(Rainbow City, AL - August 30, 2010) Wiregrass Hospice and Home Health in Rainbow City is making plans to celebrate their fifth anniversary in Etowah County by giving gifts to the community. Agency officials announced their plans to give assistance to five separate charities in the Gadsden community to celebrate their fifth year.

Wiregrass Hospice's Branch Director in Etowah County, Kim Abel, says her company is proud of their fifth year of service to the Gadsden metro area, "we hope these projects will be an example of our commitment not only to providing quality, compassionate hospice care to our patients and their families, but out commitment to our local community here in Gadsden."

In a meeting with press today, Abel and Wiregrass Account Executive Cason Brown unveiled the five projects to be completed by September 30th by company employees as they celebrate their five years of service to the Gadsden metro area. Included in those plans various projects with the Etowah County chapter of the American Red Cross, the Rainbow City/Southside Animal Shelter, the United Way of Etowah County's Success by 6, Etowah County Habitat for Humanity and the Etowah County Free Clinic.

Brown says the company's employees, including nurses, account executives, management and chaplains will serve the five groups as part of the Wiregrass Hospice 5x5 Project. The plans are to complete all five of the projects by the end of September, he says. That list of projects include:

• The Etowah County Chapter of the American Red Cross: Wiregrass Hospice will sponsor a blood drive on Thursday, September 16 in the Rainbow Plaza Shopping Center from 8 am to 2 pm. In addition, medical professionals with Wiregrass will partner with Red Cross to present First Aid and CPR training in local schools and throughout the community.
• The Rainbow City/Southside Animal Shelter: Wiregrass employees will be collecting pet food and blankets for donation to the local animal shelter at Wiregrass' office through September 30th. "We hear of shelters supported by our government entities, but this gives us a chance to help support our local shelter, which operates with little to no funding," Brown informed the media.
• Habitat for Humanity of Etowah County: Wiregrass employees will partner with the local Habitat chapter to assist in fundraising and in actual construction of a home for a local resident. A family has already been identified for assistance by Habitat for this project.
• United Way's Success by 6: Wiregrass employees will assist the work of Success by 6 to help every Etowah County child be able to read and be ready for school by age 6. To assist in this goal, Wiregrass workers will visit several area daycare centers and read to students during the month of September.
• The Etowah County Free Clinic: Wiregrass will provide several RNs for the Etowah County Free Clinic during the month of September, especially during the clinic's busy times. Brown says they are also looking for ways to provide nurses for the free clinic in the future, as a continuing project. Free Clinic representative, Jonathan Welch says the clinic "has always had a need for more volunteers, especially nurses." He explains his clinic welcomes the assistance from Wiregrass and any other medical agency who might be interested in sharing some of their medical staff with the work of the Free Clinic.

Wiregrass Hospice is located in Rainbow City inside the Rainbow Plaza Shopping Center, close to Center Stage. The hospice and its partner home health agency is owned by Gentiva, the nation's largest hospice and home health care provider. Gentiva recently purchased Odyssey for $912 million to put them on the top of the list. Brown says his office is excited about the opportunities the merger will provide for his office to provide state-of-the-art health care and hospice services to patients in Cherokee, DeKalb, Etowah and Marshall counties.

(Gadsden, AL - August 30, 2010) A weekend shooting death involving three Etowah County Sheriff's deputies is under investigation by the Alabama Bureau of Investigation.

According to reports from Sheriff Todd Entrekin's office, the three were attempting to serve a failure to appear warrant Sundayon 38 year old Bobby Ray Emery, at a Shady Grove Road home in Boaz around 12:10 p.m. Emory failed to appear for court in which he was to face charges for possession of a controlled substance, possession of marijuana and reckless endangerment stemming from an incident in which he led deputies on a high-speed pursuit into DeKalb county.

According to Entrekin, "A felony drug warrant with a subject's name and address stated, gives law enforcement the authority to enter and search property in pursuit of executing the warrant."

A press statement from the sheriff's office says the deputies clearly identified themselves when entering the residents, when the shooting victim, Anthony Ray Sampson stepped out from behind a wall pointing a gun at the uniformed officers. According to sheriff's records, shots were fired by the deputies at 12:18 p.m. After the confrontation, deputies left the residence and called for backup.

When the county's Joint Special Operations Group arrived on the scene and entered the residence, Sampson's body was found in the home.

The statement describes a surveillance system and scanner found inside the home, which gave Sampson a tactical advantage as he was able to monitor the deputies' movements and radio traffic from inside the home.

ABI and the state Department of Forensic Science gathered evidence at the scene and has received a copy of the video from cameras carried by the Etowah County deputies for this type of situation.

Entrekin says several drugs were found at the scene, "including Mexican methamphetamine. Packets of marijuana were also found, which appears to have been packaged for the purpose of selling," he states in the press release. Evidence gathered at the home will be presented to an Etowah County Grand Jury.

"At this time, based on the evidence gathered, we believe there is no reason to place the three deputies on administrative leave. They will continue with their regular work rotation and were scheduled to be off today (Monday) and tomorrow," Entrekin states.

Other agencies who responded to the scene were: Alabama State Troopers, Sardis Police Department, Boaz Police Department, Gadsden Police Department, Walnut Grove Police Department and Mountainboro Volunteer Fire Department.

Dear Editor:
For more than a decade prior to his assassination in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. went into the homes of white American families, particularly in the deep south, and talked to them about their attitudes toward African-Americans. He spoke to white children in their own living rooms as they sat on their couches and recliners. True, he was not there physically, and he did not enter the homes through the front door. That would have been unlikely in the racially-charged 1960s. But nonetheless, it was Dr. King himself, in the form of flickering back-and-white images on television screens, delivering the most powerful lines of his speeches during news broadcasts.

When Dr. King said, "I have a dream of a day when my children are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," the message was not filtered through a scrim of journalism simultaneously reporting and interpreting it. It was not drab newsprint the children would have found too boring to read. It was the great man himself, making his case "in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent," as Thomas Jefferson once described his own declaration. Nothing could shake the fundamental truth once the message had been delivered - not parents, not schoolteachers, not friends or parents of friends, not the governor standing on the steps of the university, and not the brick-throwing unrest and fist-fighting school integration of the next several years.

Dr. King was a great man because he fought a social cancer that had inflicted American society over 300 years. But his message was not new. It had been expressed by a thousand other great men and women since the 17th century. He did, however, have the advantage of being the first to deliver the message via the newly-invented television directly to the upcoming next generation of children while they were still young enough for his words to influence their yet-unformed attitudes. It seems doubtful he would have been as effective without it. He himself probably did not comprehend how the new appliance would help him ultimately and posthumously accomplish what John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Harriett Beecher Stowe, and others could not.

Barack Obama is not the realization of Dr. King's dream. We are. Millions of white children of the 60s and 70s who did not grow up to become racists despite having been born into a racist society. Dr. King did not care about electing a black American president; he cared about an America where the color of the president's skin is trivial. President Obama was elected by a multi-racial majority. More importantly, Obama's opposition is based strictly upon issues, not upon skin color. By anyone's standards, White America has achieved Dr. King's dream.

His speeches were delivered to assembled crowds of primarily African-American attendees. But the messages contained within those speeches were not directed at African-Americans. It asked nothing of them. It did not ask them to change their attitudes; it was white attitudes that needed changing. He did not ask African-Americans to achieve; it was assumed that once they were given the opportunity to achieve, they would need no prompting. African-Americans already cheered King's words. Caucasian-Americans were the ones who needed convincing.

The political left owns racism in the US today by the way it defines everyone according to the demographic categories it assigns them: heritage, gender, sexual orientation, physical limitations, etc. By identifying, categorizing, and allocating everyone into groups, leftists strip people of their individuality and their individual freedoms. Last January, Chris Matthews of MS-NBC had an epiphany - for one hour while the President was delivering the State of the Union Address, Matthews stopped thinking about the fact that the President is black. Apparently, prior to last week, Matthews had never had seen President Obama without focusing his thoughts on skin color instead of issues. Now, he has put thoughts of race out of his head. Welcome to the conservative majority, Mr. Matthews, even if it only lasted for an hour.

Last weekend a large and diverse crowd gathered at the western end of the National Mall around the Lincoln Memorial, where Dr. King gave that speech 63 years before.  The message of this meeting was not about repression of one race, or about promoting one race over any other.  It was about Americans - all Americans coming back together under the principles upon which the greatest nation in the history of the world was founded.  Those principles have come under attack during every generation, and every generation has been called upon to rededicate itself to them.  Some on the left have predictably claimed that the "Restoring Honor" rally was meant to usurp Dr. King's message.  That assertion badly misses the point.  On the contrary, it represents a social movement that grew naturally from the realization of The Dream.  Many who were gathered in Washington on August 28th were among the very people to whom Dr. King directed his famous speech, and their children, and children's children.  The fact that race had nothing to do with the message of the Restoring Honor gathering is a testament that The Dream has been realized.  And those who accuse it of racism appear, sadly, to be those who have not realized it.

The left's philosophy is that you cannot be one of them unless you agree with them on every issue. No one who disagrees with the leftist views on race, abortion, gay rights, or any other individual issue would be welcome as part of the leftist movement, even if they agree on everything else. The political faction that claims to embrace diversity will not accept diversity of opinions, the most underpinning of all civil liberties, within its own ranks.

Last year a grass-roots political movement began to stretch its wings at an estimated 800 tea parties on April 15th. It is a movement that focuses on a return to the vision of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Some reporters at CNN, NBC and its cable counterpart MSNBC, and most notably, liberal activist Janeane Garafalo have claimed that these tea parties are mere racist demonstrations. Infuriatingly, we all know that they know it is untrue. No racism was in evidence at any of the tea party rallies. In fact, this new socio/political energy is more inclusive and issue-based than any our generation has seen. Garafalo and the NBC news organization have abandoned all journalistic ethics and are attempting to make news that doesn’t exist rather than report the news that does.

Did any racists attend these tea parties? Who can say? No one suggests that there are not some racists extant in America, only that they are not in positions of leadership and that racist attitudes are no longer socially acceptable. If a few racists were in attendance, we have not yet made the Orwellian leap into thought control. Individuals are still entitled to their opinions, even ignorant and unpopular opinions. Anyone has the right to have a racist attitude if that is the attitude he has. He may not act on it in a way that denies the rights of others, but he may have and express his opinion short of that without fear of molestation. If he happens to agree with the principles this country was founded upon, and if that belief inspires him to attend tea parties, it does not require the movement to adopt or defend his racist attitudes. But it also does not require the movement to turn him away and refuse his support for other causes they agree about, such as limited government and market capitalism. In fact, the dissent on various issues among participants illustrates the very fundamental freedom of thought and expression tea parties are seeking to protect.

Television, which four decades ago gave Dr. King the power to speak truth directly to millions is failing its duty to the American people today. Rather than allow the message of tea parties to pass through unfiltered, reporters and anchors at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and CNBC distort their reporting to suit their own editorial orthodoxy. Only at Fox News and C-SPAN can anyone hear the tea party message in its own words, sans interpretive commentary.

The political conservatives believe the USA and our society were built upon a belief that everyone is an individual, not a mere representative of all others who appear similar in some superficial way. One might think that this, too, is a plain and firm truth that everyone, even Janeane Garafalo, would embrace.

Rex Stanfield
Gadsden, AL

Mr. Cecil, from Hokes Bluff, telling his story in the United Way Campaign Video "How I LIVE UNITED" from 2010 Campaign

(Hokes Bluff, AL - August 26, 2010) During Thursday's "Opening Day" ceremony for the 2010 United Way giving campaign, a house full of guests in Gadsden's Convention Hall had the opportunity to meet "Mr. Cecil" and several others who have received help from the United Way in past years.

During a four-and-a-half minute video presentation, viewers were introduced to four Etowah County residents who have received service from the 26 member agencies of the United Way of Etowah County. One of the three stories revolved around Goodyear retiree "Mr. Cecil."

Cecil tells of his struggle with recovery from encephalitis, a disease that shuts down one's nervous system.  "I'm one of the few that lived through it," he says in the video interview. He continues to explain that he had contributed to the United Way weekly for more than forty years before he retired from Goodyear.y

"I knew [my contributions] helped the Y(MCA), but I never thought I might have to be part of it, using it,  getting the benefit from the Y to help myself be mobile again." Mr. Cecil participates in the Silver Sneakers program, a physical therapy program geared for the physical needs of a more senior participant. He also participates in other rehab programs at the Y on Walnut Street in Gadsden.

Cecil tells GadsdenMetro that his experiences at the Y have helped keep him alive. "Between the programs at the Y, my friends and fellow church members, the Good Lord have kept me alive and getting better." His health has improved so much that he's gone from not being able to even write his own checks to pay his bills to being an ambassador for the United Way this campaign season.

He has visited his former workplace, and several other businesses in the area to encourage workers to contribute "somethign, anything" to the United Way. In the video interview, he reminds them to "give, because they don't know when they're going to use it." He says he doesn't regret a penny he spent on supporting the various programs of the United Way member agencies.

"I'm prouder of it [contributions] right now than I was then, knowing I'm getting the benefit of it now," he states in the campaign video. He says for forty years his money was "just a gift back then I gave to help... but, its come back home to me" he says in one of the most emotional moments in the entire video.

During the United Way of Etowah County Opening Day Celebration, it was announced that the Pacesetters Campaign, which was just concluded, had raised over $600,000. That amount reflects almost half of the more than $1.3 goal for 2010-2011.

Link to Campaign Video