Sponsored by Weinstein Law/Weinstein Real Estate
It is time for the Annual Athens Kiwanis Club Easter Egg Hunt, which will include 12,000 eggs this year.
The event, which is open for the whole community, is scheduled for 9 a.m. Saturday, March 30, at Kiwanis Park.
The Kiwanis Club will be giving away 14 bicycles and 20 plush rabbits during the event.
Children will be separated into three divisions: 1-3, 4-6, and 7-12.
The Easter Bunny will be on hand and is scheduled to arrive on a fire truck.
Everyone is welcome.
By mvhannigan
A book was the inspiration for Wanda Ola Richardson’s latest adventure.
“A county courthouse stands not only as the center of government, but also as the center of civic pride. Some with stately towers and arched doors or windows, some with high brick chimneys and mansard roofs, some in modern concrete and glass, the 254 courthouses of Texas provide an invitation to public life, a testament to the ideal of justice, and an introduction to period architecture,” reads Dr. Mavis P. Kelsey’s book, “The Courthouses of Texas.”
After reading the book, the 91-year-old from Cross Roads and her daughter, Roberta Davis, had an idea.
“We decided between the two of us that we were going to go see those courthouses,” Wanda said.
Early this month, the pair finished the eight-year odyssey to see every courthouse in the state.
The set up, with Wanda as the navigator and Roberta the driver, was very familiar. The two women have visited all 48 contiguous states together.
“That was the problem, we ran out of states. We had to find somewhere else to go,” Wanda said.
In fact, she has been to 11 countries — several courtesy Uncle Sam and the U.S. Army — and at least seven islands as well.
“When they put in a bridge, I will go to Hawaii,” she said.
Roberta, who was part of many of those trips, spent several years living in Scotland and exploring Europe.
These are two ladies with some serious miles on their visas.
Using “The Courthouses of Texas” as their inspiration and with Wanda keeping records in a small notebook, they started their latest travels on April 29, 2005 in Fairfield with the Freestone County Courthouse.
They finished March 1, 2013 in the Terrell County Courthouse.
The rules were simple. Both mother and daughter had to be there and a photo had to be taken.
One small problem cropped up when they realized some of the photos in the book were more than 20 years old.
“The courthouse picture, we’d be looking for it but the trees (in the book photo) would be little,” Roberta said.
There was also the Texas weather to deal with.
“Sometimes in our travels we’d run across tornadoes coming through the town,” Roberta said.
“Three times they happened the night before and we’d see the courthouse then next day,” Wanda said.
It look like they wouldn’t finish in 2008 when Wanda experienced an irregular heartbeat, but she was soon back on the trail.
In all those years, they never had an accident. Wanda knows the reason why.
“I accepted Jesus as my savior when I was 16, after my daddy’s death,” she said. “I wouldn’t think of making a move without Him. Always when we are making these trips, we’d say thank you at every meal and pray that he would continue to take care of us.”
She says God has also taken care of her with her family and her three children who dote on her: Roberta, Lila Berry, and W.C. Richardson Jr.
“Nobody was blessed with family like I am,” she said. “I am well taken care of.”
But “taken care of” doesn’t mean “wants to slow down.” Wanda is still planning.
“(Roberta) said she wasn’t going anymore, but I’m going to think of something,” she said.
A donation was made to The Library at Cedar Creek Lake by the members of the Sarah Maples Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Pictured are DAR Regent Margaret Ann Trail, left, and Sondra Price of the library.
DAR press release
Sarah Maples Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) members were pleased to have as their recent speaker Scott McKee. His topic was “Identity Theft” and how it affects all of us. He started off his talk by saying that all law students should be required to read the Constitution as all our laws in Texas are based on the Constitution.
Identity theft can ruin your credit and it may take many years to get it straighten out if ever. Someone using your information can file for benefits, drivers license and so much more. It is very important to protect your social security number at all cost. Do not even write checks to anyone you do not know. If you have workmen in your home be sure and put your purse and any information away from prying eyes. It is a felony for someone else to use your name and information but that does not stop a smart crook.
Scott spoke of the phone scams that are going around and the meth labs in our community. They rely on the public to report strange odors and propane bottles laying around. He says of the scams if it sounds too good to be true it probably is and just hang up.
Scott enlisted in the Army as an Airborne Paratrooper at the age of 17. He served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm in Iraq. After leaving active duty, he attended Texas Wesleyan School of law where he worked full-time and attended school at night. Scott was elected as the Henderson County District Attorney in 2008 and took office in January 2009. He began his second term as District Attorney in January 2012. A year after assuming office, he mobilized for deployment to Iraq. During deployment, he served as the Infantry Operations Officer, planning over 1,200 combat missions throughout Iraq. While in Iraq, Scott was awarded the Bronze Star for his actions and performance in a combat zone. He was recently promoted to Major and is currently assigned as a combat staff trainer. He has received many military decorations and numerous awards for his service as a prosecutor such as, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, Best Attorney and the Hope Award.
Scott has done so much with his life and won so many awards it is impossible to list them all.
He has a lovely wife named Ashley and three children Stuart, Ryan and Ranger.
Rootseekers press release
Bob Stokes was the speaker at the last Rootseekers meeting. His topic was “Losing It.” How many of us are afraid to trust our computers to store our family information. He showed us how to back up our information and to do it often so as not to lose all that research on our families. How that technology changes almost from day to day and you must keep up to protect your data. He spoke of floppies, CDs, flash drives hard drives that all of us have used to store our information on. As that technology changes so must we.Small businesses should use technology to grow their business as there are talented company Vecro Tech provides quality services of web development,app development.
He showed us old LP records and how that had changed, Polaroid films fade over time and other film darkens. How slides have changed. Everything now seems to be going digital and those films need to be updated if they are going to be kept. After that it will be something else to come along that we will have to learn. I think most of us are old fogies and hate change but not Bob. He keeps abreast of all those changes and tries to bring the rest of us out of the dark ages. With the depletion of IPv4 addresses projected to happen in just a few days, it is very important that internet hosting providers, and ISPs test and deploy an IPv6 service on their systems as soon as feasible so as to really encourage the adoption and usage of it by everyday users. To this end, a number of web hosting resellers have developed our internet hosting structure and selected service providers that allow them run hosting on IPv6 and therefore provide services over IPv6 addresses today. A vast amount of software has thankfully become IPv6-ready, however there remains some essential aspects without support as of yet which jeopardize to delay complete migrations or updates of customers. These days, plenty of virtual servers, dedicated servers and hosted DNS and email systems are set for access over the IPv6 web. Unfortunately, shared internet hosting systems (with cPanel) are not set for IPv6 because of a lack of support for IPv6 in cPanel. This really is a shame but hopefully cPanel programmers will look into this in the near future. Click on a ipv4 broker site for more about the IPv4.
Bob has had many titles in his career, teacher in Waco and Dallas, Assistant Principal at Sunset High School, Principal of Samuel and Hillcrest High School, Assistant Director of Secondary Schools and Deputy Assistant Superintendent of all data processing services for the district. He received the Premier Principal Award given by the Texas Congress of Parents and Teachers and the honorary “Keeper of the Dream” award for his contribution to public education. He was described in D Magazine as a throwback to the ideals of earlier days, when discipline was prized and the emphasis in school was on the quality of classroom instruction. He has also been interviewed and quoted with pictures in Time Magazine and Readers Digest articles on “How to Search for your Roots” and The American Way, the American Airlines in-flight magazine on growing up in America.
We are so very honored to have Bob as a member of Rootseekers and all the work he does for this organization is incredible.
Check out the Rootseekers website here.