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FRIDAY, October 16, 2015 • VOL. 18, NO. 28 • FREE

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Festival to
celebrate
collards

Global health
nonprofit
celebrates 30 years

Local food
pantry supports
refugee families

Local, 2A

Local, 9A

local, 10A

South DeKalb Senior Center finally opens

From left, in March interim DeKalb County CEO Lee May hired former state attorney general Mike Bowers “to root out corruption,…waste, fraud and abuse.”
Bowers’ recent report says May should resign. Photos by Andrew Cauthen

Residents, commissioners seek
action after corruption report
by Andrew Cauthen
[email protected]

N

early two weeks after
the release of a special
investigator’s report alleging “a pattern of corrosive
and widespread misconduct”
in the DeKalb County government, three online petitions are calling for the interim county CEO to resign.
Additionally, two county
commissioners have introduced resolutions calling
for a state investigation and
more internal controls.
As of Oct. 13, more than
440 people had signed three
online petitions calling for
the resignation of interim
DeKalb County CEO Lee
May after the results of a report by former state attorney
general Mike Bowers, who
investigated the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal.
Bowers was picked in March
by May to root out county
corruption.
In his report, delivered to
the county Sept. 30, Bowers
stated that the county’s poor
leadership and widespread
corruption “are a disgrace
to its citizens and an embarrassment to our state.”
“Choosing words such
as ‘laughable’ and ‘pitiful’ in

your refutation of the Bowers report is only further
evidence of your inability
to lead us moving forward,”
stated one petition, started
by the DeKalb Strong group
which is opposed to the proposed city of Lavista Hills.
“As CEO, the buck stops
with you,” the petition states.
“You must resign your office
in the best interest of our citizens, so that we may move
forward with the clean-up of
our beloved DeKalb.”
A second petition states,
“DeKalb County Interim
CEO Lee May needs to resign.
He ordered a special
investigation to find corruption, and ironically he was
found to be corrupt.”
May said he would resign
if the citizens of DeKalb
County asked him to do so,
the petition states.
Bob Barr, a former U.S.
attorney and congressman,
in a statement said he shares
concerns of the investigators.
Barr called “for further
investigation and action, in
order to correct what appears to be a long-festering
pattern of spending of taxpayer monies by officials
in DeKalb with little or no

See Corruption on page 15A

championnewspaper

by Andrew Cauthen
[email protected]
Seniors in south DeKalb packed the
house Oct. 12 for the official grand opening
of their newly-constructed center.
Located at 1931 Candler Road, the
South DeKalb Senior Center is on the site
of an old funeral home that was turned into
a senior center.
“We can fix it up, we can paint it up, you
can do whatever can, but every time I came
in here, I could not [forget] it was an old
funeral home,” said DeKalb County Commissioner Larry Johnson whose district
the new facility serves.
At a cost of approximately $3 million,
the center was constructed using U.S.
Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant funds.
The center is a 15,400-square-foot facility with amenities including community
meeting rooms, a computer lab, a fitness
area, a 1,400 square foot covered porch,
kitchen and more. Additionally, the center
includes classrooms to accommodate the
various activities requested by the community and a dining hall.
The center is expected to daily serve 150
to 200 seniors, ages 60 and up.
“This is a great day in District 3. This is
Residents and county officials celebrated the grand opening
of the recently finished South DeKalb Senior Center Oct. 12.
Photos by Andrew Cauthen

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2A The
Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015
The
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2A

A variety of collard-based dishes will be offered at the festival. At a wellness and sustainability pavilion, festivalgoers will have access to information on topics such as
nutrition and energy conservation.

by Kathy Mitchell

Music including reggae, jazz, blues, gospel and other genres will
be performed at the festival. Photos by Robert Ross

Festival to celebrate collards

Nobantu Ankoanda
is on a mission to promote
healthy living, especially in
Black communities. Inspired
by a garlic festival in her native California, Ankoanda
decided to create her own
festival around a nutritious
food. She chose one already
popular in her adopted state
of Georgia—collard greens.
Now in its sixth year
locally, the Collard Green
Festival this year will be Saturday, Oct. 24—rescheduled
from the original Sept. 26
date—hosted for the third
consecutive year by the city
of Lithonia and Mayor Deborah A. Jackson.
Popular in Asia, Africa,
North and South America,
collard greens are among the
world’s most healthful food,
according to whfood.com
and other sources. “Collard
greens, rich in color, texture
and taste, are a staple food

deeply rooted in the history
of Black Americans,” states
material prepared by festival
organizers. “With even more
calcium than kale and a high
concentration of other nutrients such as iron, vitamin A,
vitamin C and beta-carotene,
collard greens are arguably
the healthiest greens in the
world.”
The festival continues to
grow, according to Ankoanda, who said there are more
activities and more attendees
each year. This year, approximately 1,500 people are
expected. “Some people who
had planned to come found
themselves unable to after we
changed the date because of
weather, but perhaps some
who weren’t able to come
in September will be able to
make the October date,” she
said, noting that festival organizers are trying to arrange
to move the event to a nearby
school if the weather is again
inhospitable.

In planning the festival,
Ankoanda borrowed an idea
from the garlic festival: create ice cream flavored with
the theme food. “When I
first approached people with
the idea of collard green ice
cream the reaction was ‘I
don’t think so,’” Ankoanda
recalled. But, she said, persistence paid and she and a
collaborator developed a collard ice cream that those who
sampled it agreed was tasty—
so tasty that the collaborator marketed it on his own,
leaving Ankoanda unable
to legally make and sell the
product she helped create.
“I had to start over, make
some changes and produce
a different collard ice cream.
It’s the most popular item at
the festival. People line up to
get it,” Ankoanda said. The
frozen treat is gluten-free
and safe for those who are
lactose intolerant, she added.
In addition to collard
ice cream, festivalgoers can

October is National Domestic
Violence Awareness Month


Please Join Us for Our 5th Annual
Community Resource Fair and Symposium on
BUILDING BRIDGES, MAKING CONNECTIONS:
COORDINATING A COMMUNITY RESPONSE
TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE



WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2015
8:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
open to the public

(free breakfast to begin at 8:00 a.m.)

look forward to collard
chips, collard salads, collard
dumplings, collard dip and
a host of other unusual culinary creations built around
the theme vegetable as well
as collards prepared many

ways. There also will be
foods that pair well with collard greens such as hot water
cornbread and other fresh
vegetable such as tomatoes
and onions.
New this year is “A Taste

See Festival on page 6A

Doc Talks
Upcoming Seminars at DeKalb Medical
The ABC’s of Breast Cancer
Prevention & Bling Your Bra
Thursday, October 27
6:30–7:30 p.m.
Community Room at DeKalb
Medical – Hillandale campus
While most people are aware
of breast cancer, many forget
to take the steps to detect
the disease in its early
stages. Learn what to
do to reduce your risk
of developing breast
cancer from physicians
and nurse navigators
who focus on how to be a
good steward of your health by
making diet and lifestyle changes.
Bring a bra to “bling” or decorate
on that we provide. Decorated
bras will be displayed at the
hospital Breast Centers.
Call 770.233.7393 or visit
www.dekalbmedical.org.
Iman
Breast Cancer Survivor

please bring your used cell phones
to donate through verizon ’ s hopeline

Manuel Maloof Auditorium
1300 Commerce Drive, Decatur, Georgia
RSVP BY OCTOBER 16, 2015 TO:
Deputy Chief SVU/Community Outreach
SONJA BROWN
404.371.2234 [email protected]

Sherry Boston

For a referral to a DeKalb Medical physician or to reserve
your space for these free seminars, please call 770.233.7393.
Light refreshments will be served. Parking is free.

DEKALB COUNTY SOLICITOR-GENERAL

www.dekalbsolicitorgeneral.org
404.371.2201

www.dekalbmedical.org

MAKING DEKALB SAFER FOR ALL

dekalbmedical

local

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 3A

Candidates, developers talk opportunities
for downtown Avondale Estates
by Carla Parker
[email protected]
A potential new development was the topic during a
community forum in Avondale Estates.
Second Century Avondale hosted the forum Oct.
7 to discuss the possibilities,
trends and economics of urban redevelopment and revitalization. It included a panel
of three developers who gave
presentations on what the
city should consider for a
possible development.
Candidates for the Board
of Mayor and Commissioner
candidates also gave their
views and answered questions.
In recent years, city
officials have discussed
and worked to bring new
development to the downtown area, including doing
a downtown master plan,
which includes ideas from
residents.
In October 2014, Euramex Management Group
purchased the 13-acre
Fenner Dunlop property.
Since then, city officials have
been in discussion with the
group but no plans have been
released about the potential
development.
During its Aug. 19 work

session, the Board of Mayor
and Commissioner discussed
the latest plans that were
presented by Euramex, which
included townhouses and
apartments, a parking deck,
some greenspace, a grocery
store, retail spaces and a public space for the property.
Mayor Jonathan Elmore,
who is running unopposed,
said there is much desire to
develop the downtown area.
“I think we have the right
pieces coming together, we’re
having these discussions and
I feel like it’s a really great
time,” he said. “We just got to
make it happen.”
Each candidate gave
thoughts on the city’s master
plan.
“It’s a very good expression of the input of our
citizens,” Commissioner
John Quinn said. “I think
the goals are to preserve the
character of Avondale–which
is very special–to protect,
preserve and increase available greenspace, but to also
maintain a livable and walkable community.”
Todd Pullen, who is running for commissioner, said
the current plan is the second
master plan the city has had
since he moved to the city in
2002.
“The first one—noth-

ing ever happened,” he said.
“I remembered being pretty
active in it, developing it
alongside other people and
nothing happened. While
we need this development,
businesses need to come in
the community and give us
a reason to put it into action.
It’s not going to happen by
just sitting there, and there
is not much we can do about
that unless people invest in
our community.”
Candidate Brian Fisher
said he thinks the plan is
great and it is time to execute
it.
“We have an opportuA design of the proposed Town
nity with Euramex to have a
Center was displayed at a community
great partnership but I don’t forum.
think we need to wait,” he
said. “We don’t have a time
frame; we don’t necessarily
know what their plans are.
We got four acres right there
in the middle of the heart of
our downtown—we can go
ahead and start and I think
we should sooner rather than
later.”
“I do agree that downtown master plan is pretty
robust,” said candidate Adela Yelton. “A lot of work
has gone into it; sounds
like some updates to zoning ordinances may or may
not need to happen. I’m all
about knowing who we are,

See Candidates on page 17A

 

COMMUNITY INPUT MEETINGS FOR BUILDING S.P.A.C.E.S. INITIATIVE 

The DeKalb County School District is holding five (5) regional public input meetings, to discuss and gather 
information related to its Master Planning of the E‐SPLOST V program, called the Building S.P.A.C.E.S. 
Initiative. The Building S.P.A.C.E.S. Initiative is an effort to determine how, where, and why future 
resources should be dedicated to the improvement and modernization of our buildings and 
infrastructure to support the District’s vision “to inspire our community of learners to achieve 
educational excellence.” 
 
The meetings will be held on the following dates and times at the locations shown: 

 

Region 

Region 1 

Tuesday, October 20, 7‐9 PM 

Region 5 

Thursday, October 22, 7 – 9 PM 

Region 4 

Monday, October 26, 7 – 9 PM 

Region 3 
Region 2 
 
 
 

Time/Date of Meeting 

Tuesday, October 27, 7 – 9 PM 
Thursday, October 29, 7 – 9 PM 

Meeting Location 

Chamblee High School 

3688 Chamblee‐Dunwoody Road 
Chamblee, GA 30341 

Columbia High School 
2106 Columbia Drive 
Decatur, GA 30032 

Miller Grove High School 

2645 DeKalb Medical Parkway 
Lithonia, GA 30058 

Stone Mountain High School 
4555 Central Drive 
Stone Mountain, GA 30083 

Tucker High School 
5036 LaVista Road 
Tucker, GA 30084 

Pratt Cassity of Center for Community Design and Prevention
talks about how to create a
thriving downtown.

Nearly 100 Avondale Estates
residents attend the forum.

OPINION

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 4A

Communicating is a gift
Being able to communicate directly and freely is a
gift that we too often take for
granted. Recently I realized
just how valuable this gift is
when my ability to speak for
myself was compromised.
On a trip in Italy while
part of a delegation of tour
operators and journalists,
I was asked to do three interviews with TV reporters.
Of course the non-English
speaking interviewers were
asking their questions in Italian, and I don’t speak Italian

Gale Horton Gay
[email protected]

Lifestyle Editor

so an interpreter was there
to translate. Sometimes the
questions made sense but
occasionally they didn’t—a
word was out of place or
completely wrong, throwing
off the entire meaning of the
query. And when I answered,
the translator sometimes had
a quizzical look on her face,
clearly stumped by something I said. Did I talk too
fast? Had I used slang or an
unfamiliar phrase? Was my
reply too long and convoluted? Was her English limited?

Of course, I had no idea
what was being reported as
my comments. However,
I’m pretty sure that not everything I said was communicated exactly as I had
expressed it, if at all.
Think about how fortunate we are to be able to
share our thoughts and views
with one another directly,
especially on community affairs. We’re blessed to live in
a democratic society where
we can express our opinions,
our dissatisfaction, our sup-

port and our outrage with
others verbally or in writing
in a number of vehicles. Language isn’t a barrier for most
of us, and we can express
ourselves with the expectation that we will be understood.
However, do we take full
advantage of the strength
and power of our voices and
how we can use them to
enhance our community? I
think that we do not. If we
did, we might all have far less
about which to complain.

OPINION

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 5A

One Man’s Opinion

Let Freedom Ring!
“Let freedom ring from
Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. 
Let freedom ring from every
hill and molehill of Mississippi.  From every mountainside,
let freedom ring,” Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., nearing the
conclusion of his “I Have
a Dream” speech, from the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the conclusion of the
March on Washington, Aug.
28, 1963.
Work was set to begin
on the Lincoln Memorial in
1913, nearly three years after
Congress passed enabling
legislation in 1910. Discussion to construct a national
monument in his honor
had begun only two years
after his assassination
in1867. Congress initially appropriated $300,000, and the
monument took nearly six
years to complete after the
start of construction in 1914.
In 1915, Mrs. Helen
Plane, a President Emeritus
and charter member of the
United Daughters of the
Confederacy began public
efforts to create and fund
a memorial to the Confederacy on Georgia’s Stone
Mountain. Mrs. Plane had
read the idea in a letter to the
editor of a major New York
newspaper. The Stone Mountain Association was created
to handle fundraising, and
work first began on the carving in 1923. The original
artist, and supervisor of the

Bill Crane
[email protected]

Columnist

carving, Gutzon Borglum,
began work, completing
General Lee’s head for a
public unveiling in January
of 1924.  Later disputes over
work progress, fundraising
and expenditures caused
Borglum to resign the project
and leave Georgia. He later
moved to the Dakotas and
oversaw the creation and
sculptures on Mount Rushmore.
While the Lincoln Memorial fast rose in prominence
to become of our nation’s
most iconic monuments and
possibly the most popular
destination on the Mall in
Washington, D.C., work on
the Stone Mountain carving
languished for decades.
In August of 1963, at the
height of the Civil Rights
movement, the March on
Washington brought 250,000
people to the Mall, and to the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial to witness the historic “I
Have a Dream” speech by Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.
King closed his remarks
with a hopeful call for freedom to ring across this nation, and specifically across
many mountain tops of his
native south.  He made specific choices in that short list,
including “Stone Mountain
of Georgia.” Though work on
the Confederate memorial
and carving had been underway for decades, the state
of Georgia only purchased
the mountain and hundreds
of surrounding acres in
1958. Georgia also ended
the long-held easement and
access to the mountain top
for rallies held by the Klu
Klux Klan by the mountain’s
former owners, the Venable
family.
Two years ago, on the
50th anniversary of the
speech, a small crowd of
DeKalb and Georgia’s civil
rights community leaders
gathered atop the mountain
to ring bells, commemorating the anniversary and importance of the speech, credited with being the critical
catalyst to spurring Congress
to pass the Civil Rights Act
of 1964.
This began discussions,
and the recent decision
by the modern day Stone
Mountain Memorial Association (SMMA), to construct
a Freedom Tower and Freedom Bell monument, honoring Dr. King and his great
speech, atop Stone Mountain. A second addition to

the park will be a permanent
museum exhibit honoring
the contributions, sacrifices
and casualties of thousands
of African American soldiers
in both the Union and Confederate armies who fought
during the Civil War.
“We are into addition,
not subtraction here at Stone
Mountain Park. This new
monument and exhibit just
expand the number of important stories to be told,
of Georgia’s history, as well
as our nation’s. We are the
state’s most visited destination for many reasons, and
now we will be adding two
more,” says Bill Stephens,
CEO, SMMA.
As with the Lincoln Memorial and Stone Mountain
Confederate Memorials,
there will occasionally be
critics and detractors. But
it is very difficult to argue
against these additions offering a more complete telling
of Georgia’s history, from the
Civil War through the Civil
Rights era.
We can’t know what Dr.
King might think of this,
but his family has been contacted and is supportive of
the monument.  Words of
support have also already
come from one of Dr. King’s
key allies in the movement,
94-year old, Rev. Joseph
Lowery, “It is amazing. I
think it is a good idea, introducing a new era to the Deep
South. They are placing
Martin Luther king in a place

where he out to be. Where I
never dreamed he would be.
This is striking.”
Amen to that brother,
amen to that. Let Freedom
Ring!
Bill Crane also serves as a
political analyst and commentator for Channel 2’s Action
News, WSB-AM News/Talk
750 and now 95.5 FM, as well
as a columnist for The Champion, Champion Free Press
and Georgia Trend. Crane is
a DeKalb native and business
owner, living in Scottdale. You
can reach him or comment
on a column at bill.csicrane@
gmail.com. 

F ree P ress
Let Us Know What You Think!
THE CHAMPION FREE PRESS encourages opinions from its readers. Please
write to us and express your views. Letters
should be brief, typewritten and contain
the writer’s name, address and telephone
number for verification. All letters will be
considered for publication.
Send Letters To Editor, The Champion Free Press, P.
O. Box 1347, Decatur, GA 30031-1347; Send email
to [email protected] • FAX To: (404)
370-3903 Phone: (404) 373-7779 . Deadline for news
releases and advertising: Thursday, one week prior
to publication date.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The opinions written by columnists and contributing editors do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of the editor or publishers. The
Publisher reserves the right to reject or cancel any
advertisement at any time. The Publisher is not
responsible for unsolicited manuscripts.

Publisher:
John Hewitt
Chief Financial Officer:
Dr. Earl D. Glenn
Managing Editor:
Andrew Cauthen
Production Manager:
Kemesha Hunt
Photographer:
Travis Hudgons
Staff Reporters:
Carla Parker, Ashley Oglesby
The Champion Free Press is published
each Friday by ACE III Communications,
Inc., • 114 New Street, Suite E, Decatur,
GA. 30030 • Phone (404) 373-7779.

www.championnewspaper.com
DISPLAY ADVERTISING
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Statement from the
publisher
We sincerely appreciate the
discussion surrounding this and any
issue of interest to DeKalb County.
The Champion was founded in 1991
expressly to provide a forum for
discourse for all community residents
on all sides of an issue. We have no
desire to make the news only to
report news and opinions to effect
a more educated citizenry that will
ultimately move our community
forward. We are happy to present
ideas for discussion; however,
we make every effort to avoid
printing information submitted to
us that is known to be false and/or
assumptions penned as fact.

local

PageChampion
6A The
Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015
The
FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page
6A

Marc Morgan
For approximately five
years, Marc Morgan of
Tucker has been volunteering at the United Methodist
Children’s Home flea market.
On Oct. 9, Morgan was
wearing a neon yellow
safety vest at the two-day
flea market at the children’s
home at 500 S. Columbia
Drive, Decatur.
“I usually work in the
yard sales. I’ve done parking, I’ve done vehicle loading. That’s mostly what I’ve
done,” Morgan said.

The flea market, held
three times a year to raise
funds for the charity’s work

to help children and families, is hosted by the home’s
auxiliary, a group supporting the children’s home
since 1940.
“I know their volunteer
coordinator,” Morgan said
about how he got involved
with the children’s home
fundraiser. “She sent out
a message that said they
needed volunteers for the
yard sales and that’s why
I’m here.”
Morgan said volunteering with the flea market is
“good for the children. It’s

good for the community. It’s
good for me and it gives me
a chance to give back.
“Our community needs
people to volunteer for all
kinds of things,” Morgan
said. “Giving back for the
things that we have received
is very beneficial for all involved.”
“I have been very blessed
in a lot of ways and anytime that I can give back is
worthwhile,” Morgan said.
He also volunteers at the
church he attends, Decatur
First Methodist, “in a vari-

ety of ways.
“I’m in the choir. I work
with different groups there,”
he said.
Morgan said everyone
should volunteer somewhere.
“It would benefit them
more than it would cost
them,” Morgan said. “They
would gain from giving
more than they could ever
believe they could get.
“Come on and volunteer,” he said.

If you would like to nominate someone to be considered as a future Champion of the Week, please contact Andrew Cauthen
at [email protected] or at (404) 373-7779, ext. 117.

Accused murderer pleads not guilty
by Carla Parker
[email protected]
A man accused of murdering a
woman during a shootout pled not
guilty and waived his arraignment
Oct. 12.
Aaron Fields, 28, is accused
of killing Alicia Hodges during a
shootout at an illegal strip club in
Lithonia in August 2014. Hodges
died at a house on Davidson Drive
on Aug. 2, 2014, when Fields and
another man, Raymond Guyla Jen-

kins, fired shots into the house, according to the indictment.
Derrelle Cartaz Williams also
is charged in the case. All three men
appear to be members of the Bloods
street gang, according to prosecutor.
Fields and Jenkins were indicted
on malice murder, felony murder,
two counts of aggravated assault and
possession of a firearm during commission of a felony. Jenkins was also
indicted on possession of a firearm
by a convicted felon.

Children’s Healthcare files paperwork
for expansion in Brookhaven
by Carla Parker
[email protected]
Children’s Healthcare of
Atlanta (CHOA) has filed a
special land use permit application for an eight-story
building in Brookhaven.
The 340,000-square-foot
facility is an expansion of the
existing CHOA complex on
the east side of I-85 and North
Druid Hills. The facility will
be built on the 10.1 acres of
land on the west side of the
intersection. The building will
be used for medical office and

specialized clinic space, according to the application.
The land was occupied by
the 19-story Executive Park
Hotel, which was owned by
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. The building was also
used by Bellsouth as a training
facility.
The building was demolished in November 2014.
Children’s Healthcare of
Atlanta and Executive Park
was annexed into the city last
December after CHOA filed
annexation petitions.
This will be the site of a medical office.

Festival

Continued From Page 2A

of Collard Greens,” during which attendees
may try a variety of collard-based dishes prepared by local home cooks. “We don’t permit
the use of pork or red meats, but other than
that cooks are free to prepare the collards any
way they like,” Ankoanda explained. There’s a
cook-off in which judges, who are chefs and
local politicians, choose winners in four categories: raw or live; vegetarian; non-vegetarian;
and innovative. From among the cooks a Collard Green King and Queen—preparers of “the
meanest greens in metro Atlanta”—will be chosen and crowned.
At a wellness and sustainability pavilion
festivalgoers will have access to health providers and nutritionists who will have information on preventive healthcare, heirloom seeds,
growing one’s own food, solar energy, solar
cooking and other topics.
While the Collard Green Festival has been
in Georgia six years, it originated in 1998 as
a fundraiser for the Shule Mandela Academy,
founded and operated by Ankoanda in East
Palo Alto, Calif.
The festival here about breaks even, she
said. “If we do make a little money, we use it
for scholarships for local children who are not
doing well in public school and might benefit
from private instruction.”
Entertainment at the festival will include
such live music as reggae, jazz, blues, gospel,
R&B, hip hop (only that with positive messages, organizers said), as well as horseback riding,
arts and crafts and other activities such as face
painting and storytelling.
The festival will be at Lithonia Amphitheater, 2501 Park Drive, Lithonia, 10 a.m. - 7
p.m. For more information, visit www.collardgreensculturalfestival.com.

#ItsInTheChampion

local

AroundDeKalb

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 7A

Brookhaven

City to host Duck Duck Goose 5K
Murphey Candler Park Conservancy will host the
second annual Duck Duck Goose 5K and new
Duck Duck Food Truck events to benefit Murphey
Candler Park on Oct. 23 and 24. The 2015 Duck
Duck Goose 5K begins at 9 a.m. Oct. 23. Registration is available through active.com until Oct. 21.
Those not interested in running can register as a
phantom runner to support the conservancy and
receive an event T-shirt. Visit murpheycandlerpark.org for paper registration and more information.

City to host fall festival

bers. Guests younger than 21 can purchase tickets
for $5.
Ticket prices on the day of event are $12 for
members, $17 for nonnembers and $7 for guests
younger than 21.
The event will be at the historic DeKalb Courthouse, 101 E. Court Square, Decatur, second floor.
For more information, contact Melissa Forgey
at (404) 373-1088, ext. 22.

Dunwoody
Dunwoody offers free movies in the park

Decatur

The city of Dunwoody invites families out to a
movie on Oct. 15 at Brook Run Park, 4770 North
Peachtree Road, Dunwoody.
The feature movie for the event will be Big
Hero 6 and will start promptly at 6 p.m.
Visitors are encouraged to come earlier and
enjoy cuisine offered through city commissioned
food trucks.
The event is sponsored by the Dunwoody Police Department. Families are encouraged to bring
chairs and blankets for the movie viewing.

Decatur Cooperative Ministry to host
inaugural Sing Out For A Cause competition

Lithonia

Brookhaven will host its Fall Festival Oct. 24
at Lynwood Park. The fall-themed get-together
event is for the whole family. There will be food,
a bounce house and other activities. The park is
located at 3360 Osborne Road. For more information, visit www.brookhavenga.org.

Decatur Cooperative Ministry (DCM) will
host its inaugural Sing Out for a Cause sing-off
Saturday, Oct. 24, at the gazebo in the Decatur
square.
Competition registration is now open and applicants with vocal histories and performing experience are encouraged to enter submissions.
The singing competition will borrow basics
from Showtime at the Apollo, where the audience
endorses local choirs or choral groups by the volume of their applause. The sing-off will allow the
audience to decide the winner through the generosity of their gifts. Baskets will be positioned for
all to support and celebrate the talent and reward a
winner.
One hundred percent of all proceeds raised
will support a worthy cause and celebrate the work
of DCM, a faith-based nonprofit organization
that helps families prevent, endure and overcome
homelessness in our community.
Local businesses contributing to the event will
be recognized through promotional and other
marketing materials. To learn more about DCM,
visit www.decaturcooperativeministry.org.

History center to hold dance fundraiser
The DeKalb History Center will hold its Dance
Hall Decatur fundraising event Friday, Oct. 30,
from 8 p.m. to midnight.
Halloween costumes are welcome at the event
which will feature music, sodas and light snacks.
For an additional cost, drink tickets will be available at the event. Professional DJ services will be
provided by Spectrum Entertainment & Events,
spinning dance hits from the 1970s to present.
Advance reservations are $10 for adult DeKalb
History Center members and $15 for nonmem-

5K walk to be held at Arabia Mountain
DeKalb County walkers and runners are invited to participate in Let’s Walk DeKalb!, a free,
leisurely 5K held in the wooded setting of Arabia
Mountain on Oct 17. Participants will experience
a warm-up exercise followed by a 3.2-mile walk
through wooded paths. The walk begins and ends
at Arabia Mountain Park Nature Center in Lithonia.
“Not sure you can do a 5K? No problem, you
can make your route shorter to meet your needs,”
states an announcement about the event.
After the walk, there will be can enjoy refreshments, door prizes and more. The first 50 participants to arrive get a special gift.
Sign in and registration is at 9 a.m., followed by
a warm up at 9:30 a.m. The walk begins at 10 a.m.
Water is provided, and there will be a raffle for
prizes after the walk.
Sponsors for the walk include Delta Community Credit Union, Junior League of DeKalb County, K.D. Moore Community Development, Arlene’s
Angels, Great Day Connections Inc., Global Research, DeKalb for Seniors Inc. and DeKalb County Board of Health.
Register at [email protected]
or call (404) 508-7847 for more information.

Chamblee

Parents invited to speak with county school
superintendent
DeKalb school superintendent Stephen Green
will present himself to stakeholders in a series of
candid conversations about what the district is do-

ing well and what it needs to do better.
“On the Scene with Dr. Green” launched on
Sept. 29 at Stone Mountain High School, where
Green lead an hour-long conversation with parents, teachers and others wanting time with him.
The next session will be held on Nov. 19 from  7
p.m. until 8 p.m. at Chamblee High School, 3688
Chamblee Dunwoody Road, Chamblee.
Green said the talks allow him to keep his ear
to the ground in DeKalb County while working to
address issues already visible in the school district.
He said he first held similar meetings in Kansas City, Mo., when he was superintendent of Kansas City Public Schools. Green became the DeKalb
County School District superintendent in July after
three years leading Kansas City Public Schools.

Stone Mountain
City to host music event

The Pussywillows will perform Oct. 23 at
“Tunes by the Tracks” at 7 p.m. The event is a free
concert series that will be held each Friday night in
October from 7 - 9 p.m. in Stone Mountain Village.
Beer and wine will be available for sale and lawn
chairs are encouraged. For more information, call
(770) 498-8984.

Volunteers wanted for tree planting event
The city of Dunwoody, in cooperation with
Trees Atlanta will host a volunteer day on Oct. 24
from 9 a.m. until noon at Brook Run Park.
Trees Atlanta is a nonprofit citizens’ group in
Atlanta that aims to plant, preserve and protect
trees.
The group employs a full-time staff of tree care
professionals and maintains a network of volunteers.
Those interested in volunteering can visit
treesatlanta.org/volunteer/sign-up.
Volunteers will be assigned to assist in planting
trees in Dunwoody’s Brook Run Park, 4770 North
Peachtree Road, Dunwoody.

Countywide
International Food & Music Festival set for
this weekend
The DeKalb International Food & Music Festival will be held Sat., Oct. 17 from noon until 6 p.m.
at Northlake Mall, 4800 Briarcliff Road, Atlanta. 
The 5th annual DeKalb International Food &
Music Festival promises to be a day of fun with lots
of food, music, entertainment and more! Free Admission to all.
Children’s activities will be held in the Children’s Village; for a $5 fee, each child gets an allday pass. The Children’s village will feature the
Center for Puppetry Arts, a game truck, bouncy
houses, face painting, snacks and an opportunity
to tour DeKalb County Fire Rescue and Police
equipment.
For additional information visit www.dekalbfoodandmusicfestival.com.

local

PageChampion
8A The
Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015
The
FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page
8A

Nonprofit bridges career gap for refugees
by Andrew Cauthen
[email protected]
A Clarkston nonprofit
group is working to bridge
the gap between jobs and careers for refugees.
Lantern Project trains
participants and enables
them to get industry certifications for welding, pipefitting, electrical, masonry and
carpentry, said Dan Koenig,
training program manager at
Lantern Project.
Koenig said Lantern
Project was formed two years
ago “partnering with some
industry organizations that
wanted to try to make an
impact in the community
and at the same time help
the construction industry…
where there’s so much need
for skilled tradesmen in areas like welding, pipefitting,
electrical, carpentry [and]
masonry.”
Refugees often arrive
with “really high skills and
abilities but they sort of lose
all of that when they come
because it no longer counts
in our system here in the
United States,” Koenig said.
“In most cases they have
to go through a long process
to get equivalency,” Koenig
said. “It’s expensive and time
consuming and then the ones
that do have that ability start
at the bottom just trying to
make ends meet.”
While there are “excellent technical schools” and
“amazing” GED programs
in the area, “there’s a small
niche of guys that don’t have
the English to be able to get
their GEDs, but they have
enough English to operate
and learn how to do specific
trades, or they already have
these skills [and] they just
need to transfer their skills
into English,” Koenig said.
Although most don’t
have U.S. GED, most have
high school and university
training from their birth
countries, Koenig said.
Candidates for the program are refugees “who have
come in through the official
system. They’re here legally
and that helps them with

their employment on the
back end,” Koenig said.
“Most of them are on a
track eventually to get residency or even citizenship,”
he said. “They’re working
with the major relief organizations” such as IRC, World
Relief and Catholic Services.
The primary qualification is English “at a level that
will allow them to be successful,” Koenig said. The
participants must be able to
“understand and communicate [in] English with their
trainers [and]...read and
write basically on an eighthgrade level.”
Lantern Project targets
clients who “have fairly limited English and they have a
desire to do more than just
work at some of the jobs that
are available...that don’t have
a lot of room for advancement,” Koenig said.
Classes are held in the
evening Mondays through
Thursdays because “that allows the men and women in
the program to work either
first or third shift. We try to
make that as convenient as
possible.” The classes are held
in a training center located
in the Church Street Business Park at 3529 Church St.,
Clarkston.
The program is divided
into two phases. In the first
phase, the students get core
construction training for
four months. In the next
phase, “we help them select
one or two of the trades to
continue for about another”
12 to 18 months to get their
skill level up,” Koenig said.
Of the first round of students who graduated from
the program in June, all of
them had “an opportunity to
interview for positions that
were career level positions,”
he said.
“There were varied levels of opportunities based
on their skills,” Koenig said.
“Some of them were able to
go directly with some of our
sponsor organizations. Others found jobs in the Atlanta
market.”
One student, who was
making $8 an hour, received

trained in welding and was
hired for a job making $16
an hour, Koenig said. “He’s
moving out of his [90-day]
period of evaluation and [it]
looks like he’s going to have
a permanent job there with
benefits and a little bit more
money.
“So we’ve seen some success,” he said.
The program, which recently graduated 30 students,
is “a really good way to give a
hand up to the refugee community,” Koenig said.
Lantern Project is sponsored by Construction Education Foundation of Georgia, which is the primary
sponsor under the National
Center for Construction Education and Research, a nationally recognized industry
standard training program.
Through the Lantern
Project training, participants
can get industry certifications for welding, pipefitting,
electrical, masonry and carpentry.
“The real focus is to be
able to prepare them for industrial level jobs which are
the most needed right now,”
Koenig said.
The primary benefit
of the 18-month program,
which costs participants
$100-$150, “is that it provides [participants] accessible opportunities to bridge
the gap between a job and a
career,” Koenig said. “A lot of
them are coming in trying
to make ends meet and so
they just get a job. And a lot
of them go from one job to
the next. [If] they’re making
$8 an hour and they have an
opportunity to make to make
$9 [an hour], so they have
to logistically go for the $9
[an hour] because that’s what
they need for their families.”
Among refugees, there is
a tremendous turnover and
job instability and “very few
benefits in terms of vacation pay or sick leave or even
medical insurance,” Koenig
said.
“Now they have the opportunity to take that career
as far as they want,” he said.

Police investigating shooting involving child
by Carla Parker
[email protected]
12.

A child is in stable condition after being shot Oct.

According to Major S.R. Fore, officers responded to
the Austin Oaks Apartments on Glenwood Road after 8
p.m.
“Upon their arrival [they] found four persons shot–
one child and three adults,” Fore said. “All were transported to local area hospitals.”
Fore said the adult victims are expected to recover
and the child underwent surgery at Egelston Children’s
Hospital and is in stable condition and expected to
survive. The victims told police they were standing in
the breezeway of their apartment building when an unknown male began shooting at them.
No arrests have been made and the investigation is
ongoing, according to Fore.

EMPLOYERS HAVE JOBS.
YOU HAVE SKILLS.
GOOD WILL CAREER CENTERS
CAN BRING YOU TOGETHER.

In honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, we
wanted to remind you that Goodwill Career Centers provide equal
opportunity access to job training, job postings, technology usage,and
a library of resources. We also have special programs for people with
disabilities to help everyone move closer to their dreams. So bring
your ambition and come on in. A better tomorrow could start today.
To find a Career Center near you, visit goodwillng.org

Locations In:
Atlanta/Northeast Plaza,
Athens, Cartersville, Cornelia,
Decatur, Duluth,
Oakwood, Rome, Smyrna,
Stockbridge and Woodstock

local

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 9A

Global health nonprofit celebrates 30 years
by Andrew Cauthen
[email protected]
A Decatur nonprofit
organization credited with
increasing worldwide immunizations is celebrating its
30th anniversary.
The Task Force for Global Health, the fourth largest nonprofit in the United
States and largest in Georgia,
has reached an estimated 495
million people in 135 countries.
The task force got its
beginning after Bill Foege,
an Emory University professor emeritus and the organization’s first director, was
tapped by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to address smallpox worldwide.
“I had worked for CDC
for two years, but now I was
in Africa starting a medical
center when CDC asked me
if I would spend nine months
as a consultant on smallpox
in eastern Nigeria,” said
Foege, who also has worked
for the Carter Center.
When a civil war in Nigeria drove his team out of
the country, he “returned
to CDC expecting that we
would return to Nigeria in
a few months, but that war
went on from 1967 until 70,”
Foege said. “By the time the
war was over, I was so obsessed with smallpox eradication that I continued working in that.”
A few years later he continued his smallpox work
in India, which had its last
smallpox case in 1975.
The original program
Foege worked with in western and central Africa covered 20 countries and was
led by the CDC.
“We had a goal of trying to eradicate smallpox

For three decades, the Task Force for Global Health has been addressing worldwide immunizations. Photos by Andrew Cauthen

from those 20 countries in
five years,” Foege said. “We
actually did it in three years
and six months and under
budget.
“India turned out to be
a greater challenge,” he said.
“Once we got the program
really working there, smallpox went from the highest
rates that they had for years
to zero in the entire country

in 12 months. It was really
a spectacular time in global
health.”
The success with smallpox led the World Health
Organization (WHO) to start
its immunization program.
“It was the dissatisfaction
in both WHO and UNICEF
with the speed of the immunization program that led to
the task force being formed

See Nonprofit on page 17A

Saturday, October 24 • 10 a.m.

A deer grazes on the lawn of the Antebellum Plantation at Stone
Mountain Park. Photo by Travis Hudgons

Notice is hereby given that a General Election for the City of Clarkston will be held on Tuesday, November 
3, 2015 to elect three (3) Council Members to the Clarkston City Council.  The term of office is four (4) 
years and the elected officials will be sworn in at the January 2016 meeting of the City Council. 
 
Voting will take place at Clarkston International Bible Church, 3895 Church Street, Clarkston, GA from 
7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.  Any person who is a resident of the City of Clarkston and who is registered at least 
thirty (30) days prior to this election with the DeKalb County Board of Registrations and Elections as an 
elector within the City of Clarkston shall be eligible to vote in this election.   
 
Application for absentee ballots may be made by mail or in person to the Absentee Ballot Clerk, DeKalb 
County Elections Division, 4380 Memorial Drive, Suite 300, Decatur, GA 30032, 404‐298‐4020. 
 
This notice is given pursuant to Chapter 21 of the Official Code of Georgia, as amended, pertaining to 
municipal elections, this 2nd day of October, 2015. 
 
 
 
 
Tracy Ashby, City Clerk and Municipal Elections Superintendent. 
 
 

would develop a way to help
them facilitate their work to-

DEKALB COUNTY
AUCTION

CITY OF CLARKSTON 
NOTICE OF GENERAL ELECTION 
 

 
 

with the leaders of both
organizations...asking if we

ADESA Atlanta is featuring 200+ available units,
including, cars, trucks, fire trucks, garbage
trucks, heavy-duty trucks, heavy equipment,
trailers, office supplies and more. Preview
inventory online at ADESARigs.com or in person
on Friday, Oct. 23 from 9 a.m.–5 p.m. and
Saturday, Oct. 24 at 8 a.m.
Call 770-357-CARS (2277) for more information.

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

local

PageChampion
10A The
Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015
The
FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page
10A

Local food
pantry supports
refugee families
by Ashley Oglesby
[email protected]
Before becoming the title
of a hit television sitcom, the
term “community” meant a
group of dedicated people
who — in a small, friendly
town sort of way–pull together to do good things.
Caring for Clarkston
Food Pantry aims to do just
that.
Since its inception
in 2011, the food pantry
has served more than 500
families throughout DeKalb
County and provides lowincome families with food
twice a month.
The food pantry is a collaborative partnership with
Clarkston United Methodist
Church, Oak Grove Methodist Church, Hands on Atlanta
and the Atlanta Community
Food Bank.
With the help of volunteers, the organizations operate a community garden and
a pantry plot that includes
28 smaller plots where community members are able to
grow their own fruits and
vegetables. Residents can
also sell what they grow to
support their families.
“Clarkston is a very
international community.
We’re made up of about
70 percent refugees,” said
healthy living director Aliyah Frazier.
She said,“Our goal is to
provide healthy living options and resources to the
community and also a great
amount of education. We
make sure that we provide
organic vegetables from
our garden and that go to
our pantry, our co-op and
our market. We really try to
uplift the community and
provide as much as we can
in making sure that there are
enough options as it relates
to healthy living for our residents.”

In addition to the pantry
and community garden, the
organizations also manage
a farmers market nutrition
education program.
Frazier said the nutritional program is critical
because “we operate in a
food desert where in terms
of walking distance there are
not a lot of supermarkets in
our area. We have places like
Family Dollars and gas stations that offer a lot of junk
foods or processed foods so
it became really important
to us to rev up our healthy
living initiatives and offer
as many fresh, local organic
options as possible and we
Four volunteers stand together in the community garden.
do that through the different
legs of our program.”
The food pantry is open
two Saturdays each month
from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m and
serves approximately 150
families.
“Working in such a
diverse community where
we have refugees, African Americans, Caucasian
Americans...the biggest thing
is making sure that we cater
to everyone. For a food pantry most of the time you have
can goods and packaged
goods and those are foods
that most Americans would
eat but we found that we really have to invest more into
our organic garden and make
sure that we are servicing
the needs of such a diverse
community and that we offer
culturally appropriate foods,”
Frazier said.
She added, “It’s great to
see that integration of international culture–you may see
Living Director Aliyah Frazier poses
Volunteers work together to gather vegetables.
things in our garden that you Healthy
with a bucket of lettuce harvested from the
will not see anywhere else.
garden.
It’s a great way also for us to
Monetary donations can ment. For more information,
foods from its garden for
learn and exchange ideas,
about the pantry services or
be
mailed
to The Clarkston
Clarkston
residents.
which makes our garden a
getting involved, email FraCommunity
Center,
P.O.
Box
Even
with
all
the
partgreat meeting place also.”
zier at fsi@clarkstoncommu217,
Clarkston,
GA
30021.
nerships,
Frazier
said,
they
Clarkston Food Pannitycenter.org.
Food
donations
can
be
delivcould
still
use
support
from
try recently partnered with
ered
to
the
Clarkston
Comother
people
and
organizathe Paideia School. Once a
munity Center by appointtions.
month the school donates

welcome

FALL

BUSINESS

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 11A

Studio lets clients unleash inner artist
by Kathy Mitchell
“Everyone should paint,”
said Jo Steiner, owner of Sips
n Strokes in Toco Hills. “It lets
you release your creative energy
while you escape all your dayto-day worries.”
Steiner has both art and
science in her background and
said that’s helpful in her current
business. “The right side and
the left side of the brain [theoretically controlling intuitive
and analytical brain functions]
are used in a business like this,”
she explained. “It’s about art,
but it’s also a business requiring
lots of planning and detailed
work. People say, ‘You must
really have a good time doing
this.’ I do, but it’s not a simple
business to run. It requires hard
work.”
Steiner owns an art studio
where customers in a single
session are guided step by step
through the process of creating
a painting. They are encouraged
to bring a bottle of wine—or
whatever they prefer to sip as
they work.
“The idea is to put the rest
of the world behind you for a
little while and just have a good
time letting the artist in you
come out,” Steiner said. There is
a concept painting that participants copy generally, but each is
encouraged to interpret freely,
adding, excluding or changing
details as he or she sees chooses.
“People often like to vary
the colors, especially when there
is a person in the picture. We
show them how to change skin
tones, hair color and texture,
eye color—any details they want
to customize for their picture,”
she said, noting that on a painting of feet in high heel shoes,
one painter added straps to the
shoes and a tiny heart tattoo to
the ankle. “It’s their picture. We
don’t judge,” Steiner said.
The Sips n Strokes franchise was created in 2003 in
Birmingham, Ala., by Wendy
LoVoy, who says on her website
that her goal was “inspiring the
world to create.” Sips n Strokes
is described on its website as
“an alternative to traditional art
instruction…a casual, fun environment in which customers
of all ages and experience levels
can unleash the artist within.”
“There are other copycat
studios out there, but we’re the
original,” pointed out Steiner,

who has operated the Toco Hills
studio since 2006. “I’m very
proud of what we do,” she added. “We have real artwork and
real artists. We take an interest in every person who walks
through that door. We want
every person to have a great experience.”
Steiner said every artist in
her studio must share her philosophy that everyone in her
studio is important and should
have a satisfying experience.
“Of course, there’s some frustration—it’s a project. There
are going to be some steps that
are harder than others to get
through and the staff artists are
there to give support.
“At the end of the session,
each person takes home a completed painting. That’s very
satisfying. As we go through our
daily routines, we work at a lot
of things that may not seem to
ever reach completion. It’s ther- Jo Steiner shows examples of art students’ work from Sips n Strokes sessions.
apeutic to have a project that’s
all done,’ she said.
Before making a reservation Prospective customers can
go online and find not only the
schedule for the month, but also
see the sample painting the class
will be working from. “This
is one of the most focused activities here. Two of us work on
The Toco Hills studio is one of two in the
each month’s calendar until we
metro Atlanta area.
feel it’s right. We’re in an urban
area and many of our customers
like sassier, edgier art, especially
on the weekends. We’re not just
flowers and angels. We sometimes do flowers and angels,
but we do much more besides,”
Steiner said.
She said most customers
are women and the artists often
choose subjects that appeal to
Each student chooses a palette of colors
women. “I don’t like to think in
for his or her painting.
terms of women’s art and men’s
art, but there are subjects that
women are more drawn to,”
A student varies the master painting by adding shoe straps
Steiner said, noting that often
and a tiny tattoo.
couples come in together and
may do paintings that complement one another.
Evenings at Sip n Stokes
are often date nights, birthday
celebrations, girls’ night out gettogethers and other structured
outings. There are children’s
sessions as well as fundraisers. “I feel very strongly about
giving back to the community.
Most of our fundraisers benefit
local charities and many are
ones suggested by our clients,”
Steiner said.
Young urban students often like sassy subject matter.

InnovatIon

Paintings cover a wide variety of subject
matter.

DeKalb Chamber of Commerce • Two Decatur Town Center, 125 Clairemont Ave., Suite, Decatur, GA 30030 • 404.378.8000 • www.dekalbchamber.org

local

PageChampion
12A The
Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015
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FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page
12A

Food trucks and street vendors accommodate a crowd of people at the inaugural Clarkston Food Truck Festival. Food trucks offered creole, Cajun, Mediterranean, smoked turkey dishes
and homemade desserts. The festival provided games, music and other activities to engage families with small children. Photos by Travis Hudgons

Hundreds gather at Clarkston food truck festival
by Ashley Oglesby
[email protected]
In the last few years, DeKalb
County has seen a proliferation of
food trucks or mobile restaurants
emerge in various cities.
After much deliberation and
planning the city of Clarkston joined
suit. On Oct. 10 Clarkston hosted its
first food truck rally on Market Street
attracting more than 500 people to
its recently annexed area.
Seven food trucks commissioned
through The Atlanta Street Food Coalition set up at the festival.
The event also featured live music, corn hole toss, a kids zone with
a bouncy house, face painting and
many more family-friendly activities.
City Manager Keith Barker said

the event was “even better than expected.”
“We’d never done anything like
this before so we didn’t know if we
were going to get 50 people or 500
people to come out but we knew that
it was critical to get a good reputation initially,” Barker said.
City officials partnered with International Rescue Committee, New
American Pathways, DeKalb Medical
to organize the event.
Each organization formed an information tent for residents to learn
more about community efforts.
“We wanted to target our citizens to make sure that they enjoy
the event, but we also want to bring
in people from outside the city. We
want them to see the unique diversity
that we have here,” Barker said.

Barker said the next step “now
that we know that this is feasible” is
to create a schedule to host the event
on a regular basis.
“This was too large and too involved to pull off every weekend, but
I think we can have a slightly scaled
down version,” Barker said.
He proposed drafting a schedule
similar to other cities–“we could
hold one in the spring and in the fall
maybe every other weekend and still
have the big annual food truck festival.”
Clarkston’s city officials debated
their ordinance in four different city
council meetings before adopting
a mandate that would allow food
trucks to operate within the city.
Barker acknowledged that
Clarkston is “not blazing any trails,”

food trucks have become a popular
trend for many cities and communities.
He said in a Sept. 1 business
meeting, “The long range goal is that
we want to get people used to coming to downtown Clarkston in advance to us finishing our streetscape.”
He said he was also hopeful that
vendors will consider turning their
food trucks into a “bricks and mortar
business here in Clarkston.”
After successfully operating its
first event Barker said it may be too
optimistic of him to say based on one
event but “I think we certainly didn’t
do anything that would diminish that
hope. This is just the first step.”

In

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The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 13A

Nonprofit aims to rehabilitate homeless families

WEEK

Pictures

Stakeholders attend the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Chamblee Farmers Market. The newly constructed, 75,000-square-foot international supermarket is located on Buford Highway.

The Fernbank LINKS robotics team holds a Lego robotics training session at Stone Mountain Middle
School for younger students Oct. 8. Photos by Andrew Cauthen

The United Methodist Children’s Home holds a flea market fundraiser. Photos by Andrew Cauthen

Photos brought to you by DCTV

DeKalb County begins one-day-a-week sanitation collection service July 6, 2015
Residential customers will have same-day garbage, recyclable materials and yard trimmings collection
For more info, call or visit:

(404) 294-2900
www.rollingforwardtoone.com

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PageChampion
14A The
Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015
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FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page
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South DeKalb Senior Center

Lou Walker Senior Center dancers entertain guests at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the South DeKalb Senior Center Oct. 12. Photos by Andrew Cauthen

local

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Center Continued From Page 1A

South DeKalb residents fill the new senior center on Candler Road in unincorporated Decatur. Photo
by Andrew Cauthen

a day I dreamed of [for] a long
time,” Johnson said.
“This is all about wellness.
It’s about living and playing in
our community,” he said. At the
new center, “we will be able to
have fun and reminiscence and
talk about what we need to do to
make a difference in our community.”
Johnson said the county needs
to “make sure all of our seniors
in all of our areas are covered because the best days are ahead for
our seniors.”
Interim DeKalb County CEO
Lee May said he is “excited that
the county has invested in this
wonderful facility.”
“I’m excited for you all who
will be able to take advantage of
this wonderful facility every day
that you choose to,” May said.
“It’s been a long time coming.
It’s been too long,” he said. “A lot
of time politicians don’t like to
apologize when things didn’t go
the right way, but I’m going to
apologize…for the extended delay in getting this facility up and
going.”

DeKalb County District Attorney Robert James thanked
the seniors for their work in the
county.
“Everything that I’ve done
[and] everything that…everybody who has come up here and
spoken has done has been because, in part, of somebody who
is a senior citizen right now. We
stand on the shoulders of those
who have come before us,” James
said.
“A lot of freedoms we enjoy,
a lot of prosperity we enjoy we
enjoy that prosperity because of
people who are sitting here in
this room,” James said. “When
the county builds a senior center,
it’s not an act of benevolence. It’s
an act of justice. Y’all deserve this
senior center. The county owes
you this senior center.”
Retired county community
development director Chris
Morris said it was a blessing to
be in the new senior facility.
“I’m looking forward to everybody just remaining active.
We need to remain active and
stay united,” she said.

Corruption Continued From Page 1A
regard for ethics or for the letter and the intent of
Georgia law. “
Barr said, the report “should be taken seriously
by DeKalb County and by our state government.
Rather than be dismissed out-of-hand as Mr. May
has done, the report should serve as the foundation for a far more extensive and detailed investigation by appropriate officials at the state and
perhaps the federal level as well.”
During the Oct. 13 meeting of the DeKalb
County Board of Commissioners, Ellenwood resident Harmel Codi, a member of the Coalition for
Better Public Governance, said, “Mr. May and the
rest of you [have] failed this county for not leading.
“We have lost all the trust and confidence in
[May],” she said. “Consequently, he is no longer
effective in any action he thinks he can take to
reverse this distrust. Therefore, a resignation is a
proper course of action.”
Codi also called on other commissioners to
resign.
Commissioners “that feel that taxpayers do
not need an explanation for your lavish spending [have] it all wrong,” she said. “If you have a
conscience and you’re here to represent the community, you too would step down and do the right
thing.”
District 5 resident Faye Coffield said, “We have

to make some changes around here. We have to
make some changes that help the people.
“My position is that the interim CEO said very
carefully that if the citizens asked him to resign, he
would resign,” Coffield said. “Well, I’m asking him
to resign, and I’m sure there were enough citizens
here last Thursday that wanted him to resign, but
he didn’t even bother to show up and tell us to our
face what was going on.”
May was not present at the Oct. 8 town hall
meeting Coffield referred to. May, who has scheduled several town hall meetings around the county,
canceled the town hall. But Commissioner Nancy
Jester held the meeting without the interim CEO.
Jester introduced a resolution to “establish effective system of internal controls with defined accountability consequences.”
“The report from [the] special investigators...
demonstrates that internal controls in DeKalb
County government are weak and ineffective at
preventing financial, contracting, and human
resources fraud and abuse,” the resolution states.
“The DeKalb County Board of Commissioners
should take immediate and decisive action to direct the administration, including the office of the
CEO, the chief financial officer, the director of human resources, and all department heads, to adopt
robust and meaningful internal controls with
redundant checks for all expenditures, contract-

ing and human resources actions,” the resolution
states.
These internal controls should “include requirements for the signatures of department heads
and the CFO attesting to the validity, legality and
appropriateness of every expenditure, contract execution, and hiring action under penalty of termination and fines if found to be illegal, unethical, or
without sufficient documentation,” the resolution
states.
DeKalb County Commissioner Jeff Rader introduced a resolution “requesting the governor of
Georgia to open an investigation of the DeKalb
special investigators’ report and conclusions.”
The Bowers report alleges “criminal or improper behavior in both branches of the DeKalb
County Governing Authority, the district attorney’s office, and the court system, rendering these
entities ‘directly interested’ in the further disposition of the special investigators findings,” the resolution states.
DeKalb County governmental entities are “conflicted in their responsibility to impartially evaluate and act upon a special investigator’s findings
which find these entities at fault,” Rader’s proposed
resolution states.
The resolutions by Jester and Rader were not
discussed during the Oct. 13 commission meeting.

#itsinthechampion

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News Briefs
Health department launches Picture
Yourself Healthy in DeKalb campaign
The DeKalb County Board of Health recently
launched a Picture Yourself Healthy in DeKalb
campaign that promotes access to healthy foods
and physical activity venues in DeKalb County.
“I am so excited about the Picture Yourself
Healthy in DeKalb campaign,” said Elizabeth
Ford, the district’s health director. ”Eating nutritious foods, being active, and maintaining a
healthy lifestyle are critical steps we can all take to
reduce the burden of chronic diseases that we see
in our county.” 
The campaign currently is focused on promoting the DeKalb County Mobile Farmers Market
operated by DeKalb County Extension. It will
expand to promote local producer-only farmers
markets and physical activity. Public service announcements about the campaign can be seen
on BET, TVOne and OWN, and heard on radio
stations Hot 107.9, Praise 102.5, Majic 97.5, and
Boom 102.9 and on MARTA buses and at bus
shelters in DeKalb County.
Residents can participate in the Picture Yourself at the DeKalb Mobile Farmers Market contest
by following the mobile market on social media, taking a picture of themselves at one of the
DeKalb Mobile Farmers Market stops and posting
it to #DeKalbMobileMarket on Twitter @dekalbmobile or Instagram @dekalbmobilemarket.
Each Friday, four winners will be randomly selected to win prizes, which include a $10 gift card
to use at the Mobile Market. The contest continues
until Oct. 23.
To find mobile farmers market stops or learn
more about the contest, go to www.DeKalbCountyGA.gov/mobilemarket.

Decatur culinary talent recognized in NYC
Two out of the six members of the Georgia
culinary team selected to cook at New York City
famed James Beard House on Oct. 15 are from local Decatur restaurants.
Chef Savannah Haseler of Twain’s Brewpub
will join four other Georgia chefs in preparing
dishes made from Georgia-grown produce and
products. In addition, Julian Goglia, a partner at
The Pinewood, will create custom cocktails that
pair well with each dish of the five-course meal.
“Chef Savannah may be Georgia’s best kept
secret,” said Holly Chute, former executive chef to
five Georgia governors. “In my current role with
Georgia Grown (Georgia Department of Agriculture) I look for chefs that do a great job highlighting our local products on their menu. No one does
it better than Savannah. She has trained her staff
to make every item from scratch. People eating at
Twains for the first time are astounded by the food
experience.”
Julian Goglia has attracted similar praise for
his ability to craft cocktails. He has made The

Pinewood a go-to spot for cocktail aficionados,
and was recently named one of “America’s top
25 bartenders” by leading industry website “The
Daily Meal.”
“Julien is brilliant in his approach. Just when
I think a dish tastes perfect, he pairs it with a
certain beverage that takes it over the top,” Chute
said. “He completes the incredible talent of our
team beautifully.”
The chefs and bartenders create a Georgiagrown dinner experience for a sold-out dining
room at The James Beard House, which regularly
showcases the world’s top talent.

CDC awards Emory $2.2 million grant to
prevent spread of infectious diseases
Emory University School of Medicine has
been awarded a three-year, $2.2 million grant
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), making Emory a new member of its
Prevention Epicenters Program. The program,
which began in 1997, focuses on infection control
and prevention research in health care facilities.
Emory will collaborate with Georgia Institute of
Technology and Georgia State University on the
grant, creating the Prevention Epicenter of Emory
and Atlanta Consortium Hospitals (PEACH).
Emory and five other U.S. academic medical centers join five existing centers to accelerate
health care innovations by discovering new methods to protect patients and health care workers
from highly infectious diseases. The new centers
will focus on the prevention of Ebola and more
common infections that are transmitted like Ebola.
“The goal of PEACH is to translate microbiological, epidemiological and technological
discoveries into new strategies to better protect
the health and safety of physicians, nurses and
patients from high-risk pathogens and communicable diseases,” said Jesse T. Jacob, associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine, and
lead principal investigator of this grant. “Their
work will include rapid prototyping in simulation
labs, quantifying and visualizing spatial metrics
using special analytic tools, and using novel technology to implement programs to enhance hand
hygiene compliance.”
CDC has tasked the Prevention Epicenters
members with developing cutting-edge science to
stay ahead of the germs, for both the patients and
health care providers.
“To help protect Americans from infections
spread in hospitals, CDC supports the Prevention
Epicenter program to look for better ways to stop
these preventable infections,” said CDC Director
Tom Frieden. “Emory will play an important role
in discovering how we can make hospitals and
health care facilities even safer.”

Stop bullying now

Convicted DeKalb CEO surrenders law
license
Suspended DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis
has surrendered his law license for a year.
Ellis voluntarily agreed to the “suspension of
his license to practice law pending the termination of the appeal of his felony convictions in the
Superior Court of DeKalb County,” according to a
document from the Georgia Supreme Court.
“The court hereby accepts the voluntary petition and directs that W. Burrell Ellis Jr. be suspended from the practice of law in this state until
further order of this court,” stated the court’s Oct.
5 order.
The order stated that “Ellis acknowledges that
it is a violation of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct for a lawyer to be convicted of a
felony…and that the maximum penalty for such
conduct is disbarment.”
Ellis, accused of strong-arming county vendors to contribute to his re-election campaign, was
convicted and is serving 18 months in prison for
perjury and attempting to commit extortion.

DeKalb firefighter accused of arson
A DeKalb County firefighter is on paid administrative leave while investigators look into
charges that he committed arson.
Jairius Hardaway is charged with first degree
arson in connection with a Jan. 6 car fire in unincorporated Lithonia.
“Naturally, we here at the DeKalb County Fire
Rescue are saddened to hear this disturbing news
about one of our own,” said DeKalb County Fire
Chief Darnell Fullum on Oct. 6. “However, we
believe in truth and transparency even if it is at the
expense of one of our own firefighters. We must
continue business as usual, assuring the citizens of
DeKalb County that we are here to serve and render aid to those that require our services.”
While the incident still is under active investigation, authorities say the fire, which involved a
vehicle Hardaway did not own, is connected to an
insurance scam.
If convicted of arson, Hardaway faces a sentence of up to 20 years and will “lose his ability to
serve as a firefighter,” Fullum said.
Hardaway has been with the fire department
for 10 years.
“If we find that one of our own has allegedly
done wrong, we must put away all speculation and
deal only with the facts that are present,” Fullum
said.
“We have 700 folks in the fire department,”
Fullum said. “Day in and day out those folks [are]
doing what’s right, doing what’s expected. Anytime
we have one that falls, it sets us back.”
Hardaway was arrested Oct. 2.

stand up • speak out

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The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 17A

Nonprofit Continued From Page 9A
gether,” Foege said.
The task force “worked
so well that immunization
rates went, for the world,
from about 20 percent to 80
percent in six years,” he said.
The task force changed
when pharmaceutical companies began donating
medicines for the neglected
diseases of impoverished
countries, Foege said.
“We grew so fast because
the success led people to give
us money to do other things.
We never even, in those
days, had to solicit funds. It
just came,” said Foege, who
left the task force in 1999 to
work for the Gates Foundation in Seattle.
Foege said he never expected the organization to
last as long as it has.
“When I was director,
it was a pretty short-term
objective,” he said. “We were
trying to see how much we
could improve immunization
by 1990.
“My thought was that we

would dissolve,” Foege said.
“It became hard to dissolve,
even though we had achieved
our goal.”
In 1990, the UNICEF
director “announced that 80
percent of children in the
world had now received at
least one immunization. He
declared that this was the
largest peacetime operation
that the world has ever seen,”
Foege said.
“I was ready to disband
at that point, having achieved
the objective we set out for,
and people were still asking
us to do things,” he said.
For example, Merck
Pharmaceuticals offered to
give the task force the drug
Mectizan, used to treat river
blindness, if the task force
would distribute it in Africa.
“We set a goal of trying
to reach six million people in
six years and we actually did
it in four years,” Foege said.
Foege said the task force
is “one of the great assets of
Atlanta.”

Candidates Continued From Page 3A
knowing what we want to do,
being clear about that and
being proactive about it.”
Candidate John Pomberg said the plan is a start.
“I think we have a start
now with the Euramex thing,
but we don’t know a lot
about it yet,” he said. “I think
we [should] start on that and
go from that and see where
it goes. I don’t want to turn
the whole thing into some
big apartment complex type
thing at Fenner Dunlop. That
will set the wrong precedent.
The one thing we have to
remember about that plan is
when we implement it there
are no do-overs, so we have
to get it done right the first
time.”
Elmore said it is important for residents to look into
the plan.
“People need to dig into
this thing,” he said. “We need
to look at it very carefully,
very closely. There is a lot

to it, there are many different aspects to it, so I think
we really need to take a big
look at this thing and start to
prioritize what we need to do
first.”
Susan Belmonte said
she would like to see new
development but it should be
done the right way.
“I think the lack of development is both a good thing
and a bad thing, and I thinks
that’s why we’re all here,” she
said. “We want to move forward but we want to make
sure that we do it correctly
and smartly and with the
public realm in mind.”
Gianluca Saccone, who
has lived in Avondale Estates
for three months, said new
development is good, depending on how it is made.
“It depends on how you
make things,” he said. “Many
times it’s about that—is the
way you make things.”

GPC awarded $3 million
grant, largest in its history
The U.S. Department
of Education (DOE) has
awarded Georgia Perimeter
College a $3 million grant—
the largest single award in
GPC history.
The grant is part of the
DOE’s Predominantly Black
Institutions (PBI) Program
and will be used to increase
the number of students who
exit remedial math in two
or fewer semesters through
the use of academic success
coaches.
“Words cannot express
how excited I am about the
granting of this prestigious,
highly competitive grant
award,” Katrina Hunter, director of another PBI grantfunded program called Project R.A.I.S.E said.
Hunter also served on
the team responsible for securing the new award and
will serve as executive director of both PBI grants moving forward.
R.A.I.S.E. stands for
Raising Achievement and
Increasing Success in Education, and its accomplishments in student retention
and graduation are a big reason GPC received the recent
grant, according to Margaret Ehrlich, dean of Mathematics, Computer Science
and Engineering at GPC.
“This is an opportunity
to take the best practices
used with Project R.A.I.S.E.
and expand them so that
we can raise retention and
graduation rates for an even
greater number of students,”
Ehrlich said.
The chief goal of the
multi-million dollar grant
is to close the achievement
gap between non-African
American and African
American students. The program utilizes evidence-based
strategies—providing students with academic-success
coaching that focuses on
strengthening non-cognitive
skills, such as note taking,

time management and worklife balance.
“So often, it’s these types
of things that keep people
from being successful college students,” Glenn Pfeifer, director of Grants and
Sponsored Programs at GPC

gagement and provide the
opportunity to discuss noncognitive skills and share
various ideas with peers.
Ehrlich credits a great
deal of collaboration among
Georgia Perimeter’s grants
office, math faculty and the

‘Words cannot express
how excited I am about
the granting of this
prestigious, highly
competitive grant award.’
-Katrina Hunter
said. Pfeifer added, “The
more resources we have to
help students, the better.”
In addition, the project
will recruit students from
GPC’s teacher education
program to serve as peer
academic coaches. Pfeifer
said this will give the education majors an opportunity
to explore the relationship
between students’ noncognitive attributes and their
academic outcomes.
“They will learn how the
practice of academic coaching differs from teaching
and how it can be used as a
tool to help students deepen
learning and improve their
effectiveness.” Hunter said.
The academic coaches
also will facilitate monthly
workshops, panel discussions and other activities
that increase student en-

Project R.A.I.S.E. team as
the reason the college received the $3 million grant.
Other grants office team
members involved in securing the grant include Melissa Hodge-Penn, associate
director; Lynne Coughlin,
administrative assistant; and
Leonard Conner, grants
program administrator.
“We couldn’t have made
it without their contributions and support,” Ehrlich
said.
The five-year program
will impact all students in
learning support mathematics at GPC and expects to
increase the percentage of
Black students exiting math
in two semesters to 55 percent—matching the rate of
success for non-Black students.

welcome FALL

EDUCATION

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 18A

Local teen named youth of the year
by Ashley Oglesby
[email protected]
Since 1947, Youth of the
Year has been Boys & Girls
Clubs of America’s premier
recognition program aimed at
celebrating the achievements of
club teens.
This year Brookhaven Boys
and Girls Club member Sebastian Rodriguez was recognized
for his leadership and academic
excellence.
Rodriguez is a member of
the National Honor Society
and National Beta Club. He is
secretary of the Class of 2016
at Chamblee Charter High
School, where he maintains a
3.8 GPA, and excels on the cross
country and track teams. At the
Brookhaven Club, he is an active participant in the Keystone
and College Bound programs
and takes pride in planning club
events such as the Fall Festival
and Blood Drive.

Rodriguez said he got his
first glimpse of his leadership
potential during a game of basketball at the club. He wasn’t the
best player on the court, but he
sensed that his teammates were
looking to him to run a play.
Since that moment, he has
worked to grow his leadership
skills, developing into a scholar,
athlete, volunteer and role model. He has been a member of
the Brookhaven Boys and Girls
Club for six years, where the
staff describe him as “a remarkable young man with an infectious personality and incredible
work ethic” and a “huge heart.”
Local clubs recognize members ages 14 to 18 as youth of
the month winners and select a
youth of the year, who then participates in state competitions.
State winners each receive a
$5,000 scholarship and advance
to regional competitions.
Regional winners receive
an additional $10,000 college

scholarship, renewable for four
years up to $40,000.
Six youth, including five
regional winners and a military
winner, advance to the National
Youth of the Year competition
for a chance at an additional
scholarship of $25,000, renewable up to $100,000 for four
years.
At the Brookhaven club,
Rodriguez tutors younger club
members and peers in math.
In the garden club, he teaches children about nutrition and
healthy eating.
Rodriguez said he “hopes
to represent academic achievement, leadership, and healthy
lifestyle through fighting adversity, and to change the lives of
children by being a role model.”
He plans to attend the University of Georgia after graduating from high school and pursue a degree in civil engineering.
Brookhaven Boys and Girls Club Youth of the Year Sebastian
Rodriguez.

School district designs plan for failing schools
by Ashley Oglesby
[email protected]
Gov. Nathan Deal’s proposal
for an Opportunity School District
(OSD) has not yet won voter approval, but DeKalb County Superintendent Stephen Green said the district
has a plan to protect its schools from
state takeover.
In 2016, Georgia voters, at Deal’s
request, will be asked to empower the
state to pass enabling legislation that
will govern how the district operates.
The bill will allow the state to
temporarily step in to assist schools
that have been recognized as chronically failing.
Deal has cited state takeover districts in New Orleans and Tennessee
as his inspiration.
Green announced on Oct. 6 that
DeKalb County School district has
devised a comprehensive plan for its
schools that qualify for the OSD target lists.
“My expectations are to improve
teaching and learning and remove
DeKalb County School District from
the conversation about OSD eligibility, priority or focus schools,” Green
said in a statement.
Thirty eight district schools are
eligible as defined by proposed state
legislation and existing federal guidelines.
An additional 16 schools were
identified for support based on a
three-year average of their College

DeKalb County School District Superintendent Stephen Green addresses a crowd
of parents, stakeholders and staff at the
district’s central office.

& Career Ready Performance Index
(CCRPI) scores for a total of 54 target schools.
Green said getting DeKalb’s
schools off these lists requires a systematic solution.
“The solution begins with improving classroom instruction and
outcomes,” he said.
The superintendent recently

initiated a task force to implement
his focus on curriculum, instruction, accountability and assessment
throughout the district, which he
said is the “core of the district’s work
going forward.”
The task force includes professionals inside the district, including
two regional superintendents and
external consultants “who are going
to do a curricular audit and assess
our alignment to state standards and
national standards,” Green said.
The task force has set goals to
decrease the number of schools recognized as OSD eligible.
One of its goals is to cut the
number of schools on the list from
38 to zero in 2016.
In the superintendents comprehensive plan, all target schools are
expected to meet state targets for
subject content and subgroups based
on the 2016 Georgia Milestones and
CCRPI. All target high schools are
expected to have a graduation rate at
or above the state’s 2016 graduation
rate. All target schools are expected
to have a climate star rating of 4 or 5
on the 2016 CCRPI and the standard
teacher and principal evaluation
scores are expected to increase annually by a minimum of 10 percent.
In addition, the superintendent
highlighted that relevant professional learning for school leaders and
teachers, enhanced family and community engagement and expanded
academic support and social and

emotional student support are critical components of the plan.
Also, operational flexibility is expected to offer preferential hiring of
highly qualified and effective teachers including teachers in special education, English as a second language,
and programs to gifted.
Incentive bonuses using Title II
Federal funds will be allocated when
appropriate for teachers demonstrating academic achievement.
The district also plans to create
partnerships with local colleges and
universities to provide need-based
support.
Outside service providers that
can assist teachers, students and
school leadership also will be offered
to the target schools.
Managing this process will be a
district effectiveness team, made up
of district and school leaders. The
team will meet twice a month with
Green, develop monthly action steps
toward improving and supporting
the target schools and collaborate
with the Georgia Department of
Education and the Metro Regional
Education Service Agency.
A parent awareness and empowerment conference that will focus
on the district’s plan for removing
schools from the lists is scheduled for
Oct. 24 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Columbia High School, 2106 Columbia
Drive, Decatur.

EDUCATION

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 19A

Sen. Steve Henson reads Pete the Cat and the New Guy, a part of a series illustrated and self-published by Kimberly and James Dean, to a group of preschoolers.

Georgia leaders celebrate pre-K week
by Ashley Oglesby
[email protected]
Pre-kindergarten centers
across Georgia celebrated
Georgia pre-K week, welcoming state, business and
community leaders to visit
classrooms and learn about
early childhood education.
Pre-K week celebrations
took place Oct. 6 - 10 and
brought leaders in pre-K
classrooms in all 159 counties.
Since the program’s inception 22 years ago, more
than 84,000 students have
participated.
Among the first leaders
to read a book to a pre-K
class, Sen. Steve Henson
visited Rowland Elementary
on Oct. 7 to read Pete the Cat
and the New Guy, a part of
a series illustrated and selfpublished by Kimberly and
James Dean.
Henson said it is important to step into the
classrooms to read to the
students.
“We need to make sure
that children know that they
are appreciated and loved. It’s

Rowland Elementary School students sit attentively on the floor for story time.

important as a legislator to
come and see how the pre-K
is working and how the children are learning and developing,” he said.
“It encourages us to invest the kind of money and
support we need to keep pre-

K going strong in Georgia,”
Henson said.
He added, “We need to
make sure that everybody
who wants to send their
children to pre-K can find
a good quality place to put
their children and we need

to pay for it. Right now there
are a lot of people who want
to get their children in pre-K
and they can’t. We need to
make sure that the option is
available to everybody.”
Henson said he’ll keep
working at that.

Rowland Elementary
School pre-K instructor
Robyn Watt said she appreciated the senator coming
into the classroom to read to
her class.
“Since he has a big role
in education and in DeKalb
County I think it was great
that he came in and showed
our students how important
education is to him,” she
said.
Henson also was guided
on a tour of the facility and
introduced to the school
staff.
In a statement Gov. Nathan Deal said he and his
wife Sandra Deal “believe
that engaging Georgia’s
children and encouraging
our educators is essential to
preparing students for future
success.”
He added, “Ensuring that
Georgia’s youngest scholars
continue to benefit from the
pre-K program is a top priority of my administration. By
making strategic investments
in Georgia’s pre-K program,
we hope to provide each student with a strong learning
foundation.”

CLASSIFIED

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 20A

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SPORTS

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 21A

Dunwoody won its fourth consecutive girls’ DeKalb County Cross Country title.

The Lakeside Vikings won their 30th DeKalb County Boys’ Cross Country Champi- Lakeside’s Davis Stockwell finished first in
onship. Photos by Mark Brock
the boys’ race.

Lakeside’s Corrie Smith finished first in the girls’
race.

Lakeside wins 30th DeKalb County Cross Country Championship
by Mark Brock
In the closest finish since a tie
in 1994, the Lakeside Vikings won
their 30th DeKalb County Boys’
Cross Country Championship 32-35
over two-time defending champion
Clarkston at the Druid Hills Middle
School Course Oct. 6.
A fourth consecutive girls’ title
and sixth out of the past seven went
to the Dunwoody Lady Wildcats 2653 over the Lakeside Lady Vikings.
Lakeside’s narrow victory
was keyed by the one-two finish of senior and defending Class
AAAAAA champion Davis Stockwell (16:48.59) and senior teammate
Andrew Kent (16:49.11) that set up
the big finish for the victory setting
the fastest times recorded in DeKalb
County this fall.

Defending champion Clarkston
had four Angoras claim four of the
next five spots in the Top 10 led by
junior Suheib Mohamed (16:56.81,
third), junior Bineyam Tumbo
(17:15.10, fifth), senior Paul Nikobiri (17:38.18, sixth) and freshman
Ngabo Daniel (17:42.58, seventh).
The Vikings has sophomores
Myles Body (17:51.94, eighth) and
Jake Tubesing (17:56.11, ninth) grab
Top 10 finishes to pull the Vikings
ahead 20-21 with both teams having
four finishers across the line.
Lakeside sophomore Caleb
Cloud (18:21.11, 12th) put the finishing touches on the Vikings’ 30th
county championship as he finished
just under seven seconds ahead of
Clarkston sophomore Awet Fitwi
(18:28.07, 14th).
Druid Hills finished third in the

team standings lead by defending
county champion Ermais Tewolde,
who finished fourth overall with a
time of 17:11.81.
Stephenson’s Brandon Hines
rounded out the Top 10 boys’ finishers with a time of 18:06.14.
The girls’ championship was not
as nerve wracking for the coaches or
runners as all seven runners placed
in the Top 11 to win their fourth
consecutive title.
Lakeside had a good start to the
championship and a possible sweep
of the titles as juniors Corrie Smith
(19:31.10, first) and Morgan Mihalis (19:52.04, third) sandwiched
second-place finisher Ansley Heavern (19:34.77), a Dunwoody senior.
Smith’s time was the fastest recorded
in DeKalb County this year.
The Lady Wildcats would then

close out the title by taking six of the
next eight spots led by sophomores
Kelly Sheehan (20:18.08, fourth) and
Samantha Cameron (20:34.02, fifth).
Chamblee sophomore Beining
Xiao (20:53.15) followed in sixth to
help her team to finish third overall
with 71 points.
A trio of Lady Wildcats followed Xiao in junior Caroline Dill
(21:05.93, seventh), senior AnnMarie Sills (21:24.59, eighth) and
junior Alexandra Womble (21:31.57,
ninth). Junior Julia Echols (22:15.22,
11th) gave the Lady Wildcats seven
runners in the Top 11.
Southwest DeKalb senior Ashley
Middlebrooks rounded out the Top
10 with a time of 22:08.30 to lead
Southwest DeKalb to a fifth-place
finish.

SPORTS

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 22A

softball

Dunwoody wins
region softball title
by Carla Parker
[email protected]
The No. 7-ranked Dunwoody Lady Wildcats claimed
another softball region title after defeating Stephenson 8-0
in five innings in the Region 6-AAAAA championship
game Oct. 9 at Dunwoody.
Freshman pitcher Samantha Moss had a dominating
performance on the mound, not allowing a hit. The only
batter to reach base was Ayanna Destinvil on a leadoff
walk in the top of the fifth inning. Moss and the Dunwoody defense shut down a potential Stephenson comeback with two strike outs and an infield fly out to seal the
victory.
Although Moss had a big role in the win, Dunwoody
Coach Kerry Brown said the senior class was the motivating factor behind the team’s performance.
“[The team] is led by six seniors—phenomenal, outstanding seniors,” Brown said. “They never give up, they
always work hard, they encourage each other and they
wanted it and you could really tell [they wanted it]. They
have worked so hard, our whole team has worked hard
[all] summer. When school got out we worked out four
times a week. They were ready to play; they wanted it.”
After a scoreless first inning, the Lady Wildcats got
their offense going in the second inning on a two-run
single by senior Kaylyn Sinisgalli, giving Dunwoody a 2-0
lead.
Dunwoody got two hits in the third inning, but good
defense by Stephenson and pitching by junior Jordyn Powell kept the runners on base and the Lady Jaguars got out
of the inning without allowing a run.
However, Dunwoody’s offense got going again in the
fourth inning, scoring six runs. A RBI single by Sinisgalli
and a RBI double by freshman Walker Wicklund extended
the Lady Wildcats’ lead to 4-0. Senior Katlyn Andrin batted in two runs to bring the score to 6-0, and a RBI double
by senior Allie Puckett and a sacrifice hit by sophomore
Heather Yancey brought the final score to 8-0.
Dunwoody and Stephenson hosted first round playoff
doubleheaders Oct. 14 against teams from Region 7-5A to
open the Class AAAAA playoffs. Brown said winning the
region title gives her team a lot of momentum heading into
the state playoffs.
“It’s always great to win region,” she said. “That was a
phenomenal game; my hat’s off to Stephenson. We’re ready;
our goal is to make deep into the state playoffs.”

Dunwoody won the Region 6-AAAAA championship.

A Dunwoody batter looks back at the ball.

Stephenson’s Jordyn Powell waits for the pitch. Photos by Carla Parker

Stop Cyber
bullying now
Stand up and Speak out
Stephenson pitcher Jordyn Powell gets set to throw
the pitch.

Freshman pitcher Samantha Moss had a dominating
performance on the mound.

SPORTS

The Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page 23A

FOOTball

St. Pius running back Grant Holloman tries to avoid a number of Marist defenders. Photo by
Butch Liddell

St. Pius running back Nkem Njoju looks for running room. Photo by Butch Liddell

St. Pius running back Nkem Njoju scored on a 5-yard run to give the Golden Lions a 17-14 lead.
Photo by J. David DiCristina

St. Pius comes from behind to
beat Marist in Fish Bowl

by Carla Parker
[email protected]

St. Pius X Golden Lions overcame a fourth quarter four-point
deficit to defeat rival Marist 24-14
in the annual Fish Bowl at home on
Oct. 9.
With less than six minutes to play
and up 14-10, Marist kicker Adam
Shingleton had an opportunity to
put his team up by seven points with
a 37-yard field goal. However, the
ball sailed right and hit the goal post,
giving St. Pius the ball on its own 20yard line.
St. Pius, which is known for
running the ball, pulled out a playaction pass play and quarterback
Reed Egan found Grant Holloman
on a 62-yard completion, setting the
Golden Lions with first and goal at
the 5-yard line.
“We knew that—because they

play so close to the line of scrimmage—that if we ran play-action
then we could get behind them,”
Coach Paul Standard said after the
game. “If we had enough protection
we could do it, and we did.”
A couple of plays later, sophomore running back Nkem Njoju
scored on a 5-yard run to give the
Golden Lions a 17-14 lead with 3:32
left to play.
Marist tried to put together a
responding scoring drive, but senior linebacker Garrett Gooden
intercepted Marist quarterback Jack
Dinges’ pass and returned it to the
4-yard line.
Two plays later, Holloman leaped
over a pile of players for the 1-yard
touchdown score, extending the
Golden Lions lead to 24-14.
Senior defensive back Brennan
Garrison picked off Dinges on the
following drive to end the game, giv-

ing St. Pius its fourth consecutive
win over Marist since 2008.
Standard said he was most proud
of his players not quitting before the
missed field goal.
“We just beat a dang gone good
football team,” he said. “The defense
did a great job. They got a great offense and we didn’t have many possessions, so we had to make hay
when we had a chance. I can’t say
enough about our kids and how they
were resilient. They never gave up.”
St. Pius (4-2) will face Chamblee
(2-4) Oct. 16 at North DeKalb Stadium at 7:30 p.m., while Marist (5-2)
will host Grady (3-3).
Other Scores
Oct. 8
Maynard Jackson (2-4) 20, Towers (15) 12

Oct. 9
Lovejoy (3-4) 68, Lakeside (3-4) 14
Tucker (4-3) 56, Rockdale Co. (1-6) 21
Thomson (5-1) 56, Clarkston (0-6) 7
M.L. King Jr. (2-4) 39, Druid Hills (33) 14
Lithonia (4-3) 20, Chamblee (2-4) 7
Stephenson (5-1) 62, Dunwoody (2-4)
0
Westminster (3-3) 49, Decatur (4-2) 16
Oct. 10
Miller Grove (4-2) 35, SW DeKalb (24) 0
Arabia Mountain (3-3) 24, Redan (3-4)
14
Cedar Grove (5-1) 20, McNair (1-5) 0
OPEN: Cross Keys (0-3), Stone Mountain (0-6)

local

PageChampion
24A The
Champion FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015
The
FREE PRESS, FRIDAY, october 16, 2015Page
24A

Pet Week
of
the

South DeKalb Senior Center

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Seniors from the Lou Walker Senior Center perform at the grand opening of the
South DeKalb Senior Center Oct. 12. Photos by Andrew Cauthen