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TODAY'S
ISSUE
Good Samaritan Health
Center open in Gwinnett County
By Frank Fearon
Chairman of the board
Good Samaritan Health Center of Gwinnett
Special to GwinnettForum.com
JUNE 21, 2005 --After 13 years in the private practice of pediatrics,
Dr. Bill Warren had the desire and a call to begin addressing the
essential healthcare demands of Atlanta's neediest residents. In
1998, the Good Samaritan Health Center-Atlanta (GSHC-A) was created
with the goal of providing fulltime, comprehensive healthcare to
Atlanta's indigent, homeless and working poor.
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Dr.
Warren
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The downtown center, located near Centennial Olympic Park, opened
for services in January 1999 seeing 12 patients in its first week.
Six years later, current patient encounters exceed 17,000 annually.
Patients coming from other counties outside the I-285 perimeter
has continued to grow. Approximately half of GSHC-A's volume comes
from four counties situated on the north side of Atlanta. Approximately
20 percent were from Gwinnett County. North Fulton and Dekalb counties
combined sent another 19 percent.
While welcome, these patients have taken much needed capacity at
the downtown location. Dr. Warren and his Board had been praying
for opportunities to see the Good Samaritan Health Center replicated
in other communities of metropolitan Atlanta. Currently, a Good
Samaritan Health Center is being constructed in Cobb County and
will open in the summer of 2005. This will take a tremendous load
off of GSHC-A and allow another 225 to 230 patients to be served
downtown.
In response to the growing need in the Gwinnett County community,
a group of individuals began to meet and discuss a ministry expansion
with GSHC-A. A board of directors was formed in January 2004 and
the Good Samaritan Health Center of Gwinnett (Good Samaritan Gwinnett)
was incorporated in March 2004. A business plan was developed to
aid the Board's planning process over the course of the next year.
Good Samaritan Gwinnett is a "private physician practice"
model. Patients with insurance are referred to other physicians
in the community. Those without insurance are eligible for a sliding
fee schedule depending upon income and their family situation.
We opened the office in Gwinnett on June 13, 2005 at Good Samaritan
Health Center of Gwinnett, 3700 Club Drive, Lawrenceville. The office
is about a mile north of Pleasant Hill Road. The Center is open
after a group, led by 70 area churches, primarily in Gwinnett County,
put together a campaign to raise $400,000 for this project.
Clinic hours are: Monday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.,. Tuesday 1 p.m. to 5
p.m., and Thursday 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. For more information call Curtis
Tyler, Clinic Administrator, at (678) 280-6630 or email curtis@goodsamhc.org.
ELLIOTT
BRACK
State DOT wise in rejecting tolls on Highway
316, other roads
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher
GwinnettForum.com
JUNE 21, 2005 -- In democracy, change come slowly, sometimes very
slowly. That's not necessarily bad, for sometimes what seems to
be the route to follow later on turns out not to be so prudent.
For instance:
- Changing government may seem like it can take forever. Consider
the State of Georgia Republican Party, trying to get control of
the state for lo, these many years, and eventually only recently
gaining the ascendancy.
- Possible atrocities at Guantanamo Bay in detaining prisoners
seems slowly to be moving toward the surface of the conscience
of our nation, after repeated allegations of wrongdoing. Only
time will tell if what to many seems wrong is thoroughly aired,
and corrections taken if proven true.
- Writing new legislation, whether Social Security, Medicare or
something to regulate baseball, seems virtually to stall in committee
before anything eventually comes out of the Congress.
Surely, if you are trying to change the normal way of doing things,
it seems the pace is much like that of turning around a battleship:
ever, ever so slowly.
Yet sometimes taking this time eventually works. Often in government,
it's the great practice of compromise that finally snakes its way
through the entanglements.
For instance, here in Georgia we saw a change last week from the
state Department of Transportation board meeting, concerning toll
rolls.
You may remember that everyone back over the last 12 months or
more seemed in a rush to get approved measures to allow toll charges
on certain bottlenecked highways of Georgia. The one prime citation
was Georgia Highway 316, between Gwinnett and Athens. The road,
though four-laned, takes an inordinate amount of time to travel
the relatively short distance, all because of bottlenecks, mostly
in Gwinnett.
Proposed were ideas to simply make Highway 316 a toll road, to
speed financing and improvements. While many seemed to like this
idea, once the proposal got legs enough to come up with financial
projections, the upshot was somewhat disturbing. The one-way charge
put forth was $4, making the round trip an $8 toll.
That didn't set well with anyone much, with most people figuring
two-laned U.S. 29 would make a viable alternate to paying $8 to
go to and from Athens. The proposed fee surely slowed the rush to
make it a toll road.
And now last week the State DOT took what was probably a reasonable
position: no current roads in Georgia, built with public funds,
would be designated a toll road. If toll roads are to come further
to Georgia, they will have to be new roadways.
What setting a toll on any current open highway would have done
would be to allow the financial investors to benefit from the state
putting up the initial money for the road. While it might improve
safety, it would transfer into private hands what the state had
put up taxpayer money to initially construct.
It didn't seem right.
Granted, congested and unsafe highways need innovations in design
and financing. Yet to do so at the expense of public funds being
shunted to private financed use is overkill.
The pause in moving toward toll roads was time well spent. Acting
speedily in this case would have been a misuse of the public trust.
The Georgia Department of Transportation was wise to shelve any
plan to convert present highway to privately-financed toll roads.
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FEEDBACK
6/24: Need
input to keep wetlands off Beaver Ruin-Satellite roads
Editor, the Forum:
Please help stop the destruction of wetlands in Gwinnett County!
The Planning Commission has approved a project to move forward
to the Board of Commissioners. The Board of Commissioners will make
the final decision on Tuesday, June 28, 2005 at 7 p.m.
Retail Development, LLC has applied to the Gwinnett County Department
of Planning and Developments for rezoning of 36.95 acres of wetlands
to build 326 apartments. Gwinnett County's case number is RZM-05-025.
The property is located between the 1800 block of Beaver Ruin Road
and 4300-4600 Satellite Boulevard in Duluth. There are already six
apartment complexes located very near the vicinity of the proposed
site, and with high vacancy rates.
Gwinnett County has money in the budget for the Beaver Ruin Revitalization
Pilot Study and a Park and Recreation area was proposed for this
site. However, no one is able to tell me anything about the status
of the Pilot Study. Gwinnett County has money in the budget to purchase
this property and use it as a Parks and Recreation area. Why are
they allowing for the destruction of wetlands?
I look forward to hearing from many regarding this URGENT matter.
-- Barbara Vaden, Duluth
6/24: Finds her old
dish pattern when visiting Finster's museum
Editor, the Forum:
Let me tell you about one of the most fascinating places I have
seen. I went to Paradise Gardens near Summerville in late 1999 and
I have never seen anything like it! Some of it is wonderful and
some of it is very puzzling
!
It was the work of the Rev. Howard Finster, an eccentric Georgia
preacher who became one of the best-known US folk artists of the
20th Century. He died in 2001.
There is no doubt at all that Mr. Finster loved God. His adoration
was everywhere and God certainly blessed Mr. Finster. I remember
standing before a commode in the side yard filled to the brim with
flowers. I remember walkways filled with chips and pieces of everything
imaginable! . By the way, the only thing even close to his adoration
of God was his love of Elvis Presley.
When I first moved to Georgia, I had made sure the movers "lost"
a dish set given to me that was so ugly I never wanted to see it
again! And, there in Mr. Finster's walkway, of cement and old dishware
and ceramic pieces, were large pieces of the much-despised set of
my dishes! I don't know if they were the exact same ones (I had
never seen anyone else unlucky enough to have them) or different
ones, but Mr. Finster had a way of taking the" ugly" and
making it special!
I enjoyed every minute of my trip through Paradise Gardens and
also saw his pieces, as you have mentioned before, at the High Museum.
My friends and I still talk about our trip, to this day. When Mr.
Finster passed away, it greatly saddened us.
-- Barbara Grastat, Lawrenceville
NOTABLE
Snellville
Boy Scout troop cops top C&B award
Boy Scout Troop 50 of Snellville is this year's Great American
Cleanup Gwinnett Challenge Grand Prize Winner of the Gwinnett Clean
and Beautiful Board.
Bill Thompson, Troop Leader, accepted a $2,500 check from Jim Steele,
Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful Citizens Advisory Board Chairman.
The Boy Scouts spent their time putting their Outdoor Code into
action. They collected recyclable materials and traded them for
cash at the Recycling Bank of Gwinnett. The group also spent time
cleaning up their stretch of High Point Road as part of the Adopt-A-Road
program. Troop 50 plans to use their grand prize reward to purchase
equipment to support their scouting program.
Other finalists also collected cash rewards:
- City of Berkeley Lake received $500 for first place in the Neighborhood
Groups category.
- Park Forest Community Association of Lilburn won the Neighborhood
Groups second place prize of $250.
- Interlocking Communities, Inc. of Norcross took home the second
place Civic Groups reward of $250.
Steele reported that over 300 volunteers spent 1,000-plus hours
"creating a better Gwinnett County for all to enjoy,"
Connie Wiggins, executive director of Gwinnett C&B, said: "We'd
like to extend a special thank you to all the groups who participated
in this year's Great American Cleanup TM Gwinnett Challenge. The
contest was a special way to motivate people. We hope other individuals
and groups will get involved next year and all year long and show
their pride for their neighborhood. It only takes a few committed
individuals to join together to make a big difference in our quality
of life in Gwinnett County."
RECOMMENDED
READ
The Maker's Diet
"Right now I am reading The Maker's Diet, by Jordan
Rubin. It is an awesome book filled with a wealth of information,
carefully researched and gleaned from years of studies on society,
science, chemistry, nutrition, etc.
"I am already making healthier choices. It is a powerful reminder
of how we can do much better for our bodies. The personal story
is an incredible one and all the health tips and insights are interesting
as well as helpful and practical. I find myself shopping smarter,
moving more, eating and feeling better and sleeping sounder. Give
it a try, you have nothing to lose but health issues!"
-- Cindy Evans, Duluth
- An invitation: What Web sites or books have you enjoyed?
Send us your best recent read along with a short paragraph as
to why you liked it, plus what book you plan to read next. --eeb
ENCYCLOPEDIA
TIDBIT
Classical music arrived
soon after City of Atlanta founded
What was probably Atlanta's first
notable concert occurred in February 1858 at the recently completed
Athaeneum Theater, when pianist Sigismond Thalberg, assisted by
violinist Henry Vieuxtemps, brought his "Grand Concert"
to the city. Opera made its first appearance in October 1866, when
Max Strakosch and the Ghioni and Sussini Grand Italian Opera Company
opened the Bell-Johnson Hall (capacity 600) with Il trovatore (The
Troubadour), Norma, and IL barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville).
The next month the Grover Opera Troupe staged an operatic concert,
followed by the McCulloch Opera Troupe with performances of IL barbiere
DI Siviglia and Don Pasquale. The lack of a suitable theater prompted
the Belgian consul, Laurent DeGive, to construct DeGive's Opera
House at the corner of Marietta and Forsyth streets (capacity 1,200)
in 1870; in 1873 he increased the seating to 2,000.
In February 1872 the country's most respected conductor, Theodore
Thomas, brought his orchestra to the city for the first time. The
next year Ferdinand Wurm organized the city's first serious instrumental
ensemble. The year 1873 also saw the completion of five main-line
railroads, which increased the number of touring companies that
came to the city. During the 1870s British opera companies supplanted
Italian, presenting a few Italian favorites in English. Atlanta's
first performance of an English operetta, Eichberg's The Doctor
of Alcantara, occurred in 1877, and in 1879 William Gilbert and
Arthur Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore made its Atlanta premiere. Several
concert organizations were established in the post-Civil War period,
notably the Mozart Club (1867), the Beethoven Society (1872), and
the Rossini Club (1876).
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
What you have to do
in order to be recognized
"You either have to be first, best, or different."
-- Country music singer Loretta Lynn.
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