Pachuta Insurance Blog

Remembrance Ceremony Held by Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center in Honor of Life-Saving Organ Donors

4/16/2019

Over the weekend, Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center held a flag-raising ceremony at Prince Tower One to honor the donors and recipients of life-saving organ donations.

Like many hospitals across the country, Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center participates in Donate Life Month every April. Candi Wiercioch, the director of cardiac and adult critical care services at the Athens Regional Health System, is responsible for helping to organize this ceremony.

Since 2009, the Donate Life America flag-raising ceremony has been a celebration of organ donors.

Donate Life Month encourages communities to bring attention to the importance of “organ, eye and tissue donors,” Wiercioch told The Red & Black.

More than 113,000 people nationwide are on the transplant waiting list with over 5,200 from Georgia alone, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Every 10 minutes, someone gets added to the waiting list and about 20 people die each day on the waiting list, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“We started about five years ago doing a remembrance ceremony in April,” Wiercioch said. “We have a Tree of Life, an actual wood carving, that was made by a UGA student for us.”

The Tree of Life was created by Juan Espinosa, a former student at the University of Georgia.

His brother was an organ donor, Wiercioch said.

Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center partnered with him through UGA’s art department and the tree was incorporated in 2017.

“We have gold leaves that we engrave with each donor name each year, so that’s where we start our ceremony,” Wiercioch said.

There are three parts to its Donate Life Ceremony including the remembrance ceremony beginning at the Tree of Life, continuing at the flagpole, where the hospital raises the Donate Life flag and then the ceremony moves to the Healing Lodge where an azalea tree is planted in honor of organ donors.

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From Canton to Athens: Georgia Family to Open Bruster's Ice Cream Franchise in Town

4/9/2019

Being frequent customers at Bruster’s Ice Cream in Canton, GA, Andrew Rowe’s family decided to sell their home and open the franchise in Athens after finding out that there wasn’t a location in the Classic City.

As reported in The Red & Black, the new Bruster’s ice cream shop will be off Epps Bridge Parkway and will be family-run. Rowe and his family — Pam, Natalie, and Alex Rowe — have plans to open the store this summer.

After much discussion with his daughter, Rowe thought Bruster’s was the best franchise for his family to work with.

“When I attended school here, there was not a Bruster’s in Athens, and I had talked to my friends and coworkers at that time, and they had mentioned that there was previously a Bruster’s in Athens years ago,” Natalie Rowe said.

Having worked in the corporate world for three decades, opening a Bruster’s has been an eye-opening experience for Rowe as he and his family went through the process of researching financial aspects including an estimate of the store's success and the process of acquiring real estate and finding a location.

The Rowes signed the contract to open a location of the franchise at the end of 2017.

Rowe said he thought the store would open earlier, and finding a location with a drive through and the right traffic was challenging.

Set to attend training at the Bruster’s headquarters in May, Rowe said most people don’t realize ice cream in Bruster’s is made fresh every day, and the Rowe family will have to learn how to serve and make the ice cream themselves.

“We’ll be certified ice cream makers,” Rowe said.

Although there have been some Bruster’s closings across the country in the last five years, Rowe isn’t worried about it.

“There’s always turnover in franchises, and things like that, and as I learned this, a lot of it has to do with the location you select and the type of store you open,” Rowe said.

Rowe said Bruster's is expanding to new markets, and there are nearly 200 stores open, with less than 60 in Georgia.

“I asked that question, I said, ‘Well, why is it so successful in Georgia?’ And the response I kept getting was, ‘The people in Georgia just love our ice cream,’” Rowe said.

With construction having started in January, the timeframe for opening is June.

The Bruster’s location plans on offering special promotions, such as Free Doggy Sundae and PJs day.

Rowe said he believes most of his employees will be high schoolers or UGA students.

Sophomore entertainment and media studies major Mollie Schilling is from Blairsville, Georgia said her hometown didn’t have a Bruster's location.

“I think it’s a good idea, and I might go to it because I like ice cream, and I like to try new things,” Schilling said.

Even though Rowe and his daughter are both UGA alumni, Rowe said he hasn’t lived in Athens since the mid-1980s.

“We got to learn Athens again, participate in the community, get to know folks out here, attend a lot of the athletic events [and] the cultural events,” Rowe said.

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After Nearly 8 Years in Athens, Vic’s Vintage to Close

4/2/2019

Vic’s Vintage, known for its large variety of vintage items including vinyl and furniture, is set to close up shop on June 1.

As reported in The Red&Black, Saucehouse Barbeque, which is the restaurant nextdoor, bought the lot and building for more parking spaces and to use the building as an event space, said owner Victor Peel, who hand picks his collection which tell a story.

“All in all, it's been a great ride having this store here. Meeting people, conversing with people telling us these stories all over the world, listening to their stories, meeting a lot of really cool people in here,” Peel said. “So things like that in my store, I’m going to miss that part.”

Vic’s Vintage first opened the shop on March 31, 2011, but Peel, also known as Vic, has been selling online on eBay when it was AuctionWeb in the 1990s. For nearly 20 years, he continues to sell items he has collected locally and overseas from his travels around the world.

As a Navy veteran, Peel traveled the world to places such as Singapore, Dubai, the Philippines, and Japan. While he lived in Japan after his retirement from the Navy, he became interested in antiques because of the country’s culture.

He bought items considered useless in Japan for cheap and flipped their value in the U.S. for a much higher price.

He needed shipping containers from how much he bought, which are on his lot. Now he must sell all his pieces at reduced prices since he has to leave the building by June 1.

Despite the physical location on 768 W. Broad St. will be no longer, Peel will sell all of his items on eBay and may even run a pop-up store due to the bulk of the furniture.

“Being a military man, we're used to things being a certain way, not so much change ... that's what I like about this place.” Peel said. “And so this is a change for me to make. And it's hard for me to let go … I grab things and like to hold things, and I am going through that transition now where you got to let go.”

Peel says the store closing is bittersweet because he will miss interacting with customers face to face but he will use his time to focus more on spending time with his family and traveling.

“I’ve been telling everyone that I’m going from Athens, Georgia to Athens, Greece on June 1 … but I’ll be back,” Peel joked.

Jacob Weinstein, a music education senior at the University of Georgia, is a collector of mid-century modern pieces and an avid customer at Vic’s Vintage. Weinstein, who collects mid-century radios, discovered the shop when he was a freshman at UGA.

“Some people might say, ‘Oh, it's a junk shop.’ Well, not really,” Weinstein said. “Every single thing in the shop Vic is picked up and it has some sort of meaning and purpose and is valuable for whatever reason.”

He has frequented Vic’s Vintage on the weekends when he has free time. The most memorable item he bought there was a Heritage Henredon dresser that he paid $400 for.

“I definitely think I really wish they could have stayed open in that location ... Because they're not just people that sell furniture,” Weinstein said. “Vic will take the time to teach you about what he has … going there is an educational experience … And so I'm going to miss that.”

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East Athens Little League Recently Celebrated its 50th Anniversary

3/26/2019

On Saturday, East Athens Little League (EALL) commemorated its past and present during opening ceremonies at Satterfield Park.

As reported in the Athens Banner-Herald, EALL celebrated its 50th anniversary by featuring current players, coaches and sponsors and longtime supporters of the program, which was once known as Athens International Little League for several years.

Presently, EALL has nearly 300 players, from ages 4 to 16, and teams from the softball, T-ball, Minor, Major and Challenger leagues flooded the field before the ceremonial first pitch, which was thrown out by Hardy Edwards IV on behalf of his father, Hardy Edwards III, who played in the first game at Satterfield Park in 1969.

“Back in the beginning of time – 1969 – I was the size of these 8 years old,” said the older Hardy, whose company Alpha D3 sponsors his son’s team. “There were three leagues in town – National, American, and when this started, International League. This field here was the most developed, the Major League field, but the Senior League field didn’t have an outfield fence, so if you hit a line drive, it would go all the way to the skating rink.”

Having thrown out the first pitch 50 years ago, Larry Day has been involved at Satterfield Park for much of his life.

“I played here, I coached here for 12 or 13 years and I’ve umpired here for the last 18 years, so I’ve been around here a little bit,” said Day. “I love it. East Athens needs more good things to
happen.”

Tom Phillippo, who has been around EALL for almost four decades reflected on the changes the league has experienced in that time.

“It’s been almost 40 years since I came out here for the first time and things have changed just a little bit,” he said. “When I started, we had three fields, field maintenance was done by the parents and practice was wherever you could find a field.”

“We now have five fields and practices at several of the schools. We’ve got softball back again and I’m really glad to see that. When I started out here, you had to be 8 years old to play. Now it’s 4 – the earlier we get them started the longer we’re going to keep them. I’ll be here another year or two, the Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

Throughout the 80-year history of Little League, several communities with ball parks as their centers have organically arisen, providing support and encouragement to young people who may not receive much of that in other areas of their lives.
“This place was somewhat of a safe haven for me,” said Erek Scoville, who has played and coached at EALL for 20 years. “I was able to find a lot of male role models that affected my life greatly and I am very grateful for this place.”

The history of EALL is revealed in the stories shared by longtime veterans and that history provides the foundation for the continued success of the league.

“It’s exciting to hear the stories from the people within the community,” said league president Courtney Redmond. “Tommy Epps was introduced to me and he’s never been a public sponsor of a team, but he’s been a private sponsor for players who might need a little extra help, which is fantastic, because he knows the difference you can make in a child’s life by supporting them and giving them confidence and building a family around the ballpark”

Pat Cuneo started coaching at EALL when his oldest son Ben was 6. Now 16-year-old Ben is his dad’s assistant coach on the Rookie League Vipers, 6-year-old Henry Cuneo’s team.

“We’ve had good, consistent participation over the years and it’s great environment,” said Cuneo the elder. “We’ve got kids from all different schools and all different parts of Clarke County coming together. With our team, everybody knew each other’s names and were forming friendships by the end of the first practice.”

At the end of the opening ceremonies, another year of baseball began in earnest at Satterfield Park.

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Children’s Garden at State Botanical Garden Recently Dedicated

3/19/2019

This Monday The State Botanical Garden of Georgia hosted several happy children as University of Georgia and Botanical Garden officials dedicated the new Alice H. Richards Children’s Garden.

As reported in the Athens Banner-Herald, more than 100 people attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony including Friends of the Garden, UGA administrators, garden employees, donors, and people who had worked on the garden. Most attendees brought their children or grandchildren, who excitedly ran in to do all the things there are to do in the new garden after the adults got through with their ceremony.

Designer Cameron Berglund of Koons Environmental Design took his three children through the 2.5-acre garden featuring fun and instructive things from the steel arch at the entrance to the stone map of Georgia and its major cities and rivers, slides and things to climb on, and a big button you can push to start a river. That button sends water flowing down a funnel on a wall showing the elevations of Georgia places and cities as the water flows down from high to low on the wall and the state along with some places in between such as Atlanta (1,050 feet above sea level) and Athens (636).

There’s also huge mushrooms, a replica of a famous cave, and a wall where actual fossils from millions of years ago are embedded.

“It was such a joy working on these things,” Berglund said.

The children’s garden will be open to the public Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the university expects a huge turnout.

Aside from parking areas within the garden, UGA plans to run shuttles on South Milledge Avenue from the nearby women’s soccer and softball fields and from a UGA equestrian facility.
Garden director Jenny Cruse-Sanders, UGA President Jere Morehead and Jim Richardson, representing the Richards family, briefly spoke before the children rushed from place to place.

“Imagine what Saturdays are going to be like,” Morehead said as he spoke.

Fundraising for the children’s garden began with a $1 million gift from Alice H. Richards’ family. Other contributors, including the entire Botanical Garden Staff and its entire advisory board, added an additional $4 million.

Jim Richards, one of Alice Richards’ seven children, spoke for the family, describing his mother’s passion for gardening.

As a member of the State Botanical Garden’s first board of advisors 50 years ago, his mother always had garden scissors near to hand, sometimes on her person, he recollected.

“She told me once of the importance of garden clubs as a fraternity for women,” he said.

His mother would love the new garden, a playground “which is really an outdoor classroom for children,” he said. “She would be amazed and delighted.”

The children’s garden will be open during the State Botanical Garden’s normal working hours, but garden educational specialists will also plan regular programs. Larger festivals are also planned, including this Saturday’s grand opening, which will include food trucks and special children’s activities along with musicians, aerialists and other performers.

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UGA Junior Faculty Receive Early Career Awards And Set Example For Young Researchers

3/12/2019

UGA’s junior faculty has a lot to be proud of as they have reached milestones to be celebrated early in their careers in academia.

As reported in The Red & Black, three assistant professors have recently received awards and honors in recognition of their early career work at the university.

Assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Katie Ehrlich, is one of eight recipients of the Association for Psychological Science Janet Taylor Spence Award, which recognizes researchers early in their careers who cross traditional sub-disciplinary lines in psychological sciences.

Ehrlich’s work explores new methods to attain health outcomes in children including seeing how kids are responding to vaccines and if this response is connected to other stressors going on in their lives.

Emphasizing the value of mentorship in academia, Ehrlich said she was nominated for this award by a graduate school mentor. She also had advice to share for young scientists and graduate students.

“You never know what projects are going to work out and which things are going to be a dud,” Ehrlich said. “Persevering through some of those challenges is important. So you really can’t get discouraged by those.”

There was also two UGA assistant professors who won an award, which was the 2019 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. This fellowship is awarded to researchers as recognition for distinguished performance and a potential to make major contributions to their field, according to the Sloan Foundation.

Rachel Roberts-Galbraith is an assistant professor at the Department of Cellular Biology and the first UGA faculty member to win this prestigious award in the field of neuroscience.

“It’s really exciting as a junior faculty because this really shows that people are valuing the work that we’re trying to do,” Roberts-Galbraith said.

Roberts-Galbraith’s lab studies flatworms with regenerative abilities. She wishes to understand how this regeneration works in nature will improve treatments for neurological diseases in the future.

The other UGA recipient of the Sloan Fellowship was Elizabeth Harvey, an assistant professor at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah. Harvey said she hopes this fellowship would bring positive things to UGA as she mentioned the importance of the university’s support to her research.

“I’ve … felt supported all along the way in doing my research and I hope it encourages other people to apply for fellowships like this,” Harvey said.

Harvey studies how a single-celled plant called phytoplankton dies in the ocean. Harvey said phytoplankton are important because they act as the base of the marine food web, and they contribute to almost half the oxygen humans breathe.

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University of Michigan’s Jack Hu to be UGA’s New Provost and Academic Affairs VP

3/5/2019

University of Georgia President Jere Morehead recruited another Michigan resident to take over UGA’s no. 2 administrative position.

As reported in The Athens Banner-Herald, the university recently announced that Jack Hu, the University of Michigan’s vice president for research, will become UGA’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. He is scheduled to begin July 1.

Hu is replacing Pamela Whitten, who came to UGA from Michigan State University to take over for Morehead as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.

Whitten left her position last July to become president of Kennesaw State University. Libby Morris, director of the UGA Institute of Higher Education, has been interim provost since Whitten’s departure.

Hu has the experience “to continue elevating our national prominence in research, innovation and graduate education while building on our superior undergraduate learning environment,” Morehead said in a prepared statement.

Hu, whose academic background is in mechanical engineering and manufacturing, also holds an endowed faculty chair in manufacturing at the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering and was also associate dean for academic affairs and associate dean for research and graduate education in Michigan’s engineering college.

In recent years, UGA’s new engineering school has been UGA’s fastest-growing college, and UGA administrators have targeted it in initiatives designed to develop more research revenue.

The University of Michigan spent about $1.5 billion on research and development in the 2017 fiscal year, the second-highest total of any U.S. university, according to National Science Foundation statistics.

Hu was one of four finalists chosen by a 24-member search committee chaired by Denise Spangler, dean of the UGA College of Education, and Benjamin Ayers, dean of the Terry College of Business. Each finalist gave presentations last month at the UGA campus.

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GymDogs Aim to Replicate home-meet Routines at Away Competitions

2/26/2019

The Georgia gymnastics team is currently away from the comfort of Stegeman Coliseum for several weeks.

As reported in The Red & Black, after scoring 197 or over in its last three home meets, last Friday the Georgia GymDogs embarked on the first leg of their three-week road trip in Gainesville, where it upset No. 3 Florida and concluded the meet with a 197.45, its highest away score of the season by over a point.

According to the GymDogs, their strategy for continued success is how they have been traveling with portable components of a typical home competition including maintaining their pre-meet routine, creating their own version of a home-crowd atmosphere and remaining focused in spite of road meet changes.

“This whole year is going to just be a growth process for them in so many ways,” head coach Courtney Kupets Carter said. “One of them is bringing the energy and comfort they feel in Stegeman, [taking] the fan energy, how fun it is, to an away meet, because it’s very different.”

Before any competition, the GymDogs bond with pre-meet preparations that include listening to rap music to get the athletes hyped up.

“We keep our music going and our joking around and helping each other,” junior Sabrina Vega said. “It keeps us normal.”

Besides the travel, the away meet adds pressure to the competition since the gymnasts notice little to no enthusiasm from crowds cheering for their opponent, which is why they create their own support base on the floor.

“We definitely try to bring the energy from Bulldog nation to the away meets,” freshman Rachel Baumann said. “We cheer as loud as we can, just try to dance, have fun, get loose, but also try to focus in on ourselves, keep a bubble around the team.”

Some of the most notable differences between a home meet and an away meet are the shifts of the event order. When Georgia’s at home, it starts on vault, then rotates to bars, beam and floor. In an away meet, Georgia begins on bars moving on to vault, floor and beam.

Baumann, who competes on both floor and beam, it’s almost irrelevant which event comes first.
“[On] floor, I like to bring the energy,” Baumann said. “But I also like to be fierce, and I like to be the same on beam. So for me, it’s not as much of a transition, but more of like ‘OK, do what you need to do to focus on the beam, what you need to focus on floor.’”

Kupets Carter sees the value in the long stretch of away meets for her team’s development, as they keep showing improvement away from home.

“We get one [away meet] after the other,” Kupets Carter said. “They are ready to go on the road. They have all of those little pieces in their belt now in terms of readiness… It’s the end of the season where they’re confident in their gymnastics, so the scores will be where they need to be away.”

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World Leaders Guide International Students During Transition to UGA as Temporary Home

2/19/2019

Any first-year student may have a hard time navigating campus, but international students coming to the University of Georgia may encounter more challenges during their first week of school.

As reported in The Red & Black, that’s when the Department of International Student Life has jumped in to help make the transition as smooth as possible through their World Leaders Program.

During international student orientation, world leaders welcome all new international University of Georgia students by providing guidance when exploring a new campus and new country.

Sai Nagula, a senior coordinator at the Department of International Student Life at UGA, who was born in India but moved to the U.S. at a young age recognizes the challenges that international students deal with as they transition to a new culture during their college years.

“I definitely understand that it’s a lot more challenging as an international student to come to the U.S. … because you’ve spent most of your life in a certain country and now you’re trying to adjust to the U.S. system and the U.S. culture,” Nagula said. “Personally, I think [international students] have it a little bit more challenging as students, whereas I came at a young age.”

Nagula remembers how he got involved with ISL and the World Leaders program in his first year at UGA. After seeing an announcement for the program, he decided to apply for a position.
Nagula served as a World Leader and a Senior World Leader.

Justin Jeffery, the director of ISL, said the program places current students as a peer resource for international students that are enrolling at UGA each fall and spring semester.

“The students that are World Leaders are the most closely situated to the realities of what it means to be a UGA student,” Jeffery said. “Many of our World Leaders are international students, so they have that proximity to the reality of what the international students that are incoming are going to experience.”

Jeffery said World Leaders are picked in January and go through training until they serve their primary role providing guidance to international students during the international student orientation. He calls this job a “lifetime commitment,” hoping that the students who take on the responsibility of working in the program understand the long-term peer connections being made in the process.

“And that’s what usually brings people in, with the interest is that they are generally interested in not only helping people, but they want to create a connection that spans more than even their UGA career,” Jeffery said.

Noor Khan, a UGA sophomore studying health promotion, is one of this year’s World Leaders. She said she learned about the program while working as an office assistant for ISL.

“Through ISL, I kind of seen how we interact with students and what kind of opportunities we give them,” Khan said. “I really liked and appreciated the kind of efforts [ISL] puts forward for international students.”

Khan also said as a World Leader, she hopes to be a guide for international students and to be there for them as a resource.

“You play an important role in their transition, from coming from a foreign country and having to adjust to, not just the United States life, [but] specifically Athens, Georgia,” Khan said. “You help them realize … they also belong here, they also have a role to play in this community.”

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UGA Fraternity Quickly Raises Thousands of Dollars After GCSU Theta Chi House Fire That Displaced Students

2/12/2019

Over the weekend on Feb. 10, a fire consumed the two-story Theta Chi fraternity house in Milledgeville, which ended up displacing Georgia College & State University students who lived at the residence.

As reported in The Red & Black, the 10 residents were able to escape the fire unscathed, but the house had significant damage and much of the fraternity members' belongings were destroyed, according to the Milledgeville Fire Department.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, according to WGXA.

The Theta Chi chapter at UGA addressed their support for their brothers in a national statement shared with The Red & Black.

“The Fraternity is grateful to the large number of individuals who have already reached out and asks that all keep the men of the Iota Xi Chapter at Georgia College in their thoughts tonight and in the days ahead,” the official statement said.

Soon after the fire, there was an outpouring of support for the fraternity in which Pi Kappa Phi member Blake Cavender organized a fundraiser with a $1000 goal, which was surpassed. Cavender said he has kept raising the goal to encourage more donations.

Since the GoFundMe was posted on Sunday, the fundraisers have received more than $28,000 in donations from the community.

“The support they have received has blown my mind and is absolutely amazing,” Cavender said about Theta Chi.

Students and community members offered their consolation and spread the word about the fundraising efforts all over social media.

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