MARCH 2 - 15, 2018 • VOL. 12 — NO. 5
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► Democratic candidates for governor stake out positions PAGE 4 ► BeltLine trail may reach Buckhead by 2020 PAGE 13
Coping with a Crisis: Opioid addiction in the suburbs EXCLUSIVE SERIES
Life after death: Families turn obituaries into protests against the stigma of addiction
SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION | P15-21
Hotel, apartments proposed for MARTA’s Lindbergh Center BY EVELYN ANDREWS evelyn@reporternewspapers.net MARTA is negotiating with a developer on a proposal that would bring a hotel, retail and apartments to the Lindbergh Center Station transit-oriented development. MARTA issued a request for proposals at the end of 2016 to redevelop a vacant lot and small site near its headquarters at 2400 Piedmont Road in southern Buckhead, hoping it spurs further mixeduse redevelopment around the station. “I think long term, there are a lot of things that will change at that development,” said Amanda Rhein, MARTA’s director of TOD projects. The Lindbergh Center Station is the site of MARTA’s first TOD development, which began over 20 years ago. Mixeduse buildings and two apartment complexes were built, but it wasn’t quite what MARTA envisioned and later phasSee HOTEL on page 14
MAX BLAU
Larry and Peggy Lord display a childhood photo of their sons Ashby and Hunter. Ashby, at right, died of a heroin overdose last year.
BY MAX BLAU
O
n a Sunday afternoon last April, the moment Larry Lord had dreaded for roughly two decades finally happened. His wife, Peggy, found their 35-year-old son Ashby no longer breathing in the basement of their ranch home on Sandy Springs’ Mount Paran Road. She tried performing CPR and called 911. But nothing the paramedics did could revive Ashby after a heroin overdose. Larry was devastated. Like many family members after a death, he faced the task of writing an obituary so that newspapers and the funeral home could inform their loved ones. Larry, an architect, considered himself a problem-solver.
First of a 4-Part Series The combination of prescription painkillers, heroin and synthetic opioids is killing people around the nation, including within Reporter Newspapers communities. In this exclusive four-part series, we will look at how local families, nurses, prosecutors, recovering addicts and others are responding to a growing epidemic that already kills more people than cars, guns or breast cancer each year. To share your thoughts and stories, email editor@reporternewspapers.net
A doctor’s overview of the opioid crisis. See Commentary, page 10 ► Usually, he could sketch out new doors or windows to make design problems disappear. He’d written obituaries, too,
most recently for his first wife and Ashby’s mother, Shannon, after she died from complications of cancer. But the circumstances of Ashby’s life posed difficult questions in how to talk about his death. Euphemisms are a tradition of sorts for overdose victims. Their obituaries say that they left this world or entered eternal rest while glossing over how it happened. The reasons vary from not speaking ill of the dead to a fear that it might reflect poorly on the living. “For many years, you never saw the word ‘addiction’ in an obit,” says Dr. Frances Levin, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University Medical Center. “That’s because of the stigma related to Continued on page 8
Massell calls for Atlanta unity in State of Buckhead address BY EVELYN ANDREWS evelyn@reporternewspapers.net
Sam Massell, who served as Atlanta’s latest white mayor over 40 years ago, urged unity between Buckhead and the rest of the city after a mayoral race that had strong racial division in the vote. “We know that Buckhead’s success, indeed Atlanta’s success, depends on one combined effort, not a dream of divisiveness,” said Massell, who is now president of the Buckhead Coalition, during his annual “State of the Community” address See MASSELL on page 23