STUDENTS HEAD BACK TO SCHOOL TODAY IN TIFT

By FRANK SAYLES JR.

Tifton Grapevine

Tift County Schools begin the 2023-24 school year today, the earliest start date among Tiftarea counties.

There are 7,724 students enrolled for Tift County's first day – nearly 400 students above last year's first day enrollment of 7,329, said Dana R. Spurlin, the school system's chief information officer.

She also advises parents that if their students' bus number is still needed, just email operations@tiftschools.com and include the student's name, school, and home address. The school system will send a reply with the bus number, location, and pickup time.

Among other area school systems, Worth County schools open on Tuesday, Aug. 1; Ben Hill County schools begin Wednesday, Aug. 2; and Irwin, Turner, and Cook counties begin their school year on Friday, Aug. 4. Berrien County schools open on Monday, Aug. 7, and Tiftarea Academy begins the school year on Friday, Aug. 11.

Local law enforcement agencies remind motorists to obey speed limits in designated school zones, to prepare to stop behind school buses, and to be aware of children possibly walking around buses and crossing streets.

TIFT JOBLESS RATE RISES SLIGHTLY

By FRANK SAYLES JR.

Tifton Grapevine

The unemployment rate during June in Tiftarea counties crept up slightly or basically remained the same, according to data released Thursday by the Ga. Department of Labor (GDOL).

Tift County's jobless rate rose slightly to 3.3% in June, up from 3.2% in May.

Tift County’s labor force – the number of people who are employed or are unemployed and seeking employment – was at 20,717 during the month, which is 353 lower than last year, according to GDOL data.

June's jobless rates in area counties versus the previous month's rates were: Turner, 4.6% vs. 4,6%; Worth, 3.4% vs. 3.4%; Irwin, 4.1% vs. 4.0%; Cook, 3.3% vs. 3.4%; Berrien, 3.8% vs. 3.6%; and Ben Hill, 4.7% vs. 4.6%.

Statewide, June's unemployment rate remained steady at 3.2%, unchanged from a revised 3.2% in May. The jobless rate is also four-tenths lower than the national average of 3.6%, the GDOL reported.

"Georgia continues to become an economic powerhouse, attracting leading-edge businesses from around the globe," said state Labor Commissioner Bruce Thompson.

"While low unemployment is crucial for a thriving economy, balancing job growth with a skilled workforce capable of meeting the demands of new and existing industries is crucial."

Jobs in Georgia were up by 4,400 (0.1%) from the previous month and up by 109,900 (2.3%) over the year to 4,909,800, an all-time high.

Job numbers were at an all-time high in private education and health services, at 665,600, and in leisure and hospitality, 523,800, the GDOL said.

A LOVE LETTER TO THE FRIENDLY CITY

EDITOR'S NOTE: Dr. Joseph F. Brown lived in Tifton from 2010-2016 and was an English professor at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College until he left for a position in Colorado. He is currently director of the Academic Integrity Program at Colorado State University. He shares this "love letter" to his former South Georgia home.

By JOSEPH BROWN

for the Tifton Grapevine

“You have a bad habit of not appreciating a place until you’ve left it,” my wife said recently as we drove to dinner.

My lips moved to muster a defense and immediately stopped. My mind flashed to the many moves we had made over our marriage: How I didn’t really appreciate Louisiana until I had moved back to Georgia, Atlanta until we had moved to Tifton, and, now, Tifton once we had moved to Colorado.

But surely that wasn’t exactly right. I loved Tifton too, in my own way. I started to speak. She cut me off, “You said you didn’t want to die there, remember?” 

It was true. I had said that exact thing. I remember driving past Oak Ridge Cemetery one afternoon and putting words to that thought as my eyes searched for the top of the hill and where the headstones ended. 

But there were other thoughts too. I reminded her of how I would always remark how beautiful it was when, finally far enough south of Macon, the interstate dropped back down to two lanes, the fields spread out beyond our windshield in a gentle palette, and my back would unknot. I reminded her of how we both always noted the exhale of relief of seeing our garage door lift and the light spill out into the night.

That feeling only happens when you think of a place as home.

There were the days we spent as a family enjoying the museum’s steam train – our best days. I came to tell friends that it was the kid growing up in Atlanta that I pitied. My children would spend Saturdays blowing the train whistle, riding across the park with my hand draped across their chest as the only safety restraint, ping-ponging between grinding corn to feed the chickens, visiting the mules, setting the mill to grinding before stopping to have a biscuit on the porch swing of one of the ancient houses.

When the day was over and we stood at the station waiting for the train to return us to the world, I remember surveying the grounds in one long pan (I remember it as autumn) and feeling lucky that my life had brought me to Tifton.

On the day that I learned I would be leaving Tifton, I was serving jury duty in Judge Reinhardt’s courtroom. Five years earlier – a few days after I moved to Tifton – I was sitting in his brother’s pickup truck, having been motioned in when I had mentioned that I didn’t know where to recycle all the moving boxes now littering our little rental house. After showing me how to find the recycling center, we stopped for hotdogs and softserve ice cream at Shady Lane. Driving back to the house, he motioned out of his window with his cigar and said, “This is a nice place to live.”

Back in Judge Reinhardt’s courtroom, we had reached that part in the day when the judge had to retire to his chambers with a handful of potential jurors to explain that, no, he wasn’t asking them to judge a man in the “biblical sense,” but only his guilt or innocence. They would return, eventually, looking perceptibly abashed.

In the interim, the men nearby struck up a conversation with me when they heard me explain that I taught at the local college. They both told me stories about how their children or their friend’s children had received a good education with us: High praise in the South, where liberal arts professors are often viewed with suspicion or subjected to outright derision. 

And then one of the men began recounting the story of how, instead of college, he had spent his young adulthood working on a ranch and the day that he helped his boss with a heifer who was giving birth. It had not gone well, and the calf looked like it would not survive.

“He told me, ‘Son, we’ve done all we can. It’s up to the good Lord now’,” he recounted. “And then I saw the mother lick the calf full up its face and down its body,” he said while dragging the fingers of his upturned right palm from his left elbow down to wrist. He looked right at me and smiled wistfully, “Just then, the calf’s eye changed, and it was like a light came into it.” The calf got up and walked away, he told me.

I thought, “where else would I ever hear such a thing?”

Minutes later, the other man told me that he used to teach at my college, though he left in the summers to complete his doctoral work out of state. “Then they got tired of that and made me stop,” he said, “but I guess Colorado State was too far away.” 

And that’s when I knew. When I walked out to the car during the lunch break, there was a voicemail waiting for me: “Dr. Brown, this is so-and-so from Colorado State; I really need to talk with you….”

Three months later, we left Tifton in a nearly overpacked moving truck. After an intense day of packing and lifting, I climbed into the cab of the truck, waved goodbye to one of the best neighbors I’ve ever had, and drove past the homes of great friends on my way to the interstate. 

Others may disagree, but I have found that you never really leave a place. Within days of arriving in Colorado, I realized that my new colleagues and friends would come to know me as Joe from South Georgia. And oddly, many of the qualities that I came to associate with Tifton are now probably my strengths they’d name if you asked.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in my son, who came to Tifton when he wasn’t yet three months old. My son is marked by his South Georgia home, and for that I am genuinely grateful. He is kind, because Tifton was kind to him. He isn’t afraid of people because Tifton taught him that they are decent. He smiles because he has known happiness. He loves easily because that’s what he learned in the town’s schools, churches, and homes. Tifton is the beginning – a beautiful beginning – of his story.

However, the best stories aren’t about staying home. They are about leaving – leaving because we must. But they’re also about what we bring from them to the rest of the world and, then maybe someday later, what we bring back.

Maybe my wife was right in the end. That’s the tricky thing about even the most loving homes. Eventually, you have to leave them.

HOSPICE, PALLIATIVE CARE NOT FULLY UTILIZED, ROTARY CLUB TOLD

By BONNIE SAYLES

Tifton Grapevine

Hospice and palliative care are types of health care that people don’t utilize to its fullest capabilities, Tonya Payne, account executive with Traditions Health, Hospice and Palliative Care told the Tifton Rotary Club on Wednesday.

“You have in this community about eight to 10 hospice agencies,” she said, so there isn’t anywhere locally that you cannot find care. She said Traditions has a nurse practitioner with 11 years of experience in Hospice and palliative care. The latter is for people with a terminal illness that has not yet reached the end-of-life stage. 

“If you have a new diagnosis or a new illness that the doctors just told you about,” such as Stage 2 breast cancer, palliative can assist. “We send in a nurse practitioner once a month into the homes, we help treat signs and symptoms of those illnesses,” Payne said. That keeps patients out of the doctors’ offices and away from potential contagious germs that go along with those visits.

The nurse practitioner does a complete head-to-toe assessment. She can write prescriptions and change medications, all while reporting back to the patient’s primary care physician once a month.

“With palliative care you are getting the best of both worlds and so is your physician,” Payne said. The doctor gets the full story of what is going on in the home. With palliative care, you are getting the full continuity of care, she said. 

“We also offer a social worker once a month that goes out to allow people to know what other resources are available,” such as home-delivered meals and sitter services. “It saves the family from having to do all the legwork looking for different agencies,” Payne said.

“We have a chaplain that visits with our patients,” she said. “We help with spiritual, physical, emotional, and social support in the home with our palliative care program.” 

Hospice, she said, is for terminal illnesses that have reached end-of-life status. The types of conditions for which Hospice is appropriate include dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes that causes renal failure, different types of cancer, and protein caloric malnutrition, which used to be called failure to thrive.

“Hospice comes in, and we take over all avenues of health care,” Payne said. “We do the care in the home. We become the emergency room, the hospital, the doctor’s office. Hospice is when you change focus from curative to maintenance and comfort.” 

She said some routine medications are needed for complete comfort. Also, she said Hospice allows the patient to guide their own path as they’re passing. Hospice also covers a lot of supplies, such as incontinent supplies and durable medical equipment including fully electric beds. And, Hospice provides a bereavement program for family members for one year. 

She encouraged people to reach out and ask their doctors if their loved ones qualify, whether they are at the beginning or the end stage of terminal illnesses.

Director of Children’s Ministries

Tifton First United Methodist Church (TFUMC) in Tifton, Georgia

(https://www.tiftonfirst.org) is searching for a full-time 

Director of Children’s Ministries / Christian Education. 

We are looking for an individual who is a solid role model and spiritual director with an energetic, enthusiastic, and creative spirit to lead these program ministries at TFUMC. The Director will work with other staff under the direction of the Senior Pastor, the Staff Parish Relations committee and the Children’s Leadership Committee to develop and conduct overall children’s educational programs 

and ministries for TFUMC.

Director of Children’s Ministries:  

Primary responsibilities will be focused on Infant thru 5th Grade and include oversight of the nursery program. The Director will work with other staff members under the direction of the Senior Pastor to develop overall educational programs and ministries for TFUMC. 

The Director should possess or be pursuing a bachelor's degree; have experience working with and developing children’s ministries and/or children’s educational programs; and possess 

a strong personal faith consistent with the United Methodist tradition.  

The Director should also be a vibrant, energetic person who can get TFUMC members excited about the Lord and can recruit and motivate volunteers to lead and teach under his/her direction.

The Director will:  

• plan, develop, and implement children’s ministry program (nursery through 5th grade) 
• be the day-to-day leader of children’s ministries
• recruit and train volunteers and ensure adequate volunteer support
• ensure adequate adult-to-children ratios  
• be a liaison between the church and other community organizations, people, and resources that relate to FUMC children’s ministries 
• coordinate children’s ministry curriculum 
• assist in recruiting and provide ongoing support for teachers and facilitators   
• ensure that records of participation in programs are maintained
• develop and manage the children’s educational ministry budget  
• communicate in a timely manner as effectively as possible using all available resources (email, website, social media, newsletter, bulletin board, etc.)   
• work with other staff members and maintain a teamwork mentality 
• ensure that the Safe Sanctuary Policy is observed in all children’s ministry settings 
• make themselves available on an advisory basis to leadership of other age-level educational programs
• manage social media communication for children’s ministry
• plan and facilitate children’s events such as VBS 

This is considered a Full-Time, permanent staff member of TFUMC. We expect the Director to work with, support ministries of other staff members and to be a vibrant and visible member of TFUMC staff. 

Qualifications include:

• having or nearing completion of a bachelor’s degree in appropriate area of study
• experience working with and developing Christian Children’s Ministries and/or children’s educational programs 
• the ability and vision to develop and implement sustainable leadership structures and programs 
• demonstrated strong leadership and organizational skills
• the ability to communicate well with children, parents, volunteers and other staff members
• possess a strong personal faith consistent with the United Methodist tradition
• an understanding of, and ability to use digital technology and social media to communicate with children, parents, and staff (Remind, Canva, Google Docs, Microsoft Windows software)

Salary and benefits commensurate with education and experience.

Position available August 15, 2023 – Applications accepted until position is filled.

To apply: please EMAIL a current resume; a one-page statement summarizing 

why you are interested in and qualified to fill this position; names 

and contact information for three (3) references.

 Please EMAIL the items to: jmichaelmoore57@gmail.com 

J. Michael Moore, Chairman, Staff Parish Relations Committee, 

Tifton First United Methodist Church, 107 West 12th St., Tifton, GA

www.tiftonfirst.org

COOLING OFF

IN ASHBURN

Young Maddox Moore is happy that the City of Ashburn's Splash Pad is open once again after being temporarily closed.

The 2,700-square-foot splash pad can accommodate 109 kids on a hot, South Georgia day.

The splash pad is free and open seven days a week 10 a.m.-6 p.m. at 233 East Madison St. in Ashburn. 

The splash pad first opened in 2013. Because there was no public swimming pool in Ashburn, city officials thought the splash pad would be the next best thing.

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To Contact Us, Call 478-227-7126

TIFTON-TIFT COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE RIBBON CUTTING

Kayla Metcalf Photos

807 N. Central Ave., Tifton

July 26

The Georgia Department of Public Health is upgrading its reporting system and said there will be no update to the COVID Status Report or COVID-19 related reports this week. The next updated release will be Aug 2.

YOUR GUIDE TO ACTIVITIES THIS WEEKEND IN

THE TIFTAREA

Today, Friday, July 28, is National Milk Chocolate Day. When solid chocolate is combined with powdered, liquid, or condensed milk, it’s known as milk chocolate – the most popular member of the chocolate family. It is believed that in the mid-1800s, milk chocolate was first created as a beverage in Germany. The first milk chocolate candy bar was created by Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter and Henri Nestlé, the founder of his Nestlé chocolate company. 

FRIDAY, JULY 28

• Tift Schools Open: Drive carefully and watch out for students

SATURDAY, JULY 29

• Wiregrass Farmers Market – last one of season, 9 a.m.-noon, Georgia Museum of Agriculture, Tifton
• Back to School '80s Block Party by Nashville Main Street, 7-10 p.m., Connie's Children's Park, Nashville

ADVERTISE

YOUR

YARD SALE HERE!

TO ADVERTISE YOUR

RESIDENTIAL YARD SALE,

CONTACT US at 

yardsales@tiftongrapevine.com 

or 478-227-7126

Fees are $1 per word, paid in advance

"Tigger," a happy pooch, is ready to become part of a new family. Come see Tigger and other pets available for adoption at the Tift County Animal Shelter on Highway 125 South, open between 1-6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. For additional information, call 229-382-PETS (7387).