GwinnettForum | Number 21.39 | May 25, 2021
THE NEW DULUTH BRANCH of the Gwinnett County Public Library will have the ribbon cutting at 2 p.m. May 25 (Today) at its new location on Main Street, across from the Duluth City Hall. (See upcoming below.) Library photographs by Victoria Hopkins.
Editor’s Note: The column originally published by George Wilson on May 21 has been withdrawn following concerns about misattribution of information. We regret the error. — Elliott Brack.
TODAY’S FOCUS: Second in series of one way to solve student loan debt
EEB PERSPECTIVE: Dispelling a myth of how the City of Berkeley Lake was founded
ANOTHER VIEW: Diehard group wants to eliminate programs proven worthy
SPOTLIGHT: Gateway85 Gwinnett
FEEDBACK: Suggests use of Gwinnett Place Mall for senior housing
UPCOMING: Ribbon-Cutting at 2 p.m. Tuesday for new Duluth Public Library
NOTABLE: Walton EMC annual meeting to be a drive-through format again
RECOMMENDED: On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
GEORGIA TIDBIT: Once flourishing, Lithia Springs Hotel torn down in 1943
MYSTERY PHOTO: Oft-photographed scene is today’s Mystery Photo
Second in series of one way to solve student loan debt
(Editor’s Note: This is the second of three articles concerning the federal student loan program. The author formerly served in the Trump Department of Education responsible for overseeing and administering our nation’s $1.7 trillion of outstanding Federal Student Loan debt, which is owed by more than 44 million Americans. The first article appeared in this space April 20, 2021. Look for the final article concerning student loans soon.—eeb).
By Wayne Johnson
MACON, Ga. | Not too long ago, I was the most senior executive within the federal government responsible for overseeing more than $1.5 trillion in federal student loans owed by more than 44 million people. After looking at this program from the inside out, and seeing information that almost no one else has seen or is even aware of, I can address the federal student loan debt problem with a high level of authoritative insight.
Johnson
In short and for the record, I am convinced that all existing federal student loan debt should be canceled in its entirety, and the Federal Government should never again loan even a single dollar for the purpose of enabling an individual to access post-secondary education. Furthermore, all information regarding federal student loan debt should be removed from an individual’s credit bureau record.
Federal student loans have proven to be a failed experiment of massive proportion and an enabling mechanism for the plundering of student trust by colleges. The majority of federal student loan debt will never be repaid, nor was it the intention of the Federal Government for it to be repaid. The intention has been to keep the debt outstanding so that interest, and more interest, would continue to pile upon student loan borrowers.
Instead of loans, the Federal Government should make available to every high school graduate an “Opportunity Plus Grant” in the amount of $50,000 in order to pursue education after high school, either vocational or academic education. Any amount of federal funding for education access beyond the $50,000 should be made by way of a “no-interest, no mark-up” Income Contingent Agreement (ICA), six percent of an individual’s adjusted federal taxable income above $40,000 collected by way of the Internal Revenue Service until the ICA amount is paid back.
The lifetime cap for an ICA, whether used for graduate school or undergraduate, should be set at $250,000. There needs to be some limit as to what taxpayers are called upon for investment in the “public good” of higher education for an individual student. When considering this approach to education funding it is an important point to note that “Opportunity Plus Grants” and ICA’s should be made available to all, without considering or being limited by “expected family contribution.”
To be fair to those people who paid their own way for after-high-school education, or who repaid federal loans, these people should receive a $50,000 tax credit for having done so. People who graduated from high school within the last 10 years and who did not use federal loans should be eligible for the “Opportunity Plus Grant.”
One important aspect should be added: that for every $1,000 of debt that is cancelled, for every $1,000 of grant money that is extended, and for every $1,000 of ICA funding that is made available, that the recipient is required to perform 10 hours of public or community service, or verified apprenticeship training. It is interesting to reflect upon how many millions of man-years of beneficial public good would result from this service requirement; along with the added real-life educational experience that people would realize.
There is only one way that any of these ideas can be caused to occur. That is for the U.S. Congress to change federal law governing higher education financing. If you find the ideas presented in this article to be worthy, then contact your U.S. Congressional Representative and U.S. Senators and let them know your opinion.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Dispelling myth of how City of Berkeley Lake was founded
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
MAY 25, 2021 | The subject is the City of Berkeley Lake. This information comes from a letter from the late Pat LaHatte Langley, a long-time Berkeley Lake resident. We knew her professionally when I was with the Gwinnett Daily News and later through our church.
She had been with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1940, and was the promotion director and first female on the executive staff of those newspapers. The position of promotion director, she thought, was the best job on the newspaper, since it encompasses all aspects of journalism, from news, to representing the paper, coming up with ideas of how to advance it, and in general, how to go about promoting it within the community.
The letter from Pat dates from Feb. 27, 1997, and was writte to me when I worked for the AJC. Here’s the entirety of that letter. Pat, in longhand, wrote: “I would like nto dispel the myth that keeps cropping up in print that the city of Berkeley Lake was populated originally by wealthy Atlantans. Upper middle class, yes, but not wealthy.
Berkeley Lane City Hall
“The dam (at Berkeley Lake) was constructed in 1948 and two years later, the subdivision was laid out and named after developer Frank Coggin’s Berkeley Blue Granite quarries in Elberton, Ga. In 1952 Calvin and Kate Parsons (of Duluth) and John and Dorothy Bagwell acquired the 700 acre tract and a year later, 25 property owners founded the Lake Berkeley Civic Association. At that time, I began swimming in the lake with one of the original 25. I later purchased that lot.
“A cross section of owners included a chiropractor, an ophthalmologist, a hospital official, a school principal, a delicatessen owner, a telephone official and several retirees, who loved to fish, canoe and picnic….none rich by Atlanta standards.
“I live on ‘Coggins’ Reserve’ and have watched the phenomenal growth and sky-rocketing land values, which have turned this once quiet, bucolic retreat into surburbia.”
LaHatte Langley
Patricia Noot LaHatte Langley was a happy soul, born in Port Townsend, Wash., but her family soon settled in Atlanta. She graduated from Girls’ High and obtained a degree from the High Museum School of Art. In 1940, she began a job as the first art editor of The Atlanta Journal Sunday magazine. In 1942 she became the picture editor of the Journal, the only female picture editor in the nation.
In a major advancement, in 1954 she became promotion manager for both The Journal and Atlanta Constitution, and was the first female executive on the paper’. Meanwhile she was named the Atlanta Woman of the Year in 1958, later authored a book on Atlanta. All the time, she was an artist, specializing in water colors. She married Milner LaHatte in 1s senior staff. In 1969 she was the first female president of the International Newspaper Promotion Association 942, and was divorced in 1950. After her retirement, in 1978 she married James D. Langley, a legendary high school football coach, who died in 1987. Ms. LaHatte died in 2010 in Berkeley Lake, Ga.
Pat donated her archives about Atlanta newspapering to Emory University. The archive is extensive, consisting of six linear feet of 12 boxes, four oversized paper boxes, one bound volume and audio visual masters, and another linear foot of two boxes. Because of this legacy, we have excellent records for others to study.
And thank you, Pat, for telling how the little city of Berkeley Lake (estimated population now 1,839) evolved.
Today Berkeley Lake is one of the most sought-after spots to live in Gwinnett, with Realtor.com saying that the median selling price of houses in 2020 was $614,000.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Diehard group wants to eliminate programs proven worthy
By Ashley Herndon
OCEANSIDE, Calif. | Yes Virginia, there is a 1 percent group of billionaires, and that comes with a capital B or maybe merely with an M, saying that Trickledown Reaganomics would work, just as it has not worked for 40 years. They claim it does not work because “dribble drabble” has not really been tried.
Herndon
Can you imagine the economy if their wishes were in full play? Simply look at what has happened since House Speaker Paul Ryan pushed through his 2017 tax cuts for the One Percenters and multi-national companies. Who benefitted? That “upward vacuum effect” really played out disastrously in the pandemic. Study the data. Keep in mind, there are some in the One Percenters do help their fellow women, children, and men. But are their foundations memorials to themselves or for the people.
Many of the One Percenters are not helping, (many sporting inherited fortunes never earning a calloused hand). Many say there has been too much government spending on “handouts.” Why? Because: “Taxes have never really been low enough” and further because there has never been a “truly-pure” libertarian experiment in America. We have dodged that bullet…so far.
But the truth is that yes, that “pure” system was tried: remember “plantation capitalism,” child labor, shooting miners and workers who only sought fair wages, and locking women to work in buildings for extended hours sometimes resulting in death via fire. These free-market thinkers referred to the working class as ‘mudsills, meaning: the lowest sill of a structure, usually placed in or on the ground, figuratively. That is, a particularly low or dirty thing/place/state of being, the nadir. Geez!
We fought the Civil War because an oligarchy ignored why we revolted. Reread the Declaration of Independence, as well as the ‘Preamble’ and the Bill of Rights. The oligarchy fought for their privileges only. This war cost us between 20,000 and 750,000 combat deaths along with an undetermined number of civilians. Today folks still worship statues of those oligarchs. Then they created Jim Crow.
They swear that if we want to see if free market theories work, we must: first, do away with Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, food stamps, public schools, public health departments and the whole plethora of government-supported institutions. And of course, by the way, delete regulations on business.
These programs, they claim, have distorted our economic systems with partial deregulation and occasional tax cuts promoted since the ‘30s, which have not had the success they could have had in a pure free-market economy. The efforts so far have pushed the majority of the middle and ‘mudsills’ even lower. There are people who actually believe this tripe!
Nelson Rockefeller, a solid member of the billionaire class, gave a speech calling for moderation, compromise, and a commitment to do what was best for the nation. He got booed like Romney did recently. Rockefeller said, “These extremists feed off fear, hate, and terror. They encourage disunity.” He is like our recent deposed President Trump, the man who was soundly booed at the ballot box and decisively defeated.
Yes, Mark Twain, your quote bears repeating: “History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes!”
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Gateway85 Gwinnett
The public spiritedness of our sponsors allows us to bring GwinnettForum.com to you at no cost to readers. Gateway85 Gwinnett is a self-taxing community improvement district that includes just over 800 commercial property owners with a property value of over $1 billion. Gateway85 includes the southwestern part of Gwinnett County including properties along Jimmy Carter Boulevard, Buford Highway, Indian Trail Road, and Beaver Ruin Road. Gateway 85 is one of six CIDs to be created in Gwinnett County and is the largest single CID in the state. The community is an economic powerhouse that helps fuel the regional economy. More than 3,000 businesses (employing roughly 34,000 people) call Gateway85 home. The jobs in the district account for almost 12 percent of Gwinnett County’s total employment and support $2 billion in annual payroll. Gateway85’s mission is to improve property values through increased security, decreased traffic congestion, and general improvements to the curb appeal of the area. The CID moved their offices to 1770 Indian Trail-Lilburn Road, Norcross and recently rebranded to reflect the strong future of this area. It was previously known as Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District. For more information visit https://www.gateway85.com/ or call 770-449-6542.
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Suggests use of Gwinnett Place Mall for senior housing
Editor, the Forum:
Seniors lack housing and facilities to accommodate their diminished capabilities and increasing needs. What makes me think that perhaps Gwinnett Place Mall might serve well as a base for a multi-purpose facility for seniors is remembering seeing seniors walking with their friends in malls for exercise. The air conditioning helps maintain a comfortable environment for a measured walk. I have been amazed to see how many people use malls for this type of exercise.
Therefore, adding a medical facility at the mall could be part of the program providing care for not only seniors. This care could extend up to outpatient surgeries and treatments. A residential facility might consist of a multi-floor high rise. A gym should be part of the complex, even with a rehab facility and possibility a pool for recreational or medical purpose.
Existing space could be a mix of physicians, restaurants, shops, pharmacies, theaters, law offices, accounting, and fun stuff. In effect, it would be a mini-town, with all services nearby. Outside and inside, there would need to be areas for grandchildren. Put in a green area outside with athletic fields. The gym and pool could be adaptable for grandchildren. A mini-library or reading areas would work handsomely as well.
The county says it wants possibilities for this site. This is off the top of my bald head. Imagine 500 to 750 seniors living in this complex. Now private funding could augment this, and make Gwinnett Place thriving again.
— Byron Gilbert, Duluth
- Send us your thoughts: We encourage you to send us your letters and thoughts on issues raised in GwinnettForum. Please limit comments to 300 words, and include your hometown. The views of letters are the opinion of the contributor. We reserve the right to edit for clarity and length. Send feedback and letters to: elliott@brack.net.
Ribbon-cutting at 2 p.m. Tuesday for new Duluth library
Inside looks at the new library. Photographs by Victoria Hopkins.
Gwinnett County officials will cut the ribbon on the new location of the Gwinnett County Public Library Duluth Branch at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, May 25 (today).
The relocated branch is about twice (20,000 square feet) as large as the previous Duluth Library and provides features including two learning labs with areas for sewing, crafting, 3D printing, coding and more. There are 30 adult computer stations and six kids’ computer stations; plus a meeting room that can fit 120 people with retractable walls to add capacity.
The new facility was funded by the 2009 and 2014 SPLOST programs.
Gwinnett County Department of Community Services Director Tina Fleming will emcee the event. Board of Commissioners Chairwoman Nicole Hendrickson, District 1 Commissioner Kirkland Carden, Duluth Mayor Nancy Harris and Gwinnett County Public Library Board of Trustees Chair Dr. Wandy Taylor will provide remarks.
Two ways to register students for kindergarten in Gwinnett
Gwinnett parents whose children will be 5 years old on or before September 1 may register for kindergarten for the 2021 2022 school year in an easy, two-step process.
One way is to complete online registration on the GCPS website. Simply click the blue line.
Another way to register is, before May 28, schedule an appointment with the school your will attend to verify information, complete a readiness profile, pick up materials, and learn about summer activities.
- Check the website of your child’s new school to learn more. To see which school your child will attend, visit “Find My School
Walton EMC annual meeting again in drive-through format
Walton EMC’s board of directors has decided to keep its annual meeting as a drive-through format for one more year.
COO Ron Marshall says: “We hoped to be back to normal for 2021, but the board wisely feels it’s a little early to have a large, in-person event.”
He adds: “Although COVID-19 cases are declining and vaccinations are increasing, it may be this fall before big gatherings are once again common. We just can’t take chances with the health of our customer-owners.”
The 2020 drive-through meeting was popular, with the same number of customer-owners participating that usually attend the normal event at the Walton County Ag Education Center in Monroe.
Marshall says: “The 2021 meeting will be similar to last year except that some improvements are being made for better traffic flow.”
Co-op members can look for detailed information arriving in their mailbox next month. Additional information will be posted on the co-op’s website.
Those attending will receive the traditional bucket of gifts and be entered into a drawing for a $50 electric bill credit.
The purpose of the annual meeting is to give customer-owners a say in running their co-op. The most important facet of the event is the election of directors who represent those same customer-owners in determining the organization’s direction.
Appointments now available to visit Gwinnett tag offices
Gwinnett County Tax Commissioner Tiffany P. Porter has arranged an option for Gwinnett residents to set appointments for in-person visits at all automotive tag offices.
Porter says: “Customers no longer have to wait in line when they need to visit a tag office. They can use our website to set an in-person appointment at the office most convenient for them and avoid the wait entirely.”
- To schedule an appointment, customers go to the website, find their desired tag office location, click “Make an Appointment,” select tax or tag service, then the date and time that suits them, and complete the contact form. Appointments are available from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. up to two weeks in advance. The system sends a text message that confirms the appointment and provides a link to cancel if needed.
On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
From Karen J. Harris, Stone Mountain: Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is an inside look into the history of a Vietnamese family over several decades. It includes riveting pictures of violence during the Vietnam era, the dismantling of families forged with American soldiers and Vietnamese women, including the aftermath when these families imploded. It is also a searing portrait of Little Dog’s coming out as gay along with identifying who he is in American culture. Searing, poignant and painful to read, Little Dog travels through the horrors of racism, sexual identity and the slow and painful demise of his beloved Grandmother Lan. Questions about how obstacles are overcome amidst horrific instances of addiction, alienation and loneliness are exquisitely portrayed throughout the novel. Sections of the luminous poetry is also part of the story which underscores the mystery and pathos of growth amidst agonizing circumstances.
An invitation: what books, restaurants, movies or web sites have you enjoyed recently? Send us your recent selection, along with a short paragraph (150 words) as to why you liked this, plus what you plan to visit or read next. Send to: elliott@brack.net
Once flourishing, Lithia Springs Hotel torn down in 1943
The Lithia Springs Hotel in Tallapoosa, pictured circa 1910, was one of several hotels and resorts built in Haralson County during the last decades of the nineteenth century to attract visitors to the area’s mineral springs. It was torn down in 1943.
- To view the Georgia Encyclopedia article online, go to http://georgiaencyclopedia.org
Oft-photographed scene is today’s Mystery Photo
Today’s Mystery Photo may be an easy one, since this is an area often photographed. Figure out where it is and send your answer to elliott@brack.net to include your hometown.
The last Mystery Photo found four of our readers recognizing it. George Graf of Palmyra, Va. wrote: “It is the British Cemetery at Ocracoke, N.C. In the early days of the United States’ entry into World War II, the Navy was woefully under-manned, under-shipped, and under-gunned. The Atlantic seaboard was especially vulnerable to German submarines, whose attacks took a major toll on the U.S. merchant fleet, killing thousands and sinking nearly 400 ships. So a fleet of English ships and seamen crossed the Atlantic to help out.
“It was May 11, 1942 when one such ship, the HMT Bedfordshire, was patrolling the coastline for German U-boats when it was struck by a torpedo. The ship went down, and all 37 sailors on board perished. Most of the bodies were never recovered, but four washed ashore near Ocracoke, at the very southern tip of the Outer Banks. The people of Ocracoke wanted to honor the four men, and a small plot of land was donated to create a British Cemetery alongside the village cemetery. Eventually the grounds were leased in perpetuity to the British Commonwealth for as long as the sailors are buried there, so technically the four men are buried on home soil.Each year, on the anniversary of the sinking, there is a ceremony for the sailors, with representatives of the British Royal Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard.”
Also recognizing the photo were Allan Peel of San Antonio, Tex.; Sandy and Rick Krause of Lilburn; and Lou Camiero of Lilburn. The photo came from Donna Clemmer Carpenter of Dallas, N.C., via Susan McBayer of Sugar Hill.
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