Shelby County Today

November 15, 2024 - The inside of the Shelby County Historic Courthouse was full of Junior Chamber of Commerce helpers on Thursday, November 14 to start the process of decorating for Christmas.

The DRT ladies with the help of the JCC students accomplished much of the decorating on the inside. The Historic Courthouse will be open for tours next week, November 21st and 22nd. However, it will be closed the week of Thanksgiving.

Mark you calendar for Monday, December 16 for a Christmas Open house event from 12 noon until 2pm with the Excelsior Choir led by Tim Verner again performing in the upstairs courtroom at 1pm.

From left: (standing) Holiday Administrator Daniel Rogers, Mike Wulf, Zachery McCormick, Derrick Roberts, Larry Hume, Gene Hutto, Joy Hutto, and Mary Fausett, (seated) Robert Clifton, Luther Lorenz, James Clayton, Levon Andrews, and Roger Paxton.

November 13, 2024 - The Holiday Nursing and Rehabilitation celebrated and honored their veterans on Monday, November 11, 2024 and invited fellow VFW Post 8904 members as well.

Larry Hume, VFW Post Adjutant, spoke to the veterans in attendance explaining the reason for Veterans Day which is to recognize and honor U.S. military personnel and their service.

It was started November 11, 1919 on the one year anniversary of an armistice between Allied nations and Germany which is generally regarded as the end of the war to end all wars. Originally, the day was called Armistice Day which can be remembered to have happened on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. November 11th was signed to be a legal holiday on May 13, 1938 by the President of the United States and was set aside to honor Veterans of World War I. In 1954, the 83rd Congress amended the Act of 1938 by renaming the day Veterans Day with the purpose of a day to honor American Veterans of all wars.

Hume then recognized all the veterans in the room giving them an opportunity to say their branch and years of service. Others in attendance were then given the opportunity to say the name of family members who are veterans.

Facility Administrator Rogers then presented framed certificates to their resident veterans who are Roger Paxton - Navy 1963-1967, USS Regulus; Levon Andrews - Army 1972-1976, tank driver; James Clayton - Air Force 1962-1966, linguist; Luther Lorenz - Air Force, bombardier; Tommie Lathan; and Robert Clifton - Air Force, Retired, supply.

Pictured are Community Christian Services board members (from left) Darrell Alford, Tommy Spurlock, Jody Hooper, Lauren Bonner, and Mark Lawrence.

November 12, 2024 - The Scottish Rite presented a donation to Community Christian Services during a program held at Tenaha Masonic Lodge #737 on October 29, 2024.

Scottish Rite member Mike Waldrop explained that the Waco Scottish Rite Charitable Foundation provides what are called community grants, which are for organizations, and those organizations can be lodges, Scottish Rite clubs, or a variety of different organizations to which the Scottish Rite will match up to $2,500 if that group does something for the community.

Mike Waldrop 

Waldrop said the Waco Scottish Rite Valley has been providing Thanksgiving and Christmas meals to Meals on Wheels in Waco for around 38 years and they put together around 550 meals in an hour and a half.

Waldrop continued, “Last year, the chairman of this committee here of our Waco Scottish Rite Charitable Foundation said, ‘we give away about $7,500 a year,’ and he said, ‘I think we need to start doing this for other parts of our valley.’”

Waldrop described the “valley” as covering from the Louisiana border all the way to the other side of San Angelo in West Texas and many areas north and south in between.

“What he decided that we needed to do was he was going to either ask East Texas, Central Texas and West Texas, either Meals on Wheels chapters or food banks, that we would help those that submit a recommendation or submit an application to become one of the recipients of this $2,500 for West Texas, East Texas, and Central Texas,” said Waldrop.

Receiving the check on behalf of Community Christian Services was Jody Hooper, who is a member of the board, and he was also accompanied by the rest of the board to received the donation.

“I would like to say thank you to Lauren [Bonner] who did the tedious work of the application for Mr. Randy [Bonner], for all of you that help out each and every week. One thing I can I can speak for as one of the board members is that we're very scrupulous in how we spend money, and every penny goes to procure food for those that we give away to. We operate on a real small budget, but we've got a really big God, and he's never let us down. He's not going to. Every time we look around, there's more money and there's more food, and we just get to give it away. So we're very thankful for that.

“Thanks to all of you for, again, trusting us with this, and I invite you at any time to come to our pantry and watch what we do and see the people that it helps. There's people all over, Shelby County that come usually over 200 families every month that come on our pantry day. So if you think there's not hungry folks in Shelby County, just come to the pantry on November the 20th, I think is the third Wednesday, and you'll see them lined up all the way around the church over to Brookshire's and they're not sitting in line for two hours because they don't have anything else to do. They're sitting there 'cause they're hungry and we get the privilege to feed them and you guys help us do that, thank you so much.”

November 7, 2024 - VFW Post 8904 held a remembrance program October 26, 2024, in honor of those who lost their lives during the Beirut, Lebanon bombing of 1983.

Richard Lundie, VFW Post 8904 Chaplain, opened the program and led with an opening prayer before the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag was recited.

Lundie stated that it was early on a Sunday morning when around 06:22 hours on October 23, 1983, when two truck bombs struck buildings in Beirut, Lebanon that housed American and French service members in a multi-national force in Lebanon.

“They were a military peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War. The action killed 307 people, 241 were Americans, 5[8] was French military, six were civilians and plus the two attackers,” said Lundie.

Lundie shared that the first suicide bomb detonated a truck bomb at the building serving as a barracks for the 1st Battalion, Eighth Marines, Second Marine Division; killing 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three Army soldiers. He said, this was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II and the deadliest single-day death toll for the U.S. Armed Forces since the first day of the Tet offensive in Vietnam.

“Another 128 Americans were wounded in the blast and 13 died of their injuries,” said Lundie.

Minutes after the first bombing, a second bomber attacked a nine-story building where the French contingent was stationed, a few kilometers from the first.

In honor of those who died that day and the days that followed, a wreath was hung on the Shelby County Veterans Memorial by Post Life Member Ray Carroll, US Navy, Vietnam Veteran, and Taps was then played as presented by Gene Hutto, Past Post Commander.