By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support great journalism.
National Night Out rained out again
NNO
The Richmond Hill Police Department said it grilled about 700 hot dogs in anticipation of National Night Out. Extra food due to the event's cancellation will be donated to a local charity or church. - photo by Photo courtesy of RHPD Facebook page
Ted O'Neil
Updated: Aug 4, 2016, 11:27 PM
Published: Aug 4, 2016, 11:29 PM

For the second consecutive year Richmond Hill’s National Night Out was cut short by severe weather.

Heavy rains with lightning and thunder that started about 6:45 p.m. Thursday forced vendors to pack up and sent crowds scrambling for shelter. Cedar Street was backed up with vehicles from Ford Avenue into J.F. Gregory Park with people leaving for close to an hour.

“We were watching the weather on radar and the lightning was about three miles out,” said Maj. Mike Albritton of the Richmond Hill Police Department. “We saw about seven strikes in four minutes and that’s when we decided to shut it down.”

Albritton said he conferred with Mayor Howard Fowler, who agreed.

“With so much metal in the pavilion, it was just too much liability for the city,” Albritton added.

The RHPD had cooked about 700 of the 1,000 hotdogs it intended to give away to attendees.

“In the past we’ve cooked about 2,500 and always had too many left over, so we reduced that this year,” Albritton said. “We donate the extra to a local charity or church and we’ll do the same this year.”

Sign up for our E-Newsletters
Later yall, its been fun
Placeholder Image
Ted O'Neil
Updated: May 23, 2018, 6:03 PM
Published: May 23, 2018, 6:05 PM

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.

Latest Obituaries