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Replica of D-Day cemetery asks: Who is the hero of your story?

by Michelle Hiskey

For the past nine years, at the end of May, one man’s yard in northeast Atlanta quietly turns into a replica of a World War II cemetery in France. He covers his immaculately trimmed zoysia lawn on Ridgewood Drive with carefully-place white crosses in honor of D-Day.

David T. Maddlone, who works at nearby Emory University, always sets up in time for Memorial Day. He wants people not to forget 10,000 men who died on June 6, 1944. When asked to give everything to a cause much bigger than themselves, they answered yes.

Their answer poses this question today: What does it take for someone to be a hero like that — to risk one’s life for a greater good?

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While battling Vietnam scars, memoirist receives nearly $5,000 in city water fight

by Michelle Hiskey

While Christal Presley was uncovering her and her father’s scars from his service in Vietnam, she also ended up unearthing subterranean trouble familiar to other city of Atlanta homeowners:

Water meter problems.

Despite minimal water each month, and even in a city beset by the highest combined water and sewage bills in the country, Presley’s bills were about double her neighbors’.

To write her book and solve her water problems, she had to probe what for too long had seemed normal.

Answers came from questioning authorities – first her own father, and then the city of Atlanta.

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For Mother’s Day, honoring the singular toughness of Rochelle Bozman

by Michelle Hiskey

(Michelle is on vacation, so this column is a hold-over from last week)

Rochelle Bozman wasn’t a traditional mom, or traditional single mom. But she knew she didn’t need to be.

Ten years ago, Bozman sought to adopt a kid who was hard to place. She prepared a room for an African-American boy aged 7 to 10. But a social worker called one day asking if she could come to Grady Memorial Hospital right away to pick up a newborn.

Before she lost her struggle with ovarian cancer, Bozman raised her son with a singular toughness, and in the end arranged a new family for him.

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Limelight’s notorious hustle returns in new Buckhead mural, book

by Michelle Hiskey

The disco era took a lot of secrets with it, because no cell phones or pocket cameras were around to record the evidence of today. Today, Atlanta’s most infamous disco is back after 25 years – resurrected through a bright mural in Buckhead and a new book of 1980s photos that weren’t too risqué to publish.

Documented in “Limelight … in a sixtieth of a second,” are the nearly naked patrons of the club’s “Bare as You Dare Night… the skimpy loincloths of Jungle Night … the live female mannequins stretched out on a buffet table, covered with whipped cream.
“Indulgence. Excessive. Flamboyant,” said mural artist Dax, when asked to describe the disco era through his palette of neon colors.

“It was a very artistic, creative time,” club photographer Guy D’Alema said. “It’s interesting that art is now paying tribute back to the club. It’s come full circle.”

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For Decatur’s Intown Hardware, family and creativity will survive Wal-Mart

by Michelle Hiskey

When big-box Wal-Mart announced plans to move into indie-minded Decatur, neighbors mobilized protests.

A legal campaign began. Anti-Wal-Mart yard signs popped up. Across the road from the planned development, Tony Powers keeps the keen eye and taste that has made his family business – Intown Ace Hardware – survive and succeed.

As the world gets more homogeneous, his answer is a more diverse identity. His store’s evolving eclecticism mirrors the funky flowering of Decatur itself.

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Gary Edwards challenges stereotypes of accountants – and stereotyping in general

by Michelle Hiskey

It’s that season of certainty – tax season, representing one element of life we can all truly count on. And those who do the counting for us—accountants—are similarly bound by stereotypes: suits and numbers, professionally bound to never deviate from a norm.

Then there’s Gary Edwards, who naturally draws attention with his South African accent. His charisma builds as he tells stories from his world travels and shares insight about building friendships an increasingly global industry.

But he’s more than a stereotype buster. He’s also had his own assumptions shattered.

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Away from Facebook’s social circle, a connection to sacred circles

by Michelle Hiskey

This is the last week for “Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism” at Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum. Through May 6, “The Sacred Round: Mandalas by the Patients of Carl Jung” is on exhibit at the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art.

These kaleidoscopic circles offer a way to greater mindfulness that is so easy to lose – and thus so much more valuable — in today’s swirl of information, networks and distractions. In the age of technology, a mandala is a simple tool for staying focused.

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Common ground with the homeless raised as Easter approaches

by Michelle Hiskey

Regardless of religion, we all are equaled through humbling moments.

The Palm Sunday service at the Church of the Common Ground in Woodruff Park repeatedly chipped at the gap between the homeless worshippers and those who were much better .

Staring into a street person’s face to see the face of Christ is a stark discovery of one’s own neediness – for status, approval and fleeting comforts.

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Through writing and golf, Furman Bisher taught about life and death

by Michelle Hiskey

When Furman Bisher came into my life in 1986, I was fresh out of college, a whippersnapper sportswriter in awe of the legendary Atlanta Journal columnist. Aged 68, he seemed positively ancient.

Over the next quarter century, I studied the way he worked and wrote, and we became friends through our shared interest in golf – a sport that connects people of diverse ages and abilities.

When “the Bish” died a week ago, to me he was a young 93, because he changed my view of what it meant to grow old.

He did this by example — by living and writing the way he played golf.

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Andrew Crawford’s metal gates are passages of his own creative risks

by Michelle Hiskey

A garden gate by Andrew T. Crawford is a frame of beauty and a joy of metal.

It’s also a sign of the artist’s mid-career transformation.
Eleven of Andrew T. Crawford’s organically inspired gates frame the daffodils, tulips and hyacinths in the current exhibit, “Atlanta Blooms: 300,000 Watts of Flower Power” at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, through April. “I learned that you can change how you do something without changing what you do,” said the successful blacksmith who switched gears into more sculpture art at age 40. “Because of that freedom, I’ve done more honest work and met with more success.”

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Coyotes: Wily, hungry and attracted to Atlanta’s buffet of outdoor cats

by Michelle Hiskey

For those who link the ki-yotes’ plaintive howl to the romance of an old Western — the distant soundtrack as the cowpokes tell stories around the campfire – forget all that.

Coyotes’ story in urban Atlanta is about pests, pets and prevention.

Last week, Dr. Chris Mowry, a biologist from north Georgia who has studied coyotes, described their gritty survival skills to a crowd gathered at Fernbank Science Center for a forum titled, “How can humans and coyotes co-exist?”

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After quake, Braves pitcher Buddy Carlyle’s family helps stabilize Japanese single mom

by Michelle Hiskey

After 17 years in pro baseball, the Carlyles are used to rapid shifts in the foundation of their family’s life.

That’s why their family supporters are so precious to them, and that’s why when the earthquake shook Japan on March 11, 2011, the Carlyles pitched in to care for Akane Nakagawa, the single mom who had cared for them, and for her community that suddenly, desperately needed help.

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Georgia family with 14 children gives back through basketball fundraiser

by Michelle Hiskey

On Saturday at 7 pm at St. Pius X Catholic High School gymnasium, you can see a team of local lawyers show up on a different court against a squad of Atlanta doctors with a prescription for winning.

The game, billed as “Jawbones vs. Sawbones,” will be played the weekend before the ACC college basketball tournament in Philips Arena. March Madness kicks off with a bit of March Malpractice.

“I hope their cardiologist brings his paddles,” one lawyer joked in an email.

The game benefits Side by Side Clubhouse, a day program for people who have experienced traumatic brain injury – a population that has swelled with returning troops. Brain injuries have also become more publicized through athletic concussions.

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Jimmy Carter, Jason Carter inspired by matriarchs and family values

by Michelle Hiskey

The two men, connected by a last name and DNA, separated by two generations and different dreams, together reflected on the forces that have driven their family.

Driven Jimmy Carter past national vilification for his presidential failures, driven him into the humanitarian work that has changed the world, and driven his grandson to appreciate the example set by the older generations – especially the women behind the men.

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Off the rollercoaster, Ben Dempsey loses 165 pounds

by Michelle Hiskey

Ben Dempsey says of his lifelong battle against overeating,

“I had done all kinds of strange diets, like eating tofu straight for six weeks, but when I lost 30 pounds, I would gain 40. At the rate I was going, I would have weighed 420 pounds today.”

From his work in physical therapy, he knew change was possible if he could just slip that elusive mental switch.

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Mitchell Anderson’s method of success: From actor to chef to actor

by Michelle Hiskey

Last fall, Mitchell Anderson decided to revive his acting career in “Next Fall,” now playing at Actor’s Express on Atlanta’s west side.

After a successful TV and movie resume – you may have seen him in the series “Party of Five” or as Richard Carpenter in “The Karen Carpenter Story,” or as the kid who got eaten by a shark in “Jaws” — Anderson had left Hollywood to settle into a new life in Atlanta.

An apprenticeship in the kitchen of Jenny “Souper Jenny” Levison led to him opening his own restaurant, Metrofresh in Midtown, and a spin-off bistro at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

At 50, his culinary stage kept him plenty busy – but what pulled him back to acting was what he loved about cooking, too: friendships and a unique, exquisite creation.

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A cold January Monday, a family journey to Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in D.C.

by Michelle Hiskey

Describing a recent, resonant visit to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington D.C.:

“Against a brilliant sky rose King, almost three stories high, partially emerged from the stone, his arms crossed and eyes to the horizon. The chill seemed to bring him even more in relief, the sculptor’s lines more edgy, bare as the young trees nearby.”

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Atlanta Muppeteer Peter Linz fulfills quest for identity with Walter’s fame

by Michelle Hiskey

Atlanta native Peter Linz talks about finding his identity by becoming a Muppeteer:

“The character of Walter hits really close to home for me. I’ve always been an enormous Muppet fan who dreamed of one day working with the Muppets, and that’s basically who Walter is. How flipping crazy is that? It’s mind-blowing. I could have been cast as a monster or a chicken or someone’s right hand, but instead, I got cast to play the guy who is the world’s biggest Muppet fan who literally dreams of working with the Muppets. Apart from my wedding day and birth of my children, being cast as Walter, was one of the greatest moments of my life. I was beyond happiness.”

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