THE ET CETERA CHRONICLES 
- VOL. 22

HOW ABOUT THAT DOG! - Dublin innkeeper, Gabriel Stubbs Hooks, kept noticed his  dog gnawing an old  wound.  The wound had been inflicted a year ago by a  large water moccasin.  The canine kept chewing until it extracted a foot long moccasin.  The Atlanta Constitution, May 5, 1883. 

IT’S A LONG, HARD ROAD - For more than two decades, those streets in Dublin which were paved, were paved with large bricks.  On June 10, 1930, a large group of citizens drove across the river bridge into East Dublin to celebrate. The crews of Morgan Hill Construction Company of Atlanta, were christening the beginning of the paving of thirteen miles of U.S. Highway from the bridge to Scott, Georgia.  It was a big day, not just for east side citizens, but for all Laurens countians when the workers began laying a cement county road for the first time in the history of the county.  The road project, which was delayed by a series of unfortunate events,  ended at the Johnson County line in Scott, Georgia.   Dublin Courier Herald, June 9, 1930, September 25, 1930. 

PIONEER PILOT - On July 18, 1930, Ellison Pritchett took off in his airplane and flew to Atlanta.  The seemingly trivial flight was the first time a Dubliner flew from Dublin to another city in Georgia.  Dublin Courier Herald, July 21, 1930. 

FIRST BOMBER PILOT - J.C. Mohoun came to Dublin in July 1930 to investigate the crash of a plane during the 4th of July celebration  .  Mohoun while a member of the American army during the Mexican revolution of 1916, dropped a bomb just inside the United States border, making him the first pilot to drop a bomb on American soil.  Dublin Courier Herald, July 24, 1930.  

A HEROINE ON THE TV SCREEN - Sometime in the mid 1990s, an elderly  woman in Dublin, whose name has faded from my memory, walked to the teller line of the Farmers and Merchants Bank to cash a rather large check.  The teller was somewhat unsure to give the woman so much cash.  The woman explained that she had written a letter to a lady who she saw on television that she needed money to fix her leaking roof on her old house and this is what came in the mail.  As the bank’s attorney, I was asked if the check was good.  I looked and smiled  for the maker of the check, which simply said, “Oprah Winfrey, Chicago, Illinois.”  From the memory of Scott B. Thompson, Sr. 

TAKE MY HAND LORD - The Rev. W. E. Harville had been a fixture in the Baptist churches of Laurens County.  For nineteen years, Harville had served as the Moderator of the Laurens County Baptist Association.   On a Friday afternoon on August 15, 1930, Harville was conducting a baptismal service at Beulah Baptist Church, just below the Laurens County line in Wheeler County.  After the conclusion of the ceremony, the minister stepped up from the pool, rested his hand on a choir member, and fell dead. Dublin Courier Herald, August 17, 1930.

SAY A GOOD WORD - Dr.  W.A. Thomas, of Brewton, Ga., served in Company F of the 8th Georgia Infantry at the beginning of the Civil War.  Thomas entered the conflict as a private.  During his recuperation from a wound he received in Virginia, Dr. Thomas was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Artillery and assigned to Bounad’s Artillery, which saw heavy action at the battle of Olustee, Florida.  An error in the Confederate capital of Richmond, led to his appoint as the Chaplain of the battalion.  Thomas steadfastly rejected the appointment, telling Major Bounand that  he was not a minister.  Bounad replied, “You will do well as a minister and if you can pray, you can read out of a prayer book, which will do as well.  Besides, if you pray over a dead man, he will not know, and if you pray over a live man, he will not care.”  Thomas’s time a minister was short lived with the artillery battalion was converted into an infantry regiment. Savannah Morning News, September 2, 1902.

  

THE SMILING IRISHMAN -  Some people may remember Jeremy Craig,  the First Secretary to Irish Embassy.  Craig, the smiling Irishman,  came to early in his diplomatic career to  Dublin to promote Irish heritage during the 1970 Saint Patrick’s Festival.    Craig, a 28-year-old native of Dublin, Ireland, was promoted to Counselor in 1974.   In 1979, Craig was appointed as the Deputy Head of the Irish Mission to the United Nations in New York.    

Jeremy Craig was a respected Irish diplomat who served in several important posts at home and abroad during the course of a 25- year career in the Department of Foreign Affairs. In 1981, Craig was elected to a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for the two-year term.   Craig represented Ireland during the Falklands War, as well as the troubles in the Middle East.  

In 1983, Jeremy was promoted again and posted to Beirut as Irish Ambassador to Lebanon where he was also non-resident ambassador to Syria and to Iraq. This was a post of significance for Ireland’s relations with the Middle East and because Irish peacekeepers had been serving with the UN in Lebanon since 1978. It was also a difficult and dangerous assignment as Lebanon was convulsed by a complex civil war which in one form or another lasted from 1975 until 1989.

Three years later, in 1986, he took up another important posting in the embassy in London as deputy to the ambassador. Sadly, for health reasons, he did not have the opportunity to make the contribution he might have made there to Anglo-Irish relations. After a short time in London he returned to a post in the department in Dublin and he took early retirement on health grounds in 1991. Craig died in March, 2016.  The Irish Times, March 26, 2016. 

FIRST TO SERVE - Willie B. Anderson of a 202 Gray Street, Dublin address and Johnnie Quindo Foster of Rentz  were the first Laurens countians to be drafted into the Armed Forces during the World War II era.  The draft was held on October 29, 1940 in Washington and the first number drawn was No. 158.  Charlie Powell of Rockledge and John Albert Clemons, of a Dublin Route 3 address, were assigned number 192 and were the second men selected in the draft.  Dublin Courier Herald, October 29, 1940.