Thumbs Up! Sept. 11, 2017

Dougherty County Sheriff Kevin Sproul and his department will hold the eighth annual “Building Unity in the Community” cookout on Sept. 23 from 11 a.m until 2 p.m.. Each year the event takes place at a different location in an effort to touch the entire community. Sproul strongly supports bringing community members together for a good time. When the bad times come, the people that ate hot dogs and sat in the shade as the children played at one of the cookouts, are the same ones who count on one another for help. Bridging the world of law enforcement with the residents of Albany is yet another goal of the event. This year’s cookout will be held at Sherwood Acres Elementary School. There is no charge and everyone, regardless of where in the city you call home, is invited.

The Duke University Talent Identification Program (TIP) is used to identify students with exceptional academic potential. To actually participate in TIP, students must score at or above the 95 percentile on a rigorous standardized test. An amazing 33 percent of Camilla’s Westwood School’s current 7th grade class met the criteria. Of that percentage, seven students actually scored in the top five percent on the nationally administered test. These exceptional students are eligible to participate in independent learning opportunities and academic programs through the Duke program. In addition, this status allows the students, as 7th graders, to take the ACT or SAT. Congratulations.

Flint Media of Bainbridge wanted to help provide drinking water for the people of Texas and Louisiana following Hurricane Harvey. For a week, cases of bottled water were collected as individuals and other businesses came with case after case of the most essential need of all. The water drive expected to bring in 50 to 100 cases but it didn’t happen quite like that. By Friday of there were around 1,600 cases, an entire semi-truck trailer loaded and ready to roll. So successful was the drive and so generous were the people in and around Bainbridge that Flint Media has pulled in another semi to load and cases of bottled water have already started coming in.

By the time this editorial makes it to print, Hurricane Irma will have done her damage across Florida and further north. Southwest Georgia is still the sight of numerous blue-tarped roofs left from the January storms. Houston has scarcely begun to dry out from record water levels. Meanwhile, wildfires in the northwestern parts of the country go about destroying property and dislocating hundreds of people. But, the upside of this, and there always is one, is that this is America a.k.a. the United States. When the need is greatest, whether it be water, food, shelter or money and simply a shoulder to cry on, Americans dig deep and rarely come up empty-handed.

During tropical storm Harvey in Rockport,Texas, a do-nut shop owner used a generator to keep his business running.With a damaged building and no electricity and exhausted both mentally and physically, this man and his wife had more than one good excuse to close up and head for drier ground. Instead, they baked donuts and made coffee for the rescue workers and anyone else that came their way. There was a need and the need was met.

Somewhere in Florida before Irma made landfall, a man stood in line at an home improvement store with what turned out to be the last generator in stock. As this news reached the lady behind him, she began to cry. Although with a limited ability to speak English, the customer understood well the language of tears. It was because the lady’s father must have oxygen to breathe that she so desperately needed a generator. So what does the lucky man with the last generator do? He gave it to someone who needed it more than he did.

Natural and man-made disasters destroy property and too often take lives. It is, however, the love, sometimes hidden deep in our hearts, that will put Americans back of solid ground — just like it did on this date in 2001.