Oldies but goodies

I found these looking through some pictures I took while living in Hartwell, Ga., and working for the Hartwell Sun newspaper back in 2004. The top picture was a rare opportunity for a photojournalist — getting inside a women's jail. I was doing a story on these women who would basically take a church service to the women inside the Hart County Jail. This was my favorite picture of the few that I took.

The bottom photo is a sunset I shot while driving home from work one evening. The sunsets on Lake Hartwell were absolutely beautiful.

Nosy dog

I got a new lens the other day and tried it out on my favorite subject.

Alzheimer's

While I was up in LaFayette, Ga., attending the funeral of one grandmother this past weekend, I paid a visit to other, who is suffering from Alzheimer's. This is my father's mother, Ola Jean Liles, and she has been living in a nursing home since the disease starting taking a toll on her last year.

It's not that bad yet — I can still have conversations with her and she knows who I am — but I know it only gets worse. The good news is that I had a great time with her on Saturday.

Performance at Reynolds

I shot this a few months ago, but I didn't post it because it wasn't published until last week. I shot it for Linger Longer magazine, which serves Reynolds Plantation on Lake Oconee. This is a performance by Marvin Hamlisch (on piano) and Debbie Gravitte. Hamlisch has composed music for Broadway and several movies. He is one of only 12 people to win all four major U.S. performing awards — Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. Gravitte is a Tony-award winning Broadway performer.

I can tell you that this woman's voice was absolutely amazing, and I think this photo of her captures how much emotion and energy goes in to her performances.

Pauline Midget McDaniel Bowman, 1923-2007

A smile slid across my Granny's face before she left this world at 2:30 a.m. today.

"She saw Daddy," Mama said, referring to Paw-Paw, Granny's husband of 64 years who passed away in 2003. "She just smiled, and then she stopped breathing."

Granny, 84, had been fighting cancer with everything she had since she was diagnosed last year. She made it through two surgeries, and even the doctors were surprised at her resilience.

"She's one tough bird," Dr. Parks, one of her surgeons, said after completing her second surgery last year.

Granny was born in Chattanooga, Tenn., on March 30, 1923. She and Paw-Paw had five children — Mary, Sammy, Jackie, Sarah and Dianne (Mama) — and raised them all in that little white house on Andrews Lane. They both worked and later retired from Barwick carpet mill in Kensington.

As long as Paw-Paw had his coffee cup and crossword puzzles, and Granny had her dog, Booger, and frequent trips to the Dollar General, all was well in the Bowman household.

And yes, Granny's middle name was Midget.

"Papa (Granny's father) said she looked like a midget after she was born, and that became her middle name," Mama said. "That's what it said on her birth certificate."

It's hard to put into words how much impact Granny had on this world, but it's safe to say that we're all better because she was here.

And maybe, just maybe, there's a Dollar General beyond those Pearly Gates, where Granny can get anything she needs. I'm sure they'll have some crossword puzzles on sale, and she can take to the man she's been waiting to see.

Funeral Home Fire

A piece of history was lost last night when the 1880's house where Watkins & Sons Funeral Services operated on North Hill Street in Griffin was destroyed by fire. The cause of the fire was unknown.

No one was inside the business, and there were no bodies inside, said Griffin Fire Rescue Chief Tommy Jones. A fireman was injured when he fell down the stairs while fighting the fire, Jones said.

The wooden structure, combined with flammable materials inside created perfect conditions for a large fire. "The fuel load was incredible," Jones said. "It's an old structure and there were some chemicals inside, like embalming fluid, that made it worse."

"The home is almost as old as (Griffin) itself," Jones said. "You hate to see this happen, but you do the best you can."