Friday, December 13, 2002

Teacher returns from military duty

By MONROE ROARK
mroark@TheCitizenNews.com

A veteran Fayette County teacher has been welcomed back to the classroom after some time on active military duty.

Charles Buckle returned to his teaching duties Dec. 2, school system spokesperson Melinda Berry-Dreisbach said. The Fayette County Board of Education officially approved his return at a meeting Tuesday morning.

Buckle, who has spent more than two decades teaching history and government to Fayette students, was called to active duty a couple of months after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. It was not an unexpected move, and he began preparing his classes just before final exams near the end of the fall 2001 semester.

He received his activation orders three weeks after last year's Christmas break, and became the first reservist to be called to active duty from the school system since the war on terrorism began.

Buckle is a U.S. history teacher at McIntosh High School, where his wife heads the physical education department. He is also a sergeant major with the 335th Theater Signal Command out of Fort McPherson. He served under the command of Maj. Gen. Lowell Detamore, a Peachtree City resident who has had three children graduate from Fayette's school system two of whom have been students in Buckle's classes at McIntosh in the last several years.

Buckle has been an Army Reservist for 25 years. He served at the 81st ARCOM headquarters during the Persian Gulf War.

In another personnel move, the school board Tuesday officially accepted the resignation of Sandy Creek teacher and former coach Damian Belvedere. He was arrested Nov. 22 at the school and charged with two misdemeanor counts of distributing obscene materials and one count of public indecency.

According to police, Belvedere was caught by sheriff's detectives using a webcam on a computer in his classroom to display a "sex act" via the Internet. There were no students or juveniles involved, police said. He was released on $15,000 bond.


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