Saturday, June 17, 2017
SANTA ROSA CO.MEN AMBUSHED
Special to The Journal
Milton, Sept. - 2. 1911 Alf and Arch Cooley, residing in the northern part of this county, were ambushed and shot from their horses early last night, adding two more murders to the already long list of crimes in this year. The ambuscade was in what is known as the Clearwater creek neighborhood. A coroner's jury has been impaneled and a thorough investigation will be made of this latest murder. Arch Cooley was a brother and Alf a cousin of Daniel Cooley, who was shot and killed near here last Sunday.There is considerable excitement,!but from what could be learned tonight the Cooleys were returning to their homes early in the night and were shot from the roadside by parties secreted in some thick undergrowth. Shot guns were used and there were several in the party, as five shots in rapid succession were heard. Later the riderless horses galloped up to the homes of the men with blood on the saddles. A searching party found the bodies riddled with shot and death must have been instantaneous.
Santa Rosa County Sheriff John Houston Collins“long John Collins.” faced a wild and sometimes murderous frontier, folks in remote areas of the county generally settled things themselves and for the most part peacefully, however violent feuds are well known to have occurred in many areas of the county during the early twentieth century, one of the more notorious Munson feuds would lead to the killing of a constable, for unknown reasons this death has not been recorded as an LOD .
Robert E.L. Collins was killed on 2 December 1916 while serving as constable for Munson District.
John Houston Collins was born on May 16, 1868 in Santa Rosa County, Florida. In 1893, Collins was elected Sheriff of Santa Rosa County. He was considered to be a “frontier type” sheriff and served two separate terms in office. descriptive speaking, Collins stood 6’7”tall, was thin in build, and often considered to be an imposing figure. He earned the nicknames of “honest John” and “long John Collins.” While Sheriff Collins and his family resided in the upper level of the jail in the county courthouse.At the age of 69, Collins died following a lengthy illness. He and his wife are both buried in the Milton Cemetery
.
Special to The Journal
Milton, Sept. - 2. 1911 Alf and Arch Cooley, residing in the northern part of this county, were ambushed and shot from their horses early last night, adding two more murders to the already long list of crimes in this year. The ambuscade was in what is known as the Clearwater creek neighborhood. A coroner's jury has been impaneled and a thorough investigation will be made of this latest murder. Arch Cooley was a brother and Alf a cousin of Daniel Cooley, who was shot and killed near here last Sunday.There is considerable excitement,!but from what could be learned tonight the Cooleys were returning to their homes early in the night and were shot from the roadside by parties secreted in some thick undergrowth. Shot guns were used and there were several in the party, as five shots in rapid succession were heard. Later the riderless horses galloped up to the homes of the men with blood on the saddles. A searching party found the bodies riddled with shot and death must have been instantaneous.
Santa Rosa County Sheriff John Houston Collins“long John Collins.” faced a wild and sometimes murderous frontier, folks in remote areas of the county generally settled things themselves and for the most part peacefully, however violent feuds are well known to have occurred in many areas of the county during the early twentieth century, one of the more notorious Munson feuds would lead to the killing of a constable, for unknown reasons this death has not been recorded as an LOD .
Robert E.L. Collins was killed on 2 December 1916 while serving as constable for Munson District.
John Houston Collins was born on May 16, 1868 in Santa Rosa County, Florida. In 1893, Collins was elected Sheriff of Santa Rosa County. He was considered to be a “frontier type” sheriff and served two separate terms in office. descriptive speaking, Collins stood 6’7”tall, was thin in build, and often considered to be an imposing figure. He earned the nicknames of “honest John” and “long John Collins.” While Sheriff Collins and his family resided in the upper level of the jail in the county courthouse.At the age of 69, Collins died following a lengthy illness. He and his wife are both buried in the Milton Cemetery
.
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Monday, June 12, 2017
How May I Help You.
Rufus “Doc” Thames, MD by Eddy Gilley
Growing up in Milton, living “way out in the Country” with two younger brothers provided me with ample opportunities to injure myself. Most times we just “rubbed some dirt on it” and “walked it off”, but there were other times we had to seek ‘professional’ medical attention. From the time I could remember until moving away from Milton after graduating from PJC, I saw three doctors: Dr. E. V. Sutton, Dr. H. M. (Max) Meredith, and Dr. Rufus Thames, Jr. I was only patients of the first two. It was a chance meeting, Dr. Thames treated me. More on that later.
Shortly after graduating with my fellow Class of ’79 MHS Panthers in MAY, I started working for Boo Weekley’s daddy, Tom. Tom purchased the Milton location of Fortune’s Rexall Drugs from Ed Fortune. For many years the store was located in Gateway Plaza (beside Waffle House) before moving to the Berryhill Road location in the 1980s. I was originally hired to work the cash register, stock shelves, sweep, etc. That was not enough for me. I soon was checking in orders for sundries and OTC medications. Better, but not where I wanted to be. I wanted to work alongside Tom. He allowed me to do so and I soon learned to read prescriptions, pull the meds, type the labels (yes on a typewriter) and basically do everything required to work alongside a pharmacist. It was a wonderful experience and learned a lot while working there. But before all this happened, I had a lot of learning to do.
One of the first things every employee in the store learned was to answer the telephone: “Fortune’s Drugs, how may I HELP you?” If it was a doctor’s office, we immediately “hollered” to Tom so he knew to pick up the phone. Normally, nurses called in prescriptions or inquired of a patient’s prescription history. That is, all but Dr. Rufus “Doc” Thames, Jr. He preferred to do this himself. Sometime within the first week or so, I answered the phone, “Fortune’s Drugs, how may I help YOU?”—I was a fast learner—I heard what can only be described as a loud vocalization of a man that could not utter any words in any known language. It sounded like Uh-huhhhh. Say this aloud to yourself, as if you are agreeing with something someone told you in conversation, but hold on to that “h”. Go ahead. We will wait. Got the sound in your head? That is all I heard so I once again replied, in a somewhat more professional voice attempting to express authority, “this is Fortune’s Drugs, HOW.MAY.I.HELP.YOU?” The reply was the same single grunt I heard earlier, but a bit more emphatic. I am now lost. I was not taught this in training. What if this was a mental patient—what are the protocols for talking someone down? What if it was a patient suffering an “adverse drug reaction” and I hung up on them, could the store be held liable? I then continue trying to explain this was a business and attempted to develop some common communication skills. Perhaps monosyllabic words were necessary. It was then I heard Tom start hollering, “That’s Doc Thames! That’s Doc Thames!” as he dropped what he was doing to pick up the phone. You might have noticed we did a lot of hollering. Hollering pronounced hollerin’ (drop the ‘g’) was acceptable when trying to communicate from front to rear of store. It is different from “yelling”, pronounced yellin’. Yelling is when you increase your volume and are shouting at someone while engaged in an angry conversation. For example, “Mom holler’d for us kids to come in. When we showed up late, she yell’d at us for not coming when she holler’d”.
Tom attempted to explain that I was new, still learning and that it would never happen again. This he said while looking down at me from his perch in the pharmacy at me on store level. Most of us are old enough to remember when “drug stores” had a compartmentalized pharmacy area that was elevated two or three feet from floor level. This was to instill trust (fear?) in what the pharmacist told you. They were authoritative and were in a position superior to you. They were “above” you and you must reach “up” to take the medicine they were handing “down” to you. Kind of like when Moses had to reach “up” to take the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments God was handing “down to man.
After the call, Tom explained Doc Thames always calls in his own prescriptions and he only says, “Uh-huhhhh”. I learned to understand his signature single-word greeting rather quickly. Again, I am a fast learner. I also soon learned to read prescriptions (scripts) and was taking calls from doctors’ offices. One day the phone rang, after my now professional yet congenial greeting of “Fortune’s Drugs, how may I ASSIST YOU?” I received the unmistakable greeting from Doc Thames. I quickly explained I could take the script. Without any pause, he asked: “Son, do you hunt?” –Yes sir.—“Do you take a shot if you cannot make sure the area beyond the deer is clear?”—No sir.—“If you do not have a clear shot but still think you can kill the deer, do you take the shot?”—No sir.—“Do you understand why I am asking you these questions?”—Yes sir. “Why?”—You want to make sure I understand the importance of taking a prescription correctly and not try to do so just to prove I can. I must be 100% confident my actions will not endanger anyone. In other words, Doc Thames was making sure I had no doubt in my mind about taking this script. I am not sure a teenager in a drug store could take the Hippocratic Oath, but I certainly understood the “Primum non nocere” portion and he wanted to make sure he fulfilled the “First, do no harm” clause of the oath. Satisfied I could handle it, he then rattled off the script. I am not sure if I jumped for joy, but there was a smile on Tom’s face when I turned to face him. He took the scripts from my hand, and then compared them to his. He was listening in on the conversation. I guess he too wanted to “primum non nocere”.
Sometime later, Tom had me take something to Doc Thames at his office. I was walking with a pronounced limp because I had twisted my ankle. It was swollen and all shades of colors in the G BIV portion of ROY’s name. At the time my normal doc was Max Meredith and could have seen him, all I had to do was walk in the back door and Sharon (his RN) would have put me in a room. Dr. Thames told me to “sit down in this chair and I’ll fix you right up”. He untied my shoe, pulled off my sock then examined my ankle and foot. He wrapped it in an elastic bandage and told me to take it easy. If it was not any better in 10 days, come back. He had a room full of patients, but he took the time to tend to my ankle. On the way back to the drug store I remembered meeting Doc Thames on New Year’s Eve 1978. His son Ricky hosted a party on their property and we would gather around a huge bonfire. We listened to music, told lies to each other, and tried to find a girl to kiss at midnight. While counting down the minutes, Doc Thames walked up and asked how we were all doing. He was just coming home. He hung out with us for a bit and told us all to be careful.
A year or so later, Fortune’s Drugs won the contract for providing prescription and OTC meds to the inmates at SRCSO jail. I met Doc Thames on SAT mornings at the jail. I sat beside him as he examined the patient; he recorded his own notes and rattled off the scripts. I wrote the scripts on Fortune’s Drugs prescription pads then took them back to the pharmacy and once filled, delivered the meds back to SRCSO jail later that day. Between patients, we would have a few moments to talk. He always encouraged me to stay in school. No matter what I do, enjoy it. Asked if I had a girl friend and whether I was treating her right. Asked how my tennis playing was going and how many times I had beat Dr. Matthews. He always talked about making my time count. One of his many pearls of wisdom, one I will never forget, “it’s just as easy to ask a pretty girl out as it is an ugly girl”. So true.
Working in the drug store afforded me many opportunities. I was able to learn a lot about medicine, being responsible for opening/closing a business, and generally matured a lot. It also afforded me the opportunity to meet a lot of wonderful people, some of them the pillars of the community from judges to school board members and some on the opposite end of the social spectrum. I learned to look past their circumstances and see them as people. I also heard countless stories about Doc Thames. Regardless of the social stratum, tax bracket, or even which side of the river you lived, everyone had a kind word to say about Doc Thames. He was always just a phone call away. Whether they saw him at his office in the middle of the night or at ER, he did what was necessary to treat them. For payment he took either a few bills of crumpled, sweat-laden cash, a post-dated check, a pot o’ collards, a basket o’ chicken or even a bushel of fresh corn. He was not a physician for the money or social standing. He did it because he cared about the people, regardless of their situation.
When he looked at my ankle, I was a bit uncomfortable. Here was a grown man kneeling before me, taking off my sock and shoe. It sort of had a “foot washing” vibe to it. The entire point of washing another’s feet is servitude. Doc Thames was a servant. He took care of his fellow man. He was a man larger than life. He was a just man. He was a good man. Many around Milton only have to look at family portraits to see their “memories”. He delivered many babies and in so doing, gave those families many loving memories. Most of my memories were made sitting beside him, watching him in his element, even if the exam room was a small room at the county jail. Each of us with our own spit cup, passing the time while seeing one patient after the other. He treated them no different than any other. Like all other patients, he “fixed ‘em right up”.
— in Milton F.Rufus “Doc” Thames, MD by Eddy Gilley
Growing up in Milton, living “way out in the Country” with two younger brothers provided me with ample opportunities to injure myself. Most times we just “rubbed some dirt on it” and “walked it off”, but there were other times we had to seek ‘professional’ medical attention. From the time I could remember until moving away from Milton after graduating from PJC, I saw three doctors: Dr. E. V. Sutton, Dr. H. M. (Max) Meredith, and Dr. Rufus Thames, Jr. I was only patients of the first two. It was a chance meeting, Dr. Thames treated me. More on that later.
Shortly after graduating with my fellow Class of ’79 MHS Panthers in MAY, I started working for Boo Weekley’s daddy, Tom. Tom purchased the Milton location of Fortune’s Rexall Drugs from Ed Fortune. For many years the store was located in Gateway Plaza (beside Waffle House) before moving to the Berryhill Road location in the 1980s. I was originally hired to work the cash register, stock shelves, sweep, etc. That was not enough for me. I soon was checking in orders for sundries and OTC medications. Better, but not where I wanted to be. I wanted to work alongside Tom. He allowed me to do so and I soon learned to read prescriptions, pull the meds, type the labels (yes on a typewriter) and basically do everything required to work alongside a pharmacist. It was a wonderful experience and learned a lot while working there. But before all this happened, I had a lot of learning to do.
One of the first things every employee in the store learned was to answer the telephone: “Fortune’s Drugs, how may I HELP you?” If it was a doctor’s office, we immediately “hollered” to Tom so he knew to pick up the phone. Normally, nurses called in prescriptions or inquired of a patient’s prescription history. That is, all but Dr. Rufus “Doc” Thames, Jr. He preferred to do this himself. Sometime within the first week or so, I answered the phone, “Fortune’s Drugs, how may I help YOU?”—I was a fast learner—I heard what can only be described as a loud vocalization of a man that could not utter any words in any known language. It sounded like Uh-huhhhh. Say this aloud to yourself, as if you are agreeing with something someone told you in conversation, but hold on to that “h”. Go ahead. We will wait. Got the sound in your head? That is all I heard so I once again replied, in a somewhat more professional voice attempting to express authority, “this is Fortune’s Drugs, HOW.MAY.I.HELP.YOU?” The reply was the same single grunt I heard earlier, but a bit more emphatic. I am now lost. I was not taught this in training. What if this was a mental patient—what are the protocols for talking someone down? What if it was a patient suffering an “adverse drug reaction” and I hung up on them, could the store be held liable? I then continue trying to explain this was a business and attempted to develop some common communication skills. Perhaps monosyllabic words were necessary. It was then I heard Tom start hollering, “That’s Doc Thames! That’s Doc Thames!” as he dropped what he was doing to pick up the phone. You might have noticed we did a lot of hollering. Hollering pronounced hollerin’ (drop the ‘g’) was acceptable when trying to communicate from front to rear of store. It is different from “yelling”, pronounced yellin’. Yelling is when you increase your volume and are shouting at someone while engaged in an angry conversation. For example, “Mom holler’d for us kids to come in. When we showed up late, she yell’d at us for not coming when she holler’d”.
Tom attempted to explain that I was new, still learning and that it would never happen again. This he said while looking down at me from his perch in the pharmacy at me on store level. Most of us are old enough to remember when “drug stores” had a compartmentalized pharmacy area that was elevated two or three feet from floor level. This was to instill trust (fear?) in what the pharmacist told you. They were authoritative and were in a position superior to you. They were “above” you and you must reach “up” to take the medicine they were handing “down” to you. Kind of like when Moses had to reach “up” to take the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments God was handing “down to man.
After the call, Tom explained Doc Thames always calls in his own prescriptions and he only says, “Uh-huhhhh”. I learned to understand his signature single-word greeting rather quickly. Again, I am a fast learner. I also soon learned to read prescriptions (scripts) and was taking calls from doctors’ offices. One day the phone rang, after my now professional yet congenial greeting of “Fortune’s Drugs, how may I ASSIST YOU?” I received the unmistakable greeting from Doc Thames. I quickly explained I could take the script. Without any pause, he asked: “Son, do you hunt?” –Yes sir.—“Do you take a shot if you cannot make sure the area beyond the deer is clear?”—No sir.—“If you do not have a clear shot but still think you can kill the deer, do you take the shot?”—No sir.—“Do you understand why I am asking you these questions?”—Yes sir. “Why?”—You want to make sure I understand the importance of taking a prescription correctly and not try to do so just to prove I can. I must be 100% confident my actions will not endanger anyone. In other words, Doc Thames was making sure I had no doubt in my mind about taking this script. I am not sure a teenager in a drug store could take the Hippocratic Oath, but I certainly understood the “Primum non nocere” portion and he wanted to make sure he fulfilled the “First, do no harm” clause of the oath. Satisfied I could handle it, he then rattled off the script. I am not sure if I jumped for joy, but there was a smile on Tom’s face when I turned to face him. He took the scripts from my hand, and then compared them to his. He was listening in on the conversation. I guess he too wanted to “primum non nocere”.
Sometime later, Tom had me take something to Doc Thames at his office. I was walking with a pronounced limp because I had twisted my ankle. It was swollen and all shades of colors in the G BIV portion of ROY’s name. At the time my normal doc was Max Meredith and could have seen him, all I had to do was walk in the back door and Sharon (his RN) would have put me in a room. Dr. Thames told me to “sit down in this chair and I’ll fix you right up”. He untied my shoe, pulled off my sock then examined my ankle and foot. He wrapped it in an elastic bandage and told me to take it easy. If it was not any better in 10 days, come back. He had a room full of patients, but he took the time to tend to my ankle. On the way back to the drug store I remembered meeting Doc Thames on New Year’s Eve 1978. His son Ricky hosted a party on their property and we would gather around a huge bonfire. We listened to music, told lies to each other, and tried to find a girl to kiss at midnight. While counting down the minutes, Doc Thames walked up and asked how we were all doing. He was just coming home. He hung out with us for a bit and told us all to be careful.
A year or so later, Fortune’s Drugs won the contract for providing prescription and OTC meds to the inmates at SRCSO jail. I met Doc Thames on SAT mornings at the jail. I sat beside him as he examined the patient; he recorded his own notes and rattled off the scripts. I wrote the scripts on Fortune’s Drugs prescription pads then took them back to the pharmacy and once filled, delivered the meds back to SRCSO jail later that day. Between patients, we would have a few moments to talk. He always encouraged me to stay in school. No matter what I do, enjoy it. Asked if I had a girl friend and whether I was treating her right. Asked how my tennis playing was going and how many times I had beat Dr. Matthews. He always talked about making my time count. One of his many pearls of wisdom, one I will never forget, “it’s just as easy to ask a pretty girl out as it is an ugly girl”. So true.
Working in the drug store afforded me many opportunities. I was able to learn a lot about medicine, being responsible for opening/closing a business, and generally matured a lot. It also afforded me the opportunity to meet a lot of wonderful people, some of them the pillars of the community from judges to school board members and some on the opposite end of the social spectrum. I learned to look past their circumstances and see them as people. I also heard countless stories about Doc Thames. Regardless of the social stratum, tax bracket, or even which side of the river you lived, everyone had a kind word to say about Doc Thames. He was always just a phone call away. Whether they saw him at his office in the middle of the night or at ER, he did what was necessary to treat them. For payment he took either a few bills of crumpled, sweat-laden cash, a post-dated check, a pot o’ collards, a basket o’ chicken or even a bushel of fresh corn. He was not a physician for the money or social standing. He did it because he cared about the people, regardless of their situation.
When he looked at my ankle, I was a bit uncomfortable. Here was a grown man kneeling before me, taking off my sock and shoe. It sort of had a “foot washing” vibe to it. The entire point of washing another’s feet is servitude. Doc Thames was a servant. He took care of his fellow man. He was a man larger than life. He was a just man. He was a good man. Many around Milton only have to look at family portraits to see their “memories”. He delivered many babies and in so doing, gave those families many loving memories. Most of my memories were made sitting beside him, watching him in his element, even if the exam room was a small room at the county jail. Each of us with our own spit cup, passing the time while seeing one patient after the other. He treated them no different than any other. Like all other patients, he “fixed ‘em right up”.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)