About 40 miles east of Athens, GA (home to the state’s most prestigious University, UGA – “Go Dawgs!”) on U.S. 78, is the picturesque small town of Washington, in the heart of Wilkes County. I have been through it many times.

On one such trip, many years ago, coming back from a visit with friends in Athens over Thanksgiving, I decided to (finally) stop at the “Washington-Wilkes Historical Museum,” housed in a huge old two-story columned house on the downtown main street. I had been by there many times, but never stopped in before to see what they had. (The Robert Toombs house is two houses away.)

I picked up their brochure and took the self-guided tour, staying maybe about an hour. When I got home, and later read the brochure, I discovered to my surprise that the original portion of the house had been built by a distant relative, Albert Gallatin Semmes!

So the next time I went to Athens, six months or so later, I made a point to stop back by on the way home, again. This time I went to find the curator, a white-haired lady named Doris Martin, held out my hand, introduced myself, then asked for the keys!

When she looked up at me in surprise, I explained about my earlier visit, and discovering upon my return to Savannah and reading their brochure, that the original owner was a relative! Whereupon the kind woman undertook to give me her personal guided tour, and explained what she knew.

The original house, she said, was what was now the ground-level basement, later used as the kitchen, and the two upper floors were added later, along with the east and west wings. She showed me the second story’s western wing, and pointed out the six-inch drop from the floor of the main house to the floor of the wing.

We don’t know if that was due to a lack of proper measuring, or the weight of the addition sinking into soft soil,” she told me. “So you have to watch your step.”

She said that the surrounding ~100 acres or so were part of the original farm, but had been sold off by later owners, and were now residential areas. And that the original owners had apparently gotten spooked by a yellow fever epidemic in 1857, so sold the property, packed up everyone and everything, and moved back to Mississippi!

She directed me to the nearby county (Carnegie) library, and told me to ask for the woman in charge of their special collections section, who could show me the various cemetery records (city, church and family) to see if I could find any relatives buried there. I did go by, looked through all of what was there, but couldn’t find a one! So apparently my ancestors “got out while the getting was good,” and didn’t lose a soul in the process.

The other remarkable thing about that second trip was that the curator had the same name as a long-time Savannah dance and theatre icon, Doris Martin, who ran a dance studio for young girls for many years, and choreographed many Little Theatre summer musicals.

She and her husband Harris also served on the LT Board of Directors. I knew them both well from my LT days.

Another recent discovery I made, at an antiques shop in downtown Savannah, down the street from a BBQ joint I sometimes go for lunch, was a book on this very topic.

One of their window displays was a three-level bookshelf with a variety of old books; and a slender green volume at one end of the second shelf caught my eye: “The History of Wilkes County, Georgia.”

I was unaware of such a volume, so of course had to go inside and look at it.

I told the young man who pulled it off the shelf for me that I only needed to “look at it for a minute, and would give it right back to him.”

“Unless, of course, you want to buy it!” he said with a smile. “Of course,” I replied, cheerfully but doubtfully.

Then I turned to the index, and found to my surprise at least half a dozen entries under the name “Semmes.”

“OK, I’ll take it!” I told him. “That was quick,” he said. I told him I’d found what I was looking for, but hadn’t expected to find.

So, five minutes and $62 later, I walked out with it in my hand.

All I’ve had time to do so far is put post-it flags on all the pages referencing Semmes family members.

I will eventually scan those pages, and the introduction to the volume – which is a story in itself – and send them to family members.

One small note: This apparently was a Protestant branch of the family, unlike mine, which was long Catholic. But then, I don’t think there were many Catholics in Georgia back then, unlike Maryland, where my branch of the family comes from. So that may have been more to do with necessity than conviction.

Life is full of surprises!

Rafe Semmes is a proud graduate of (“the original”) Savannah High School and the University of Georgia.

He and his wife live in eastern Liberty County, and are long-time Rotarians. He writes on a variety of topics, and may be reached at rafe_semmes@yahoo.com.

MISSOULA — Typically, Washington-Grizzly Stadium is described as the Mecca of FCS football. But for this upcoming week it is Concert City, USA.

Over a 10-day stretch, there will be four major events at UM’s stadium, starting with three concerts and, of course, capped off by the Grizzly football home opener.

“This series of concerts is like a football game, super-sized you could say,” UM Athletics’ director of communications Eric Taber said.

That couldn’t ring more true. Starting Thursday, Washington-Grizzly Stadium will bring in recurring guest in rock and roll hall of famers Pearl Jam to kick off an insane 10-day run at the venue.

Country star Tyler Childers will follow soon after on Saturday, and that will lead up to the grand performance that is expected from Pink next Wednesday, with the opening Griz football game slated for Saturday, Aug. 31 to complete this run.

“This is really following along with (UM) President (Seth) Bodnar’s charge to make sure that we’re utilizing these facilities that we have and this entertainment hub that we have with Grizzly Athletics and the stadium and the Adams Center, and we’re maximizing what those are,” Montana athletic director Kent Haslam said.

And there’s strategy behind it too.

While it’s going to be a tall task and a heavy load, setting up the base-layer stage for three shows versus just one limits the costs on the university, allowing UM to generate more revenue in holding these three extra events.

“The stadium has proven to be a place where great acts can come and perform and generate the revenue that they want to generate, and also spend some time in western Montana,” Haslam said. “Having three, that’s a lot, that’ll do a lot to people who are working behind the scenes, but only having to set up the stage one time and then having three concerts is really financially much more viable for a stadium of this size.”

“It really is a 24/7 process,” Taber added. “And as soon as the Pearl Jam concert is over, they’re going to start the load out process. And then Tyler Childers arrives from their show at The Gorge (in Washington) the next day, basically, and they start moving things in. And then, luckily, there’s a few more days until the Pink concert, because that’s going to be a major move in.”

Logistically, to say it’s complicated is drastically understating it.

Floor installation began on August 15 and teams have been working around the clock since to set up. Pearl Jam will bring 25 tour trucks with them for Thursday’s show. Childers will follow with a slightly lighter load of 15 trucks and 10 busses for Saturday’s event.

Then, the all-hands on deck operation must go above and beyond even more for Pink, who is bringing 35 trucks, 19 buses and is using 20-plus spaces in the Adams Center for prep in what is expected to be a theatrical and monumental event at the stadium.

After that, it’s a quick two-day turnaround for the first Griz game of the season when UM welcomes Missouri State to town for a 7 p.m. kickoff. One of the reasons that game is a night kickoff is to give ample time to set up for the football game.

There will be 200-300 people selling beer at these events, and about 150-200 security staff will be used for this on top of hundreds who are helping put the facility together, and while there’s no official costs out yet, the school is hoping to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars from staging them.

Haslam noted that the money made from Pearl Jam’s show in 2018 helped pay for and put in a new soccer field for the Grizzlies.

That money will come from all kinds of negotiated areas, from renting the facilities out, to beer sales, concessions, parking, tickets and more.

Then, the ability to get everything the artists need in has been the other hurdle.

“It’s just a massive amount of people,” Taber said. “You know, for a football game, we have three buses, one truck, and so to have 35 trucks on campus, the hard part for Grizzly Athletics is just finding out where they’re going to park, what time they’re going to come in, how they’re going to come in, what route they’re taking, and how long it takes them to unload and reload, that kind of thing.”

Not to mention the ancillary benefits UM will draw, from people drawn to the campus and seeing what they offer and the fervor it will all add to campus life now that students are moving back in for the 2024-25 academic year.

“This is a great thing to do. It’s fun for our students, fun for the community, brings folks into town,” said Dave Kuntz, the University of Montana’s director of strategic communications. “But two, it really helps the university out, from a financial perspective, to be able to build a stage once have the three big shows then go on to normal operations after that.”

UM will use a new security system, exactly like the one used at the FCS national championship in Frisco, Texas, to get people in and out faster, and the school will also implement that during football season.

Parking will be limited, with UM encouraging folks to walk to the venue or use public transportation. Campus Drive was shut down to through traffic on Aug. 20.

And also, thanks to the new indoor practice facility being installed and the south campus fields, the athletic teams, especially football, will be able to continue to prep for their upcoming seasons with everything under way.

“Our primary business, for lack of a better word, is an athletic department, and athletic events, volleyball, soccer, and then football certainly is our largest revenue generator,” Haslam said. “So we can’t put those things in jeopardy.”

It’s going to be a wild week-and-a-half in Missoula as Washington-Grizzly Stadium serves as an entertainment epicenter to cap off the summer with a bang.

“One of the things that really makes UM special is our vibrancy,” Kuntz said. “We’re a campus here that’s tucked away with the mountain and the river and all the outdoor spaces, but we’re also the cultural capital of Montana, and to be able to bring in three shows and three diverse shows, it really provides all of our students, whatever their genre of music, an opportunity to participate in the shows.”

“This town’s in for a big party, and so we’re just super happy to be a part of it,” Taber said. “Honestly, we want the university to be part of the community and to be hosting these great events and providing the entertainment options for the community is just such an awesome experience for everybody, especially in Grizzly Athletics, because that’s what we do. We host a community.”

George Washington University has suspended its chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace just days before the start of the new semester.

The private university in Washington, D.C. also suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and put six other pro-Palestinian student groups on probation, in a preemptive move that signals the school expects campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war to resume as students return to campus in the coming days.

The groups were temporarily suspended last fall after pro-Palestinian students projected inflammatory messages on campus buildings, including “Glory to our martyrs” and “Free Palestine From The River To The Sea,” weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The school’s chapter of JVP, the anti-Zionist Jewish group, supported that protest and said on social media that it stood behind every message.

The new suspension means that the groups will not receive official university recognition, funding or any other forms of institutional support this semester. In the spring, they will go on probation and will have to seek permission to hold any on-campus events.

Multiple other universities have changed their policies around campus protests over the summer, anticipating future standoffs with pro-Palestinian groups as classes reopen with fighting ongoing in Gaza.

The suspended GWU groups, which frequently work together, shared news of the suspensions in an Instagram post on Monday and said they would not be deterred.

“GW administration may suspend our organizations and strip us of our funding, but they will never quell the student movement,” the student groups wrote on Instagram. They vowed to “return a hundred times stronger in the face of their repression.”

Neither GWU nor JVP’s national organization immediately returned a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment.

Addressing violations of university policy

But a university spokesperson told Jewish Insider that the school has “an obligation to address violations of university policy, and does so without regard to the content of the message those demonstrating seek to advance. It does so through a Code of Student Conduct that provides a fair review process that includes student peers.” The spokesperson would not specify what campus policy the groups had violated. 

GWU is at least the second major university to suspend its JVP chapter since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. Columbia University took a similar action last fall and renewed the suspension in the winter, months before it became the epicenter of the pro-Palestinian encampment movement. JVP has been a prominent force in the movement, often providing Jewish representation for a student movement whose calls to divest from Israel have been accused of veering into antisemitism.

GWU’s own encampment was cleared by D.C. police in May under pressure from Congress and some Jewish faculty.