Newspapers / The News-Record (Marshall, N.C.) / April 14, 1982, edition 1 / Page 1
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?1st Year No. 15 PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE COUNTY SEAT AT MARSHALL, N.C. WEDNESDAY, April 14, 1982 15c Per Copy ORD SERVING THE PEOPLE OF MADISON COOi.TY Graham Pleads Guilty ; Judge Orders Removal Of Boarders By NICHOLAS HANCOCK Editor Mildred Graham, operator of Graham's Boarding Home, pleaded guilty to a December 1961 charge of operating a rest home for the aged and disabled without a state license Wednesday in Madison County District Court. As a result of a plea bargain between the state and the defense, Judge Robert H. Lacey sentenced Graham, 56, to six months in jail but deferred the sentence and placed the defendant on supervised probation for three ~years and ordered her to meet several conditions while on probation. Graham, who faced a maximum two year sentence on the charge, was also ordered to pay a $200 fine and court costs, in addition to being ordered to cooperate with the local Department of Social Services and state agencies in carrying out the terms of the plea bargain. Those terms included removing all aged and disabled residents from the Graham Boarding Home in the Sandy Mush area within 10 days and to stop See Related Story On Page 3. operating the establishment as a rest home. DDS and state Division of Facilty Services officials went to the home Thursday to determine which residents would have to be removed and relocated to licensed facilities. The terms also stipulated that the home would be monitored regularly over the next three years by DSS and DFS officials, and that Graham would have to get written approval from DSS and DFS before placing any person in the Madison County facility. Graham will also have to furnish DSS and state officials a list every six months of residents boarding at the home during her probation period. The December charge stemmed from an investigation of the home conducted in August 1961 by DSS and state of ficials who said they found several residents in need of medical and high skill care at the facility composed of one house and six trailers. Testimony at Wednesday's trial showed cases of residents deprived of food, clothing, and medication and others secretly sent to the rest home from another in Buncombe County. Assistance District Attorney Forrest Ball dismissed two similar misde meanor charges in exchange for Graham's gillty plea. She had entered a plea of not guilty in the January 1982 term of District Court. Graham did not testify during the two-hour trial. The court case drew considerable at tention locally after a 57-year-old resi dent wandered from the rest home on Nov. 30 and died. Dean Roger's body was found on Dec. 4 and the state filed charges against Graham on Dec. 7. The warrant accused Graham of operating the facility without a license on Nov. l. Graham had operated the rest home for 17 years and testimony Wednesday showed that relatives of residents had complained over a period of years of mistreatment and mismanagement at the facility. Graham Boarding Home had been the subject of "a number of investiga tions" over the past 11 years, according to Elaine Armstrong, bead of the Group Care Facilities Branch of the North Carolina Department of Human Resources. "Complaint reports were received from another state agency," Ms. Arm strong said, and a letter was sent to Graham on Dec. 31, 1980 advising her to cease operation, she said. The facility was never licensed as a rest home, Armstrong said, and never could be because the trailers used to house residents are substandard under state regulations. No doctors or nurses were on duty, although residents there required substantial medical care, she said. Another letter was sent to Graham on Sept. 1, 1981 ordering her to cease operation, but Graham never compiled with state orders to stop running a rest home, Armstrong said. Businessman Starts Scholarship Fund A new scholarship fund has been established at Madison High School by R.D. Williams, president of World of Clothing of Henderson ville Williams, a native of the Spill Corn area of the county, presented a letter of commitment for a $10,000 scholar ship fund to the school's scholarship committee Thursday. "This is not a one-time deal; we plan to do this annually, and hope to continuously provide the scholar ships for Madison High School students," Williams told the com mittee. The $10,000 gift, which will be given to the school in July, will be parceled out to student recipients in the class of 1982, Williams said. He emphasized the money is to be awarded to "needy and deserving students" who plan to go to college. Williams stressed the "Needy" criteria in his letter to the commit tee. Williams, whose company donates some $100,000 annually for college scholarships, said Wayne McDevitt, director of the governor's Western Office in Asheville and a resident of Marshall, influenced him in his deci SCHOLARSHIP COMMITMENT ? R.D. Williams (second from left) presents a letter of commit ment for establishing an annual $10,000 scholarship fund at Madison High School for 1982 sion to add Madison High to the list of schools which receive scholarship grants from his company. Williams said he was pleased to make the scholarship commitment to Madison County and happy that Photo by N. Hancock graduates. Receiving the letter for the school's scholarship com mittee are (1-r) Wayne McDevitt, Superintendent Robert L. Ed wards and Principal David Wyatt. he could make a contribution to the school and county. "I feel like any businessman who doesn't put something back into the society and community is a leech on the community," he said. Bobby Ponder Re-elected Chairman School Board Hears Request To Expand Band Program By NICHOLAS HANCOCK Editor Madison County 7th and 8U1 grade ?tudents may get the opportunity to take band lessons in preparation for Joining the Madison High School band beginning next fall if the board of education approves a request heard Wednesday. The request came in the form of a let ter from Madison High Principal David Wyatt. but the board tabled the request until It hears a more detailed proposal for salary supplements for both the band director and the high school and elementary school coaches for fiscal year 1083-83; a point which caused the board to balk at taking any action. Wyatt, who also serves as athletic director at the high school, stated in his letter that the sum needed to provide supplements for the coaches would amount to 911,000 for the coming fiscal year. He said the gate receipts at athletic events, which are used to pay coaches supplements, have not been out for the band director's traveling to all six of the elementary schools. Board member Ed Gentry tentatively propos ed consolidating 7th and 8th grade band studmts at Spring Creek and Hot Spr ings schools when informed that only seven students had indicated an in terest in taking band at Spring Creek He said much of the band director's time could be wasted on the road travel ing between the two schools, but pooling the students < ould make the program more cost effective. In other budnaas the board ? Unanimously re-ejected Bobby Ponder as chairman tor another year ? Approved a request by Madison Bentley Addresses N.C. 2000 Dr. Fred Bentley will be the featured speaker for the Mars Hill N.Q. 2000 community meeting set for Friday, April 16 at 7:30p.m. in the Mars Hill town hall. Resources, population and economics are some of the subjects to be discussed at the meeting which is open to the public Photo by N. Hancock Mildred Graham Leaves Courthouse At Boarding Home Trial Witnesses Tell Court Of Patient Abuse State witnesses in Mildred Graham's trial Wednesday told of mistreatment of pa tients and of residents being secretely transfered to Graham Boarding Home in Madison County from others in Buncombe County without authorization. The testimony was solicited by Judge Robert H. Lacey in Madison County District Court to support the terms of a plea bargained arrangement in which Graham pleaded guilty to operating a rest home without a state license and agreed to stop operating the facility as such. Sue Steele-Correll of Salisbury testified that her 27-year-old son, Carroll Anderson Steele, who suffered from psychiatric problems, began living at the Wayne Wells Family Care Home in Arden in August 1900. She said her son was not there when she went to visit him a month later. Steele was moved to Graham's Boarding Home in Madison County "without my knowledge and without my approval," Mrs. Steele-Correll said. Wells told her that Steele had been moved to the Graham rest home because he had been going to a nearby convenience story and causing a muisance, she said. Mrs. Steele-Correll said she searched for her son at Graham's rest home, a place she described as "a godfor saken isolated place out in the middle of nowhere", but police located him in October 1980 at Mrs. Graham's son's trailer. She said her son was unclothed, underfed, unkept and lacking medical care. She said she began sending money to Mrs. Graham when she threatened to cut off Steele's medications, even though she was supposed to pay her share of 1280 a month to the state. "She said if she didn't get the money, then he wouldn't get medication," Mrs. Steel e Correll said. She added that Graham assured her that the Graham Boarding Home was a licensed facility. Jay Markley, a Haywood County Department of Social Services official, detailed the case of Dean Rogers, the 57-year-old man who suffered from emotional problems who wandered away from Graham's rest home last November and was found dead four days later. Markley said he authorized Rogers moved from a Haywood County rest home to Havon Rest Home in Candler (Continued on Page 3) Mother Says Daughter Was Threatened At School Saying she thought her daughter had been threatened "became she wouldn't smoke marijuana," a parent told members of the Madison County Board of Education Wednesday that 'she wanted them to know "some of the things going on at Madison High School" in hopes that similar incidents would not happen to other students Mrs. Jerry Maney of Mara Hill said her daughter, a sophomore, had received threats, "both on the bus and at school," of being beaten up by a group of students. The threats ard an Incident in which paper and rulers were thrown at her daughter on a Responding to questions from board chairman Bobby Ponder, Mrs. Maney said she felt the incidents involving her daughter "have been straightened out" at the school, but she added, "I don't want it to happen to other students." Ponder told Mrs Maney "threats are just idle words, and nobody has ever been physically hurt by words," and he told her, that such mat ters should be handled with the principal and assistant principal at the school. Mrs. Maney said fotttwi* and her daughter received threats from the students in the presence of witness as. Later, the students "left school without permission" and followed her to a shopping center, Mr*. Maney said. "I think there ought to be a way to get parents more in volved with what their kids are doing at school," she sakl. Board member Gerald Young naked lire. Maney if she thought there was a drug problem at Madison High School Yes. I've seen that for
The News-Record (Marshall, N.C.)
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April 14, 1982, edition 1
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