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We kind of hit it off on a Friday night, had a little Fourth of July at the lake on the following Monday and began dating, said Eric Patterson, Pams husband. Pam was in a hurry to get married and get through school. She finished high school atBriarwood, earned her degree from UAB and at the age of 19 she was back at Briarwood teaching.

I figured I better hurry so I could grab him, Pam said.

The Pattersons have a true passion for giving back to their community, wherever they may be. Eric worked forAlabama Power Companyin Birmingham for four years, transferred to northwest Alabama, then moved to Tuscaloosa and lived there for a number of years before moving to Mobile in 1989.

I have been blessed by a great company, said Eric, who was a division manager. Alabama Power is involved in the community, period. Its been a blessing that Ive had a company that encouraged us to be engaged and involved in the community. And as I say, its because of Alabama Power that we do and get engaged in so many ways.

Pams career was not dependent on staying in one particular place, and she was able to move to continue her passion for teaching while supporting her husbands career.

I tell my students, I was made to be a kindergarten teacher, Pam said. I feel just as strongly as people are called to the ministry that I was called to teaching. And that path just worked because I could move with Eric very easily when he moved and fall back into teaching.

When the Pattersons moved to Mobile, Pam started working atMorningside Elementary, which served a diverse population of students, as most of her career has been in diverse schools.

I taught there for 15 years, and during that time of teaching I also was on various committees, Pam said. I worked with our school in developing our Title I project and did training for Mobile County school teachers. I retired in 2004 and started working with the New Teacher Academy withMobile County Public Schools. In 2006 I accepted a position at South supervising student teachers, and in 2012 I started working in theOffice of Field Services.

Eric has served on the USA College of Education and Professional Studies Advisory Council since 2016 and currently is the advisory chair. In 2018, he made a donation to South to create the Pamela Lynne Patterson Endowed Scholarship in Education.

Being part of the advisory council has deepened that appreciation and love for giving, Eric said. Everything were talking about right now starts with Mr. Abe Mitchell and his willingness to help match giving toward undergraduate scholarships for the university. Everything that were talking about centers around Mr. Mitchell, and I just cant say enough to thank him for what hes done to make things like we were able to do possible because of his generosity.

Eric surprised his wife with the creation of the scholarship. He hopes the scholarship will honor Pams work and dedication to the field of education.

Pam knew nothing about it, and I didnt want her to be involved in it at all, Eric said. I wanted to find some way to honor this lady. I mean, as I said before, she could have made millions of dollars doing other things. Shes absolutely brilliant. She was valedictorian at Briarwood High School.

When I told her about it, the first thing she did was start crying and crying. That was reward enough right then and there to know that it meant a lot to her, and it did because of all that shes invested in her life.

The Pattersons know how difficult it is financially for undergraduate education students in their last semester of college. While completing student teaching in schools, its difficult for students to work.

And we do have a number of back-to-school students and a lot of them need to work because they have families, so I wanted our scholarship to be able to help students with tuition in their last semester, Pam said. Im just so thrilled that someone can benefit from this, because I was on an academic scholarship in college and I know. We were married while I was in college, and it was a godsend for us. Im just thrilled that we can do that for someone else. Again, paying it forward.

Erics involvement in education has not only stemmed from his wifes involvement with education, but also his time with Alabama Power. While working with the company in Mobile, Eric also worked with theMobile Area Education Foundation.

We have supported schools throughout my career in various places throughout the state, Patterson said. So, as Ive moved around, I have been involved with school systems because of Alabama Powers encouragement and our personal belief in being involved with schools.

The Pattersons have also supportedDistinguished Young Women. Eric was president of the board for two years and Pam was executive director of the organization for three years.

The primary focus of Distinguished Young Women is to provide scholarships for young women to attend colleges and universities across the country, Pam said. Distinguished Young Women is such a beneficiary of University of South Alabama scholarships. More than 25 young women from various states have attended South on scholarships received through this program.

Weve been very heavily involved with that organization and, just again, another one of those benefits of education and another of those things that I love about South Alabama, because Eric and I love Distinguished Young Women. Souths involvement has just been a model for many universities in the state.

Eric is still involved in fundraising for Distinguished Young Women and is chairman of the scholarship foundation. The two are active members at their church, and Eric coached and served on the board for Cottage Hill Little League. He and Arlene Mitchell in 1990 helped establish the first senior center in Mobile, previously named the Mary Abbie Berg Senior Center.

Our boys and their children have learned some things also about passing it on, Eric said. And everything about me is centered around my faith, and the Lord has blessed me way beyond anything I could have ever imagined with family and everything else. And so heres another way to try to help somebody else along the way, to pass along some of the good things that weve been blessed with.

The Pattersons have truly embraced the University of South Alabama during their time in Mobile.

The university has been good to us, Eric said. We enjoy the time we spend with folks from the university and, you know, were just very grateful for what the university means to Alabama as well as the Mobile area.

This story originally appeared on theUniversity of South Alabamas website.

(Courtesy of Alabama NewsCenter)

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7 Things: COVID-19 vaccine may not come soon enough to stop coming wave, Tuberville lashes out at socialism and communism, AL AG involved in election...

Marco Eagle Published 5:02 a.m. ET Nov. 13, 2020 | Updated 7:47 a.m. ET Nov. 13, 2020

Editorial cartoon(Photo: Universal)

How ironic. The same people who were denied the right to vote for centuries white women and black and brown U.S. citizens are now the saviors of our precious democracy.

It is even more amazing since Trump and the Republican Party tried every dirty trick in the book to keep these same people from voting in the 2020 presidential election. They all deserve a badge of honor and our eternal gratitude. Our young citizens should also be thanked.

Nevertheless, I will never understand how so many educated Americans could be so brainwashed by one man. Trump, maybe the greatest conman in the history of the United States, was able to do it.

Hopefully, when Biden is sworn in, they will get to see how a real American president should act and perform.

E. L. Bud Ruff, Marco Island

My parents took me to see the great leader who had come to campaign in our hometown to make Germany great again. The people cheered him on. Flags were everywhere. No one feared the loss of democracy in the process. The enemy was cloaked under the word communism.

Fascism was the opposite of communism, but both systems advocated rule over many by a handful of insiders.

Fast forward to the cult of Trump. When I see the signs, the flags, the radicals and thugs who defend the great leader under some skewed concept of patriotism and nationalism, I see images of the past repeating.

I dont know whether it is lack of education or plain stupidity that causes these folks to side with dictators in advocating the demise of democracy in our country. About 75 million (voters) said no in order to save democracy.

In my native country it went the other way. Right after Hitler took power, government agents went door to door, looking for his enemies. They arrested socialists, communists, trade union leaders and others who had spoken out against the party. Democracy was dead and concentration camps were built to house socialists. The con had worked, as it almost did here.

Fred Rump, Golden Gate Estates

More: Guest Commentary: Safe Navigation in area waters

More: Letters to the Editor, Nov. 10

And: Letters to the Editor, Nov. 6

Read or Share this story: https://www.marconews.com/story/opinion/2020/11/13/letters-editor-nov-13/6248670002/

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Letters to the Editor, Nov. 13 - Marco News

The actress Olivia de Havilland, who died on Saturday at the age of 104 in her home in Paris, turned Hollywood upside down in two ways

The two-time Oscar-winner was a pivotal figure in Hollywoods golden era and has appeared in nearly 50 films since the beginning of her film career in 1935.

De Havilland, perhaps best known for her role as Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind and for her twists in Robin Hood and Captain Blood, was less known for her efforts to end Communist influence in Hollywood. In 1946, De Havilland gave a speech to the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions in which she was asked to condemn the Truman administrations policies toward the Soviet Union.

Instead of delivering the pro-Soviet speech, she urged the Hollywood liberals to distance themselves from Moscow and the American Communists.

We believe in democracy, not communism, she said, according to the book Dupes: How Americas Adversaries Have Manipulated Progresses for a Century by Paul Kengor.

She warned liberals that communists would often join liberal organizations to exploit them.

When Hollywoods Bolsheviks saw what de Havilland had done, they were furious, Kengor wrote, citing the speech as a serious awakening for Ronald Reagan, who was also a member of the Independent Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences and Professions in Hollywood.

Reagan and de Havilland were already working together on the Santa Fe Trail in 1940.

They also fought to end the Hollywood system, according to which actors had to work exclusively for the studio they had signed on for up to seven years, unless they were lent to competitors. Under this system, actors could be suspended without pay if they refused roles, and the period of suspension was recorded in their contracts.

De Havilland also thought Warner Bros. would give her inferior roles.

She expected that her home studios, Warner Bros. would cast her in her own leading roles. That didnt really happen. She still felt that her best roles were in other studios, said Emily Carman, a professor at Chapman University.

De Havilland sued her employer, Warner Bros. in 1943 when they tried to renew her contract. The lawsuit ended the system of long-term contracts and changed the way Hollywood worked. The court decision in de Havillands favor became known as the De Havilland Act.

She could have just been the simpleton of Errol Flynn, said Carman, referring to de Havillands co-star in a number of films. We wouldnt remember her if thats what she just did. Its really remarkable that in the prime of her career, she fought offstage against Warner Bros. for almost two years.

She went beyond the form that Hollywood had given her for a more multi-faceted acting career, Carman said.

De Havilland won her first Oscar in 1947 for Best Actress in the 1946 film To Each His Own and her second Oscar in 1949 for her performance in The Heiress.

She was the great Hollywood star of the Golden Age, said Jonathan Kuntz, film historian at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

She lived so long, lived into the 21st century, Kuntz added, and allowed people in the modern era to still get a first-hand look at a person with that experience in the classical era.

This story was made available to Tekk.tv by Zenger News.

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How Olivia de Havilland defied the male studio heads and charmed the audience. - The Washington Newsday

President Trump won Florida by 4 percentage points thats a landslide by the states standards. Political analysts attribute that success, in part, to Joe Bidens inability to secure enough votes in already solidly blue regions like South Florida.

Although Florida didnt decide the election, after all, its still a heavyweight in the Electoral College and Latino voters here play a critical part in deciding who receives those electoral votes.

WLRN is committed to providing South Florida with trusted news and information. In these uncertain times, our mission is more vital than ever. Your support makes it possible. Please donate today. Thank you.

WLRNs Luis Hernandez spoke with a panel of reporters and a political strategist to understand more about this diverse set of voters. Tim Padgett is WLRNs Americas editor; Lourdes Ubieta is a television, radio host and journalist; Fernand Amandi is a Democratic strategist, pollster and lecturer at the University of Miami.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

WLRN: Tell us one story about one Latino voter that you spoke with before the election that really illustrates what happened in Florida.

TIM PADGETT: We were at a voting polling site, and she was probably the only person and perhaps the only Cuban-American voter there who was voting for Biden. She told me that she was probably the only person in her Cuban-American family there in Hialeah who voted for Biden. And because she's a teacher, she's very worried about President Trump's performance with the COVID crisis and how that was affecting her. She was sort of out of step with everyone else in the Cuban-American community there in Hialeah who was voting mostly on this idea that Trump was had a much tougher stance against communist Cuba and that therefore Biden and the Democrats were all socialists radical socialists because they didn't agree with that hard line on Cuba.

LOURDES UBIETA: With the Venezuelan voters, mostly on the Democratic side, I was shocked to see quite a few families voting for Trump just for Trump, not for the rest of the candidates on the ballot, just because of his policies towards Venezuela. So there was kind of an emotional vote for Trump in the Venezuelan community for his hard line stance.

FERNAND AMANDI: As a pollster, I had the pleasure to speak to thousands of people about it through some of the polls that we did. And that was certainly a sign for us of what was to come. But I think more personally, I would say just looking across the Thanksgiving dinner table a couple of years ago at members of my own family, several of whom had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, that all of a sudden sounded like they were guests on Fox News, repeating back some of these absurd talking points that the Democratic Party has become infiltrated by Marxists and communists and socialists. That was certainly a warning sign.

Do you think that the messaging from Republicans was stronger than what the Democrats were doing?

UBIETA: In Florida, these people from Latinos for Trump, they did great work here. Im talking about the outreach of the party. First, about this socialism message it worked. Why? Because a big part of the community here in Florida comes from countries that have suffered a direct impact of communist or socialism, like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.

Then, they use influencers like [Alex] Otaola, who made younger Cuban voters, who we suspect that they want to vote for the Democratic Party, vote for Trump. Their Trojan horse was the registration they did of thousands of new voters. They went door to door calling for people to register to vote and I think thats part of the story.

AMANDI: They always do this after every losing election. They talk about how much they invested in dollars and how many staffers they hired. But its all a function of when those dollars are spent. It's much more efficient to spend a fraction of the money earlier in the cycle than just trying to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at the wall in commercials that may or may not be generating the message.

The fundamental problem here, that I saw, is that the Democratic Party was allowed to be branded here in Florida with Hispanic voters as a party of socialism and communism. It's an absolutely absurd characterization, the only thing more absurd than that is to fail to confront that and contextualize that refute it, because then otherwise it doesn't matter who the Democratic candidate is someone as moderate as Joe Biden will then be seen through that lens. And that's where, unfortunately, the Biden campaign just got outfoxed here in Florida.

PADGETT: Part of it has to do with the COVID problem, the Biden campaign obviously wanted to be responsible about how direct its outreach was to voters in a health context. But ironically, the Republicans realized that they're starting at a disadvantage with Latinos, for example, you've got a president who's known for his racist rhetoric with Latinos as well as his fierce anti-immigration policies. And because of that, they do tend to work harder at this idea of micro-engaging Latinos, meaning don't look at Latinos as a monolith, but go at them more personally and individually.

Despite the fact that the Democrats were coming up with individual groups like Cubanos con Biden, Venezuelanos con Biden. But still, the Republicans did a much better job of making each individual Latino group in Florida and especially South Florida feel as special as the Republicans have always made the Cuban voters feel.

Help me understand how Latinos in general view the word socialist compared to how Americans view the word vastly differently.

PADGETT: Given the socialist regimes that have destroyed countries like Venezuela and South America and across Latin America, that word then takes on the connotation of destructive, radical Marxist communism like Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua right now. That is what the word summons in that context, whereas in the North American context here, socialism, we tend to see more of Denmark as an example. We tend to think of the social safety net combined with capitalism is what makes us such a great society, for example.

But the Trump campaign was very savvy about realizing that that's a nuance that most Latin American voters, particularly in South Florida and so many of whom have fled regimes where radical socialist Marxist style political philosophy is applied, that's a nuance that they're just not really going to pick up on. And if you call Biden and the Democrats socialist, that Latin American context of the words will take over. It was a brilliant psychological insight on their part. And it worked.

UBIETA: Latin voters have the idea that the Democratic Party is kidnapped by the more leftists in the party. I believe that the Biden campaign made a mistake when they didn't react to the support of people like Gustavo Petro in Colombia, a former guerrilla [member] and related to terrorists in Colombia or Nicolas Maduro or Miguel Daz-Canel in Cuba. So all these elements together give you that perception that the party is kidnapped [by the far left]. And these big people that made us run out of our countries in Latin America are supporting Biden and Biden is not saying thank you, I don't want your support. So they bought it, they believe it. There is an emotional vote "No, no, no, no, I don't want to have in the United States what I had in Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba."

AMANDI: That's the problem. Democrats are now defined as [socialists and communists] and in politics, the name of the game is defining yourself and your opponent before your opponent defines themselves or defines you. And again, you know, everybody wants to focus on the 2020 cycle. But this is a phenomenon that happened in 2018, the road testing or the pilot program, if you will, of the socialism campaign happened in 2018 here in Florida when Andrew Gillum was called a socialist, when even Bill Nelson, one of the greatest moderates in the Senate to come out in many years, also tagged with the label. But what did the Democratic Party do? Nothing.

They chose not to counter it. They thought that they were going to litigate the word and redefine the word when in reality thats a trigger word. It's a word that traumatizes a lot of people. There were actually many people, some of them from this community, that said the Democrats should not even touch that issue of socialism.

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How Florida Democrats Lost Latino Voters And What They Should Learn From It - WUWF

Poland is now among the top five most attractive wine markets in the world, according to the Global Compass 2020 report published by Wine Intelligence. Kelsey Chance on Unsplash

Poland is now the fifth-most attractive wine market in the world, a major increase since last year, according to a new report.

Wine is not normally the first alcoholic drink people think of when it comes to Poland. The country tends to be associated with beer and vodka, which both have a long tradition of being produced in Poland unlike wine, which is usually imported from other countries.

The jump in ranking can be attributed to an increasing wine drinking population and a flux of disposable income, both of which are taken into account when calculating wine market attractiveness, along with other economic and specific wine market metrics.Wine Intelligence

Yet the Polish market has big potential: Poland is now among the top five most attractive wine markets in the world, according to the Global Compass 2020 report published by Wine Intelligence.

It is in fifth place, after the United States, South Korea, Germany and China, up from 14th place last year. Fifty markets around the world were analysed for the report.

Wine Intelligence had already noticed Polands potential earlier. Back in 2017, it had predicted an exciting period of growth ahead for Poland not just economically, but also in terms of wine consumption.

The report said: Wine consumers in Poland are [] typically younger and more eager to discover more about wine than in other places, and as the economy keeps expanding relatively fast, so does the purchasing power.IAN LANGSDON/PAP/EPA

This years ranking compared two attractiveness models: one with the impact of COVID-19 and the other without it. In the former, Poland ranked fifth, compared to tenth place in the latter, without the effect of the pandemic.

Poland was categorised as a growth market for wine, one where it is a mainstream product and/or experiencing growth, between an established and an emerging market. Other countries in this category include South Korea, Russia and Singapore.

In a piece published in 2017, James Wainscott of Wine Intelligence linked Polands promising wine market to the changes in the country over the past three decades.

Although the total number of wine drinkers has remained relatively stable over the past few years, within this population, consumers are drinking wine more frequently.Wine Intelligence

The fall of Communism in 1989, the advent of cheap air travel and membership of the European Union has infused the country with wealth and shaped the perspectives of a huge swathe of Poles born after 1980, he wrote.

Wine from France, easily available in Poland at hypermarkets such as Auchan and Carrefour, was found to be the top country of origin, but consumers have been introduced to wine from Portugal by the Portuguese-owned Biedronka shops.

This years report said: Poland brings a lot of opportunities for global wine brands. This is one of the few markets in Europe where European origins such as France, Italy or Spain dont dominate.

Poland was categorised as a growth market for wine, one where it is a mainstream product and/or experiencing growth, between an established and an emerging market.Zachariah Hagy on Unsplash

Instead, the US and Chile are the main countries of origin supplying the Polish market. Wine consumers in Poland are also typically younger and more eager to discover more about wine than in other places, and as the economy keeps expanding relatively fast, so does the purchasing power.

It added: This leads to Poland being a strong opportunity market, particularly as the market develops and drinkers start looking for core and recognisable brands.

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Chardon-hey! Poland becoming a nation of wine drinkers as country listed 5th most attractive market in the world - The First News