Page 4-A – Adel News Tribune – April 15, 2015
Adel News Tribune
THE ADEL NEWS TRIBUNE
established 1888, COOK COUNTY
TRIBUNE established 1978, COMBINED JULY 6, 1983.
SPARKS EAGLE established 1912. Incorporated 1981
131 South Hutchinson Ave.
P.O. Box 1500 • Adel, Georgia 31620
Telephone: 229-896-2233
Fax: 229-896-7237
Robert E. Tribble
Charles Shiver
President
General Manager
THE STAFF
Advertising Manager: Maria Hardman
Office: Wendy Stancil, Jessica Bell
Graphic Design: Brandi Sellars
Legals/Composition: Kayla Holton
Production: A.J. Adkins, Henry Futch
Editorial Cartoonist: George ʻWoodyʼ Wood
Adel News Tribune ISSNO746-0176 is published every Wednesday
by Cook Publishing Co., Inc.
131 South Hutchinson Ave., Adel, Ga. 31620
Periodicals Postage Paid at U.S. Post Office, Adel, Georgia
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the Adel News Tribune
Post Office Box 1500, Adel, Georgia 31620
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES (including sales tax):
Inside Cook County $24.00
Senior Citizens (Cook County residents only) $20.00
In Georgia $32.00
Out of State $40.00
OUR POLICIES:
•Signed letters to the editor welcomed. Please limit to 300 words or less
and include address and daytime telephone number, for verification purposes.
•Liability for any error will not exceed the cost of space occupied by
the original effort.
•We cannot be responsible for the return of pictures or materials unless
accompanied by a stamped, return addressed envelope is included.
OUR GOAL: Adel News Tribune is created proudly for the citizens
of Cook and adjoining counties by Adel News Tribune in Adel, Georgia.
Our goal is to produce a quality, profitable, community-oriented newspaper of which our readers may be proud. We will reach that goal
through hard work, teamwork, loyalty, and a strong dedication toward
printing the truth.
Letter To The Editor
Opinion
Always seek the perfect outcome
Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn once described baseball
as “a game of failure” noting that even the best batters were
unsuccessful about 65 percent of the time.
On the evening of June 2, 2010 nobody on the Cleveland
Indians roster succeeded in getting on base after a talented
young right-hander had taken the mound for the Detroit
Tigers. With two outs in the ninth inning Armando Galarraga
had retired 26 batters and was on the verge of pitching the 21st
perfect game in major league history.
But to err is human and a split second decision by a veteran
umpire soon stole Galarraga’s moment of jubilation. While
the controversial call generated a perfect storm and denied the
pitcher a place in the record books the reaction to the outcome
left a far more meaningful and enduring legacy.
The 27th batter for Cleveland was shortstop Jason Donald.
Galarraga got Donald to ground a slow roller to first baseman
Miguel Cabrera. The pitcher rushed over to cover first, received the throw from Cabrera and touched the bag. Galarraga
briefly raised his arms in celebration before receiving the bad
news.
Inexplicably, umpire Jim Joyce ruled that Donald was safe
on the close play at first base. Replay showed clearly that
Joyce blew the call. The runner was out by half a step.
Galarrga got the next hitter outfielder Trevor Crowl on a
grounder to third base ending the game but the “call heard
around the world” was already generating headlines on sports
networks, talk shows and regular news broadcasts.
At first outrage was the dominating theme. After the shock
of the decision and the fury about its unfairness, the game
without a perfect ending slowly but surely became a controversy with an almost flawless conclusion.
As the media coverage went into extra innings there was a
triple play of confession, redemption and forgiveness.
The confession came almost immediately. A fulltime umpire since 1989 a horrified Joyce admitted his mistake. “I just
cost that kid a perfect game,” Joyce said. “I thought Donald
beat the throw. I was convinced that he beat the throw until I
FROM WHERE
I SIT
BY ROBERT E. TRIBBLE
saw the replay.”
While seething about the initial ruling many gave Joyce a
thumb’s up when he accepted responsibility for the error. Even
though he had the option to skip the following game Joyce
showed up at the stadium ready to work despite the dust up.
Equally admirable was Galarraga’s demeanor during the
entire ordeal. In the seconds after Joyce made the infamous
call Galarraga could be seen smiling. He did not throw a
tantrum or shout obscenities but handled himself with dignity
and restraint.
The Detroit Tigers and the Motor City crowd at the game
the next afternoon also rose to the occasion. Tiger’s manager
Jim Leyland arranged for Galarraga to deliver the lineup card
to the plate umpire to begin the day. The umpire who received
it broke into tears. It was Jim Joyce.
Such forgiveness is startling to many and flies in the face
of a culture that often demands and glorifies revenge. Although each of us craves total forgiveness after making mistakes it is hard to accept the apology when we are the one who
has been wronged.
The reluctance is captured in the book of Matthew when
Peter asks Jesus “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my
brother when he sins against me, up to seven times?” Jesus
replied, “I tell you not seven times but seventy times seven.”
The message is clear, don’t keep score when others fall
short. Just forgive. Thanks to an impartial umpire who sacrificed his life for us on the cross we are forever forgiven for
our failures and will be welcomed home at the end.
Reader thanks Adel Public
Works Superintendent
Dear Editor:
To Mr. Wayne Giddens, I would like to say thank you for
all of your hard work of 40 years with the City of Adel.
We hope you get well soon. I was at the benefit we did for
you by Friends Helping Friends. We will keep you in our
prayers. We will miss you this year at the Adel Daylily Festival.
Thank you and take care,
David Welch
Have an opinion? Need to say something?
Let us hear from you.
Letters to the editor must be signed and include a
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our staff to contact you to verify the letter.
Please submit letters to:
Editor
Adel News Tribune
P.O. Box 1500
Adel, GA 31620
Letters must be signed and
phone number provided.
(Phone numbers will not be published.)
Students explore connections between Anne Frank and WWII vet
Sixth graders in the Reading and Language Arts class of
Cook Middle School teachers April Crabill and Tonya Gregory are learning how small the world is after all.
In this file photo from Nov. 15, 1995, issue of the
Adel News (published nearly two decades ago),
Powers, a World War II veteran and former POW,
is shown reminiscing with a photograph taken of
him and his wife Ella Mae 51 years earlier.
They have found a Nov. 9, 1942, passage in Anne Frank’s
Diary of a Young Girl in which Anne wrote about Operation
Torch, in which Allied forces invaded Axis-occupied Tunis,
Algiers, Casablanca, and Oran. The radio news about the battles was “certainly reason for optimism” that the Nazis would
soon be defeated, Anne wrote in her diary. Anne, the most famous Jewish victim of the Holocaust, would later be captured
by the Germans and die (probably of typhus) in the BergenBelsen concentration camp in March 1945 (70 years ago).
Mrs. Crabill’s grandfather Ira Powers Sr. served as a tank
commander with the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division in
Operation Torch. Powers himself became a prisoner of the
Axis, though he survived and returned home to raise a family.
Students in Mrs. Crabill’s class thought it was cool that
there is a link between an entry in Anne Frank’s world-famous
work and an Adel man.
Of his three years overseas during the Second World War,
Powers spent 19 months as a prisoner of war and then as an
escapee hiding out behind enemy lines. He went off to war as
a strapping young man who weighed 210 pounds, but when
he returned home, he weighed just 129 pounds.
Interviewed by the Adel News in November 1995, just before Veterans Day, Powers said his and other veterans’
wartime sacrifices were worth it. Otherwise, “they (the
enemy) would be over here now telling us what to do,” he
said. He recalled a little European girl hiding behind his legs
and shivering when she heard a German plane passing above:
“I hope this never happens in America … little girls and boys
being afraid they are about to be bombed.”
Powers said his tank was the second one ashore on the
North Africa coast. The tanks moved swiftly into enemy ter-
New Frontiers
By Charles Shiver
ritory, but then the Americans suffered a terrible defeat when
they faced the German tanks at a pass near Tunis.
“They had equipment superior to ours,” Powers said. “We
had obsolete World War I equipment, but we fought them the
best we could. I knocked out one or two of their tanks by hitting them in the side [with shells from his tank’s big gun]. One
of their shells hit my tank. It passed through, cut the radio operator in half, and hit the engine. The driver got his eyes
burned out.” Powers escaped from the tank’s burning wreckage and “I saw death all around me” among the Americans’
decimated force.
Powers and the few survivors were captured by the Germans. Powers recounted how he was held prisoner near the
Bremer Pass in Italy, his repeated escapes and recaptures in
freezing weather, his eventual escape from a moving train,
fighting with a guerilla band in the mountains against the Germans, eating boiled grass and the roasted hind legs of a wolf,
and finally reaching Allied territory by heading downriver in
a stolen Italian boat. “We were happy. I cried like a whipped
baby. … I knew I wasn’t being hunted any more like a rabbit,”
Powers recalled.
Powers returned to the U.S., where he met his future wife
See NEW FRONTIERS, Page 5-A