The news emanating from Barnesville-Lamar County in 2019 – like every year before it – was a mixture of good and bad, uplifting and depressing. As a new decade dawns, we took a look back at the year’s headlines. First the good as it always outweighs the bad. The community saw the opening of a much needed, long overdue new high school campus, a new health department building, a new food bank building for Hope Tree Ministries, a new library in Milner and a highly-successful fund drive that raised over $300,000 for a new Boys & Girls Club which will open in two weeks. We also saw local legend Willie Hamm arise from his wheelchair and walk 200 meters. The LC girls softball and basketball teams won region titles while the LCMS soccer team won the district title. The boys varsity soccer team won its second consecutive region title. Aldora Mills completed a vast expansion and added over 100 new jobs and Hollywood once again came to town as Marvel Studios filmed for the new Disney+ steaming service at several locations. The bad included the killing of a local truck driver by a prostitute and her male accomplice, the arrest of two locals for operating a puppy mill and the demise of the beloved pig chase that many considered the premiere event at Buggy Days. A two-year-old girl died in a Memorial Day swimming pool accident and the community was stunned by a double murder-suicide at homes near each other on Fredonia Church Road. A lineman replacing transformers along Morgan Dairy Road was electrocuted and a 27-year-old Milner man was shot and killed at the Waffle House on Hwy. 36 near I-75. The full recounting of 2019 is published in the 12.31.19 edition of The Herald Gazette.
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