Features

The Sentinel-News, since 2008 has honored at year’s end five Shelby Countians we think have had a significant impact on our community during this year. We sought your nominations on our Facebook page, and we believe each person – or in one case, team – selected for what we call Shelby County’s Fabulous 5 has in his or her own way left an imprint that merits our honoring and emulating, represents a broad spectrum of a diverse society and truly is one of the best of our best.

Steve Eden

Mayor of Simpsonville

Heads together, giggling, surrounded by the smell of gingerbread and the sound of carols playing softly in the background, Janice Harris and Tyra Beach reminisced at a Christmas party two weeks ago about a Karaoke session they had attended at a Shelbyville restaurant.

Harris: “You did sing.”

Beach: “Did not.”

Harris: “Did too, and I have the pictures to prove it.”

Beach: “Well, I just did some backup.”

Everyone has a favorite part of the holiday season.

Some enjoy giving gifts, others the parties and festivities. But from the children to Santa, there is one important piece of the holiday season that everyone looks forward to – the food.

And what takes center stage?

The Christmas ham shares its time with Easter, the turkey with Thanksgiving, the trimmings with every holiday – although I think we would all agree that mac-and-cheese should share more dinner tables.

On Thanksgiving Day, while driving to visit relatives, it took my wife and me an hour and a half to finish thanking God for all the blessings in our life.

One of the biggest gratitudes for me was that that day was my 30th “birthday” of my new life in sobriety and recovery. It was not until my third year of recovery that I could see that its blessings were going to outweigh the pleasures and comforts I had gotten from my two addictive habits.

Walking into the home of Al and Goldie Smith at Christmastime could either be a child’s dream or an adult’s delight, with four large Christmas trees, red and white poinsettias placed throughout the home, and two vases of brilliant green holly with bright red berries on the fireplace mantel.

“Those aren’t fake. We grow them right here,” Smith said, pointing to the holly.

The living room contains two of the trees, one of them a stately Christmas tree at the entrance with a smaller, silver Christmas tree at the other end of the room.

SIMPSONVILLE – The crowd was small Tuesday night at the community Thanksgiving worship service held at Simpsonville Christian Church, but the message was powerful – count your blessings.

Ric Holladay, minister of Simpsonville United Methodist Church, delivered that message to the 65 or so people who gathered in the candlelit sanctuary as the first snowfall of the year fell gently outside, blanketing the world in white, fluffy arms.

As we gather around tables to feast on turkey with all the trimmings and give thanks for what’s important in our lives, it just may be that out in the woods behind the house those turkeys that found a way to stay in the wild and avoid the ovens are giving thanks for being dropped back in Shelby County.

A rural community filled with outdoorsmen, there is no doubt that in this county many of the centerpiece turkeys have been hunted and harvested by someone sitting at that table, but not too long ago that wouldn’t have been possible.

On a Friday afternoon, 50 years ago today, an American tragedy unfolded in the downtown streets of Dallas. The moment when an assassin’s bullet took the life of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and in so many ways changed the course of American history is not something anyone alive that day can forget.

In fact, it has become the most significant “I remember that day” anecdote that men and women have passed down through the generations, through oral histories, written memories or simply reliving the moment through media presentations.

Christmas – that magical time of year that children dream of all year long – is just around the corner, and some charitable organizations are struggling to come up with enough money to make sure that children around the county will have a gift on Christmas morning.

Officials of one event that has been instrumental in providing gifts for children in need during the past decade said that funds are down by 50 percent this year, a situation that means that some children who received gifts last year may not receive anything this year unless more donations come in.