Word: marshes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Brent's father Ray had opened the crematory in 1982, expanding on his grave-digging business. The Marsh family was among the most prominent of the few African-American families in the area. Ray's wife Clara--known as "Preacher Clara"--taught in public schools for more than 30 years. In 1995 she was selected as Walker County's Citizen of the Year. Incredibly, Ray even ran for county coroner in 1992. (He lost.) When he became ill with heart disease in the mid-1990s, Brent returned home from the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, where he played football...
Nobody is more at a loss to explain the horrific trove than the people who live in Noble and have known the Marsh family all their lives. On Thursday, the tally of bodies unearthed surpassed the total population of the rural, unincorporated town. It was impossible to reconcile the news reports with the family's reputation. Like most people who spoke to TIME, a bewildered Judy Davis said of the Marshes, "They are good people, churchgoing people...
...took his car to Test & Tune and ate at Wanda's Restaurant. Over the past four years, he brought three bodies to a nearby crematory, telling co-owner Glenda Wilson his equipment was down and he needed a favor, she says. She always complied, free of charge. The Marsh clan went about the business of living, all the while surrounded by rotting corpses...
Back in Georgia, Representative Mike Snow has introduced a bill to require all crematories to be licensed. The irony is acute, since in 1992, Snow had introduced an amendment to exempt the Marsh place from inspection for two years--at Ray Marsh's request. When the coroner complained in 1995 that Marsh wasn't licensed, Marsh's lawyers convinced the state attorney general that Marsh was exempt. The Marsh place only dealt with funeral homes and thus did not fit the state's definition of a crematory as a facility open to the public...
...there's real value to having your peers cheer you on, says Merle Marsh, a prep-school administrator and author of several parents' guides to the Net, including Everything You Need to Know (But Were Afraid to Ask Kids) About the Information Highway (Computer Learning Foundation). Marsh applauds the site for encouraging young people to read and write; she only wishes they weren't writing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. "It would be better if they were coming up with their own characters," she says, "but maybe this is the way they need to start...