season, it airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. I came across it one night while channel surfing. The show’s theme revolves around a boy’s or girl’s 16th birthday. These aren’t parties for the practical, pragmatic or poor. I’m talking about over-the-top, outrageous celebrations that cost up to $200,000.
Money isn’t an issue on the show, though some might argue common sense is in short supply. Viewers get to follow along as privileged kids plan their bash with costly demands for entertainment, attire and invitations. Whatever obnoxious request they dream up, the parents eventually pony up.
Part of the episode I saw featured a girl who’d been told there would be a special guest at her party. She, as well as her guests, assumed it would be Eminem. Wrong. It turned out to be a no-name singer. Oh, the disappointment on the birthday girl’s face.
Dad, though, saved the day. He pulled out the keys to her gift. Birthday girl got a BMW SUV. The night was salvaged.
I have no qualms with rich people. They make their money. They can spend it however they choose. It’s the American way. Fine.
“Super Sweet 16” simply proves you can have more money than sense. That’s cool, too.
What really bothers me, though, is the distorted, narcissistic message teens get when they tune into the popular show. It may be a fun fantasy, one that’s edited and scripted to add shock value.
But it lacks any redeeming value, and from the looks of things, our children need as many positive influences as they can get.
Mr. Surpris has caught snippets of the show. He doesn’t like it.
“It pretty much has a negative impact on a lot of kids,” he told me. “If I had all the money in the world, I wouldn’t do anything like that. You want to please children, but there has to be a balance between what’s right and what makes sense.”
Mandisa’s parent didn’t buy her an SUV for the big one-six. She didn’t get a car at all. She got something that probably every kid featured on “Super Sweet 16” already owns.
She got a cell phone.
Fake hero’s flashiness stood out alongside real deal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
He always wore a red blazer.
Nary a hair in his handlebar mustache appeared out of place. He used a cane to get around.
I met Richard Thibodeau at the Gwinnett Veterans Memorial Museum in Lawrenceville. He stood out. Made the other veterans seem small.
Veterans, typically, are low-key. Very unassuming people. You almost have to pry information out of them, especially when it comes to getting them to talk about their role in theaters around the globe. They aren’t particularly keen on reliving — or boasting — about what they did to secure our freedom.
Not Thibodeau, 64, a medical technologist who lives in Lawrenceville. He was different. He was the atypical veteran who reveled in the story. Notably his own. He embraced the attention, soaked it up, like gravy on a biscuit.
Unsuspecting veterans would grab me by the arm and insist that I meet him. His military story, they’d say with pride, was remarkable, one worth telling. After all, he was a retired sergeant major, the highest enlisted rank in the Marines. And he won a Navy Cross citation for uncommon valor during the Vietnam War. Paperwork at the museum said as much.
Little did I, or the Gwinnett veterans, know the truth. Thibodeau was a fake. He came clean in a story that ran in the Saturday edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He never served in Vietnam. Never earned the Navy Cross. Never saw combat. He wasn’t even a Marine.
Dave Martin chuckled as soon as I identified myself on the phone Monday morning. “I told my wife I’d get a call from Rick Badie today,” he said, laughing. Remember Martin?
He earned a Purple Heart and two Bronze Stars in Vietnam. He served with the 199th Infantry Brigade. His medals and other military memorabilia are on display at the veterans museum, in the Historic Courthouse in Lawrenceville. He loaned the items to museum founders when they were getting started a few years back.
When the museum officially opened, all organizers had for some of the medals was a last name — Martin. I wrote about their efforts to find the “mystery soldier.”Martin stepped forward as the owner.
I doubt if you’d learn anything about the man’s military record unless you asked. Even then, you might not get much.That’s just the way he is, the way most veterans are — unpretentious.
Not Thibodeau.
“I don’t know what would cause somebody to do something like that,” Martin said.”He said this started out as a practical joke. I guess he didn’t know when to stop it.
“Or the prestige got to him.”
Wally Choi, the junior vice commandant for the state Marine Corps League, met Thibodeau at a birthday party. He came up to Choi and dropped a U.S. Marine Reconn coin on the bar. Protocol calls for you to buy the bearer of the coin a drink if you don’t have a coin of you own.
Choi didn’t.
“So I bought him a drink,” said Choi, a Gulf War veteran who lives in Lawrenceville.
Looks like Thibodeau owes Choi, and the rest of the Gwinnett veterans, a drink. He may want to accompany it with an apology.
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‘Adopting’ Katrina family helps us as much as them
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gulfport, Miss. — The first thing Katrina destroyed was the chimney. Crumbled it like a graham cracker. Daryl Necaise bounded up to the attic to inspect the roof.
“I saw a gable bending like it was a turtle,” said Necaise, sitting on the patio next to his wife, Brenda. “I ran downstairs and told my wife and sister-in-law that we had to go.”
The storm, which struck on Aug. 29, left the couple’s house uninhabitable. Wind sucked up the roof and tossed 32-foot rafters like they were toothpicks. Inside, most of their furnishings were destroyed.
The Necaises grew up with little in this coastal town near Pascagoula. They admired the historical homes from a distance and dreamed of the day they’d have fine digs of their own.
The first step to making that a reality took place in 1997 when they bought four acres in the Quail Ridge subdivision. Brenda and Daryl don’t like debt. They paid off the land in a year. They cleared the property on weekends. They planted fruit trees. They dug a pond and stocked it with catfish, bream and bass.
And in 2003, they moved in. Life was good.
Then came Katrina.
My church, Tucker First United Methodist Church, has “adopted” the Necaises. We’re part of a network of churches helping to repair hurricane-damaged homes. Practically every weekend, a group from Tucker First endures the nearly seven-hour drive to Gulfport to work on the Necaises’ house. We spend all day Saturday and part of Sunday getting our hands dirty, doing whatever it takes to help the couple reclaim a sense of normalcy.
When Necaise signed up to be adopted by a church, he penned a note on his application.
“I put on there, ‘Please help those who are in more need than us,’ ” he told me. ” ‘Leave us last.’ I wanted to make sure nothing was taken away from people in worse shape than we were. The help [Tucker First] has given us has just been unimaginable.”
It’s hard to say who benefits the most from this mission — the Necaises or us. By helping them, we seem to be helping ourselves.
“People have formed bonds with other church members they might not have ever gotten to know,” said Suzanne Segler, who oversees the church’s missions/social concerns committee. “I think a lot of us feel like it could easily be us, and we would want help.
“And just seeing the devastation of the Gulfport area makes you realize how fortunate you are, and how it all could change so quickly.”
Like it did for the Necaises.
Several days after the storm, they slept in their cars or camped out. Since October, home has been a FEMA trailer parked in back of the house. A subcontractor has put a roof on their home. The electricity’s back on, and they can shower in the master bathroom.
“I think we’re doing OK,” Necaise, a Gulfport firefighter, told me before the Tucker crew left for home last weekend. “This is basically how we have lived our life. Stepping up, little by little.”
I asked Brenda if she had a specific date in mind for when she’d like to sleep in her own bed, in her own bedroom, in her own home, again.
“Aug. 29,” she said. “That’s our goal.”
To learn more about Tucker First United Methodist Church’s mission program, contact the church office: 770-938-3030. Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875. Or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
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Black-on-white racism is just as bad as the reverse
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Why the silence?”
A reader from Lawrenceville asked that question via e-mail. He wanted to know why I hadn’t taken the brass to task for racist shenanigans in the DeKalb County Police Department.
“Racism cuts both ways,” he wrote.
“Unless you raise just as much hell when its black-on-white discrimination, white folks become less inclined to [care] when you write about the reverse.” The reader was referring to the column I wrote last week about my son, Miles.
Somebody called him the n-word at school. He was off-base on one fact. I never gave a racial description of the kid who hurled the epithet. He wasn’t white, though. He was Hispanic.
But I digress.
On May 3, DeKalb Police Chief Louis Graham bowed out from a job he’d held for 18 months. An audio recording led to his resignation. Caught on tape was a frank conversation between the top cop and his assistant chief, R.P. Flemister. The black cops cussed up a storm. Flemister referred to someone as”that white bitch.”
And in a different recording released last week by police union leaders, Flemister espouses his distaste for white employees.
“Have you ever thought about why I ain’t promoted them nine on the list right now … because seven of them are white.”
Flemister retired.
On Tuesday, DeKalb Chief Executive Officer Vernon Jones addressed the incident in an op-ed column. Mr. Jones said DeKalb County wouldn’t tolerate discrimination, and left it at that.
And that’s what irks the AJC Gwinnett News reader from Lawrenceville.
He has seen this scenario play out ad infinitum, and he’s tired of it. He’s sick of the rules society abides by when black racism takes place as opposed to white. It’s a code of conduct applied unevenly. In favor of blacks.
“White people see the all-too-typical double standard — racism is winked at when it’s black on white,” he wrote in a series of e-mails. “White people are crucified when it is reverse.”
He’s right. And the practice is flat-out wrong. It hampers cross-racial dialogue, something we need badly.
Imagine if the situation had been reversed,that a white DeKalb police officer’s racist comments had been digitally preserved. Black activists would have had a field day.
Press conferences. Inflammatory rhetoric. Televised marches and demonstrations. There would have been demands for apologies, sensitivity training and heads on a stake. White guilt would have been milked like a cow.
I suggested the reader from Lawrenceville write a letter to the editor to express what many white observers apparently think, secretly or publicly, about the mess in DeKalb. He didn’t bite.
“White folks screaming about black-on-white racism falls on deaf ears,” he told me. “It’s gotta come from other blacks.”
Well, I’m screaming. Hope you’re listening.
Veterans stiff-armed by U.S. armed forces
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Back in 1944, he was a Young Lion. That’s what they called 18-year-old soldiers who served in World War II.
Marvin Nash Worthy served in the Army under Gen. George S. Patton as a member of a water supply technicians crew. He helped set up and operate portable water purification units that supplied water for infantry and artillery soldiers in France and Germany.
“Hardest work I’ve ever done,” said Worthy, who, as a local historian, has written a book that chronicles the county’s history from 1960 to 1990.
“We’d be tired and sleepy. We’d set up a water pump and pump water for several hours. We’d go down the road a quarter-mile and set up again.”
Asbestos was used widely by the military during and after World War II. Many veterans were exposed to the deadly substance. And Worthy, a water supply technician, thinks he was exposed to asbestos that was used to pack the pipes. A respiratory ailment plagues him today.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, though, thinks otherwise.
Last fall, Worthy, a Lilburn resident, filed a request with the Department of Veterans Affairs for an increase in disability compensation. He provided documentation, including statements from civilian doctors, that he thought connected his illness to his nearly four-year service stint.
In a four-page document dated May 2, the agency rendered a decision.
“The evidence continues to show this condition was not incurred in or aggravated by military service,” it states.
“Your military exposure to asbestos was not shown to be significant. … The previous denial of service connection for asbestos is confirmed and continued.” Naturally, Worthy plans to file an appeal. He has a year from the date of the letter to do so. He’s willing to fight — if his health doesn’t quit on him.
It took William S. Burton Sr., a World War II Navy combat gunner, four years to get his VA compensation. Burton of Lilburn recently updated his self-published book, “Asbestos, the Silent Killer of Navy Veterans.”
Burton helps other veterans win their disability pay. I asked him if he thought Worthy, a longtime friend, had a legit claim with the VA.
“Oh yeah,” Burton said without hesitation.
He noted that Worthy worked on the front lines of the purification pumps. And like Burton, he traveled on military ships that used asbestos as a fire retardant and insulator.
Worthy, 81, has never been a smoker. And it’s unlikely civilian jobs like servicing pools brought him into contact with asbestos. He plans to appeal the VA’s decision and is contemplating hiring a lawyer.
His health isn’t ideal. He gets short-winded walking up stairs. At night, he props himself up with pillows to catch his breath.
“It makes me nervous,” he said.
Last week, I called Worthy to see whether he’d pose for a photo in his military uniform. It wasn’t a good day. He could barely talk.
He’d just returned home from a visit to the VA hospital.
Immigration debate ignores children’s fate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
May 10 was Dia de las Madres — Mother’s Day — in Mexico. Maria Ramirez implored her female friends to go to church. She wanted them to pray for better days, especially for the kids.
Immigration reform has become a red-hot topic. We’ve had dueling rallies over it. State laws have been passed to, supposedly, curb the influx of illegal immigrants. Congress stands poised to act. There’s a lot of big, bad talk about what ought to be done. It’s nothing to hear someone say, “Send them all back!”
But no one ever mentions the children. So Ramirez prays.
Rumors, half-truths and paranoia have gripped the Mexican community. Illegal immigrants figure their jig is up. They foresee massive Nazi-like roundups and deportations.
Some of you might say good riddance. After all, you’re on the right side of the law. You’re American, either by birth or application. And you’re sick and tired of what you perceive to be the face of immigration’s ills.
So you rationalize.
If the illegal immigrants (hence, Mexicans) are forced out, the county would be so much better. Jimmy Carter Boulevard might start looking like a street worthy of a former president’s name. The value of houses in certain areas might stop flat-lining. Crime might drop. Schools might be less crowded.
All because “them Mexicans” got the boot.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re a dreamer. Maybe you need to step back. Put your blame-the-illegals diatribe on hold, if you’re able to, and look at the entire, complex picture.
I met Ramirez on Wednesday, Mexico’s Mother’s Day. She wasn’t happy. She cried, and occasionally moaned, throughout a nearly two-hour interview. The tears aren’t for her. Nor are they for her husband, whom she declined to discuss in detail.
Ramirez cried for those caught up in this mess through no fault of their own. The kids. Some, like hers, are illegal. Others aren’t. It doesn’t matter. They all hurt.
In recent weeks, fear and uncertainty has paralyzed these families. They wonder what will happen to them in a country that has systemically hired them and let them establish a life here.
Now they see this same country declare these men and women are no longer wanted. It’s deemed them undesirable, more hindrance than help. Cruel.
The Ramirezes have three kids — two boys and a girl. Like many parents beset with anxiety, they have a plan. A contingency plan. It’s to protect the children, just in case the rumors turn out to be true, and they are rounded up and deported.
Say the kids come home from school one day and find Mom and Dad gone. They know now to go to the home of a designated person. It might be a neighbor. It might be a cousin. Whoever it is, that person will raise them. Right here in Gwinnett.
Ramirez said lots of parents have made these kinds of arrangements with relatives and friends.
“Everybody has a different plan,” she said.
Marisol Mercado, a social worker at Nesbit Elementary, told me the same thing.
“A lot of them are willing to leave the kids behind,” she said. “The parents value education and understand the impact of it and the difference it can make. The issue of immigration is a political issue, but it is impacting the functioning of the children.”
Sadly, in all the talk about the problem of immigration, the children don’t get mentioned.
Thank goodness for a mother’s prayer.
Son goes through ugly rite of passage: being called n-word
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We talked about the kind of stuff a father and son rap about en route to school. The basketball playoffs. Ben Wallace being named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year — for the fourth time.
Then, very casually, Miles told me about an incident that took place Monday at school.
“A boy called me the n-word yesterday,” he said, with about as much concern as an out-of-touch politician.
My reaction matched his nonchalance. I think his teacher was much more upset than we were.
It’s become easier for me to stay cool about something that doesn’t apply — to me or my children. Remember that old playground phrase: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
It’s a mantra I’m trying to teach Miles to practice, though it’s going to be difficult, as he grows older, to play the role of the pacifist. Situations differ.
Monday, by the way, wasn’t the first time he’s heard that word. A ratty kid in our neighborhood, trying to be cool, used it around him a few summers ago. Mom and Dad gave Miles a cryptic synopsis of the term’s history — who started it and why; how it was, still is, derogatory, even though minstrel rappers and others consider it a term of endearment.
Richard Pryor used the word almost poetically. His comedic cadence made it appear funny, hip, unsettling and edgy. Even he saw the light and eventually rejected use of the term in his stand-up routines.
When Pryor died in December, I wrote a column saying that we as a society should nix the n-word. Idealistic, I know, but the majority of readers agreed. The few who defended its use said it was their way of claiming ownership of a derogatory term, of making it one’s own. But it will never be “ours” when history shows it has been a degrading term since its inception.
It’s 1985. I’m a junior journalism major at UGA. I’ve just returned from an evening shift at a Piggly Wiggly supermarket. I hear guitars, music, laughter and singing coming from an adjacent room on the third floor of Milledge Hall. Some white guys are singing a song. The lyrics are about a white man whose girlfriend has ditched him for a “———” She doesn’t want to come back.
I walk in. The guitars don’t stop. I’m the invisible man.
Later, I’m told it’s all harmless fun. Ha, ha, ha. Fun-ee.
In some way, the name-calling incident was Miles’ rite of passage. Like getting a driver’s license or buying that first car. It marked the first time the epithet had been directed at him. I can’t say it will be the last.
I hope that it is, just like I hope he never incorporates the n-word into his vocabulary. Miles has never heard his mom or dad use the racial slur. We don’t condone it in any way.
If parents stand up and teach our children how degrading the word is, that it is a symbol of racism no matter who uses it, the use of it might taper off. And so might some of the name-calling.
Spanish fliers anger Lilburn residents
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Neighborhoods were blanketed with fliers written in Spanish and English when he opened an insurance office in Cumming two years ago.
If anyone took offense to the bilingual advertisement, Marvin Jenkins didn’t hear about it.
Not a peep.
Last week, the 17-year veteran of Nationwide Insurance learned that sensibilities have changed with time. He had 10,000 fliers mailed to households to announce the opening of a fourth office in Lilburn.
An incensed reader sent me a copy of the flier. The Spanish was in big letters. The English appeared postscript. Like an afterthought.
And that angered many recipients. They have called or written the Nationwide office off Lawrenceville Highway to take umbrage. Linda Singleton was one of them.
“I was furious,” she told me in an e-mail.
Jenkins has instructed the Lilburn staff to send upset residents his way. He tries to assure them that he didn’t mean to slight anybody, especially Americans. He lets them know the flier was simply a marketing tool, and that he’ll gladly write a policy for anybody. Long as they have a legit driver’s license and Social Security card.
Obviously, Jenkins is after the Latino dollar. The buying power of Gwinnett Latinos is No. 1 in the state at nearly $2 billion, according to a 2004 UGA report. It’s on track to more than double by 2009.
Last year, his three offices wrote nearly 2,000 home, auto or commercial property policies to Hispanics. And he’s one of the top five Nationwide agents in the state.
“I attribute that to being able to diversify and go after the different markets,” he said.
The flier backlash has surprised Jenkins. Some of the vehement reactions can’t be misconstrued. It’s racial, he said, if not outright racist.
“I’m not trying to upset the American people,” he told me. “All we are trying to do is change with the market, and the market we’re going after in that area is primarily Spanish. This grand opening just happened to coincide with the time we’ve had the [protest] marches. Had the timing been different, it would have been a totally different situation.”
I dropped by the Lilburn office Monday morning. Three Latino women, American citizens, staff it. They’re bilingual and fluent. They greeted me in English. Their boss has instructed them to speak it when dealing with English-speakers and to use Spanish when dealing with people who speak Spanish.
Jenkins knows just enough Spanish to get himself in trouble. He listens to a language tape in his car. He’s not proficient enough to conduct staff meetings in Spanish, though. There, English is spoken.
When he’s in any of the offices run by a bilingual staff, he makes them speak English.
“I told them that I thought it was disrespectful not to,” Jenkins said. Plans are to open a fifth location later this year. He heading up I-985, to Gainesville — “Little Mexico,” it’s called.
And he intends to roll out the same marketing tool he implemented in Lilburn.
Stem cells buy cancer patient time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
They’d just played 18 holes of golf.
Now it was time to decide who would buy lunch, and that would require one last swing of the club. The person who shot closest to the hole ate free. The one whose ball sailed errant picked up the check.
Jim Gates teed off, then hit the ground. His friend thought he’d suffered a heart attack. He hadn’t, but it would turn out to be just as traumatic.
His left arm had snapped. An X-ray of the hairline fracture showed some type of growth, or tumor, on the bone. An MRI was done. When Gates went back to the doctor for the results, he knew the news wasn’t good. The nurse, usually affable, wasn’t as bubbly.
Gates had plasmacytoma, tumors that can morph into a fatal cancer called multiple myeloma (MM). It eats up bone marrow. It’s incurable.
And Gates, a real estate agent, eventually contracted it.
“I always thought everybody else got cancer,” the 60-year-old Lilburn man told me.
Now, all he wants is a little more time.
Time to spend with Lee, his wife, their four adult children, and four grandchildren. Time to play golf with Tom Paciorek, the former Atlanta Braves outfielder and broadcaster who was with Gates, two years ago this month, when he suffered the broken limb.
Gates isn’t ready to die. Who is?
So he’s trying to prolong life.
First, he underwent about 30 radiation treatments to kill active cancer cells in his arm. A pin was inserted to strengthen it. Various tests showed him to be free of cancer cells. Gates’ gut suspected otherwise. The real estate agent asked for a full-body X-ray. Cells of multiple myeloma were present.
“I had holes in my pelvis, head, ribs and right arm,” he told me.
Gates was admitted to an experimental cancer treatment program at Emory University. His doctor tried chemotherapy. It failed. He was given steroids. Ineffective. Eventually, a mixture of the three killed the cancerous cells.
Now, he was ready. Think of a heart transplant. A defective heart is taken out. It’s replaced with a healthy one.
“In my case, it’s stem cells,” Gates said.
Gates’ own. Stem cells were removed from his body. He received two doses of chemotherapy. Two days later, the cells were replaced.
The surgery might have bought him a maximum of six years. Or as little as two.
Gates is buying time. He will take what he can get.
And consider it a wonderful gift.
English is language of the land. ¿Comprende?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The flier arrived via mail Tuesday.
It was an invitation to attend the grand opening of an insurance office in Lilburn. Incentive to show up for the May 6 event was a $10 gift card from Target.
Bruce Wilcox had to read the fine print to glean details. See, the main text was written in Spanish. The subtext was in English. Itty-bitty type.
Wilcox is a true liberal. I know this because he posts comments regularly in the Badie blog. The flier, though, ruffled his collar. Stirred some emotions. Maybe made him feel like a foreigner in his own land.
He faxed a copy of it to me, then fired off an e-mail.
“I take exception when a company … starts making English the second language,” he wrote.
Stop by the Norcross Eckerd’s on Buford Highway. There, Spanish is the primary language on signs that direct you to the aisles. English appears postscript. Drop by the state unemployment office on Beaver Ruin Road. Job services are offered in several languages.
My humane side acknowledges and applauds the value in accommodations like this. They serve a purpose, particularly when you’re dealing with kids. They make it easier for immigrants to navigate in Gwinnett — the epicenter of ethnicity, the immigrant gateway.
But the critic in me feels a little bit of what Wilcox felt when he got that flier, especially when it comes to language.
I won’t lie: It’s a small annoyance to be asked to choose English or Spanish at an ATM machine. It bugs me when a white contractor pays the initial visit to work on my house, then turns the job over to a crew in which nary a worker speaks English.
The key to assimilation is to learn to speak the primary language of the community so you can operate in it. For us, that’s English. Like currency, it unites us.
And in heightened times like these, when immigration and what to do about it is a red-hot issue, not speaking the same language might drive us further apart.
In Lilburn and Norcross, a Hispanic can function with relative ease and not know a speck of English. Some might say that’s cool, that it’s a sign of progress. It is. On a small scale.
Operating in the shadows isn’t assimilation. It’s isolation. It’s also hinders the purpose for migrating here in the first place. You can’t prosper, truly prosper, if you’re isolated from the larger society, unable to communicate.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with foreigners speaking their native tongue. You expect it in their homes, churches and other places where culture and heritage intertwine. Outside of that, they should learn and speak English. Many are making an effort, I’m sure.
No immigrant should expect government to accommodate them with interpreters, translators and other such services. It’s too costly.
I’d imagine the insurance company that sent out the flier in Spanish was attempting to show their willingness to do business with Latinos. Cool.
I have a suggestion. If the company really wants to invest in the community and help our new neighbors, it should encourage them to learn English. How about offering night classes?
Pennywise teen: Prom doesn’t have to break you
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s a purple satin dress.
And she plans to match it with a pair of maroon and black pumps.
Michelle Manges, a Brookwood High senior, figures she’ll spend about $60 or $70 on prom, and that includes her dress.
“I wore the shoes in a pageant before,” the 18-year-old told me. “So I’m good to go.”
She e-mailed me after I wrote a column about $3,000 prom dresses and people insane enough to buy them. Subsequently, I asked readers for prom-saving tips — ways to make the Big Dance special without raiding the bank.
Michelle credits her frugality to heredity and innateness.
“It’s just the way I am,” she told me.
I like this girl. Her prom dress, too. It cost $40.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, “I don’t even have to shorten it, and I’m pretty short. It was a perfect size, and it was brand new. Nothing wrong with it.”
She snagged it at Second Glance, a consignment shop near her home in Lawrence-ville. Michelle’s bought her other prom dresses there, nothing more than $60. She recommends the store to other fashion-conscious pennywise teens.
“It’s adorable,” said Michelle, who takes a full course load at Georgia Perimeter and works two jobs.
Her mother is making her prom corsage and boutonniere with fresh flowers from the family garden. All you need, Michelle told me, is a long straight pin, some elastic band and floral tape.
When she was a freshman, she and a group of friends rented a limousine for the big night. Not this prom, which takes place May 13 at the Georgia Historic Railroad Depot in Flowery Branch. Her chariot is a red Toyota Camry, courtesy of her date.
“OK, so maybe it’s not high class,” she said in an e-mail,”but it’s convenient and gives us more leniency on time and funds.”
She recalls a past prom dinner at Little Gardens, a swank restaurant in Lilburn. Great atmosphere. Spectacular food. Way too expensive.
Michelle suggests dining somewhere a little more casual, where etiquette faux pas won’t spell disaster. Unless plans change, she and her date will dine at Saigon Cafe, an Asian bistro in Duluth with “yummy food and great prices.”
Recently, Michelle paid to have her hair professionally cut and styled. When prom day rolls around, she can touch it up herself. And while flipped-up hairstyles can be beautiful, they can be cumbersome.
“As the night rolls on, they become a hassle as they fall down and look silly, especially if you’re out afterward,” she said.
Don’t misconstrue Michelle’s practicality as being judgmental.
She has nothing against those who spend exorbitantly for this seminal event. That’s their business. She simply doesn’t believe that limos, pricey dresses and premium dinners guarantee fond memories.
“Remember,” she told me, “sometimes the best things in life are free.”
