GwinnettForum | Number 21.61 | Aug. 23, 2022
CLIMBING FOOD: Here’s what the “dining hall” looks like when you are on a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. Lawrenceville’s Laura Jensen, near right, recently made the climb to the summit with this group, a long-held goal of hers. Next to Laura is Sarah Grady of Atlanta. Read more about the hike in Today’s Focus below.
TODAY’S FOCUS: Wesleyan teacher among group climbing Mount Kilimanjaro
EEB PERSPECTIVE: Biggest marketing agency in Gwinnett calls Duluth home
ANOTHER VIEW: “Defund the FBI” statements are hurting the GOP
SPOTLIGHT: The Piedmont Bank
FEEDBACK: Church leadership should be held to high standard
UPCOMING: Preservation Board seeks nominations for 2022 awards
NOTABLE: Gwinnett jury awards plaintiffs $1.7 billion, largest ever in Georgia
RECOMMENDED: Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
GEORGIA TIDBIT: The Andersonville Trial was both a play and television production
MYSTERY PHOTO: Is a bunker the key to today’s Mystery Photo?
LAGNIAPPE: Ooops. That Historic Courthouse scaffolding isn’t that ancient
CALENDAR: Learn more about foster parenting on August 30 in Grayson
Wesleyan teacher in group climbing Mount Kilimanjaro
There’s the destination: Mount Kilimanjaro. Photos provided.
(Editor’s note: the following account of a lifetime mountain climb is from the Pre-First teacher at Wesleyan School. She is also the wife of Ryan Jensen, pastor of the Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church, and the mother to two, Camille, 10, and Knox, 8. The Wesleyan summer Sabbatical Grant encourages faculty to pursue a lifetime of learning. Faculty members may apply for grants for scholarly work. She was awarded the grant in 2019, but because of the pandemic not able to complete it until 2022. Total cost of the climb was $6,495, but for travel, shots, insurance, etc., the total was $10,000.)–eeb
By Laura Jensen
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. | This June I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with Beyond Adventures, bringing to fruition a 20-year dream!
Our group of eight climbers required four guides and 20 porters. Our lead guides have been climbing Kibo, the highest of Kili’s three peaks, for over 20 years with 250+ trips to the summit. Their knowledge and experience put us at ease. Our porters faithfully cooked, set up tents, pumped water and carried equipment on their backs, shoulders, and heads.
The hike took us through Kilimanjaro’s four climate zones – rainforest, moorland, alpine desert, and glacier. We tackled each day with conversations, as our group bonded instantly. We learned about the mountain and its beauty from our guides.
Walking the moors.
Each day began with a delicious breakfast, prep for the climb, and praying for the day ahead. We set off silently to reflect on our experience. Our second day, I was so surprised to see the mess tent set up at lunchtime with tables, chairs, and a hot meal prepared. Afterwards we headed to higher altitude for acclimatization before descending into the valley to sleep.
Meanwhile, our porters broke everything down, raced past us yet again to the next camp, and set everything up for the evening. Lead guide Gabriel would say at our rest stop, “Okay guys, let’s go home!” We arrived to cheerful porters, a bustling campsite, and time to rest. Our days ended around the table, reflecting on the day, and receiving details for tomorrow. Early bedtime to the sounds of our porters finishing the day laughing and talking in Swahili helped us drift off to sleep.
We hiked for five days through stunning and rugged terrain. We challenged our bodies to acclimate to altitudes and slept on inclines in a tent. We celebrated our successful scaling of an 800 foot vertical rock wall. Each day I grew more aware of the impending final push to the top.
We rested at 16,000 feet before waking at 12:30 a.m. for a 1:30 a.m. departure. We left under a full moon with headlamps lighting the way. Our guides and summit porters carefully watched our every step. After five hours of hiking, we began to glimpse a breathtaking sunrise over the horizon. We continued all the way to 19,354 feet at Uhuru Peak. After congratulations and photos, we quickly began descending to 13,000 ft. for a final night of camping.
Our last morning brought a celebration of gratitude – singing, dancing, giving out tips, and a prayer over the guides, porters, and their families in both English and Swahili. A long day of steep descent was filled with stories, laughter, and sore muscles.
The team rejoices at the summit.
We hiked quickly through the moorland and back into the rainforest. It had rained recently and left the trail very slick. After walking “pole, pole” (slowly, slowly in Swahili) for 5½ days, this rapid pace for 7,000 feet down the mountain felt like a sprint! Despite the rapid pace, we all tried to look around to appreciate the lush beauty of our surroundings, listen for the sound of monkeys and hornbills, and soak up these final moments together on the trail. Arriving at elevation 6,000 feet officially ended our trip. After final hugs, high-fives, and thank you’s for our guides and porters, we boarded a bus to head back to Arusha.
Reaching the summit I will always remember. Yet the greater gift was spending time with the amazing group that included not just those of us climbing, but the crowd of witnesses who loved and served every step of the way.
Biggest marketing agency in Gwinnett calls Duluth home
Luckie’s John Gardner. Photo provided.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
AUG.t 23, 2022 | The largest marketing agency in Gwinnett was once a Birmingham, Ala., company which bought a local business and made the Gwinnett office its headquarters. The Luckie agency was established in Gwinnett in 2011 and now employs 130 people, with 70 of them based at their 20,000 square foot entire second floor offices across from the City Hall in Duluth. The agency is among the 10th largest in Metro Atlanta.
Luckie was originally founded in 1953 in Birmingham. Chairman Tom Luckie is the third generation to run the company, which just opened new offices there.
The company markets products for several well-known customers, though none of the headquarters of their clients are in Georgia. Its clients are Birmingham-based Regions Bank; McKee Foods (Little Debbie cakes) of Chattanooga; GlaxoSmithKlein of Raleigh, N.C.; Panama Beach, Fla.; Alabama Power Company; Blue Cross/Blue Shield; and the U.S. Civil Rights Trail, among others.
President of the company since 2013 is John Gardner, a Gwinnett resident, who moved here in 1996. The company recently added “CEO” to his title. He spends most of his time in Duluth, though travels to Birmingham about twice a month.
Gardner was born in Denver, Colo., and grew up in the South, graduating from high school in Alexander City, Ala., and obtained his degree from the University of Alabama. He moved to the Atlanta area two weeks after the Olympics, working for a Tucker marketing firm, which later moved to Peachtree Street. He picked the Brookwood area as his home because of the Gwinnett school system for his two daughters. One daughter now works for Georgetown University as a health care policy analyst, and the other, a UGA graduate, works for Luckie as an account manager.
Gardner had started another marketing company, Integrative Logic, also based in Duluth, which Luckie bought in 2011. He says of his strategy for working with clients: “You start with the understanding of the internal workings of the company, and then take it externally.” On most of the company accounts, there will be multiple staff members working. “For the Regions’ account, for instance, about 35 people work on it. Panama Beach has four full time staffers, and another 20 going in and out according to their speciality. Yes, we have lots of meetings; sometimes it’s overwhelming.”
Visit the Duluth office, and you get two sensations: the atmosphere is so very quiet, and at the same time, so large. You don’t see a lot of people. “Most of the staff is usually in the office three days, with two days working remotely. Many younger members like to live in Atlanta, and have a relatively easy reverse commute. They point out that they work two extra hours when working at home.”
A major reason the company is headquartered in Metro Atlanta is because there is a bigger professional marketing talent pool here. Gardner says: “You have more people on the technical side, and there is a bigger immigrant talent pool here, which helps.”
Gardner bases his company in Gwinnett since the operating costs are lower. “What would cost $19 a square foot for our offices in Gwinnett would be at least $39 in Atlanta. This also allows our employees to have a higher quality of life and work balance. They never miss a kid’s tennis match, or have to fight heavy traffic. Many of our people live in Forsyth or Hall Counties, or even in Athens. These are definite advantages to us in Gwinnett.”
That’s how the Luckie agency works on solving problems for their clients.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
“Defund the FBI” statements are hurting the GOP
“Defund the FBI!” – The strange new GOP anti-police slogan?
“DEFUND THE FBI!” – U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet (in all caps), Aug. 8, 2022.
By Jack Bernard, contributing columnist
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | I’m an anomaly. I’m a social progressive who comes from a law enforcement family. My favorite uncle was a Lieutenant with the New York Police Department who ran a precinct in Brooklyn. My closest cousin is a retired prison guard. Another close first cousin retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I believe that the law enforcement occupation deserves our respect.
As I have said before, the Democrats goofed big time when they did not come down hard on the very few extremists in their ranks (like Missouri Rep. Cori Bush), who advocated “defund the police.” It hurt the Democrats politically, with the GOP projecting as though it was House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer who also advocated defunding. Although they were 100% percent against it, because leadership was not aggressive enough in disavowing the far-out activists, the noose was hung around their neck and they cannot seem to get it off to this day.
You would have thought that the GOP leadership would have learned from the Democrats’ recent disastrous experience. But no, they obviously did not. And those who do not learn from history are doomed to relive it.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the GOP House Minority leader, tweeted on Aug. 8, 22: “When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.” And Marjorie Taylor Greene was not alone, for example, extremist Arizona GOP Rep. Paul Gosar tweeted much the same: “We must destroy the FBI.”
Although she was not the only one attacking the FBI in the national GOP, Greene stands out because of the level of her paranoia and hatred of the FBI. According to Greene- “We now know that there was an FBI informant at Mar-a-Lago… they are traitors and they’re helping the deep state. These are the enemies within.”
There is no proof whatsoever that the FBI was doing anything other than its job. No one has shown maleficence of any sort.
I am not saying that the FBI or other law enforcement agencies are perfect. My view is that we need to spend more, not less, on policing in our country. We need better pay and improved training on the state and local levels. We need to give local police more resources to assist them with mentally ill people who are having problems.
For example, the sick woman in Sparta, Ga. who fell out of the police car to her death; she should not have been arrested. She needed emergency mental health assistance, aid that does not currently exist, especially in a rural area like Hancock County. It’s not fair to the police to simply dump the problem in their lap.
However, I also believe that law enforcement needs to weed out the bad apples. And that cannot be done with police unions wielding protective power, ensuring that all police are given immunity from their actions. As a nation, we must address this issue, doing away with the “qualified immunity” doctrine protecting bad police.
But remarks like the ones made by the GOP establishment are not helpful. They simply represent politicization of policing based on wild theories versus facts. These outrageous declarations by GOP politicians are bound to come back and bite their party in November and beyond.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
The Piedmont Bank
The public spiritedness of our underwriters allows us to bring GwinnettForum.com to you at no cost to readers. Today’s underwriter is The Piedmont Bank, which opened its doors in 2009, and is a full service commercial bank. It has recently closed a merger with Westside Bank with offices in Paulding and Cobb Counties and also has an office in downtown Duluth. Piedmont now has offices in 14 locations, with its home office in Peachtree Corners at 5100 Peachtree Parkway and other locations; at 185 Gwinnett Drive in Lawrenceville; east of Interstate 85 near Suwanee at Old Peachtree and Brown Roads; in Dunwoody at 1725 Mount Vernon Road, in Cumming at 2450 Atlanta Highway and in Cleveland, Gainesville, Jefferson and Blue Ridge, plus another office in Kennesaw opening soon. Piedmont Bank has capitalization in excess of $180 million and over $1.8 billion in total assets and is active in making loans to businesses and individuals in its local markets. Piedmont’s board of directors includes local business leaders with strong ties in the communities it serves. Board members include Lamar Black, Ray Black, Robert Cheeley, Paul Donaldson, Kelly Johnson, John Howard, Paul Maggard, Michael Tennant, Ray Barnes and Monty Watson. Deposits at The Piedmont Bank are insured by the FDIC up to $250,000.
Church leadership should be held to high standard
Editor, the Forum:
The previous issue had an article about the Methodist denomination and a doctrinal disagreement. There are several districts trying to “secede” but apparently there are many legal issues at play as well as the doctrinal disagreement. In my opinion church leadership should be held to a very high standard of conduct. We might like someone as a friend but wouldn’t want to loan them our car or our lawnmower. Everyone falls short of God’s glory, so that’s why we need a Savior.
– John Moore, Duluth
About handing out water, and checks signed by governor:
Editor, the Forum:
People CAN hand out water or whatever to people standing in line to vote, just not representative of someone running. That goes for Kemp or Abrams, so it’s even.
With regards to the tax rebate to Georgia voters, those funds are coming from the surplus that the state has run for the last year (tax revenue exceeded expenses). Yes, a surplus! So he is returning some of the money to the taxpayers rather than spend it. That is very reasonable stewardship or logic I would like to think.
– Terry Swaim, Auburn
Dear Terry: And I presume it’s just coincidental that the checks come signed by Mr. Kemp in an election year? Come on, Terry. On your first item, I give you a point. –eeb
- 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.
Preservation Board seeks nominations for 2022 awards
The Gwinnett Historical Restoration and Preservation Board is seeking nominees for its second Preservation Awards. The Board seeks to recognize a person or organization that has contributed greatly to the historic restoration and preservation of Gwinnett County sites, artifacts, oral history, written historic documentation or care of such items. Nominations are due by September 19, 2022.
All age groups are encouraged to apply and/or nominate. Details such as nomination criteria, how to submit application, deadline, etc. are explained in the application. Click here to pull up that form.
The first Preservation Awards were announced in 2018. There were 18 Gwinnett groups and individuals inducted into the new Preservation Hall of Fame during an event at the Isaac Adair House in Lawrenceville.
The following families, individuals and groups were honored: The Hutchins, Livsey, Nash, Hudgens, and Williams families. Individual honorees were Alice McCabe, Annette Williams Tucker, James Flanagan, James D’Angelo, Marvin and Phyllis Hughes, Marvin Nash Worthy, Robert Bowman, Charlotte Nash, and Wayne Hill.
Organizations recognized included Gwinnett Historical Society, the Hooper-Renwick Legacy Preservation Committee, the United Ebony Society, and the Gwinnett Historical Restoration and Preservation Board.
Lawrenceville promotes 2 staff members to new positions
The City of Lawrenceville has promoted two senior staff members. Barry Mock, assistant city Manager and public works director, will take on the additional duties as Downtown Development Authority executive director. Keith Lee, formerly the director of finance, is the new chief financial officer.
Mock
Mock has worked in the engineering and planning field since 1995. He directs seven departments with 120 employees and manages an operating budget of $101 million and $15 million in capital projects. As the Executive Director of the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), Mock works with the DDA Board to revitalize downtown Lawrenceville through smart land use planning, land banking, carefully curated retail, business retention, and the strategic execution of the people’s vision for a vibrant and inclusive urban center.
He joined the City of Lawrenceville in 2017 and has served as the staff liaison to the DDA since 2019. Mock is a member of the Gwinnett Rotary Club, serves on the board of directors at Hebron Christian Academy, and is a 2020 graduate of Leadership Gwinnett. He holds a bachelor of science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech.
Lee
Lee has worked in local government since 1997, serving the Barrow County, City of Roswell, and City of Lawrenceville communities. He served on the Advisory Board for the Center for State and Local Finance at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. While at the City of Lawrenceville he has played an instrumental role in improving the City’s Bond Credit Rating and has facilitated the adoption of Fund Balance Policies and Debt Management Policies to improve and manage the City’s financial position. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and the Florida Institute of Technology.
Local architectural firm announces promotion
Walker
New director of engineering for Lindsay Pope Brayfield (LPB), an architectural firm in Lawrenceville, is H. Taylor Walker Jr. of Norcross. A graduate of Georgia Southern University, he has been designing HVAC, plumbing and fire protections for 27 years, including 17 years with the Lawrenceville firm. These systems have gone into hotels, schools, restaurants and governmental buildings. Walker is a native of Atlanta, who with his wife, Katy, has lived in Gwinnett since 1998. He is a member of ASHRAE, the ASPE and is a LEED accredited .
Gwinnett jury awards plaintiffs $1.7 billion, largest ever in Georgia
On August 19, a jury in Gwinnett County answered the question left pending by their verdict rendered the day before: what amount of punitive damages should be imposed against Ford Motor Company for selling 5.2 million “Super Duty” trucks with a dangerously weak roof that would crush down on occupants during a rollover wreck. The unanimous jury imposed $1.7 billion in punitive damages against Ford.
This is the largest verdict by far against a defendant in Georgia history – eclipsing the previous verdict of $457 million in the Six Flags case 24 years ago.
Plaintiffs’ legal team included, in addition to Jim Butler of Butler Prather of Columbus; Gerald Davidson of Mahaffey Pickens Tucker of Buford; Mike Terry and Laurie Ann Taylor of Bondurant Mixson and Elmore of Atlanta; Dan Philyaw of Butler Prather; and paralegals Kim McCallister and Sarah Andrews plus investigator Nick Giles, all of the Butler Prather firm.
The jury returned a verdict for Plaintiffs Kim and Adam Hill for the wrongful deaths of their parents, Voncile and Melvin Hill, and for pain and suffering by their parents after the rollover wreck of their 2002 Ford F-250 on April 3, 2014. That verdict totaled $24,030,500. The jury apportioned 30 percent of the damages against Pep Boys, a tire distributor that mistakenly installed the wrong size, or “load range,” tires on the Hills’ truck in 2010.
That mistake caused the right front tire to blow out, causing the wreck. Undisputed evidence at the trial showed the wreck was survivable, and the crushing of the roof caused the injuries that lead to the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Hill. Pep Boys settled in 2018.
The case has been litigated for several years, and was tried for three weeks in 2018 until Ford’s violation of a multitude of Court Orders forbidding Ford from injecting into the trial arguments the Court had excluded caused the Gwinnett State Court to grant a mistrial. The Court subsequently sanctioned Ford. This second trial also lasted three weeks.
The retrial was delayed because Ford filed an appeal to the Georgia Court of Appeals, which dismissed the appeal as illegitimate. Ford then petitioned the Georgia Supreme Court to review the Sanctions Order; that Court denied the petition, 8-0. The pandemic intervened and caused further delay.
In an attempt to get the case tried again quicker, Plaintiffs filed a formal waiver of jury trial. Ford refused and insisted on a jury trial.
A Hill family spokesman said: “The Hill family is thankful to the jury for their verdict, and glad to get this phase of the litigation over with, finally. An award of punitive damages will hopefully warn people riding around in the millions of those trucks Ford sold, was the reason the Hill family insisted on a verdict.”
During the first trial Plaintiffs had submitted evidence of 69 prior similar wrecks with rollover, roof crush, and killed or injured victims. In the four years since Ford caused the mistrial in 2018 more people were killed or injured in such wrecks, and at the second trial Plaintiffs submitted evidence of 10 more such wrecks. Ford declined to say how many more other similar incidents were known to Ford.
Scholarships, awards highlight governor’s GC&B address
Scholarships and awards were key elements of the annual Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful Governor’s environmental address, where Gov. Brian Kemp spoke in Gwinnett last week.
A number of scholarships were presented to recent high school graduates and Georgia Gwinnett College students. GGC’s Brian Land and Ngoc Lan Thanh Le were each awarded $2,500 scholarships from Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful, and former Green Youth Advisory Council members – Daniel Jung and Logan Zimmerman – were each awarded $2,000 Gwinnett Clean & Beautiful Jim Steele Environmental Education Scholarships.
The winners of the 2022 Environmental Consciousness and Stewardship Awards were also announced. They are:
- Green Community Partner of the Year: Gwinnett County Police Department, for its efforts to help GC&B combat graffiti, illegal dumping and urban camping;
- Jim Steele Education Award: Lovin Elementary School for its textiles recycling, composting and community garden initiatives;
- Green Government of the Year: The City of Lawrenceville for its citywide sanitation and recycling efforts;
- Volunteer of the Year: Angela Hamlet for her tireless devotion to keeping her community clean and beautiful, including the adoption of four roads through the Adopt-A-Road program; and
- Connie Wiggins Legacy Award: Jim Steele – longtime COO of Gwinnett County’s Board of Education, as well as charter member, former board chairman and emeritus board member of Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful. This was awarded posthumously and accepted by Adele Steele – who created and funded the GC&B Jim Steele Environmental Education Scholarship in honor of her late husband.
- Click to hear the governor’s address.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
From Raleigh Perry, Buford: This is a good blend of absurdist drama and existentialism. It is about two homeless men who are standing around a tree waiting for a man. It involves poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense with these two men awaiting a man that never shows up. Basically, it is about mankind’s search for meaning. Beckett is probably the best of the absurdist playwrights. The play is very popular. It is not a long and drawn out read. There was a question about what was on the stage of this play in a Jeopardy program and the answer is a tree. Act one has the tree without leaves, act two has it with leaves. The dialog between the two men, and three others that they encounter is simply funny. I read this years ago when I was with Random House, which was the distributor for Grove Press, who published it.
- 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
The Andersonville Trial was a play, television production
A play, The Andersonville Trial, and two television films, The Andersonville Trial and Andersonville, have focused on Sumter County’s Andersonville, the most notorious prison camp of the Civil War (1861-65).
In 1959 dramatist Saul Levitt wrote the play The Andersonville Trial, which was produced that same year by William Darrid, Daniel Hollywood, and Eleanore Saidenberg. The award-winning play recounts the trial of Captain Henry Wirz, the Swiss doctor who commanded the Confederate garrison at Andersonville.
Eleven years later, in 1970, George C. Scott, a cast member in the original Broadway production of Levitt’s play, directed a critically acclaimed film adaptation also entitled The Andersonville Trial. In 1996 Andersonville, a film produced by David W. Rintels and directed by John Frankenheimer, appeared on Turner Network Television (TNT). This miniseries followed the experiences of Union soldiers imprisoned at the camp.
Levitt’s two-act play The Andersonville Trial was first performed in New York City at Henry Miller’s Theater on December 29, 1959. The original Broadway production was directed by José Ferrer, and the cast included Herbert Berghof, Albert Dekker, Lou Frizzell, Russell Hardie, and George C. Scott. Levitt used the official record of Wirz’s 1865 trial as his primary source.
In the play, Captain Wirz’s defense maintains that he was simply following orders as he watched thousands of Union soldiers die at the prison. The prosecution argues that orders should not shield Wirz from being held responsible for the deaths. The play ends with the court sentencing Wirz to death. (Wirz was the only man tried and executed for war crimes committed during the Civil War.) Although much of the play’s dialogue consists of direct testimony from the trial transcript, the play deviates from history in having Wirz testify on his own behalf and in making the ethical dilemma a central element of the case.
In 1970 Scott brought Levitt’s play to television. The cast of Scott’s film includes Richard Basehart as Henry Wirz and William Shatner as the government prosecutor, with Jack Cassidy as Otis Baker, Buddy Ebsen as Dr. John Bates, Cameron Mitchell as General Lew Wallace, and Martin Sheen as Captain Williams.
The only member of the original Broadway cast to star in Scott’s adaptation was Lou Frizzell. Like the play, the television production recounts through courtroom testimony such conditions as overcrowding, disease, malnutrition, and rat-infested living quarters. The movie presents the same ethical dilemma of Levitt’s play, that of military officials who must decide when to disobey orders to save lives. The production won both an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award in 1971.
- To view the Georgia Encyclopedia article online, go to https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org
Is a bunker the key to today’s Mystery Photo?
What looks like a bunker along the seashore is today’s Mystery Photo. But there’s another clue for you to spot. Figure out where this photograph is taken and send your idea to elliott@brack.net, including your hometown.
Susan McBrayer, Sugar Hill, quickly recognized the last Mystery Photo: “This is the Water Shops Armory in Springfield, Mass., part of the old Springfield Armory building. The part shown in the photo is only a part of the entire building which is several buildings pieced together. The U.S. Army built the armory in 1794 on the Mill River, where heavy metal forging and machining was done as well as gunstock shaping. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places.
Here’s a google view (bleft) of the whole front side facing Allen Street.” The photo came from Rob Ponder of Duluth.
George Graf of Palmyra, Va., wrote: “ The Armory and Arsenal at Springfield was the primary center for the manufacture of United States military firearms from 1777 until its closing in 1968. It was the first federal armory and one of the first factories in the United States dedicated to the manufacture of weapons. The facility would play a decisive role in the American Civil War, producing most of the weaponry used by Union troops which, in sum, outpaced Confederate firearm production by a ratio of 32 to 1. The last small arm developed by the Armory was the M14 rifle, which was, essentially, a highly modified version of the M1 Garand. The M14 was produced from 1959 to 1964 and was the U.S. Army’s primary combat rifle until being replaced by the M16 rifle gradually from 1964 to 1970. The M14 has evolved over the years into a more modern sniper rifle—the M21.”
Allan Peel of San Antonio, Tex. and Lou Camerio of Lilburn also recognized the Armory.
Historic Courthouse getting new slate roof
In the last issue, Roving Photographer Frank Sharp’s picture of scaffolding at the Historic Courthouse was said to be from years ago. That was wrong. Sharp took the photo recently, as the county government is making repairs to the 1984 courthouse.
The slate roof is being replaced on the building and bell tower; the be completed in the fourth quarter this year. GwinnettForum apologizes for not being aware of what’s currently going on at this site.
Foster Parent Information Session will be Tuesday, August 30 at 6:30 p.m., at the Grayson Branch Library. Join the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services to learn how to become a foster parent in Gwinnett County.
The 21st British Car Fayre will be Saturday, Sept. 10, 2022 in downtown Historic Norcross, from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. Join as many as 15,000 who visit this annual event, showing British automobiles and motorcycles from the past. The featured vehicle this year is a 2022 Land Rover. There will be awards, raffle and boot sale, with all earnings going to the Amanda Riley Foundation. Visit https://www.atlantabritishcarfayre.com for more details.
Put on your calendar: The 43rd Annual Elisha Winn Fair will be Saturday and Sunday, October 1-2, at the Elisha Winn House, Gwinnett’s birthplace, at 908 Dacula Road in Dacula. Enjoy a living history exhibit, good food, craft vendors, music, blacksmithing, weaving, spinning and military enactors. The fair is sponsored by the Gwinnett Historical Society.
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