News - Friday, March 21, 2014

Attorney Jamie Morton remembers wishing she’d gone to law school, and then realizing there was no reason she couldn’t. She wasn’t married, she had no children, and although she liked her job, she’d been there eight years and was open to change.

Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) Colonel Tracy Trott has named the agency’s Chattanooga District as the 2013 District of the Year. The THP’s Nashville District won the award last year, and the Knoxville District took the honor in 2011.

State Representative and Nashville Democrat Mike Turner is retiring from the General Assembly and considering a run for mayor.

He served for 14 years, representing District 51, including parts of Old Hickory, Madison, East Nashville, downtown Nashville, and Germantown.

The days are getting longer and warmer — a sure indication of the arrival of spring. Another sign of the season may be the urge you get to do some spring cleaning. But you might not have realized that some of the same spring-cleaning techniques that can be used on your home can also apply to your investments and your overall financial strategy. 

In December of last year, the Tennessee Supreme Court issued its ruling in Johnson v. Hopkins, 2013 Tenn. Lexis 1010, a decision that continues a trend of hammering away at creditors’ ability to evict via a “summary” process after a foreclosure in Tennessee. Based on the ruling, creditors will no longer be able to have borrower/defendants’ purported appeals from General Sessions Court to Circuit Court, summarily dismissed based on the Defendant’s failure to post the appeal bond called for in the eviction statute.

Nobody hates winter weather more than me. I truly believe that. I have said it before, and I will say it again: Snow and ice serve no purpose in my life other than to stifle my business and allow those that work for my firm on a salary a paid day off. Like an electricity meter on the side of a house in the middle of the summer spinning as fast as it can, my overhead runs at full blast whether anyone is working or not. When winter weather hits, I go up to the office when I can, but I stay home when the roads are bad. It just seems like common sense.

Yousef Hamadeh has become a shareholder at the law firm of Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel. Hamadeh joined Chambliss in 2006 in the Litigation Practice Group.

“Yousef has aptly demonstrated his abilities as a skilled lawyer during his time with the firm,” said Mike St. Charles, managing shareholder at Chambliss. “He has achieved outstanding results for the firm’s clients and is making a significant impact on Chambliss and the community through various activities. We are fortunate to have him on the team and now serving in a shareholder capacity.”

"Need for Speed” opens with a shot of a drive-in theater showing the movie “Bullitt,” in which Steve McQueen plays a cop determined to find the underworld kingpin that killed the witness in his protection. Made in 1968, it gave birth to car chases on film. Back then, movie makers didn’t have computers that could animate the trickier stuff, so they did things the hard way: live, with stunt drivers and real cars. While the laws of physics limited what they could do, the action was more realistic, and therefore more exciting and suspenseful, than anything an animation whiz can whip up on a workstation today.

For more information or to reserve tickets, call 493-0270, extension 10, or e-mail rsvp@jewishchattanooga.com. The concert is produced by Young Leadership of the Jewish Federation.

The band, made up of founder, producer, composer, lead guitarist, and manager Ori Naftaly and songwriter, composer, and lead vocalist Eleanor Tsaig, began playing their brand of “jazz-inspired blues” in November 2011. By 2012, they became the first Israeli band to have been voted into the International Blues Competition, where they were 2013 semi-finalists.

"The first thing I would do every morning was look at the box scores to see what Magic did. I didn’t care about anything else.”

~Larry Bird

On Monday morning, someone here at the paper asked me what the mascot is for Indiana State. I had to think about it, which kind of surprised me. Then it came. “They are the Trippers,” I told him. 

This weekend was busy! I had kids and grandkids here, and it was so much fun! Busy, but one fun moment after another.

My youngest granddaughter, Gwynn (three years old), loves to help in the kitchen. She has a rolling step-stool I keep in the pantry, and she knows that every time we walk toward the kitchen, she can go get her step-stool and say, “I help you.” And help she does!

The Chattanooga Mortgage Bankers Association on Thursday, March 13 gathered together at Food Works to install new officers for the upcoming year. Pictured are (L-R): Jill Green, director; Mary McLean, secretary; Bryan Fryar, vice president; and Tina Christein, president. Not pictured: Michael Reed, treasurer; Charity Kincaid, director; and Chad Harris, director and past president. The CMBA is committed to promoting professionalism within the mortgage banking industry through networking and educational opportunities and to supporting and promoting its membership as well as local nonprofit and charitable organizations associated with homeownership. Additional photo on page 16. (David Laprad)

If laughter can bridge the gap between two points, then Great Chattanooga Association of Realtors President Vicki Trapp built the equivalent of the Golden Gate Bridge between her Association and local mortgage bankers Thursday, March 13 Food Works. Trapp was invited to speak at the Chattanooga Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual installation of new officers, and had her hosts in stitches with her list of “simple demands” from Realtors. “We want the underwriter’s phone number,” she said, causing the bankers in the room to burst out laughing. “We don’t want to hear that the nice couple we’ve been showing houses to doesn’t qualify for a loan. We just want you to make it happen!” (David Laprad)

The Crye-Leike REALTORS website has once again been voted as the best of the best.

Crye-Leike.com recently won two awards from Leading Real Estate Companies of the World at Leading RE’s annual 2014 meeting, held in Las Vegas.

1. What was the only southern town to remain in Union hands throughout the Civil War? Little Rock, Ark.; Birmingham, Ala.; Jackson, Miss.; Key West, Fla.

2. How many miles per gallon did the 22-horsepower, 4-cylinder Model T Ford get when it was introduced in 1908?

Factor V Leiden (FAK-tur five LIDE-n) is a mutation of one of the clotting factors in the blood called factor V. This mutation can increase your chance of developing abnormal blood clots (thrombophilia), usually in your veins.

As I approached my early twenties, I was married and had one beautiful baby girl. When she turned two, we decided we wanted to start trying to extend our family. We easily became pregnant, but maintaining the pregnancies we learned would be a completely different story. We found ourselves with child one month after we started trying. The pregnancy was going great! We went in for our first ultrasound to find out that we were actually expecting identical twins. Yes, we were dumbfounded. My doctor warned us of all the complications with this type of pregnancy and the survival rate of both twins. We felt confident that everything was going to go fine, and in nine months, we’d be holding two more beautiful babies. It was not until week 19 that I started to suspect something was not right. I had called my husband at work and let him know I wanted to go to the doctor. As we left the doctor that afternoon, we knew we were going home with only one baby still cooking. Although we were sad, and the process at that point in the pregnancy was difficult, we were still feeling so blessed that Baby B, as we were naming it, was looking great! At this point, I felt the pregnancy would be much easier considering there was only one baby who would need blood, nutrients, etc... Fast-forward two weeks and, once again, I felt there was something not right. This time, leaving the hospital was much harder, and I had a huge feeling of emptiness – literally. We would recover and would actually end up experiencing the loss of two more children late in my first trimester. This is very hard for women to comprehend and deal with. Our bodies are supposed to be able to make babies. It was then that I decided I wanted to figure out why I was forming blood clots throughout my body – including the umbilical cords of my precious children.

Never in the history of competitive crossword puzzle solving has there been a rivalry like the one between Tyler Hinman and Dan Feyer.” Thus begins a write-up of last week’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament at time.com. Citing New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, who’s also the ACPT’s founder and director, Katy Steinmetz continues: “The competition ended when Feyer, a 36-year-old freelance pianist … finished the final puzzle in 7 minutes and 18 seconds.”

Jason Rains, in-house designer at La-Z-Boy Research and Development in Dayton, Tenn., used scrap material and recycled fiber to create a six foot teddy bear, called a “La-Z-Bear,” to donate to the Chattanooga Ronald McDonald House. Rains’s idea came about when his son mentioned he wanted to woo his girlfriend for Valentine’s Day. Seeing his initial creation was such a success, he decided to make another one for RMHC.