THE ET CETERA CHRONICLES - VOL. 89

MERITORIOUS ORTHODONTIST - Dr. Charles Meyers, a Dublin orthodontist, served twenty-three years in the United States Army, for his exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements. Dr. Meyers was awarded the prestigious Legion of Merit by the Surgeon General.  As it happened, Meyers was the first orthodontist in the United States Army to receive the award with a prefix designating the award came from the Army. 

THE NEW CHIEF IS A WOMAN  - Dr. Linda J. Hedden was appointed as the head of the Domiciliary Department at the Carl Vinson VA Medical Center in the winter of 1979.  A sociologist by profession. Dr. Hedden attended Kent State University, Cornell University, and Illinois Institute of Technology, and became the first woman in the history of the United States to serve in the chief of a domiciliary department in a VA hospital.  Dublin Courier, February 28, 1979.  

A SOUTHERN ODDITY - While the overwhelming majority of Georgia’s county names honor military leaders of the Colonial Army, the U.S. Army during the War of 1812 & Indian Wars, and Confederate leaders of the Civil War, there is one notable exception.  While named for Gen. George Washington, chief aid, this colonel was instrumental in being one of the first officers of the Colonial Army to recruit slaves for paid service in the Colonial Army.  Also known as an ardent abolitionist, Georgia was named one county in the state for this anti-slavery proponent.  His name was Col. John Laurens, who was killed in 1783 in South Carolina, well after the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781.  Although South Carolina has a Laurens County which was named after Henry Laurens, father of Col. Laurens and President of the Second Continental Congress, Laurens County, Georgia is likely the only state in the Deep South named after a staunch abolitionist against slavery.  A Revolutionary Abolitionist,  By James A. Percoco  Civil War Trust 

HONORING A LEGEND, YET ANOTHER SOUTHERN ODDITY - In the Deep South of the late 1940s and early 1950s, it was quite rare to name a city street in honor of an African-American man.  But, it did happen, right here in Dublin, Georgia.  State Senator and Dublin businessman and newspaper editor, Herschel Lovett was also the city’s biggest baseball fan.  In 1948, Lovett invested a lot of his own money in establishing a minor league baseball team in Dublin, to be known as the Dublin “Green Sox.”  Lovett traveled to Florida to visit the spring training home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Impressed with what he saw, he told his subordinates to build one just like it on his property at the northwest corner of Kellam Road and Marcus Street.  For most of the next decade and a half, Dublin would be the home of the Dublin Green Sox, the Dublin Irishmen, the Dublin Orioles, and the Dublin Braves, farm clubs of the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, Baltimore Orioles, and the Milwaukee Braves.

When the time came to create streets through another tract of land owned by Lovett, this one on the far south side of town leading to the Negro baseball park, there was only one name that the Dodger fan could pick.  Therefore the name of Campanella Street was placed on the new street in honor of the Dodger’s Roy Campanella, the first African-American catcher and the first in the National League, at Lovett’s request in November 1949.  Little did Lovett or few others in Dublin know, but — years later, Quincey Trouppe, a 1913 native of Dublin, became the first African-American catcher in the American League.  Dublin Courier Herald, Nov. 8, 1949.

“HISSSSSSSSSSS!”  - It was somewhat a normal late autumn day when James L. Creel was working on routine matters in East Dublin when a lady asked Creel and his crew to come to her house to investigate a hissing sound beneath her floor.  Creel, Superintendent of the City of Dublin’s gas department,  went inside expecting to find a leak in the gas line.  When he heard nothing, the man of the house instructed his wife to stomp on the floor, which triggered the hissing sound to start again.  Puzzled, Creel sent some of his men to crawl under the house to further investigate the mysterious hissing sound.  Much to their chagrin and the lady’s horror, the source of the warning sound of a huge rattlesnake. Dublin Courier Herald,  September 18, 1957.