A charity that helps feed down and out Fayette Countians is itself down and out — of food and charitable family items — and needs your help.

I'm going to stay with the McWhorters this week since I recently got involved in a volley of messages on the McWhorter email list. This Allen M. McWhorter was a relative of Laura McWhorter Thompson Stowers of last week's article since he was the much younger half-brother of Laura's grandfather, Moses McWhorter and, therefore, the uncle of Laura's father, Leroy McWhorter. However, since Allen was the child of a second marriage, he (b. 1795) and his nephew, Leroy (b. 1797,) were close to the same age.

Russia. Georgia. A lot has been made on both sides about the reasons why Russia made its move past the South Ossetia breakaway region and continued its march to Gori in the central part of the country and to Poti on the Black Sea coast. The reasons appear to be several, though at least one of those has received virtually no media coverage.

I was so excited last week after receiving a reply to a message I had left on Rootsweb back in 2001 about my McWhorter family.

Some of you may know that I have this huge, sprawling family tree (nearly 20,000 people) on Rootsweb's WorldConnect Project and, by default, on Ancestry's World Tree. Many people in it are relatives and some are not. We call these semi-related and non-related families "collateral" and "allied" families because they are either related through marriage or connected through other means.

I'm going to pick up on a family from last week - James and Mary Herndon Norris, a member of the Norris family of Walton, Gwinnett, Fayette, Campbell, Douglas and Cobb counties. When I mentioned them a couple of weeks ago I had no idea that someone would pick up on this particular couple. I was thrilled. I had very little myself. But Pat Vermeer wrote and gave us a little more information for which I am very grateful. Let me give you a little of what I have, then I'll tell you some of what Pat said.

“You’re where? Why on earth would you be in San Francisco? It’s 10 o’clock here. That makes it the crack of dawn there.”

“All government, of right, originates with the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole. Public officers are the trustees and servants of the people and are at all times amenable to them.” — (Constitution of Georgia of 1983, Article I, Section II, Paragraph I.)

Sheriff — Wayne Hannah

District attorney — Scott Ballard

County Commission — Peter Pfeifer, Greg Dunn and Bob Fuhrman

By ELLIE WHITE-STEVENS

This Republican primary I’m working with 10 of our candidates on their advertising. Some of them chose to answer The Citizen’s questions for the online forum, some did not. While I’ve had my say in a lot of their advertising strategy, I’d like to approach them, and the other candidates, with some media advice from a professional.

This week's story was written by Sandra Moody of Sharpsburg. Because of space limitations, I had to edit some of her details. If you will write to Sandra, she can send you the full, unedited version. Sandra writes:

Oil over $140 a barrel, with OPEC announcing that it could go to $200 within a couple of years (did they mean months?).

I do apologize for the interruption in the genealogy columns but it was unavoidable. Most of you are aware that last March I was diagnosed with breast cancer and, after talking with several experts, decided on surgery to get rid of it once and for all. The surgery was done on June 3 and I am happy to report that all is well. Recuperation will take a while but all the cancer is gone (along with a goodly portion of me). My granddaughter, Jadie, came down from Covington to stay with me as she did after the open heart surgery a couple of years ago, and I couldn't have come back so fast without her. She is an amazing young lady.

When summer time hits and the high school ball fields are empty, the sports pages need to be filled. We receive news of little league baseball teams, soccer teams, roller hockey teams, swimmers, golfers, drivers of all ages and track athletes. In addition to all of these stories, my colleague Kevin Wandra and I have started a summer tradition of challenging each other to sporting activities around the county and seeing how we stack up. Last year, we went miniature golfing at DixieLand Fun Park. I won the first course and Kevin won the second, also eking out a one-stroke overall win.

This column is a continuation from the one I began last week. It’s meant to address the belief that this nation is in a condition of economic slavery and why apathy is not the answer to that condition.

Local politics is relevant and important. But, sooner rather than later, national and international issues quickly find their way to your front door.

That headline, while clever, is a little misleading. I am the one trying to get fit with the new Wii Fit. My wife is already in great shape. Just two months after the birth of our daughter, she is already back to her weight before we even had kids. And yes, I am more than a little jealous. I enjoyed all the sympathy weight gain while she was pregnant with our son, Colin (another brownie sundae, dear?), but didn’t get to enjoy any of the calorie draining breast-feeding after he was born.

I don’t normally continue a column from one week to the next. But last week’s column on government accountability and transparency and the need to televise or otherwise have a video recording of public meetings with playback capability deserves a bit more elaboration.

Again, we're going in a different direction this week with a story on the Terry family written and submitted by Nancy Jones Cornell of Fairburn. Nancy is president of the Old Campbell County Historical Society based in Fairburn and her roots go deep into Campbell County, a county no longer on the Georgia map but now the southern part of Fulton County. Campbell merged with Fulton in 1932, as did Milton County, on the north side.

We have a problem. The problem is local, national and global. Here in America, as elsewhere, we are being held hostage to forces out of our control, forces committed to having us reduced to economic slavery over the control of energy that sits outside the reach of our current thinking.

There's a couple more Owen and Cole families I want to cover but several emails have come in and I need to get them out there so you guys can help these folks, if you can. It's also time to give the link again for the really old columns going back to 2001 that no longer come up on a search. The Riggins letter came from one of those old columns, although I don't know how the writer found it.

Remember when Mother’s Day was a simple affair? The kids woke Mom up with breakfast in bed — Froot Loops floating on a sea of slightly pink milk — and handmade cards.

The Citizen has certainly done its share of picking on The Frederick Brown Jr. Amphitheater in the past and not without reason (semi-annual REO Speedwagon/Foreigner shows anyone?), but the kick-off to the 2008 Summer Concert Series was fantastic.

We're going to jump back to another Cole family this week because I sort of left them hanging out there in left field a few weeks ago. If you will go back to the "Chasing Jesse Cole …" story you will see that I had only two children from his first family with Elizabeth Crawford - Robert S. and William Thomas Cole - when the census indicated more.

[A rebuttal letter follows this column.]

A Column of Opinion — I’ve voted Republican for a quarter century, but I’m wishing I had some choices other than loony Democrats and hardcore “looking out for number one” Libertarians.

Latest exhibit: Senate Bill 458. Here is where ideological theory got pounded by political reality.

And its aftermath demonstrates how our GOP leaders — including senators Ronnie Chance (R-Tyrone) and Mitch Seabaugh (R-Sharpsburg), who are hard at work covering their posteriors before elections later this year — just don’t get it.

Last week's column on Richard Cole brought a response all the way from California. Bob Johnston, who has contributed many interesting tidbits of information to the column over the years, did not have anything on Richard's parents but did have information on his children.

I forgot how small babies are when they are first born.

Our son, Colin, will be three years old at the end of April and he looks like a giant compared to his baby sister, Nora. When he holds her and tries to pat her head I am reminded of the giant in the Bugs Bunny cartoons, expecting him to start hugging and squeezing and calling his sister George at any minute.

This column is going to have both questions and miscellaneous facts since I'm curious, myself, about this Richard Cole. He appears in Coweta very early (1829) and I am trying to find out whether he is connected to the other Coles who were here … descendants of Robert Cole and Elizabeth Fambrough, or perhaps related to that Robert Cole somehow. Frankly, I have no idea at this point and I'm hoping someone out there can fill in the blanks. From Coweta court records, I know he was married to Susan Vance but I don't know where the marriage took place.

The story about Jesse Cole last week brought several responses I'd like to share with you on the Fambrough and Parks families. The Barnett tidbits came from an unexpected find in the estate records.