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Mayors collect gifts for hospitals
Motorcade donations taken through Dec. 4
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Local city officials are doing their part to spread some holiday cheer by collecting gifts for patients at Savannah’s Georgia Regional Hospital as part of the 2012 Mayors’ Christmas Motorcade.
Pembroke Mayor Mary Warnell and Richmond Hill Mayor Harold Fowler will join numerous other mayors and city officials Dec. 5 as they parade vehicles through the Georgia Regional Hospital campus to drop off various gifts to patients.
Cities across Georgia participate in the annual program that provides gifts to patients, most of whom are adults, with developmental disabilities and behavioral health needs at Georgia’s regional health hospitals.
Fowler said it’s important to remember the patients, some of whom may not have family or others to celebrate with during the holiday season.
“I think it’s a means of giving to the needy at the hospital,” Fowler said. “Of course people there don’t always get gifts, and it’s a means of helping them. It’s all a part of the season of giving back.”
This will be the first time Warnell has participated in the motorcade as a mayor, although she has gathered gift donations in the past as a member of the Pembroke Garden Club. “We always need to do things to help folks that are in need, whether they are in hospitals or whether they are in facilities where they don’t get extra things for holidays,” Warnell said.
Donations of new and unwrapped gifts can be dropped off in Pembroke at The Heritage Bank, First Bank of Coastal Georgia and City Hall until Dec. 4.
In Richmond Hill, donations can be dropped off until close of business Dec. 4 at City Hall or the Richmond Hill Police Department.
Gifts suggested for donating include board games, watches, baseball caps, wallets, stationery, pens and pencils, tote bags and PG- or G-rated movies
Other items needed include personal care items, like toothpaste, toothbrushes, shaving cream, deodorant, after shave, body lotion, shampoo and conditioner, cosmetics, combs and hairbrushes.
New clothing, like bedroom shoes, socks, underwear, sweatshirts, pajamas, bathrobes and tennis shoes, can also be donated. Donations of wrapping paper, ribbons and bows are also welcome, as are cash donations. Any items donated should be new and unwrapped.
The Georgia Municipal Association began the Mayors’ Christmas Motorcade in 1958 at the request of then-Gov. Ernest Vandiver as a way of providing holiday gifts for the patients of Georgia’s mental health hospitals. The program is also aimed at raising awareness of the needs of such hospitals.
There are currently seven regional mental health hospitals in the state serving around 3,200 Georgians. Many of these patients have lived in the hospital for much of their lives and receive little, if any support from their families. Hospital staff have said that without the motorcade, many residents would not receive gifts during the holidays.  
For more information, call 653-4417 in Pembroke, 756-3345 in Richmond Hill or visit www.gmanet.com/Motorcade.aspx.

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Later yall, its been fun
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This is among the last pieces I’ll ever write for the Bryan County News.

Friday is my last day with the paper, and come June 1 I’m headed back to my native Michigan.

I moved here in 2015 from the Great Lake State due to my wife’s job. It’s amicable, but she has since moved on to a different life in a different state, and it’s time for me to do the same.

My son Thomas, an RHHS grad as of Saturday, also is headed back to Michigan to play basketball for a small school near Ann Arbor called Concordia University. My daughter, Erin, is in law school at University of Toledo. She had already begun her college volleyball career at Lourdes University in Ohio when we moved down here and had no desire to leave the Midwest.

With both of them and the rest of my family up north, there’s no reason for me to stay here. I haven’t missed winter one bit, but I’m sure I won’t miss the sand gnats, either.

Shortly after we arrived here in 2015, I got a job in communications with a certain art school in Savannah for a few short months. It was both personally and professionally toxic and I’ll leave it at that.

In March 2016 I signed on with the Bryan County News as assistant editor and I’ve loved every minute of it. My “first” newspaper career, in the late 80s and early 90s, was great. But when I left it to work in politics and later with a free-market think tank, I never pictured myself as an ink-stained wretch again.

Like they say, never say never.

During my time here at the News, I’ve covered everything that came along. That’s one big difference between working for a weekly as opposed to a daily paper. Reporters at a daily paper have a “beat” to cover. At a weekly paper like this, you cover … life. Sports, features, government meetings, crime, fundraisers, parades, festivals, successes, failures and everything in between. Oh, and hurricanes. Two of them. I’ll take a winter blizzard over that any day.

Along the way I’ve met a lot of great people. Volunteers, business owners, pastors, students, athletes, teachers, coaches, co-workers, first responders, veterans, soldiers and yes, even some politicians.

And I learned that the same adrenalin rush from covering “breaking news” that I experienced right out of college is still just as exciting nearly 30 years later.

With as much as I’ve written about the population increase and traffic problems, at least for a few short minutes my departure means there will be one less vehicle clogging up local roads. At least until I pass three or four moving vans headed this way as I get on northbound I-95.

The hub-bub over growth here can be humorous, unintentional and ironic all at once. We often get comments on our Facebook page that go something like this: “I’ve lived here for (usually less than five years) and the growth is out of control! We need a moratorium on new construction.”

It’s like people who move into phase I of “Walden Woods” subdivision after all the trees are cleared out and then complain about trees being cut down for phase II.

Bryan County will always hold a special place in my heart and I definitely plan on visiting again someday. My hope is that my boss, Jeff Whitten (one of the best I’ve ever had), will let me continue to be part of the Pembroke Mafia Football League from afar. If the Corleone family could expand to Vegas, there’s no reason the PMFL can’t expand to Michigan.

But the main reason I want to return someday is about that traffic issue. After all, I’ll need to see it with my own eyes before I’ll believe that Highway 144 actually got widened.

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