Mailbox mandate? City approves 1st reading to keep district’s door-to-door mail delivery tradition A2 CLARENDON: District 2 students SERVING SOUTH CAROLINA SINCE OCTOBER 15, 1894
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2015
could get free 2-year degrees
75 CENTS
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Chief of staff faces challenges at Shaw Leader addresses sequestration, attracting soldiers and their families to serve at base BY JIM HILLEY jim@theitem.com Brig. Gen. David Glaser, chief of staff of U.S. Army Central based at Shaw Air
Force Base, says he faces a challenge when trying to attract top personnel to the unit at the local base. “There are five Army Service Component Commands, and we are all geographically
Woman urges not to give up on answers to health issues
aligned somewhere in the world,” he said. “When a person calls up (an assignment officer) and says, ‘As part GLASER of my professional development, I need a tour in an Army Service Component Command,’
and the guy says, ‘OK, there are five of those: there is Wiesbaden, Germany, there is Stuttgart, Germany, there is San Antonio, Texas, Honolulu, Hawaii, and there is Sumter, South Carolina.’” “So immediately what comes to your mind if I say Honolulu, if I say San Antonio — the same thing for Eu-
rope — these are vacation destinations, and that’s the challenge,” he said. “Not a lot of people know South Carolina.” Not only is attracting top prospects important, he said, but so is having soldiers bring their families along with them.
SEE GLASER, PAGE A5
CANE SAVANNAH CARVINGS
From tree to treasure
Recent search for migraine treatment uncovers stroke BY JADE REYNOLDS jade@theitem.com Renee Shorter knew she had vicious, debilitating headaches. What she didn’t know was that during one of her migraines, she had a stroke. “What was so odd is they didn’t diagnose it at the time,” said the Cherryvale Elementary School preschool teacher. “As for stroke preventative and heart issues, I had no risk factors. It was very bizarre, (but) the stroke could have been so much worse. To my knowledge, it’s not affected anything.” While a heart attack occurs when a blood clot forms within an artery that feeds the heart, a stroke is when a blood clot forms in the brain or when you have bleeding into the brain, said Dr. Mitchell Jacocks with Sumter Cardiology, a Lexington Medical Center physician practice. Stroke is the third-biggest killer in the state, according to S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. In 2012, 2,331 South Carolinians died from a stroke, www.scdhec. gov states, and 14,827 were treated in hospitals for the same condition that year. But Shorter didn’t really have any of the usual symptoms associated with stroke and described by Jacocks — abrupt onset of weakness in an arm or leg, garbled speech, confusion or drooling from one side of the mouth. “I don’t do nausea or nausea and vomiting that many have,” Shorter said. “I have severe pain in the front and back of my head. Part of my face goes numb, and I have some aura, and I need to lie down in the dark.” While seeking treatment for her migraines in 2006, health care providers ran blood work and conducted scans such as CT and MRI. When they discovered the stroke, they sent her to a neurologist. She’s now on migraine preventative medication and has an MRI every six months to check for another stroke. So far, so good. “I have them (migraines) periodically, maybe one every four or five months,” Shorter said. “But they do not put me in the bed. I might get a really bad one every six months.” Her advice is to push for answers. “If you have headaches, don’t just medicate them,” Shorter said. “Make
SEE STROKE, PAGE A5
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PHOTOS BY KEITH GEDAMKE / THE SUMTER ITEM
Jeffrey Spigner uses a dremel to carve an Indian face into a scrap piece of wood at his Cane Savannah Carvings workshop. He’s been carving full time for about six months. An eagle carving, right, that Spigner created for a Sumter client is seen.
Friend’s gift inspires Sumter man to start carving hobby BY HAMLET FORT hamlet@theitem.com
J
effrey Spigner started wood carving about five years ago when a
friend gave him a carving as a gift. “I fell in love with the carving and thought I could do it,” Spigner said. His newfound hobby led to Cane Savannah Carvings of Sumter, and he’s been carving full time for six months. Spigner carves pieces from pine knots and cut trees. His most recent project is a large eagle formed from a tree in a retired music teacher’s yard on Teton Road in Sumter.
The impressive piece was cut with no major plan in place, according to Spigner. “I looked at a picture of an eagle and started carving away until it started looking like an eagle to me,” he said. “When I started it, I had no idea what I was going to do.” Spigner carves whatever customers ask of him, and when he works on his craft, he’ll carve anything from Indians to mountain men, from ducks to a small-mouth bass. He also makes food platters, and in the center he’ll usually carve a palmetto tree. The hardest part of wood carving, he said, is knowing when to stop. If you go too far, you’ll have no more wood to work with. He said there’s a
SEE SPIGNER, PAGE A5
DEATHS, B5 Leroy Ray Stone John Way Sophia Denny James Phillips Reginald Hightower
James Lee Lemon George Bradshaw Mary Louise W. Allen Christine Dayle Fersner
WEATHER, A14
INSIDE
QUITE COLD TODAY
2 SECTIONS, 22 PAGES VOL. 120, NO. 106
Mostly sunny, breezy and colder; very cold tonight HIGH 32, LOW 12
Classifieds B7 Comics B6 Lotteries A14
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