Followup and Photos from the Marshall Fellows in Atlanta Trip
August 16th, 2007 • Marshall Memorial Fellowship
I’ve been way behind in getting things done and someone recently reminded me that I never posted pictures from the European Marshall Fellows trip. You can see the entire set of pictures here but let me also talk about what we actually did since it ended up differing a bit from what I said we’d do before.
As planned, we did a tour of Grady Memorial Hospital. The tour was interesting and we learned a lot about the financial and coordination challenges that Grady faces. We had the opportunity to tour a number of areas at the hospital. One that pulled at everyone’s heartstrings was the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). In the NICU we saw babies who were as small as two pounds. If you know anything about birth weight, you know this is extremely low.
We then went on to meet Fulton County Commissioner and Chairman-elect John Eaves. John also happens to be a past American Marshall Fellow and was extremely helpful in arranging visits for the European fellows. While we were visiting with John, one of the fellows requested a visit to a county jail. This wasn’t in our schedule but we squeezed it in and am I glad we did (see below).
Next we visited the Gateway Center. I took a group of fellows to the center last year and the trip was well received. This year I think the trip was even better. Not only has the Gateway Center have more of an operating history at this point but we were also able to sit and talk with one of Gateway’s clients. The only downer of this visit is that I learned that my contact, Rachel Page, was leaving the center and moving to Boston. This is a huge loss for the city of Atlanta.
Next we had a great lunch at McKenna, Long, & Aldridge where we sat and talked with Buddy Darden. Buddy did a lunch discussion with the European Fellows last year and this year was just as good as last year.
Next up was a spur of the moment event. We went and visited the EcoManor. The EcoManor has had much written about it because it is a LEED certified green house in Atlanta. The group did a tour of the entire house and we saw some pretty cool things. Personally, I’m just waiting for the day that I can rip out my water heater and put in one of those Rennai on-demand water heaters (only one, my house isn’t that big).
To round out Friday night, we did a ride along with the DeKalb Police department. The group had to split up into two different precincts and I think everyone had an interesting time. I rode with the officers with the North Precinct. It was an interesting and eventful ride along. Especially when we had to transport a suspect to the central jail.
Finally, we wrapped up the trip on Saturday with a visit to the Fulton County Jail. Talk about a wild experience. We walked into the maximum security wing and saw the specially constructed jail which used to house Brian Nichols (he has since been moved elsewhere). We also walked into a wing of general population prisoners. And no, they weren’t in their cells. They were all told to line up against the wall while we walked into the wing. The inmates were all very nice and some even said good morning to us. Afterwards some of the fellows were wondering what these individuals were in jail for because they seemed so nice and congenial. We were told their crimes included murder among others.
Our last visit (aside from the farewell dinner at Canoe) was to CNN. Pretty strange Saturday if you ask me - going from a county jail to an international news company. But I think the fellows had a good time and saw the strange dichotomy of life in an American city.
So that is a summary of the European Marshall Fellows visit to Atlanta. I had a lot of fun and really enjoyed having the fellows in town. I hope they can say the same.
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