GwinnettForum | Number 22.88 | Dec. 12, 2023
SUPPORTING THE SALVATION ARMY CAN-A-THON has been an annual school-wide tradition at Greater Atlanta Christian School (GAC) since 2012. This year, the GAC student body of 1,800 students came together and provided 22,800 non-perishable food items for the Salvation Army. GAC President, Dr. Scott Harsh says: “The annual Can-A-Thon at GAC is about more than just food. It is an opportunity for our students to join together to help those who live and work alongside us in Gwinnett County.” Captain Paul Ryerson, Gwinnett Salvation Army Corps Officer, added: “It is evident that GAC is a school that instills a culture of service above self. Students are educated on the needs of their community and then respond with caring and compassionate hearts. Can-A-Thon is one, out of many, examples of this. Thanks, students, for your help.”
TODAY’S FOCUS: Former President Trump is clueless on health care
EEB PERSPECTIVE: Remembering a close friend of 60 years
SPOTLIGHT: Georgia Gwinnett College
FEEDBACK: On national leaders and Rep. Collins
UPCOMING: County awards contracts for several initiatives
GEORGIA TIDBIT: John Stith Pemberton and Coca-Cola
MYSTERY PHOTO: Wow. Look at the gables on this structure!
CALENDAR: Poll worker hiring set for Dec. 18
Former President Trump is clueless on health care
“I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!”
– Donald Trump
By Jack Bernard, contributing columnist
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | Recently appearing in a Modern Healthcare column entitled: “Trump attack on ACA elevates healthcare in 2024 election.”
But Trump has no new suggestions to fix the malfunctioning health care system. He never proposed anything specific to replace it when he was president. He just says that he will magically fix things, just like he did in 2016 when he convinced Mexico to build the wall and thereby solved our border immigration problem. Sure, he did.
On the other hand, it’s a fact that we have the costliest health care in the world, while still leaving 11 percent of working-age adults aged 19 to 64 uninsured. Not only that, our state of Georgia is the second worst state in the nation, with 19 percent of its working-age group uninsured.
It’s just plain wrong to attack the Affordable Care Act (ACA) without providing a better way to get people insured. The most recent data show that the ACA, or Obamacare, has drastically reduced the number of uninsured, an important accomplishment. However, 12 percent of Georgia’s total population is still uninsured. Only Oklahoma and Texas are worse.
In Georgia, as in the rest of the states, health insurance is delivered through many means. In our state, the majority of people are insured via employer-based insurance. Medicare and Medicaid make up over a third. The rest is Veteran’s Administration, Tricare, or purchased directly by citizens.
Because of our uniquely fragmented private insurance system, U.S. health care insurance coverage is a highly political “Rube Goldberg” rigged mess looked upon by other nations in disbelief. Corporate lobbyists throw money at politicians so that nothing (including access, quality, or cost) gets in the way of the corporate profit motive. Meanwhile, problems such as adverse selection, driving up costs for insurers who will then be forced to leave the market or raise rates, have existed and are growing issues.
Meanwhile, we spend much more of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care than other developed nations. When I became director of Health Planning for Georgia, we spent about 8 percent of GDP. We are now at more than double that … and still growing. Per one source- “In 2021, the U.S. spent 17.8 percent of GDP on health care, nearly twice as much as the average country who is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).” And we are the only developed nation without some type of universal health insurance.
Further, the U.S. health care system does not deliver better results; the opposite is true. We rank 33 out of the 38 OECD nations for life expectancy. Think of it this way: we spend much more on health care than other nations and have much higher mortality rates.
Key players (large providers, insurers, big pharmaceuticals) hold all the winning cards. That can only be changed if there is one payer, Medicare, with enough clout to force change. Traditional Medicare has an overhead rate of two percent Private insurance companies spend 12 percent on marketing and overhead. (Those annoying ads are not free.)
What we need are political leaders willing to look at the facts, fight the entrenched special interests and pass Medicare for All. It’s not a question of having enough money. It’s all about taking on entrenched for-profit corporate health care. And Trump has shown that he will not do that.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Remembering a close friend of 60 years
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
DEC. 12, 2023 | The first business partner I had died at age 96 last week. How lucky I was to have been associated with him all these years!
I didn’t know him until he was already my partner. And we maintained our association, becoming close friends for over 60 years, me checking in with him often, and he occasionally calling me. Most every time we went to the coast, we tried to go by for a visit.
It happened this way. Just out of graduate school at Iowa, I got my first job in Jesup, Ga., going to an 18 month old start-up weekly newspaper in a town where there was already another weekly. After working there for six months, one of the two guys who started the newspaper, an insurance agency owner, asked me to stop by his office after work. He and I did not hit it off very well, and I thought perhaps I was going to get canned.
Instead, he said he wanted out, and offered to sell me his half of the newspaper. Having no savings, I couldn’t see how I could buy, but somehow, with a loan from my mother-in-law, we bought a half-interest in the paper. That’s how I inherited Dr. Lanier Harrell as a business partner, whom I didn’t know at all. But of course, he had also just met me, a guy with little experience in newspapering or management. Boy, did he take a risk on his investment!
Harrell
The partnership was pleasant from the beginning, and set me on my newspaper career. But it was very much a one-sided partnership in this way. Rather shortly, I realized that we were in danger of not meeting payroll, and I told my new partner. “I’ll come by and we’ll go to the bank tomorrow,” he said, the beginning of my understanding of how vital local banks are. There we arranged the first of what was many loans, all because his signatory was good, and while mine was also on the bank note, but wasn’t worth much. Luckily, we did well, paid back many loans, and grew the business, and eventually took on a third partner. Later on, Lanier and I would sell our interest in the paper to our younger partner.
Lanier Harrell was born on a farm in Jeff Davis County, graduated from Waycross High, and went to Clemson to play for Frank Howard. He joined the Navy six months before the end of World War II, and later graduated from the University of Georgia. After getting married to the Wayne County sheriff’s daughter, he taught in Jesup and coached football before taking his family to Augusta to medical school. He returned to Jesup as a family doctor for 10 years (who made house calls) before becoming a radiologist for 20 years. He was most active and highly respected in many ways in the community.
He and his wife, Evelyn Warren, had one girl and two boys. His daughter Charlotte, worked with me at the newspaper one summer. She was killed instantly when a log truck hit her car when she was returning from school one afternoon. She was only 16. It devastated their family, though Lanier kept on as the radiologist at the local hospital before his retirement to his home overlooking the Altamaha River.
The community celebrated his life last Wednesday at the First United Methodist Church in Jesup, where Charlotte and Evelyn also had their funerals. His family gave the lectern in the sanctuary in memory of their daughter, Charlotte.
Edsel Lanier Harrell, 1927-2023: Thank you for your friendship. May you rest in peace.
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Yearns for national leaders like Kennedy and Reagan
Editor, the Forum:
It seems to me that the two major political parties have chosen mediocre, if not outright bad, candidates for the top posts in government.
In this country of 300 million people, there must be another John Kennedy or a Ronald Reagan who can be found to re-unite and re-ignite hope, truth and spirit. Trump and his court have caused untold damage to the nation…but Democrats have fallen into the same mold, refusing compromise and damning the other side.
While there is sunshine there should be hope. I am certainly looking for it even in the shadows.
– Mike Eberlein, Peachtree Corners
Dear Mike: Sad to say, but look around at other offices, state and local, and you do not always find mediocre officials. Sometimes we have to vote negative, against someone, rather than for. And with the economy doing quite well, why do people not give Joe Biden some of the credit?—eeb
Enjoys recent comment about Rep. Collins
Editor, the Forum:
Excellent article Friday from Jack Bernard on Rep. Mike Collins. We need to add he’s uniformed and a hypocrite, but he sure enjoys the campaign checks from the gun lobbyist.
– George Wilson, Stone Mountain
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.
County awards contracts for several initiatives
Gwinnett Board of Commissioners acted on several initiatives during its December 5 meeting. A recap of what they approved follows.
Dual lanes coming: Commissioners awarded a contract to Ohmshiv Construction to build dual left turn lanes and modify the existing traffic signal at the intersection of Sugarloaf Parkway and Old Norcross Road. The 2017 SPLOST program is funding the nearly $1 million intersection improvement contract .
Intersection improvements: The Rockbridge Road intersection with Wydella Road will also get safety improvements with new left turn lanes, new traffic signal, concrete sidewalks, curb and gutter, drainage improvements and installation of a new water main. Peach State Construction Company was awarded the $4.8 million contract, which is funded approximately 82 percent by the 2017 SPLOST program.
Sewer improvements: Approximately one mile of gravity sewer west of Buford Drive from Laurel Drive to north of I-85 in unincorporated Gwinnett County will be upsized with the award of an $18.4million contract to JDS, Inc. The project will expand sewer service to accommodate growth in the area and future flows from the Little Suwanee Creek Pump Station, which is currently under construction.
Water main replacement: Commissioners awarded a $5 million water main replacement project contract to Summit Construction and Development, LLC, to replace the water main serving the Flowers Crossing subdivision. The existing water mains are nearly 40 years old and have a history of breaks. By upgrading the water mains to current standards, the reliability of the water distribution system in this area will be improved.
Send us some recommendations
- 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
John Stith Pemberton and Coca-Cola
In his day, John Stith Pemberton was a most respected member of the state’s medical establishment, but his gift was for medical chemistry rather than regular medicine. He was a practical pharmacist and chemist of great skill, active all his life in medical reform, and a respected businessman. His most enduring accomplishments involve his laboratories, which are still in operation more than 125 years later as part of the Georgia Department of Agriculture. Converted into the state’s first testing labs and staffed with Pemberton’s hand-picked employees, these labs almost single-handedly eliminated the sale of fraudulent agricultural chemicals in the state and ensured successful prosecution of those who tried to sell them.
Born on January 8, 1831, in Knoxville, in Crawford County, Pemberton grew up and attended the local schools in Rome, where his family lived for almost thirty years. He studied medicine and pharmacy at the Reform Medical College of Georgia in Macon, and in 1850, at the age of nineteen, he was licensed to practice on Thomsonian or botanic principles (such practitioners relied heavily on herbal remedies and on purifying the body of toxins, and they were viewed with suspicion by the general public). He practiced medicine and surgery first in Rome and its environs and then in Columbus, where in 1855 he established a wholesale-retail drug business specializing in materia medica (substances used in the composition of medical remedies). Some time before the Civil War (1861-65), he acquired a graduate degree in pharmacy, but the exact date and place are unknown.
The analytical and manufacturing laboratories of J. S. Pemberton and Company of Columbus were unique in the South. “We are direct importers,” the company claimed, “manufacturing all the pharmaceutical and chemical preparations used in the arts and sciences.” Established in 1860 and outfitted with some $35,000 worth of the newest and most improved equipment—some of it designed and patented by the company—it was “a magnificent establishment,” an enthusiastic reporter from the Atlanta Constitution proclaimed in 1869 when the labs were moved to Atlanta, “one of the most splendid Chemical Laboratories that there is in the country.”
Pemberton served with distinction as a lieutenant colonel in the Third Georgia Cavalry Battalion during the Civil War and was almost killed in the fighting at Columbus in April 1865. In 1869 he became a principal partner in the firm of Pemberton, Wilson, Taylor and Company, which was based in Atlanta, where he moved in 1870. Two years later he became a trustee of the Atlanta Medical College (later Emory University School of Medicine) and established a business in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his own brands of pharmaceuticals were manufactured on a large scale. He also served for six years (1881-87) on the first state examining board that licensed pharmacists in Georgia.
Pemberton was “the most noted physician Atlanta ever had,” according to the Atlanta newspapers, but he is best known for his expertise in the laboratory, where he perfected the formula for Coca-Cola.
The origin of Coca-Cola
A few years before Coca-Cola began its spectacular rise to international acclaim, a drink known as Pemberton’s French Wine Coca was extremely popular in Atlanta. Its fame spread throughout the Southeast, and the demand for the tasty beverage was high.
In 1885 a reporter from the Atlanta Journal approached the creator of French Wine Coca and asked him for a detailed analysis of the new drink. Pemberton replied, “It is composed of an extract from the leaf of Peruvian Coca, the purest wine, and the Kola nut. It is the most excellent of all tonics, assisting digestion, imparting energy to the organs of respiration, and strengthening the muscular and nervous systems.” He explained that South American Indians considered the coca plant a sacred herb and praised its beneficial effects on the mind and body. With the aid of the coca plant, the Indians had performed “astonishing” feats, he said, “without fatigue.” Pemberton then admitted that his coca and kola beverage was based on Vin Mariani, a French formula perfected by Mariani and Company of Paris, which since 1863 had been the world’s only standard preparation of erythroxylon coca.
In 1886 the city of Atlanta introduced prohibition, which, among other things, forbade the sale of wine. Pemberton decided to make another version of his popular drink. He dropped the reference to wine in the name of the beverage, substituted sugar syrup for the wine, and coined the name “Coca-Cola” to identify his formula. Henceforth, he would call Coca-Cola the ideal temperance drink, both on the label and in advertising.
Realizing that he needed financial backing to market this nonalcoholic version of French Wine Coca on a large scale, Pemberton formed a company for that purpose. He put his son Charles in charge of manufacturing Coca-Cola, and after prohibition ended in 1887, he again produced French Wine Coca. He announced that he would retire from active practice, sell his drugstores in Atlanta and elsewhere in the state, and devote all his time to promoting his beverages. Meanwhile, a group of businessmen responded to Pemberton’s appeal to finance the new Coca-Cola Company. He was to receive a royalty of five cents for each gallon of Coca-Cola sold.
It was Pemberton’s practice to organize a business as a copartnership and then convert it into a corporation. In March 1888, after being in business for eight months as a copartner, he filed the petition for incorporation of the first Coca-Cola Company in the Fulton County Superior Court. Five months later, on August 16, 1888, he died at his home in Atlanta.
On the day of Pemberton’s funeral, Atlanta druggists closed their stores and attended the services en masse as a tribute of respect. On that day, not one drop of Coca-Cola was dispensed in the entire city. At sunup the following day, a special train carried his body to Columbus, where a large group of friends, relatives, and admirers laid him to rest. The Atlanta newspapers called him “the oldest druggist of Atlanta and one of her best known citizens.”
- To view the Georgia Encyclopedia article online, go to https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org
Wow. Look at the gables on this structure!
Here’s a photograph of quite a distinctive structure. Your job is to tell us where this photo was taken. Send your answers to elliott@brack.net. Be sure to list your hometown.
Paula Waldroup of Hayesville, N.C. recognized her first Mystery Photo: “This is a picture inside The Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, N.C. The Folk Art Center highlights crafts from The Southern Highlands Craft Guild.” The photo came from the editor on a recent trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Holly Moore of Suwanee also wrote: “The Guild was created in 1930 to foster and support artisans in the southern Highlands of the Appalachian Mountains. Their mission is to cultivate, educate, market and preserve the rich creative heritage of this region. We drive the Parkway frequently and always make this a stop on our journey. Displays are updated throughout the year and the shop offers a wonderful selection of hand-crafted goods.”
Others spotting this photograph include Allan Peel of San Antonio, Tex.; George Graf, Palmyra, Va.; Jay Altman, Columbia, S.C.; Ruthy Lachman Paul, Norcross; Lou Camerio, Lilburn; and Susan McBrayer, Sugar Hill.
- SHARE A MYSTERY PHOTO: If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send to: elliott@brack.net and mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
Poll worker hiring set for Dec. 18
Experience the magic of Christmas at Mary Our Queen Catholic Church’s service of lessons and carols on December 15 at 7 p.m., located at 6260 The Corners Parkway, Peachtree Corners. It will feature an array of talented choirs and musicians, weaving together scripture and song to illuminate the story of the Nativity.
Wreath laying will be Saturday, December 16 at noon at the Duluth Church Cemetery, 3290 Hill Street, as the William Day Chapter, National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, will host Wreaths Across America. This annual ceremony honors veterans, by placing wreaths at over 100 graves. Join the DAR, along with their partners, Mayor Nancy Harris, Duluth High Junior ROTC and Deloitte and Company in this ceremony.
Poll workers needed: Gwinnett County is seeking residents as poll workers for the 2024 election season. A hiring event will be on Monday, December 18 from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Dacula Park Activity Building. The county is particularly seeking Spanish-English speakers. Poll workers earn up to $390 per election.
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