May 14, 2004
The women of Sugarloaf County Club held their finale luncheon on May 11th to wrap up their hugely successful fourth annual "Volley for a Cure." Event founder
Sheila Stevens has created something beautiful with this grassroots tennis challenge to benefit breast cancer victims and their families. The tennis challenge this year was not only played at Sugarloaf Country Club, but also at Laurel Springs Country Club and Summit Chase Country Club. Next year will include even more locations in Metro Atlanta. Sheila Stevens dreams BIG!
Stevens and her co-chair, Lynn
Roberts, presented a check for $116,000 to
Carolyn Hill, president of the Gwinnett Hospital System Foundation and chair of the "Time Matters Campaign against breast cancer." All of that hard work by the ladies of Sugarloaf will pay off right here, my friends, making a huge difference for the women in Gwinnett County. With this gift from "Volley for a Cure," the Digital Mammography phase of the Time Matters Campaign will have raised over $500,000 toward the $1 million goal.
Digital mammography is cutting edge technology that is revolutionizing breast care by delivering extremely clear, detailed images that enable significant reductions in call-back rates, image retakes and exam time. All hospitals are clamoring for it and we certainly want to have it available here in Gwinnett. The first mammography center that will be upgraded to digital mammography when all the money is raised is the Marion Allison Webb Center for Screening Mammography, which is located on the Lawrenceville campus of Gwinnett Medical Center.
You can add another donation to that figure on the big check, too. Duluth
Mayor Shirley Lasseter brought along a check for $1,000 to the luncheon from candidate for District 1 Commissioner,
George Thorndyke. I saw the check myself.
Find out more about this extraordinary charitable project, "Volley for a Cure," by visiting the Web site at
www.volleyforacure.org
.
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Word on the street is that the reason the Democratic opponent of District 5 School Board member
Louise Radloff dropped out of the race is because his family was not registered to vote. Ooops! The Democrats didn't do quite
all of their homework when they slated a candidate with a major gap like that. Wonder if the rest of the Democratic candidates, many recruited at the last possible moment before the filing deadline, have all of their documents in order, so to speak.
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I am always hopeful that reason will prevail in our local elections. Some of our elected positions, such as the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education are decidedly NOT entry-level positions. Somebody who has never even attended one of these public commission meetings should not even think he or she could be a good candidate for one of these jobs. Both of these huge public entities have billion dollar budgets. Why would voters even think of handing over control of budgets like these to amateurs? We must use some common sense here, my friends. We must do our homework and determine which of the candidates are qualified for the job they seek and which are not! There will be some of each on our ballots.
Some folks have developed a prejudice against all incumbents and vote for a change every chance they get. This is too facile a response in my view. If an elected official is doing a good job with our public trust, I believe I would vote in favor of the incumbent. Not all public officials do a good job, however. That is when a change is definitely indicated. We all know who the doofuses are; at least, I
hope we all know! Once in a while somebody says something to me that makes me wonder where they might have been for the past four years, however. There really are people who evidently do not read newspapers or watch the news, or have any inkling what goes on right under their noses. They must stay somewhere very dark.
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Gwinnett County gives all of the political candidates a copy of the guidelines for the placing of their political signs. For instance, no signs are allowed in the county's right of way, which is defined as typically 11 feet from the curb or the pavement if there is no curb. You would expect that candidates for county and state offices would make sure their sign committees follow the rules, but we know that is not always the case. Well, not to worry. There is a dedicated group that call themselves "The Truckload Fifteen" that will make short work of any signs that are posted in defiance of the law. These guys loooove to do their sign sweeps! Those tacky signs by the side of the road don't last very long any more, thank goodness!
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The sweet scent of honeysuckle is everywhere. In my garden, there is also the heavy sweet smell of valerian, which has a tall white floweret, not unlike Queen Anne's Lace. The wild strawberries are ripe and the turtles love them so we have to be careful where we step. Now is the time to hand prune your azaleas if they have stopped blooming. The Gumpo azaleas are just breaking into bloom; the Encore azaleas are in full bloom as well. If you plant some of each variety, you'll have blooming azaleas for about two months. This is Spring at its best!
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Hope all is well and thanks for reading.
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