Feast to Famine

***Update on 08/09/06: Blogger (the program, not the user) is apparantly having some sort of issues. I have tried to update twice, but it is not coming up on the blog home page. Try clicking here for the latest entry.***

If you hang around WTOK long enough you'll hear a lot of things come out of Lindsey Hall's mouth. One of his favorite sayings has got to be "We're about to go from Feast to Famine." He is usually talking about the start of summer. In local sports there isn't a whole lot going on once schools let out for the summer. So, what had been a busy time becomes slow.

The famine also hit the news department this weekend. There are a couple of things happening, but for the most part it will be a long, slow weekend. Tonight, of course, is the big Travis Tritt concert over at the Ag-Center. We'll have more from this show on Newscenter 11 at Ten on Sunday.

But tonight, my story will be about the Shriners. This morning, they had a parade that was--as the Potentate of the Hamasa Shriners, Bill West, put it--their fun time. Lots of motorcycles, go karts, and clowns were parading through downtown Meridian. The Shriners are an organization that many people don't know a whole lot about. Tonight we'll look at why they have this parade and what the Shriners do.

On a personal note...The Royals won last night at the Yankess ending their 13-game losing streak. I keep hoping that the Royals will turn the corner and get back to the Royals-of-old. One thing that most Royals fans will agree needs to happen is for the general manager (Allard Baird) to be fired. It looks like that is about to happen. The Royals have offered the job to Dayton Moore. Moore is the assistant general manager for baseball operations for the Braves. He is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the Braves' scouting and player development. This is an area where the Royals fail. Their farm system is not exactly high quality. Even if the Royals and Moore cannot reach an agreement soon, the team has a few other candidates waiting in the wings.

And it's good to see the Braves back in second place in the East. I didn't get to see yesterday's game, but from what I hear it was a great 9th inning. I was doing some grocery shopping and keeping up with the game on my cell phone. Well, the Braves and Cubs are about to play game 2 on Fox Meridian. I'm going to turn it on while I work. Enjoy your weekend.

Weekend Recap

This weekend, like most for me, was a long one. I'll try to remember some of what happened:

In my last entry I mentioned that I was going to Atlanta to watch the Braves and Marlins. It was definitely a much better game than the last one I went to. We were running a little late, so by the time we got to our seats it was the second inning. Atlanta was already down by a run. The Braves turned it around though and won 9-1. This was the second Braves game I've been to this year and Jeff Francoeur has homered twice in both. If this happened every time I went, I think he might buy me some season tickets. And then he would set some sort of record. But I digress...This picture is the view from our seats. We were right above the Braves dugout.

Saturday meant back to work for me. It started out with a story about the 5th Annual Queen City Soap Box Derby. I met a couple of the kids competing, Garrett Slay and Logan Powell. The pair said they were best friends, but Logan said something that made me laugh. He said "We're friends off the track, but on the track, you don't have any friends." This kid already sounds like a NASCAR driver. Logan beat Garrett down the hill and eliminated his best friend from the competition en route to a second place finish. Grant Hill won the Super Stock Class. He has finished in second three times, but advanced to the National Finals this year. The finals take place in Akron, Ohio. He and Hayley Randall (Stock Class Winner) will be representing Meridian in Akron. Billy Jack Ethridge was the official starter for the races, he says that when the kids get up to Ohio they are treated like royalty. They are called Mr. or Ms. Champion during the week-long event.

After the races, I went to Enterprise for a celebration of Armed Forces Day. The Town of Enterprise put on an event to honor those who have served our country. Veterans from WWII and the Korean War were honored. This year marks the 53rd Anniversary of the Korean War. The veterans from that war that were in attendance each got a baseball cap recognizing their service. They also had a memorial tribute for fallen soldiers and also had a moment of silence for the late G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery.

On Sunday I didn't have to be in to work as early. Many Sunday mornings we go to shoot a church service, but this morning we did not. My story was in Livingston, Alabama at 5:00 pm instead. The Birmingham Southern College Concert Choir was performing at the First Presbyterian Church. They were attempting to raise some money for the churches that were damaged or destroyed by fire in February. Three suspects were arrested on arson charges for the fires. Two of the students Russell Debusk, Jr. and Ben Moseley were students at BSC. Ben was a member of the Concert Choir. In fact he had been at choir practice the morning that he was arrested. Members of the choir say they feel obligated to help out the churches that were damaged.

Well, that's about all I got for now. There is some more stuff that I'd like to get into, but I'm pretty tired. I'm going to head home now. I'll get something up tomorrow. I'm working nights right now, so it will probably be late again tomorrow when I get something posted. But in the meantime, I hope you have a good Monday (do those really exist?) and a great week!

TGIF

Well, it's my Friday at least. Since I work the weekends I get Thursday and Friday off. Tomorrow, I will be heading over to Atlanta to watch the Braves take on the Marlins. Hopefully the Braves will have a better performance than they did when I went over there last month. In that game, Kyle Davies gave up five runs before anyone could breathe.

Today, my story was about an arrest that has been made. Linda Griffin allegedly poisoned her husband (Frankie) on February 1st (Wednesday). His death was originally ruled as natural causes. After investigating further, authorities found enough evidence to warrant an autopsy. The autopsy revealed that he did not die from natural causes, but instead from being poisoned.

I spoke with his family earlier this afternoon. They told me that they suspected Linda from the get-go. The two were going through a divorce and Frankie had visited his lawyer that Monday. According to his family, he was attempting to speed up the divorce. There were some other things that made Griffin's family suspicious. His sister, Beverly Griffin, said that on the night Frankie died Linda made three phone calls: to Linda's mom, to 911, and to the funeral home. Beverly said that Linda asked the funeral home to start the embalming process that night. I was told by the family that they asked for an autopsy to be performed, to which Linda replied that she didn't want one performed.

The case is definitely a bizarre one and the family has said that they just want justice. With the arrest of Linda Griffin, they believe that the wheels are starting to turn for justice to be served.

Sonny Montgomery's Funeral Service

Well, I was hoping to get something on here earlier this afternoon but I just didn't have time. I got to work at 9 this morning. After our morning meeting, I headed up to St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Since the funeral service there was private, I was left to stand outside and wait. And wait I did...for three hours. A little before one the Color Guard brought Sonny Montgomery's casket out to the hearse. Once that motorcade made it's way down to the Temple Theater I came back to the station to edit that story.

Unfortunately I was not able to attend the funeral service at the Temple Theater, but I did watch it on television. My job for today was to tell the story of the funeral service. I knew that once the service was over I would not have a lot of time to get ready for Live at Five. During the service, I kept notes on some of the things that were said about Mr. Montgomery. This made it easier to pick out the sound bites that I would use in my package (just a reminder that we have a television terminology glossary that defines some of the terms we use in the television business...the link is on the right side of the page).

Today was a day that doesn't come along very often for a city the size of Meridian. Anytime a former President is in town, it is a big deal. I thought it was great to see President Bush at the service. As you've probably heard, he and Sonny Montgomery were very good friends.

When I think about Sonny Montgomery, it is hard for me not to think about the only time I had the chance to be in the same room as him. It was July of 2003 and I was an intern in the News department at WTOK. If you remember, another big story that July cast the eyes of the country on Meridian. A few days after the Lockheed-Martin shooting, there was a memorial service that was held at First Baptist Church. Before that service started, I had an assignment to go shoot a VO/SOT at MSU-Meridian. Sonny Montgomery was there signing copies of his book. One story that Mr. Montgomery stuck out in my mind.

Montgomery was a freshman Congressman...as was the future President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush. The two were sitting next to each other and Montgomery asked Mr. Bush if he knew where a gym was located. The Texas Congressman said he knew where one was and that he would show the Democrat from Mississippi where it was. The two went to the gym and went on to become great friends and tennis partners.

Something about their friendship that sticks out is the fact that the two were on opposites sides of the aisle politically. During today's funeral service, Mrs. Barbara Bush said "That aisle never divided them on the way they voted and much more importantly never challenged their friendship."

The city of Meridian, the state of Mississippi, and the United States of America lost a great friend in Sonny Montgomery last week. Ask almost anyone and they'll likely tell you that not only did everyone love Sonny Montgomery, but Montgomery loved everybody.

I'm attempting to post from my cell phone again. Hopefully
it will work this time. Also please forgive any typos.
Before I get into work-related stuff, a personal note: I
just finished watching the Prison Break season finale
(what would I do without Tivo?). I can't wait until this
fall when the show comes back on. This week is a big one
for Meridian. The funeral of Sonny Montgomery will be
attended by several very influential people including
former President Bush. I'd be lying if I said that I
wasn't looking forward to covering today's events. This is
by far the biggest story of my young career. I'll have
more once I get to work and actually have a computer to
type a blog entry on.

I'm back!

OK, so it's been a while since I've updated this thing. Now my unofficial boycott of blogging is over. I'm going to try to get back into blogging at least a couple of times a week. I stay pretty busy, but there is always a time that I could blog. I usually just choose not to. But that's not fair to the readers of this blog. I know how frustrating it is to follow a blog and not have the author update.

I'm not going to get into a lot tonight since I am pretty tired. I got called in on my day off yesterday. I was called at 5:20 am and was at work an hour later. 12 hours after that I was able to go home. I imagine over the next couple of days all of us here at Newscenter 11 will be staying busy covering the events that lead up to the funeral of G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery.

That's it for now, I'll try to post again tomorrow.