A letter to GHS fans from the head coach

Dear Gaffney High Fans:

We would like to take this opportunity to wholeheartedly thank you for your support this year during our tremendous football season.

We are very fortunate to have fans who are passionate about football and about the success of our athletic programs at Gaffney High School. We appreciate your patronage and hope that it will continue on through Saturday and for the remainder of the athletic season this year.

In the event we are victorious on Saturday, we would appreciate the first opportunity for you to purchase championship merchandise from the Gaffney High School Athletic Department to help defray the expense of championship rings and items for our players, coaches, cheerleaders and support staff. We will have hoodies, sweatshirts, longand short-sleeved T-shirts and hats on sale at the school next week for you to purchase.

Again, thank you so much for your support and we will see you in Columbia.

Sincerely,

Phil Strickland

Gaffney High Head Football Coach

God chose to perform a miracle in writer’s life

Dear Editor:

I would like to take this time to thank the wonderful people of Cherokee and surrounding counties for all the prayers during my six weeks of hospitalization at Upstate Carolina Medical Center and Carolinas Medical Center, where I was airlifted after 11 days.

I was fighting for my life and my family was told several times that I didn’t have much of a chance of making it. I received 54 units of blood and underwent three surgeries in three weeks.

I believe that because of all the consistent prayers that God chose to perform a miracle and I’m now doing well. I thank everyone who donated blood. I also thank my pastor, Delos Blanton, for all the time he spent with my family and at the hospital. It meant so much to us. Thank you to my church family for their prayers, cards, calls and visits; and to all our friends for the loyal support and concern.

Thank you to the First Responders and EMS medics who answered my 9-1-1 call so promptly and to all the nurses who were so wonderful to me and my family.

Last but not least, thank you to Dr. Christopher Bailey who spent many long hours by my side working hard to keep me alive.

If I have left anyone out, whatever the part, I’m so sorry because to all of you, my family and I will forever be grateful. To God be the glory.

May God bless each of you,

Gladys Solmon

Student wishes her dad would stop drinking

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The following item was written as a school assignment asking the student to identify with a character in a story.)

Today I am going to tell you about my connection in my book, it is about a girl and her father. Her dad smokes and she tries putting signs up saying “No Smoking” but it does not work.

This kind of connects to my dad’s life. He also smokes but drinking is his biggest problem. I try to get him to stop but everything I do does not work. I really do not want him to die but if he does, I will remember what I tried to do. It wasn’t my choice; it was his. It’s the good or the bad and he is choosing the bad.

Name withheld

Teresa at the DOT office gets a commendation

Dear Editor:

I want to commend Teresa at the Department of Transportation.

I called about a dead tree on Old Post Road that had big limbs that were breaking off and falling on the highway. I travel this road every day going to work and noticed the tree and called the DOT. Within one week the tree was removed. Congratulations on a job well done.

Harry Washburn Boiling Springs, NC