Phil Baggett, What Are You Thinking?!

Until retiring with a heart condition, Josiah Lewis was a chemist with TVA. His wife Koleta owned several antique shops in the Shoals area before her health forced her to retire. Elizabeth, their only child, died unmarried at a relatively young age. Now, years after their deaths, a local businessman is about to destroy the final resting place of the Lewis family's Great Danes, and there's no one to stop him.

Many who knew the Lewis family state they buried the canine members of their household in the small Hough Road pet cemetery in order to avoid this very fate, but the death of the cemetery's owner Paul Johnson left the land in the hands of a mortgage company more than willing to sell to those seeking to develop the now commercial property.

We're sure there are other such animals buried there, animals whose human families are no longer part of the Shoals and who know nothing of the fate that's about to befall the cemetery. No one will dispute that the land has fallen victim to neglect; grass covers unmarked graves as well as those where expensive bronze plaques mark the final resting place of those who no longer have anyone to defend them.

Phil Baggett is a native of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, and owner of Baggett Oil Company. Surely, Mr. Baggett could remove these graves to another piece of property. It would not only be the right thing to do, it would establish Baggett as one who truly cares about the Shoals area and not just what he can gain financially from it. We ask Phil Baggett to carefully consider how this will affect the community, a community from which he earns his livelihood.


What's up with this: DFU president and former mayoral candidate Van Morgan has stated he favors the removal of downtown parking meters in Florence. Perhaps he can tell us how the city will then fiance operations of the Pine Street parking deck, a facility that loses over 40K each year?

Shoalanda