An Albany retiree is celebrating a million-dollar Georgia Lottery win. Frances Cole, 65, won $1 million on the instant game World Class Millions. She claimed her prize Monday at the Georgia Lottery’s Tifton office.
BP Food Mart #0021, located at 1817 N. Slappey Blvd. in Albany, sold the lucky top prize ticket. Cole scratched her ticket in the store.
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Kay Barber Schwegler Bingaman, pictured here with her husband, Tom, is in need of surgery. A fund-raiser is being conducted in Miller County to raise money for Bingaman’s procedure.
An uninsured Albany native, in need of a surgical procedure that could potentially save her life, is reaching out to her community for donations to help cover the cost of the procedure.
Kay Barber Schwegler Bingaman, who grew up in Putney and lived in Dougherty and Lee County most of her adult life, touched the lives of many children during her dozen years as a home daycare operator and later as director of the Albany YMCA’s afterschool program in Lee, Crisp, Worth and Turner counties.
In addition, Bingaman was instrumental in raising money and managing fundraising campaigns for children in need of medical care, as well as writing grants to help rural children participate in after school and summer care. Now she needs help
Bingaman has suffered from numerous medical issues for years, including fibromyalgia, non- alcoholic fatty liver disease, a heart defect, arthritis and degenerative joint disease in her spine and recurring kidney stones.
Hospitalized and in emergency rooms for over 20 admissions and procedures in recent years, including stent placements and lithotripsy, Bingaman’s blood work revealed a high calcium level and she progressed to seeing six doctors a month, was on oxygen and taking 16 medications. A divorce left her without health insurance, and she has already depleted her funds with existing health expenses.
“My pain increased, my symptoms of extreme bone pain did also, and in ’09, I finally reached a point where I simply could not walk through a store, keep my own house, or even stand to cook dinner,” said Bingaman. “My body was wracked and still is, from my shoulders down my arms all the way to my feet.”
Soon, Bingaman complained about deep bone pain, and blood tests were taken by the only doctor she could afford at the time.
“I was told I was nothing but a “laundry list” of ailments. I knew that, but I needed a doctor to start doing laundry and give me some diagnostic help – fast.”
Last summer, symptoms progressed and began to affect her vision. Having moved to Bainbridge nearer her new husband, Tom’s, place of employment, she then began to experience hair loss, falling and losing the use of her arms and hands because of the pain, every new issue putting additional stress on her already weak heart.
A return trip to the doctor for more blood work revealed nothing.
“At one point, I knew that because of not having insurance I was literally dying from lack of medical testing. I needed a bone scan, a new stress test on my heart and several other things that maybe would have, with insurance, saved me from the fall of ’09 being my breaking point,” she said.
Still wracked with migraines, bone, chest and stomach pain, a swollen liver and overtaxed kidneys, Bingaman and her husband again sought answers from a doctor, knowing her lack of insurance would still be an issue. This time, blood tests revealed something new, a non-functioning parathyroid gland, where calcium levels in the body are regulated.
“That week, I had been carried in to my doctor’s office nearly hysterical with pain. Hair was coming out in handfuls, my arms were numb, then my legs … my gut felt like I had been beaten in it. I woke up every night, if I was lucky enough to get to sleep, screaming with pain.”
Her diagnosis is hyperparathyroid disease, paired with extreme hypocalcaemia. Her parathyroid gland has stopped working for one of two reasons, either a tumor or growth on the gland or cancer, possibly from her bones that have likely leeched calcium into her system for years. Only surgery will reveal which one she faces, but without insurance, the prospect was dim. Not to mention that very few surgeons are capable of the performing the specialized procedure Bingaman needs.
“After long searches, we’ve found that no surgeons that have any pro-bono funds available. We have called every agency you might think. We have inquired about Medicaid and were told if we divorce, I can get it. No. God is not going to think that is the way we should take, with our strong marriage and faith.”
So the search was on, and The Bingamans have a consult on Feb. 1 with a surgeon who started performing this procedure a year ago, and who they are hoping will be able to work out a payment plan, if the funds in her campaign are high enough to cover his consultation, a down payment, pre-surgical testing and hospital arrangements. It is another dilemma for the Bingamans to hope that the hospital where the surgeon performs will work with them under a payment agreement also.
Sadly, without campaign amounts climbing quickly – they’ve raised $2,800 thus far – the Bingamans may actually have to wait until donations raised are enough to satisfy both the surgeon and hospital with promise of payment.
But time is crucial. The initial goal is $13,000 to get Bingaman in the lineup for the surgery. Additional funds will be needed for travel and other expenses, including follow up care. A couple of her husband’s coworkers at the Miller County Board of Education have organized a fundraiser for Bingaman. Donations can be sent to the Miller County Board of Education, Attn: Bingaman Family Fund, Jeff Hatcher – Trustee, 96 Perry St., Colquitt, GA 39837.
Donations should be made payable to Bingaman Family Fund. Donations are tax deductible.
When he was a child on a tenant farm in southwest Georgia, Karl E. Peace learned early that his parents, thankfully, were not equal in temperament or ambition. While his mother was protective and had a strong desire to learn, his father subjected him to brutal beatings and would have relegated him to a continuing cycle of sharecropping and poverty.
While his father rejected him when he was child, his mother provided the love and inspiration that he needed to endure and persevere. With a small loan from a prominent farmer and businessman, he left Baker County in 1959, the first in his family to receive a high school diploma, and continued his education at Georgia Southern College in Statesboro.
After earning degrees from Georgia Southern and Clemson University, he returned to Baker County and moved his mother, then suffering from breast cancer, and his siblings to Statesboro to begin life anew.
In Paid In Full the author paints a vivid picture of life on Georgia’s tenant farms in the 1950s – perhaps one of few books with a firsthand account of the involvement of poor whites in the state’s old sharecropping culture.
The book is also a tribute to a mother’s love and a son’s devotion, as well as an account of a love story that ended tragically with the death of the love of his life.
After his wife lost a gallant battle to breast cancer in 2004, Dr. Peace, who holds a Ph.D. in biostatistics, endowed the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health at Georgia Southern University in honor and memory of his late wife. He remains a benefactor to many young men and women seeking to improve their lives through advanced education, and he has generously recognized the positive contributions that others have made to his own life.
“Paid In Full is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry, “ said Albany physician James Hotz, author of Where Remedies Lie and recognized as the inspiration for book Doc Hollywood.
“This is an insider’s view of one of the most powerful and productive segments of the world’s economy,” said Hotz, who has practice medicine in Baker County, which has about 4,000 residents, for 30 years. “ Karl Peace is a mathematical genius who applied his unique skills to develop statistical models that helped revolutionize the drug development process.
“Along the way Karl made a fortune but when his wife was tragically dying of breast cancer he committed his life to philanthropy trying to use his drug earnings to advance public health.
Karl’s success story is infinitely more compelling because societal norms dictate that it should have never happened. Hollywood has never made this movie, as no one would believe it could happen in real life! I had to see it with my own eyes and now you can, also. Yes, the American Dream can still happen.”
Athletes from the Albany Recreation and Parks Department’s Special Olympics program enjoyed a day of bowling at a recent tournament held at the Rose Bowl in Thomasville.
I’m first and foremost a pastor. I like to tell people that the 40 hours I work here is my part time job.”
Never one to shy away from hard work, Bob Prince began his dual career as a preacher and a barber when he was only 16 years old. And while the price of a haircut has increased over the years, so has his passion for both jobs.
As a teenager growing up in Tampa, Fla., Prince completed Barber College before he graduated from high school. He charged just 75 cents for haircuts back then. With two older brothers working as barbers and seven relatives — including his father — preaching, it’s easy to see how he was influenced.
“I had finished college and was working my first job when I was called to preach,” said Prince, 67, who was raised Church of God. “Since then, I’ve done both off and on, sometimes at the same time.”
Prince recently returned to his dual career life, having focused solely on his church for the past few years. And while leading the congregation at Shepherd’s Fold, a Congregational Holiness Church on Fussell Road, remains his priority, former customers are delighted that he’s opened a barbershop once again.
Located at 2222 Palmyra Road in the Lamar Parr Center, The Barber Shop isn’t Prince’s first venture at shop ownership. For 15 years he owned Northside Barber Shop before selling it to one of his peers. After three years of cutting hair in that shop on Saturdays only, he decided to hang out the red, white and blue pole once again.
“I came back to accommodate my clientele,” shared Prince, noting that the barber business is one of few not adversely affected by the economy. “But I’m first and foremost a pastor. I like to tell people that the 40 hours I work here is my part time job.”
Prince will be behind the chair full-time until the first of the year when he’ll cut back to Thursdays and half days on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
“The customers seem to be glad I’m back,” said Prince, adding that he cuts the hair of many of his fellow pastors. “This is a Christian shop and we try to maintain a Christian atmosphere and they appreciate that. Our gospel music plays 24/7. It’s a quiet and relaxing atmosphere.”
Barber shops are notorious for the conversation that takes place there between barbers and customers, and Prince’s shop is no exception. These days, Barak Obama and politics dominate most conversations.
“We try not to discuss politics, but it still gets discussed,” he admitted.
When asked if customer expectations or requests have changed over the 50 plus years he’s spent barbering, Prince was quick to respond.
“Not from my customers,” he said. “I still do the old fashioned barber cut. But the introduction of cosmetology into the barbershop has made a big difference in the clientele I guess.”
So if a fella walks in off the street and wants some kind of fancy do, Prince won’t be his man. But not to worry — he’s got them covered. The Barber Shop also employs two cosmetologists, Kim Etheridge and Melanie Carter, both of whom he worked with at his previous location.
While business is building for the moment, Prince fears that barber shops “are a dying breed.” Aging barbers and an increase in men seeking haircuts at hairstyle chains and beauty shops may mean an end to barber shops in the not too distant future.
“We used to get so busy at the other shop that we had to use numbers. I anticipate having to do that again here,” he said.
For now, Prince will keep cutting hair and spreading the good news, both from behind the pulpit and the barber chair.
The Barber Shop is open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday and Saturday. The shop’s phone number is 436-2828.
Written by K.K. Snyder.
Kiwanians Dr. Larry Perkins (left) and Bob Fowler get things going on the pancake griddle at the Kiwanis Club of Dougherty County’s annual breakfast.
The down-home aroma of pancakes on the large, specially-made griddle and sizzling sausage and bacon wafted tantalizingly through the air at the Kiwanis Club of Dougherty County’s annual pancake breakfast fundraiser, held at Albany’s Covenant Presbyterian Church on November 14.
By the time the three-hour event had wrapped up, some 600 hungry customers had been served and an estimated $3,200 raised to support the club’s activities on behalf of youth and other community projects in Dougherty and Lee counties.
Dougherty County Kiwanians Ann Owen and Jay Carpenter and an unidentified high school Key Club member work on preparations in the kitchen at Kiwanis Club of Dougherty County’s annual pancake breakfast.
Kiwanis Club of Dougherty fundraising committee chair Mike Bertram described the event as “an awesome day,” with dozens of Kiwanians and Kiwanis-sponsored high-school Key Club members coming together to work both in the dining room and behind the scenes in the kitchen to feed the continuous wave of breakfast-goers. Anyone who wasn’t there really missed out on something, he added.
The all-you-can-eat pancake extravaganza is just one of the fundraising events the club undertakes every year. Among the numerous events and organizations currently or previously supported through the Kiwanis Club of Dougherty County fundraisers are Christmas in April, Meals on Wheels, Charles H. Smith III Memorial Golf Tournament, School Art Contest, Asthma Day Camp, Little League and Dixie Youth Baseball, Dougherty High School Football Team Dinner, Pastor Appreciation Day, Special Olympics, School Reading Program in Dougherty and Lee counties, holiday Salvation Army bell-ringing, Christmas Angel Tree, the Russian Delegation visit, Southwest Georgia Therapeutic Riding Center, Pritchett/Pippin School of Dance recital, and the Scholarship Program for Lee and Dougherty high schools.
An Albany housekeeper is celebrating a “tidy” Georgia Lottery win. Belinda Gilliard, 43, matched all five winning numbers in the Nov. 10 Fantasy 5 drawing and won $280,127.
Gilliard purchased her jackpot ticket at June Bug’s Grocery, 1905 S. Madison St., Albany.
“I went by the store to pick up a printout of the winning numbers and realized I won,” Gilliard explained.
Winning numbers for the Nov. 10 Fantasy 5 drawing were: 7-18-26-31-33. Gilliard won using numbers from a previous Quik Pik combination.
“I had a Quik Pik and kept playing the same numbers over for awhile,” she said.
Gilliard says she’s still deciding how to use her winnings.
Georgia Lottery retailers selling winning Fantasy 5 jackpot tickets receive a retailer incentive bonus of $2,000. The retailer incentive bonus increases by $2,000 each time Fantasy 5 rolls. If more than one winning jackpot ticket is sold, the retailers selling the jackpot winning tickets will share the bonus. June Bug’s Grocery will receive a $6,000 retailer incentive bonus.
Longevity in itself is fine, but the real point of living right is the love, and Mary Bass Fitzgerald Taylor, my grandmother, is a solid example of not only a long life, but a loving one. On Nov. 8, she turned 100. To celebrate, family came from all over, some of whom I’d never met. Her modest home in the country was awash in kinfolk, all with one common bond; our “Ma”. I overheard a cousin saying, “Ma doesn’t have a family tree, she’s got a forest.”
It’s hard to put yourself in someone’s place that has seen the changes a hundred years can bring. My family is blessed to not only have her with us, but her mind, her memory, and her engagement in life, is clear and sharp. I will never forget the time she told my daughter about seeing an airplane for the first time, at the dawn of the air age. The perspective that offers is priceless, and you could see it in my child’s eyes.
She was born in 1909, in a small farm house just outside Leslie, Georgia. It was a Saturday afternoon. At the time, a small brush fire was burning near the farm. Her mother, Mary Winifred Reid Bass, sent for her father, Henry Carson Bass, who was helping fight the fire. The house is still there today.
In 1930 she married Harvey Fitzgerald, my grandfather, and moved to Albany. They had five children. Their second daughter, died from pneumonia when she was just two years old. Ma and Pa were married 45 years until his death in 1975. She soon was very involved at the Downtown Senior Center, where she met and married her second husband, Virgil Taylor. He passed away in 1987. Since then, Ma has been the matriarch of a big and growing family.
As her first grandchild, I’m special. Sorry cousins, I love you, but the facts are the facts; Lonny’s number one. Just deal with it. Of course the truth is Ma, like all grandparents, loves every single one of her kids; the first bunch, us grand-kids, and even those young upstarts, the great-grand-kids. We are a well-mannered mob, for the most part. When we all get together it is usually around Ma. Belonging to each other because of her, makes for a much needed break from our individual lives. If just for a few hours, we get a reminder of who we really are and what really matters; family. They are always pleasant and uplifting times.
But don’t get the idea that our Grandmother holds back on her opinion just to keep things like that. Ma has no problems sharing what you should be doing, as opposed to what you are doing, if she thinks you’re messing up. She comes from the generation of parents that had very basic rules when it came to raising a family. Even in the good times, life was hard, but right was right and wrong was wrong. As far as she’s concerned, it’s still that way. Sure, it can seem like a simple, blunt approach to problem solving these days, but the older I get the more refreshing and assuring those older, tried and true standards of hers become.
This year, she was named the Georgia Living Healthy Senior Champion of 2009, through the SOWEGA Council on Aging. By sticking to her regular checkups, eating healthy, staying active, being smoke free, and keeping a positive, upbeat attitude, she finally got a little official recognition for being the great lady that we have known all our lives.
Preparing for her big 100th birthday event, her kids; my mother, her two sisters, and one brother, worked hard to locate and invite everyone. The property was spruced up, food was prepared, and schedules of who picked up what and when, kept the four of them jumping for weeks. When the day arrived, it all came together, and the weather was perfect. Laughter and boiled peanuts, candles and old stories, picture taking and hugs. Who could ask for a better birthday party? Actually, that would be my grandmother. We have to top it next year. It was a good day to be a part of this family.
Written by Lon McNeil.
For three-year-old Gracyn Cannon, the expansion of the family tree is far more than needed extra space and functional new classrooms. Now the place where Gracyn spends her day transports her to a place where imagination takes over.
“I feel like I can jump into fairytale land,” said Gracyn, the daughter of Jay and Chris Cannon, both Phoebe employees.
Indeed, the hallways meander from town to country to woodlands, every wall, door, nook and cranny covered in art that can take a child’s imagination to places unknown.
Meet the artist: Jenni Bode, who usually spends her days as one of phoebe’s graphic artists, designing everything from brochures and patient literature to signage and ad campaigns. When the Family Tree expansion was in its early planning stages, design teams wanted to add hallway murals to the facility. But the costs of commercial designs and output were prohibitive. Bode stepped up and volunteered to take on a challenge that not only salvaged the plan, but resulted in a unique and original “loose watercolor” artwork that is making the youngsters squeal with delight.
“This was a collaborative effort between marketing and construction department teams, as well as architects, to come up with a theme that would be educational and enjoyable and fun,” said Bode. She poured through stacks of children’s literature before settling on a style and theme that takes the children through a progressive journey, from pizza parlors and pet shops to dairy cows and alligators in the swamp.
The final product required more than brush strokes and paint. Bode constructed a miniature to- scale paper model of the entire building using architectural renderings and blueprints. The tiny one-inch high roofless model captures every window, door and turn, including placements for light switches and other elements that needed to be incorporated into the artwork. Bode had to make sure that windows and doors didn’t interrupt the flow of the art. “I had to keep in mind that the walls have recesses and how the art would look as it turned a corner or went over a door.”
She started with original watercolors on illustration boards, piecing together a story that starts at the farmyard with renderings of sheep, pigs, horses and ducks to name a few. “We put fluffy sheep on the walls near the infant nurseries because the fluffy soft sheep seemed to go with the sleeping babies,” said Bode. The illustrations were then scanned electronically with special layout computer software and then reproduced by Matrix in Lee County to wall-sized vinyl murals.
The art, while clearly eliciting lots of “oohs and ahs,” also has a teaching purpose.
“If you walk further down the farmyard path, youngsters will see chickens roosting in tiers in the hen house. We saw these kinds of scenes as an opportunity to use the artwork for educational purposes, where teachers can count with the children and teach concepts such as above and below, top and bottom,” said Bode.
Other areas enhance different concepts and skills. The bakery, for example, can teach concepts of small, medium and large. And some of the art teaches counting skills.
“As you look at this, much of it just lends itself to wherever the teachers find opportunity, from learning math to learning colors and the alphabet,” said Beverly Waddell, Family Tree director. “We wanted everything to be child friendly, uplifting, and fun. There are no people in the scenes because we wanted the children and the teachers to be the people as they used and lived with the art.”
Bode said she and construction planners wanted the central section to be town, and animals were placed in two categories – one set from the farm setting and then those found in the woodlands and countryside, but all of it with elements that are native to South Georgia.
“We used the layout of the rooms and the room functions to lead us to what to put on the walls,” said Bode. Bookshelves are outside the new parent/child library and the dairy murals lead to the new mother’s breastfeeding rooms.
“We worked closely with the artists and planners on this so that they could match the colors of the rooms and the finishes and fabrics we used,” said Roxie Paul, of the construction team.
The new Family Tree expansion allows an additional 103 children to enroll. With more than 3500 employees, the child development center is in high demand and is a key recruitment and retention tool for healthcare professionals. In fact, the turnover rate for employees with children in the Family Tree is less than half that of the overall employee population.
Waddell said the artwork is just one of the facility’s many features created by Phoebe personnel.
Phoebe’s grounds employees designed and installed all new landscaping around the facility.
“We also used a lot of local talent, including a local architect, construction company, vendors, contractors and sub-contractors, in an effort to keep those dollars in our community and provide additional jobs for the area,” said Waddell.
The center has maintained full operations during the construction project, with children moved into the new section while the older building was being refurbished. The new Family Tree is expected to open in its entirety this month.
Bode calls the project a classic labor of love, “pure fun” for an illustrator. “It was a challenge, and it was gratifying to work on this with the rest of the team,” said Bode. “But my favorite part has been seeing the children’s delight.”
Written by Amanda Chisholm.
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