It's no secret! School starts for Wilkes County students Friday, August 7. Teachers and administrators at the new school have been busy all summer getting their rooms ready for Friday, and all other teachers have also been busy, especially since Monday morning when official pre-planning for the year began. It's a beautiful school building.

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Pauline Bell brought me a postcard with a picture of the First Baptist Church, Washington, on the front. The card was mailed from Washington on September 5, 1912, to a Mrs. Coleman in Johnston, S.C. The name of the person who wrote the message on the card is faded. The picture is a view of the church which I have not seen before. It includes a white wooden fence and a corner of the pastorium which was next door. The card was found by Pauline's roommate when they were students at Erskine College in South Carolina. The roommate found it while doing some cleaning at the home of her grandfather in Johnston recently and sent it to Pauline. . . . . At the bottom of the card, it reads, "Baptist Church, Main Street, Washington, GA. Pub. by Moore Bros., Washington, Ga."

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A note from Jane Echols Davis, native Wilkes Countian, reads, "I immediately recognized our beautiful Florida Capitol - the new capitol towering over the old domed capitol - in "Where in the World is The News-Reporter" on July 23. This may be the first time The News- Reporter has been photographed in Tallahassee, but it has been in my home in Tallahassee or St. George Island every week since February 1967. I save the paper each week and when Jackie or Jim visit they always pick it up and read it. What a great hometown newspaper!" We like to get notes like that. I remember Jane and her husband, James, when we were students at Washington High School. For some reason, his nickname was "Jap," and he was a great football player.

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The Reville sisters - Debbie Jackson, Sandra Brown, and Jeana Worley - had the grand opening of their new jewelry store in Athens Monday. They bought the building and inventory of the former Foster's Jewelry and have been working for several months to get ready for the opening. Jo and Buzzy Randall were among those from Washington-Wilkes who visited the store and they report that it is a beautiful, beautiful store.

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We have finally gotten enough rain to report. Before noon on Monday,

Norris Ware on Hill Street had only .7 of an inch to report and we were proud of that. Sonny Johnson at Tyrone had 1.531 inches. Then the storm came about 3:30 in the afternoon and Norris says here in Washington we added .65 of an inch to that total in about 15 minutes, making a total for the week of 1.35 inches. Total for the whole month of July was 1.35 inches.

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The main office and the downtown branch of the F & M Bank are getting new signs since the name change. They are not completed yet but are going to be nice.

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Debbie Jackson brought us the "Viewpoints" page from the July 22 issue of The Elberton Star. On the page was a letter from Jesse Neal Browder who signed her name as a "concerned Elbert County citizen." Apparently the Elbert Memorial Hospital has some problems and citizens are trying to "save the hospital." In the letter Mrs. Browner cites Washington-Wilkes and Wills Memorial Hospital as a good example of "saving our hospital." She writes: "Wills Memorial Hospital in Washington, just 34 miles to the south, was in the same financial predicament as our hospital is at the present. What did they do? They hired a retired Army colonel to come in as hospital CEO, and the first thing he did was to discover ways to put the hospital on a paying basis. He contacted physicians at the Medical College of Georgia, physicians in Athens, and contracted with them to come to Washington one day a week to use the surgical suite. My personal experience was with cataract surgery done by an eye surgeon from Athens. My experience at Wills Memorial was very satisfactory. They did 15 surgeries that Friday, netting the hospital $30,000 for use of the operating room. The particular physician will do as many as 20 on Fridays, netting the hospital $40,000. Let's see now: Do this for 52 weeks and the hospital earns $2,080,000 for just one day a week. Other physicians, with different skills, are scheduled different days of the week, doing hemorrhoid surgery, appendix, and other minor surgeries. The hospital is in the black, and the operating room is clean as a pin, the grounds are well kept, the staff is very efficient and courteous. I highly recommend Wills Memorial for any type of surgery. . . . It can't be said much better than that.

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Kay and Pug Nelms spent from Monday morning until lunchtime Thursday of last week in Asheville, N.C. They report that their many hummingbirds at home consumed about three gallons of nectar from their feeders while they were gone. . . . They brought me a picture of a 1922 American LaFrance fire truck that had been completely restored and is one of many antique vehicles in the Antique Auto Museum at the Grove Park Inn. The truck looked so much like our 1919 American LaFrance that I thought at first she had made a picture of it. They made a picture of a little white country church, in a beautiful tranquil setting, which I am enjoying.

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A note from Jean Newsome Casey, native Wilkes Countian now living in Cedartown, included some interesting high school programs of the past. Jean says that she came across the items in her collection of memorabilia from the past 60 years. One was a program by the Washington High School Band on May 23, 1950. The other was a program by the Washington High School Glee Club on May 8, 1953. I'll tell you about the band program this week and save the glee club for next week. . . . Mary Johnson (Mrs. Dan) Duggan was the director. The program began with "Storm King March" by Finlayson; continued with "Eroica Overture" based on themes from Bethoven's Third Symphony; and "Under Escort March" by George Douglas. Then came "The Crusaders Overture" by Buchtel; "Csardas" by Monti; good ole "Anchors Aweigh"; and "Russian Chorale and Overture" based on music by Tchaikovsky. A trombone trio rendered "Slidin' Some": followed by "An American Rhapsody" and "Mexican Overture." The program concluded with "Tea for Two" by Vincent Youmans and "Night and Day" by Cole Porter. . . . Now where else but in musical Washington-Wilkes could you find a high school band made up of 38 students from the sixth grade through 11th grade that could play that kind of music? Mary Duggan knew it could be done, and it was. . . . And you should have seen the place where we had to rehearse!