"A Brush with Destiny"

"A Brush with Destiny," an art exhibit featuring work from artists who served in World War II recently opened in the Colonial Group Inc. Art Gallery of The Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Pooler. The exhibit will be at the Museum through October 31st of this year and features 23 pieces of work in a variety of media, depicting a wide range of events and experiences during World War II.

Three of the featured artists served in the Eighth Air Force and were held as Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany for periods ranging from 10 months to nearly two years. Over all, 17 of the "A Brush with Destiny" artists are World War II veterans and 15 of them were members of the Eighth Air Force, including one who served in the last Bomb Group to be activated in the Eighth. Four of the artists served in the 303rd Bomb Group stationed at Molesworth, England.

Also included in the exhibition are two large drawings by Milton Caniff, creator of the "Terry and the Pirates" and the wartime "Miss Lace" comic strips. "A Brush with Destiny" showcases seven oil paintings, four watercolors, four acrylics, and a stained glass piece of a B-17 Flying Fortress.

The featured pieces include:

An 11 x 17 watercolor on paper of a row of P-47 Thunderbolts lined up for takeoff by Byron Morrell. The piece was painted while Morrell was a Prisoner of War for 19 months, his P-47 ran out of fuel and crashed while on a mission.

A 24 x 36 oil on linen by Benjamin Napolitano depicting the explosion of a bomb dump at his base on July 15, 1944. Napolitano, who was recovering from frostbite suffered during one his 35 missions as a tail gunner, painted his recollections in 2004.

A 22 x 30 portrait of a Royal Air Force Spitfire in flight, done in 1943 by Donald Allen. Allen was a member of the ground crew for the 334th Fighter Squadron of the 4th Fighter Group and painted the nose art on over 30 P-47 Thunderbolts.

A 14 x 18 watercolor and graphite on paper illustration, Country Draft Board 1943 by famed illustrator Kerr Eby, depicting six men and a woman reviewing local records. Read More

Community Outrage over Effingham County Property Tax Assessment

If you are an Effingham County homeowner who is outraged at your recent Property Tax assessment, you are certainly not alone. You may have seen the television news report on WTOC 11 when the County held a meeting Thursday May 10th on the topic. There was a packed house at the Springfield Administrative Complex. In attendance were hundreds of angry Effingham County residents ready to hear what Chief Appraiser Janis Bevill had to say about why their tax assessments are perceived as so far out of line with fair market value.

Since then, there has been a lot of misinformation out there as to when and if there was another meeting to be held. There was a second meeting held on Thursday May 17th, but it was not held by the County. Instead, it was a concerned group of residents from Meldrim.

This grass roots group of concerned tax paying citizens is called S.E.T.A. for short, and led up by President Richard Sapp. He states that the problem is not with the tax assessor’s office, but with the State’s formulas. He also mentioned, “the assessments are hard to fight – we have got to get control of the values and the spending in this county.” This excited the crowd at the first meeting. Read More