LAURA DARLEY

You have never seen Laura Darley's picture on the front page of the Courier Herald. People like her rarely wind up on the front page of any newspaper. That doesn't mean that you won't recognize her if you see her. Many of you have eaten lunch with her. You may have seen her in the lunchroom at Northwest Laurens Elementary. But, if you don't know who Laura Darley is, just go over to Chick-fi-La for lunch and you'll find her patrolling the place, policing up the fallen crumbs and abandoned trays, and keeping the whole place tidy and neat, just like your grandmother would.


Laura Darley has lived in Laurens County for almost all of her eighty-five years. She grew up on a farm near Rockledge. Life was tough for Laura's parents, Ashley and Tiny Stewart, during the Great Depression. After she graduated from Wilkes High School, Laura married Johnnie Darley. They had seven children, five boys and two girls. Johnnie died way too young in 1970.

During her four decades of widowhood, Laura Darley kept on working. She worked in and outside of her home. Despite the fact that she had seven of her own children, Miss Laura took in at least five foster children, including a six-month-old baby. When she was looking after her own children, Mrs. Darley worked for almost two decades in the lunchroom at Northwest Laurens Elementary.

After leaving the school, Laura took a job at Quincy's Restaurant in Dublin. She worked along with her son Doyce, who was the one who cooked those fabulous, triple-buttered yeast rolls that put a smile on our faces and inches on our waist lines. "When I worked there, my family would always ask me to bring them some home when I got off work," Mrs. Darley, who only worked at Quincy's for a short time, fondly remembered.

Then in the middle of April in 1999, Laura's life took a change for the better. She took a job at Chick-fi-la. "I went over and applied for a job and Mr. David Roberts hired me," Laura recalled.

Roberts had a plan for Laura. "When she came in, I thought how wonderful it would be to have her as a greeter for a while, to be a grandmother to everyone," the manager recalled. She wouldn't work in the kitchen or in the drive through a window or even the front counter.

Laura's shift starts at lunch and lasts only three hours. It is her job to keep the place neat and tidy. She really doesn't mind those who leave their tables and booths in a mess. After all, it's her job to make the eating areas so clean that you wouldn't know anyone had eaten there in a while. One customer, who requested anonymity, keeps an eye on his drink, careful to move it every 20 seconds or so, to make sure Mrs. Laura doesn't come by and pluck it up. And, she does that six days a week. She reserves the seventh day for the Lord and her family.

David Roberts once thought that when she first came to work that Laura would work for only a short time. "Now, she's been here for about 12 years, and " She has only missed a handful of days and her work ethic is unmatched," Roberts continued. On some days, Mrs. Laura has to work up to the strength to get over the normal aches and pains of someone her age just to make it in to work. "She is always in a good mood. She has been a blessing to us," Roberts observed of his longest serving employee.

Laura Darley will celebrate her 85th birthday on Thursday, March 31. Unless her boss gives her the day off, Laura will be working the lunch shift, just as she has for the last dozen years.

Laura Darley has no plans to quit working. "I love the people who come here," she says. "And, I will keep working as long as I can," she continued.

So, if you want to wish her a happy birthday, stop by at lunch and there you'll find Miss Laura, doing what she does best, being a grandmother who picks up your crumbs and your trash and never fusses at you.

SHANE HARDEN

War on Terror News
Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Relics of Defeat: Marines uncover insurgent caches


Regimental Combat Team 1



03.28.2011 Story by Sgt. Jesse Stence

MARJAH, Afghanistan - Like tomb raiders, the Marines unearth the deadly treasures of those who no longer rule Helmand province. Scouring dry creek beds and abandoned compounds, they collect caches of AK-47s, Soviet era grenades and homemade explosives buried by the Taliban.

Capt. Walker Koury, the commanding officer with Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, said his troops find caches every day as citizens of Northern Marjah warm to the Marines.

“I think this makes it much more difficult for them to return,” said Koury, addressing the possibility of a Taliban spring campaign in the area.

For Fox Company, weapons cache finds are the most tangible evidence of the Taliban’s woes in Northern Marjah. The company has averaged three per day over the last three months, accumulated more than 240 since the beginning of their deployment almost five months ago, and accounted for more cache finds than any other Marine company in Afghanistan, Koury said.

Koury, from Nashhville, Tenn., said the increased rate of cache finds is a byproduct of the growing support for Marines in Northern Marjah.

“If the people support the Marines, they’ll tell them that the Taliban are coming,” explained Koury. “Who’s going to spot the Taliban? Not us. The people. Because they’re going to see the Taliban moving with the weapons, so that’s [why the Taliban] are having to hide all of this stuff … What they’ll do is hide the weapons where they’re going to conduct the attack.”

“So therefore,” concluded Koury, “I’m literally attacking their ambush position, but they’re not there; their weapons are.”

First Lt. Shane Harden, the Fox Company executive officer, noted a significant decrease in Taliban small arms attacks since the beginning of the deployment. Harden said firefights used to be a daily occurrence. Now, he said, more than two weeks have passed since their last engagement with the enemy. Harden, from Dublin, Ga., believes the decrease in violence is directly related to the increase in cache finds.
Koury, whose company supports 3rd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, said the turnaround in Northern Marjah is the byproduct of a change in command philosophy. The former battalions focused more on destroying the enemy, whereas 3/9 and Fox Company have concentrated more on building relationships with the locals, Koury said.

Harden noted that Fox Company and 3/9 face a weaker enemy than past Marine battalions in Marjah – units that adopted a more aggressive approach by necessity, he said. He conceded that Fox Company's approach wouldn't have been possible in the spring of 2010, when local Taliban forces were a more formidable threat, and he credited previous battalions for aggressively pushing lingering Taliban out of Marrjah and setting the conditions for more sophisticated counterinsurgency operations. Nevertheless, he said, Fox Company saw no progress until a point early in the deployment when they shifted their focus from killing the enemy to embracing the community.

Koury illustrated the problem Marines have had in the past. “Say you get attacked, and you go through – you break people’s stuff,” he said. “You point weapons at people, and every time your [base] gets shot at, you return with machine gun fire. Now what are the people going to think about you? You can see it however you want, but they’re not going to like you.”

“The next day, the Taliban come by, and they go up to these people and say, ’Hey, you know the guys who broke your door? The guy who just pointed that weapon at your kid? That guy who searched your house? He’s coming down the road in 15 minutes. We’re going to put this bomb in the road, and don’t you say anything to him.’”

Koury looked up, breaking off the narrative. “Would you say anything to him? Would you tell him there’s a bomb in the road?”

In Northern Marjah, the people will, asserted Koury, because the Fox Company Marines have avoided endangering the civilian population in pursuit of insurgents.

Sgt. Gerry Cariaga, a squad leader with Fox Company, said he’s surprised at how much of the deployment he’s spent talking to people and searching for buried weapons. He said departing Marines from the last unit warned that violence would resume with the changing of seasons.

“They said, ‘Hey, once it gets hotter, it’s going to get worse.”

Cariaga, from Solsona, Ilocos Norte, Phillippines, said he’s sometimes disappointed by the unfulfilled prophecy. He sometimes misses the excitement of the firefights, he admitted, but overall, he’s glad that his company has found a safer, more effective way to operate.

“If you treat people with respect, they will respect you,” Cariaga observed.

Koury attributes the company’s success – the uncovered caches, burgeoning public support and reduced hostility – to Marine discipline. Marines prefer the gallantry of combat to playing the role of neighborhood watch, but they will always restrain their natural aggression for the sake of mission accomplishment, he said.

“You can kill every Taliban, but if you don’t have the support of the people, it doesn’t matter,” Koury said. “In fact, you don’t have to kill any Taliban, and you can win.”

LEONARD BURKE

America and Erin Go Bragh

Leonard Burke is used to wearing green. After all, his parents were Irish. And, he just celebrated his 93rd St. Patrick's Day. Although Leonard may look green on the outside - he wore the olive drab uniform of his country for six years too- on the inside, Leonard Burke bleeds red, white, and blue. So, at this Saturday's St. Patrick's Parade, look for this passionately patriotic veteran, one of the many grand marshals we salute for their service to our nation.

Leonard Burke was born to Joseph Patrick Burke and Sarah Jane Eckert Burke in Pennsylvania on the tenth day of the tenth month of 1918. Six weeks after his birth, Joe Burke began making preparations to come home from World War I. Leonard Burke grew up in the Great Depression on the back streets of a West Philadelphia neighborhood, where most of the residents were Irish or Italian. Leonard never finished high school, opting to start working instead. He worked at Dewey's Restaurant on 13th and Market streets for $18.00 a week, keeping $5.00 for himself, and giving the rest to his mother as long as he was living at home.

When the war with Japan broke out, Leonard left his managerial job at Dewey's and took a job as a ball bearing grinder at SFK Ball and Bearing Plant, where he made bearings for ships, tanks, and trucks. When called into the service in 1943, Leonard, at the age of twenty-five with a wife and infant daughter at home, enlisted in the Army. Naturally he was assigned to an engineering unit. After training for many months in the states, Burke and his unit arrived in Liverpool, England in mid-May of 1944, just weeks before D-day.

Leonard was assigned to the 300th Combat Engineers. For eighteen months, Leonard built roads, mine fields, bridges, fortifications, and anything else the Army needed to build or blow up as it slowly moved across France and Belgum into Germany. During the bitterly cold winter of 1944-45, Burke's unit saw service just north of the Battle of the Bulge. One of the highlights of his service was the day Leonard literally bumped into Gen. George S. Patton. When Burke saw whom he had bumped into, he apologized. The immortal general excused the momentary brush. Leonard never can get out his mind the sight of piles of bones in the killing ovens of the concentration camps he saw near the end of the war. During his tour in Europe, Burke was awarded five bronze stars, a meritorious unit award, and various other awards. Seeing it as a jinx, Burke turned down a Purple Heart instead telling his general to give it to the guy in the bed because he was in worse shape.

After the war was over, Burke was one the lucky ones when he got old job back. But, after six months, Leonard decided to join the Army Air Corps to ensure a steady income for his family. Among Leonard's highly prized memorabilia of his years in the service is a certificate issued to him by Col. John R. Kilgore. Burke participated in Operation Sandstone at the Eniwetok Atomic Energy Proving Grounds on the Marshall Islands. The project was a three-detonation series of atomic bombs in 1948 to test the effects of nuclear fall out on the atmosphere and naval ships and aircraft.

After the war, Burke married the love of his life, his wife Thelma, and moved to Florida. Eventually, Leonard and Thelma moved to Moultrie, Georgia, where he lived and worked until he recently retired. Yes, Leonard worked up until the age of ninety. Burke began working at Lear-Signer in Moultrie in 1951 and kept on working full time in the aviation industry. At the age of seventy-three, when most people his age have already retired, Leonard took a new job at Maule Air, Inc. He would work there for almost 17 years. At the age of 89, Leonard was honored for his work as a quality control inspector as the Older Worker of the Year in Southwest Georgia.

Today, Burke lives with his step daughter Elaine Goolsby on Walke Dairy Road. His memories of his life in World War II are still vivid in his mind. He treasures the friendships he made and the good he was able to do on behalf of his country. I imagine, if the U.S. Army called and needed his help, Leonard Burke would put his green uniform back on, stand at attention, and salute the flag of the country he so dearly loves.

The Dublin Civitan Club invites all veterans of military service to serve as grand marshals of this year's parade. If you are a veteran and would like to walk or ride in the parade report to the head of the parade column at S. Jefferson Street and Martin Luther King Dr., this Saturday morning between 08:30 to 09:30 hours. If you can't make it, the Civitan Club thanks you for your service to our country. To those who come to watch the parade, bring your flag to wave as we honor those who risked their lives to give us the freedoms we enjoy today. For further information, please call me at 478-279-2514.

Leonard Burke riding aboard the VA float, St. Patrick's Parade, March 19, 2011.
 

CAROL PORTER

Her Passionate Mission

BY: Scott B. Thompson, Sr.

Carol Porter has a passion for her missions. And, her missions are her passion. That mission is to make sure every Georgia child is educated, every waterway is clean and full, every road is safe and efficient, and every person who wants a job can have a job. Carol wants to put the people back in charge of their government. She has other missions, ones she hasn’t completed yet. They are spreading the word of her faith in her actions and as a Sunday school teacher and most important of all, raising her four sons and spending time with her husband, State Representative Dubose Porter. If you ask her, she will tell you that her favorite thing to do is to sit down and eat at the dinner table with her family. If there are friends there, then that’s good too.

Carol Dodd Porter was born on November 8, 1958. She grew up in the small town of Wrightsville, Georgia, where her father, Dr. William A. Dodd, practiced medicine. When Dr. Dodd wasn’t seeing patients, you might have found him sitting at his piano playing some of the world’s greatest jazz songs, sometimes with some of the world’s great musicians by his side. Her mother, Mrs. Louise Dodd, was a teacher, author, and community volunteer.

It was on house calls with her father when Carol got her first glimpses of the poverty, hunger, sickness and abuse which plague our state. “I believed there were solutions for those problems then and now I know that there are,” Porter says. Carol Porter’s passion for education was most stirred in the class room of Mrs. Pansey Mixson. “I still remember her reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books to us every day,” the former tomboy recalled. But by far, it was Carol’s mother who had the most profound impact on her young life. “My mother has the highest energy and strongest work ethic that I have ever seen. And, every day, I aspire to be the example she has set for me,” the mother of four grown sons proclaimed.

After graduating from the University of Georgia with a degree in Psychology, Carol went to work as a copywriter with the Courier Herald in Dublin. It was in Dublin where Carol met Dubose Porter, the county’s new state representative. Dubose left his law practice and along with Carol, purchased an interest in the newspaper.

Following the birth of their four sons, Stephen, Guyton, Asa and Inman, in five years, Carol Porter went to work on her first mission. Along with her husband, the Porters worked hard to raise their children to be exposed to education, the arts, scouting, and the teachings of the Church. All four of her sons followed in the footsteps of their father in obtaining the rank of Eagle Scout. Carol never was an Eagle Scout, but then again, they don’t have Eagle Scouts in the Girl Scouts.

After 14 terms in the Georgia Legislature ending with a position as House Democratic Leader, Dubose Porter stepped down to run for Governor of Georgia. All along, Carol had been at his side, listening and learning about the issues which affect our state. She researched policy positions, managed campaigns and formulated strategies for her husband. So, it only seemed natural that Carol could stand in for Dubose at the NFIB/Georgia's Small Business Day at the Capitol, held on Wednesday, January 27, 2010.

“It started when I sat in for DuBose at a governor’s forum,” Carol Porter commented. “And what I found out is, I know the issues facing Georgia better than some of the candidates running for governor that day. And I am passionate about this,” her husband’s biggest fan affirmed.

Then one by one, calls, emails and Internet posts came pouring in, asking her to run for the office of Lieutenant Governor. No one had announced for the position, other than the Republican incumbent Casey Cagle. So when the movement to draft Carol into the race began, she saw the opportunity to run for the office to stop the corruption she believes secretly infests the offices under the Gold Dome.

To Carol, political office is all about trust. “What I love is to find a solution to a problem. Solutions come through leadership and governing. The answers are there,” Carol adds. Believing that politics is just one way to help find those solutions, Mrs. Porter contended, “too many of the people who get involved in politics forget what they are supposed to be doing.” The candidate believes in government can work, as long as those in the government don’t usurp their power and start working for the people.

At this moment, it is entirely possible that the top two elected offices in Georgia could be filled by women, if not in November, then some day very soon. To Carol Porter, that is a good thing. “Women make up not only the majority of Georgia’s population, but also an even larger majority of the state’s voters,” Porter observed. What troubles her is that women hold a fraction of the elected offices in the state. “I hope that my candidacy, along with all the other female candidates in the country this year, will inspire young women to be more active in their communities and their government. I hope those young women will learn about Georgia’s government and issues we are facing,” Porter wishes.

More than anything else, the housewife and newspaper owner turned politician, wants to return the power of government to the people. “The biggest problem that our state is facing right now is the corrupting of the legislative process under the Gold Dome,” Porter remarked. By consolidating power in the hands in less than a dozen people, Mrs. Porter believes the Constitution of the State and the government itself has been compromised. “By allowing our system to work as our Constitution intended it to do, then all we have to do is put the facts on the table and let common sense be our guide,” affirmed Porter.

Candidate and citizen Carol Porter’s passions are self-evident that children should learn, people who want a job should work, and that our highways and waterways should be the best they can we can make them. Fighting the corruption she sees at the highest levels of state government may be her most impossible mission, but her passion for the power of the voices of the people will always be her most passionate mission.

DORRIE GARNER

Dublin Woman Donates Bone Marrow to


Stranger

Jennifer Bellamy



@WMAZ
http://www.wmaz13.com/ 12/1/2010







For 22-year-old Dorrie Garner, life is full of golden opportunities. "I think that everybody is given gifts, and the purpose of those gifts is to turn around and help and love and strengthen those in need," said Garner.

The University of Georgia senior has found ways to give back though mission trips to Peru, Costa Rica, New York and Los Angeles, but managed to come across the chance to try and save someone dying from cancer while away at school.

Garner took a cheek swab test at UGA, and though others doubted her bone marrow would match up with someone in need, Garner knew better.

"I had people tell me 'you won't get a phone call' 'it's very rare, the statistics are very low that you'll get called' and I believed I would be called," recalled Garner laughing.

She says the National Marrow Donor Program flew her to Virginia for the six and a half hour non-surgical procedure, but before donating Garner spent her fall break getting ready. She says she had to have a medical injection that left her feeling weak and sore.

"It makes you kind of sick, it makes your bones hurt, but it's nothing in comparison to what cancer patients go through with chemotherapy," she said, describing the effects.

The National Marrow Donor Program says about 30 percent of people in need of a transplant can find a perfect match within their family, leaving about 70 percent to depend on the kindness of strangers or others for life-saving treatment.

Garner says she comes from a family involved in the medical profession with a father who works as a doctor, her mother a former nurse, and a brother in medical school. She says her family and friends supported her decision to try and help someone else.

"It's been a blessing," said Garner, "I think I've gotten more out of the experience than anyone." Lee Garner, Dorrie's mother, says she's proud of her daughter but knows she would say the story isn't about her. She says her daughter would want others to feel encouraged to sign up to donate bone marrow to others.

Dorrie says the preparing, undergoing and recovering took about 2 weeks. She says her professors appreciated what she did and gave her extensions that helped her get back on track with school.

Garner says she'll find out in a few weeks if the bone marrow she donated saved the life of a 52-year-old woman suffering from leukemia, but either way, the choice to try came easily.
"The idea that I can use something that I already have which is a healthy body, healthy blood, a cancer-free body to help someone else...it just made sense to me I have it so why not give it out," said Garner.

Until she knows the outcome, she'll continue to pray for the healing of a woman she doesn't know, but cares for just the same.

If the transplant is successful, Garner says she can meet her recipient in one year if she agrees.

LULA GILBERT

Family celebrates 10-10-10



By: Ed Grisamore
@Macon Telegraph





 DAVISBORO — Lula Gilbert cannot push her memory all the way back on a journey that began 110 years ago.

She can no longer recall what it was like to be alive before Abraham Lincoln was on the head of a penny and the Wright brothers had wings.

Special to The Telegraph Lula Gilbert, 110, sits with a can of snuff in this undated photo. Some of the memories are still intact, though. They return to a time when every road was dirt because no one owned a car. Or had a telephone.

She can tell stories about picking cotton and plowing behind a mule, when the field hands could have irrigated the row crops with the sweat of a summer day.

There are other centenarians who can find the recesses of their childhoods with greater clarity. Their minds don’t get as weary or have to work as hard. But they don’t have to turn as many pages of the family Bible to find their births recorded.

Sunday is being revered as 10-10-10.

For Lula Poole Bridges Gilbert, who was born on Oct. 10, 1900, in Washington County, it is 10-10 ... 110.

One hundred and 10 years is 40,177 sunrises in Deepstep and 27 leap years across the ditches to Riddleville. It is a zillion footsteps over wooden bridges along the road to Sandersville, kicking up red dirt and kaolin dust as she carried babies in her arms while trying to balance a sack of groceries on her head.

Sunday at the New Fleming Baptist Church, six generations of family and friends will gather for dinner on the grounds to honor their matriarch. They will celebrate the longevity of a woman who still carries three cans of snuff in her pocketbook and enjoys watching Westerns every afternoon on a big-screen TV in her grandson’s single-wide trailer.

There will be plenty of birthday cake, but no one will dare strike a match to 110 candles for fear of burning down the church.

Miss Lula would bake one herself, if she were able. Some folks still call her “Cook.” The nickname has stuck like the batter of her famous sweetbread. She not only fed her own family but wore aprons in dozens of other homes, where she worked as a housekeeper. For years, she was hired to cook meals for the men between shifts at a local sawmill.

She is a great-great-great-grandmother, and the branches of her family tree — scribbled in the crowded margins of spiral notebooks — are like a giant oak reaching in every direction. Two of her grandchildren, Catherine Morgan and Willie Bridges, helped fill in the details and reconstruct much of her life story.

In July, Miss Lula moved to Davisboro to live with Willie and his wife, Emma. She had been in Bristol, Pa., with her only surviving daughter, Nora Williams. Before that, she lived with granddaughter, Catherine, in Macon.

She grew up one of 10 children, and her parents, Ed and Gustann Poole, were sharecroppers. She was married at age 13 to a man named General Bridges. He passed the house one day and noticed her baby sitting a neighbor’s children. Before he formally introduced himself, he asked her father for her hand in marriage.

She gave birth to the first of her five children at age 14 and was grateful for whatever the Lord and the land provided. They pulled corn and picked velvet beans to feed the hogs. The beans were prickly, like okra, and they would wrap their sleeves to protect their skin.

When she separated from her first husband, she married Gordon Gilbert, a widower who had no children of his own but was raising three of his nephews.

She taught her children and grandchildren how to quilt, can vegetables and make potash soap. She never had a driver’s license. About the only thing she has ever collected was store-bought dolls.

Sunday, she will officially move from the ranks of centenarian (100 and older) to supercentenarian (110 and older.) According to the Gerontology Research Group, which tries to verify the age of those who qualify as supercentenarians, she will be the fourth-oldest Georgia resident.

Bess Cooper of Walton County is 114 and the second-oldest living American behind Eunice Sanborn of Texas, who is 37 days older. The second-oldest Georgian, Leila Denmark of Athens, is 112 and a graduate of Tift College in Forsyth. She achieved notoriety as the oldest practicing pediatrician in the world when she retired in 2001 at age 103. Annie Leverett of Americus turned 112 in June.

KENNY MARTIN

Building a Better World
BY: Scott B. Thompson, Sr.

There's a new governor in this state. You may know him as the pool guy or the father of some pretty good athletes. Now and for the next year, you will know him as the Governor of the Georgia District of Civitan International. He is as old as life and as young as the rainbow, as endless as time. His hands reach out in service to others. His ears hear the cry of children. His heart beats for every friend and bleeds for every injury to humanity. He is a Civitan. And, his name is Kenny Martin.

Kenny was born to be a Civitan. Actually, he was born before the Dublin Club was founded in 1955. His father, Hubert Martin, was the club's fifth president and a Lt. Governor of the South Georgia District. Kenny grew up in East Dublin and went to school in Dublin before returning to the Rams of East Laurens High School. It was on the East side where Kenny got his first taste of leadership. He served as his senior class president and helped to facilitate the integration of East Laurens and B.D. Perry High School. Just three years out of high school, Martin made his first venture into politics, winning a seat on the East Dublin City Council, a feat which made him the youngest city council member in the history of the county. That record didn't last long. Clifton Wilkinson set the record two years later when he was elected to the Dublin council at the age of 20.

Kenny devoted most of his time to build a life and home for his family, but found time to serve others as a Mason and a Shriner. When his law enforcement career ended, Kenny began to look for other ways of serving. He didn't look far, remembering all the times that his father and Elbert Mullis, known to many as the "grandfather of all Civitans in the South Georgia District," would meet together at his house working on Civitan matters. Kenny also remembered going with his father and other Civitans out to the old Brewton School to salvage some unused chalk boards which the county donated to the School of Hope in Dublin behind Saxon Street School. The school, whose first teacher was Mrs. Shirley Miller, was sponsored by the Civitans to help educate disabled children.

"Most people are asked to join the Civitan club. It was different with me. I wanted to get in," Martin fondly recalled. Fellow deputy Vernon DeLoach and Kenny's Civitan role model Elbert Mullis helped him to join the club in 1988.

To Martin, being a Civitan means a chance to give back to his community. "We have a strong club with a good mix of ages with members from their twenties to their eighties," Martin observed. In fact, the Dublin club, in a constant seesaw contest with Warner Robins club, is now the largest in Georgia. Kenny feels a sense of fulfillment when he and club members build a wheel chair ramp for the disabled, host an Easter egg hunt for special needs children, or host a fair, the club's biggest fund raiser, all in the name of helping children, who cannot help themselves.

Speaking of the Fall Fair, which will be held on October 19-23, Kenny Martin has headed the fair committee for the last sixteen years, going back to the old days when it was held in the rear of the Ag Center. It was a role groomed for him by Mullis. "Robert Drew helps get the building and grounds set up every year and I handle the business end of it," said Martin, who can always rely on fifty-plus year member James Hudson to handle the ticket booths, Treasurer John Simpson to count the proceeds, Wick Cochran to stock the concession stand with donated products, and every other member to step up and help where needed.

Martin served his first year as President of the Dublin club in 1997, but two years ago when a president-elect took another job and the club needed a replacement with experience, Kenny Martin couldn't say no. Old cries for him to run for District Governor by long time leaders of the old South Georgia District were heaped on him. With all of his children out of school, Martin succumbed to the pleas and threw his hat in the ring. "At the time, I didn't know I would have any opposition, there is usually not any," Martin recalled. But, at the 2009 annual convention, Kenny Martin was elected Governor of the Georgia District. He is the first Dublin member to attain that honor, although three former members have served as Governor of the South Georgia District.

Kenny took office on October 1st. In the six weeks leading up to his taking office, Martin has been busy, very busy. He attended and helped manage the district convention, only two weeks before traveling to the International Convention in Cancun, Mexico. Since returning home, Kenny has spent the last three weeks traveling all over the state attending and speaking at officer installation banquets.

This year, 2010-2011, the International Civitan Club's motto is "Pay it Forward." "Every civic club's mission is to pay it forward," Martin contended. It is Martin's goal and the club's goal to encourage every single member, there's 1150 of these public servants in Georgia, to "pay it forward" on an individual basis to help even more people in our community and around the world, including children in the International Civitan Research Hospital Center in Birmingham.

One of the Dublin club's goals for the upcoming year is the revitalization of the Special Olympics programs in Laurens County. Citing that the Olympics were once the club's most important event, Martin would like the games and community support rejuvenated.

"There are plenty of opportunities to help people out. There are a lot of people hurting with the economy and the shape it is in. You always think you have it bad until you look around and find somebody else who has it worse than you do," Martin remarked. "You don't have to look far to find somebody in need," he concluded.

So, if you would like to help disabled children and do unto others as you would have them do unto you, find a Civitan and ask for a membership application. Then, you too can help build a better world.