Georgia Today: Sapelo Island dock collapse; Inmate dies in Bibb County Jail; Author interview

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today's Tuesday, Oct. 22. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, Black lawmakers are demanding answers for questions surrounding the dock collapse that killed seven people on Sapelo Island. State officials will investigate the death of a Macon man who died in Bibb County Jail. And a Georgia author's new collection of poetry explores the complex grief of losing a loved one to addiction. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.

Story 1:

Peter Biello: Black lawmakers in Georgia are demanding answers after a state-operated ferry dock on Sapelo Island collapsed Saturday, killing seven people. GPB's Benjamin Payne reports.

Benjamin Payne: Sapelo Island is among the nation's last intact communities of Gullah Geechee people, descendants of enslaved West Africans who worked island plantations from the Carolinas down to Florida. Only about 30 people currently live on Sapelo Island. The only way to get there is by a ferry run by the state. At around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, a group of about 20 people lined up to board the ferry when the aluminum gangway suddenly collapsed. They fell into the water below.

Carl Gilliard: There are some questions about the infrastructure, about what could have been prevented and what we can do moving forward to do right by Sapelo Island.

Benjamin Payne: That's state Rep. Carl Gilliard, who chairs the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. Seven people died, all elderly. None were Sapelo Island residents. They were among 700 visitors who came for the annual Gullah Geechee Festival. Gilliard and the Black Caucus gathered last night across from Sapelo Island on mainland McIntosh County, demanding accountability from the state's Department of Natural Resources.

Carl Gilliard: We are here to not only offer our prayers and condolences because prayers without works is dead. What are we going to do to maintain that this will never happen again? This is an atrocity. And through the state of Georgia, it's an audacity.

Crowd: Yes, yes!

Benjamin Payne: And a preventable one, says J.R. Grovner He's a Sapelo Island resident and descendant who says he noticed recently that the dock was in poor condition. We spoke on Saturday, shortly after the ferry dock collapsed.

J.R. Grovner: I was walking on it and was bouncing. So I stood in the middle of it and bounced up and down for the captain, and he said, "Aw, it ain't going nowhere." The captain told me tonight after that happen. And he said, J.R., "you told me." He said, "you were right. You said it."

Benjamin Payne: The Georgia DNR declined to comment on Grovner's allegation. The agency said the dock was built in 2021 and had its last inspection in December. Gov. Brian Kemp said he was heartbroken by the tragedy. A special legislative hearing on the Sapelo Island dock collapse has been scheduled for next week. For GPB News, I'm Benjamin Payne in McIntosh County.

Story 2:

Peter Biello: Prosecution continues against Georgians accused of crimes related to the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol, even as former President Donald Trump vows to pardon what he calls political prisoners if he's reelected. A jury trial began yesterday for Tonya Webb, a Stockbridge woman charged with misdemeanors in the case. An Alpharetta man was arrested on Friday on several charges, including two alleged felonies. Cylester Maxwell was charged with assaulting law enforcement officers with a dangerous weapon and civil disorder. He also faces misdemeanor charges of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds and engaging in physical violence in a Capitol building or grounds. A Department of Justice database shows 24 Georgia cases related to the Capitol breach in various states of prosecution.

Story 3:

Peter Biello: State investigators will look into the case of a man with a history of mental health issues who died in the Macon Bibb County Jail. GPB's Grant Blankenship reports, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation considers the death earlier this year a homicide.

Grant Blankenship: Both County Sheriff David Davis and making District attorney Anita Howard requested the GBI look at the death of Steven Fossett. Fossett struggled with schizophrenia and had been in the county jail a number of times before his detention this past May. It was then during what his family suspects was a mental health episode that Fossett was shocked with stun guns. He later died of cardiac arrest in hospital care. In August, family attorney Muwali Davis said guards should have better known how to safely work with Fossett.

Muwali Davis: This was chronic. This was long term. This was something that they were on notice about and should have put in place the proper accommodations to ensure his safety.

Grant Blankenship: And voluntary manslaughter is the least serious criminal charge associated with homicide in Georgia. It's punishable by up to a 10-year prison sentence. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon.

Story 4:

Peter Biello: State House. Speakers in six Southeastern states affected by recent hurricanes, including Georgia's Jon Burns, are asking for federal disaster relief funds. In a letter to congressional leaders, the six ask Congress to send block grants to help farmers affected by Hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton. They also ask for funding through the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help with restoration of infrastructure, housing and economic development, as well as funding through the Federal Highway Administration to repair and rebuild roads and bridges. Hurricane Helene passed through Georgia more than three weeks ago, causing widespread damage. That storm came about two months after Hurricane Debby dropped heavy rain in southern Georgia.

Story 5:

Peter Biello: Shots that protect against flu viruses are widely available and in many places free or low cost. So why has less than half of Georgia's population received the seasonal vaccine? Turns out it's a common trend. GPB's Sofi Gratas has more.

Sofi Gratas: The flu vaccine is tested, has mild side effects and is especially good at protecting from severe illness impacting thousands in Georgia every year. Yet the number of people getting the shot remains largely unchanged, says Glen Nowak with the University of Georgia. Though there's been a slight uptick among adolescents, adults over 65 are still most likely to get vaccinated. Nowak says if states like Georgia want a greater turnout, they need to invest in primary care access.

Glen Nowak: You're probably not going to be able to solve that problem just with posters. People are going to have to be able to access doctors and nurses and health care providers who can educate them about the vaccine and its importance.

Sofi Gratas: According to data from last flu season, just over 40% of Georgians received a flu shot. For GPB News, I'm Sofi Gratas.

Caption

Erin Carlyle is the author of the new poetry collection 'Girl at the End of the World'.

Credit: Peter Biello

Story 6:

Peter Biello: Addiction can put stress on even the most stable relationship. Atlanta poet Erin Carlisle knows this firsthand. In her new collection, her father's opioid addiction colors her memories of the man she knew. The book is called Girl at the End of the World. And Erin Carlyle is with me now. Welcome to the program.

Erin Carlyle: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Peter Biello: So this is your second book of poetry?

Erin Carlyle: Yes.

Peter Biello: And your first book dealt with similar themes.

Erin Carlyle: Yes.

Peter Biello: I'm wondering what you were trying to explore in this second volume that either you didn't get to or you weren't trying to get to in your first book?

Erin Carlyle: Yes. So my first book was a lot about my childhood growing up poor in the South. My family was greatly affected by the opioid crisis. My dad and mom, my uncles all were addicted. And so that really impacted my childhood, my girlhood. And so that's what most of the poems are about. There's some other things in there, too: girls I grew up with, things like that. With the second book, my dad actually passed away in 2019 of overdose — opioids and Xanax.

Peter Biello: I'm sorry for your loss.

Erin Carlyle: Thank you. He had heart disease. He had had a quadruple bypass about eight months before he passed away. And he was always in pain. So it was really legitimate pain that he had that he was trying to use the pills for. But, yeah, it ultimately took his life. And that's sort of what this book is about. So the same players, the same spaces, same places. But this is really about grief and just trying to come to terms with that.

Peter Biello: Yeah. I wanted to ask you about the father figure in this book because you never really want to fully assume the speaker in the poem is actually you.

Erin Carlyle: Right.

Peter Biello: You describe your first book as autobiographical.

Erin Carlyle: Similar, yeah.

Peter Biello: But I just wanted to measure the distance between who this person is speaking and in you.

Erin Carlyle: I'm not going to lie. You know, it's me, but maybe the poem version of me, my thoughts and feelings, not maybe everything I actually did and said, but also maybe a mixture of maybe other people I was seeing too — things that just kind of got messed up in that memory world. But it is me. Yeah. I'd say all of my speakers are me, mostly. I mean, unless I'm doing persona or something like that. But for the most part — especially in this book, you know — it's me.

Peter Biello: OK. And ... the father in this book — your father in this book — is described in a few different ways. I was hoping you could read one of your poems that — that puts him in a certain light. Can you read "Airspace" for us?

Erin Carlyle: Yes. Airspace. Ghosts Sit. Watching planes lifting liminal space. A long time ago, my dad took my brother and I to an airport just to ride the shuttle from one end to the other. We watched people board their flights, and then we watched other people claim baggage from the carousel. My dad, fresh, shaved in his throws, grabbed my face in his hands, so excited to teach me about traveling somewhere else, only to come back home.

Peter Biello: How did this poem come together?

Erin Carlyle: So I am working on my Ph.D. at Georgia State. I took a class and we were working on chapbooks — so, a shorter book of poetry. And I had written a bunch of stuff about my father, about my grief process beforehand. And I brought all of these poems in. And one of my fellow poets in the class sort of picked up on a few of the themes. There were a few times I'd mentioned this moment that he took us to the Atlanta airport when we were living in Phenix City. And this is pre-9/11, so you could just go and get on the shuttle. And ... we didn't have the money to fly anywhere, but he was so interested in flying. He had been in the Air Force. He just wanted to show us airplanes. And this was a moment after his first heart attack, after his first surgery, before I knew anything about pills or anything like that. And I just remember him being so excited. And to me back then, when I looked at him, I thought he was just like this older man. And this, like — just so silly and like, just my father. But now that I'm older, he was — I just think about how young he was and just how having that heart attack and just how he was at the very beginning of his addiction. Gosh, how that really detoured his life completely and what maybe what he could have been. You know?

Peter Biello: You approached these poems, I think, in a very writerly way. And what I mean by that is you're showing as many sides of your dad as you can. "Airspace" is a sweet poem, right?

Erin Carlyle: Right.

Peter Biello: Where you have this wonderful view of a very excited dad showing his kid something he's excited about. There are other sides of him, sides that maybe if he read those poems, I don't know if he'd feel too great about them. So he siphons gas in a few of them. He's rather insensitive in very particular ways in other poems. What was it like for you having to explore both of those sides as honestly as you can, even when it's clearly painful?

Erin Carlyle: It is painful. We didn't have the best relationship because of his addiction. And just the path that that laid out for him was something that I just couldn't be involved in, even though I totally empathize and understood the reasons why certain things were happening. ... And when he was younger, he made a lot of decisions, very rash decisions based on survival. We didn't have any money. He didn't have a lot of means to get money, especially after he'd had a heart attack. He physically couldn't do certain things. He had undiagnosed bipolar, undiagnosed ADHD until he was way older. And he just made a lot of decisions that made things harder in the long run. And that really kind of put a rift between he and I and my brothers and him. And so all of that was true, you know? All of those aspects of him were true. And I love him. But that was my — my experience of him. So it wouldn't have been a true book if I had just told the nice things, you know?

Peter Biello: Well, Erin Carlyle, thank you so much for speaking with me about Girl at the End of the World.

Erin Carlyle: Thank you so much.

Peter Biello: And Girl at the End of the World is the book we are discussing on the most recent episode of Narrative Edge, GPB's podcast about books with Georgia connections. We dropped that episode in your podcast feed today, and if you haven't subscribed yet, you can search for Narrative Edge wherever you get your podcasts. Also, Erin Carlyle is going to be reading from her work Saturday, Oct. 26 at noon at the Reading Attic in Marietta. You can find a link to more information at GPB.org.

Story 7:

Peter Biello: Chik-Fil-A has announced a launch date for its streaming service. The Atlanta-based fast food giant said yesterday its Chick-Fil-A Play service will go live on Nov. 18. The company announced its foray into the entertainment business this summer, saying it would focus on children's content, including original shows, podcasts and games.

Story 8:

Peter Biello: And in sports, in soccer, Atlanta United will face No. 8 seed CF Montreal in a single elimination game today in Montreal. And if they win, they'll take on Inter Miami in a best-of-three series beginning Friday. This follows a 2 to 1 win over Orlando City Saturday to clinch a berth in the MLS Cup playoffs. The match is scheduled to begin at 7:30 tonight.

That's a wrap on Georgia Today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you want to learn more about any of these stories, visit GPB.org/news. And remember to subscribe to this podcast. It's a great way to stay on top of all the Georgia headlines. Just subscribe to Georgia Today, wherever you're listening now. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news