Five decades from Phinizy
Attention, former students and staffers of North Columbia Elementary School: It's time for a reunion.
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Attention, former students and staffers of North Columbia Elementary School: It's time for a reunion.
Actually, the anniversary is for the building, not necessarily the school. Opened in the 1956-57 school year as Phinizy Elementary School, it was among several facilities built during a modernization campaign by then-School Superintendent John Pierce Blanchard.
When Phinizy became North Columbia in 1971, it consolidated with Appling Elementary, which had also gotten a new building in 1956.
Other schools built that year included the Evans Consolidated School (at the now-empty site of Evans Middle), Gibbs Institute (now Evans Elementary), Grovetown Elementary, Harlem Elementary (later George T. White, then South Harlem, now abandoned), Blanchard High (now Columbia Middle), and new buildings at Harlem High School (now at Harlem Middle).
And to think we now make a big deal out of building just one school per year.
North Columbia will celebrate the anniversary with a reception April 26 at the school. I'm looking forward to an opportunity to reminisce with some of my fellow former students and teachers - and hoping they don't nail me for overdue library fines.
As North Columbia celebrates its opening, the last brick of another school built in that era fell last week.
Thompson Building Wrecking knocked down the final wall at the former Evans Middle School building on Friday. Word still has it that a Home Depot is destined for the site.
Republicans evicted
Also coming down last week was the sign for the Columbia County Republican Party headquarters on Davis Road.
The party's March 24 county convention didn't go the way landlord George Snelling liked, so he sent party officials - including newly elected party chairman Deborah McCord - a tersely worded letter evicting them from the building.
The rent-free office represented an approximate $15,000 gift to the party that he didn't feel was appreciated, he said. He gave the party less than a week to clear out.
Snelling has been a huge benefactor of the party in the past. This rift will be a tough one to patch - and his generosity will be hard to match.
Dignity in death
It was with sadness that we noted the recent death of Susan Temple of Evans.
Rarely has there been such a tragic figure. Suffering from tremendous illness in the past few years, both from the ravages of diabetes and injuries from an automobile crash, Temple's health had been in steep decline.
Adding to her misery was the grief brought on by her husband, Merle Temple, who is serving an eight-year sentence for his role in the federal corruption case involving ex-state school superintendent Linda Schrenko.
Temple and Schrenko carried on an affair in Atlanta while Susan Temple was largely confined to her Evans home. The fact that he had cheated on his wife was revealed during the trial, yet during sentencing, Temple tried to use her ill health as an excuse for a shorter prison sentence.
Through it all, Susan Temple stood by her husband. Her dignity in death is exceeded only by Merle Temple's abandonment of it in life. May she deservedly rest, at last, in peace.
Can't spell it, either
A final note: In my column Sunday in which I pointed out the difficulty of pronouncing Chamber Director Karen Chrjapin's last name, I committed the faux pas of spelling it wrong.
It's pronounced SHRAP-in; it's spelled Chrjapin.
Barry L. Paschal is publisher of The Columbia County News-Times. E-mail comments to barry.paschal at newstimesonline.com.