Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Chestertown
In some cases, the images of a community coming together on a particular cause are more powerful than words. And that was the case last night as Talbot Goes Purple kicked off a month of programing at the Talbot County Courthouse with a walk on the streets of Easton.
The Spy was there to capture these moving scenes.
This video is approximately two minutes in length. For more information on Talbot Goes Purple please go here
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It could be said that the Women & Girls Fund on the Mid-Shore was wearing purple a long time before Talbot Goes Purple started their successful awareness campaign. A philanthropic organization committed to empowering women and girls, it also seeks to help with the special health needs, both physical and mental, of women in our community who are trying to rebuilding their lives after a life of drug or alcohol abuse.
In the Spy’s ongoing Grants in Action series with the WGF, we turn our attention to the Mid-Shore Restoring H.O.P.E. in Women organization, and their work on the in connecting with women immediately after leaving a recovery program or prison to provide a safe and sober place to live, eat, and most importantly, be introduced to the ongoing local recovery groups and workshops to keep straight.
The Spy talked to Sherry Collier, its founder, as well as WGF board member Talli Oxnam, a few weeks ago about this critical program in saving women’s lives on the Mid-Shore.
This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about Mid-Shore Restoring H.O.P.E. in Women please go here
This is the ninth in a series of stories focused on the work of the Women & Girls Fund of the Mid-Shore. Since 2002, the Fund has channeled its pooled resources to organizations that serve the needs and quality of life for women and girls in Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot Counties. The Spy, in partnership with the Women & Girls Fund, are working collaboratively to put the spotlight on twelve of these remarkable agencies to promote their success and inspire other women and men to support the Fund’s critical role in the future.
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According to Kirk Helfenbein, part of the management team at Fellows, Helfenbein & Newnam Funeral Homes on the Mid-Shore, his firm helped with more than twenty families last year with funerals of loved ones lost to the current opioid epidemic. While many of the deceased lived on the Shore, others were brought home from other parts of the country after losing their lives as a result of a drug overdose.
Not a month goes by without at least one or two services being held for the victims of this horrific plague, and with each case, the toil of family and loved ones is almost too painful to describe as they prematurely mourn the death of teens and adults alike. That is one of many reasons that Kirk and Helfenbein, and Newnam Funeral Homes, have devoted their staff and resources to support the Mid-Shore Goes Purple campaign.
The Spy talked to Kirk last week in Chestertown about his own experience helping these families and his personal commitment in going purple for September and organizing a race on September 9th to help bring a new level of awareness to the community of this tragic wave of death hitting all parts of the Mid-Shore.
This video is approximately is three minutes in length. For more information about the race please go here
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All five counties of the Mid-Shore have suffered tremendously since the opioid epidemic became a public health and law enforcement crisis over the last few years, but it is hard to see a greater impact than in Dorchester County.
While Dorchester has roughly the same population as its neighbouring countries, it has suffered almost twice the number of recorded overdoses last year, with over 60 individuals seeking help from local and county police. Lucky for those drug users, the vast majority were saved by the use of Narcan, but 7 still died as the result of using the killer substance fentanyl.
The Spy sat down with Dorchester Sheriff Jim Phillips on his county’s long-term battle against this horrific plague and why his community is going Purple this year.
This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about Dorchester Goes Purple please go here
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It is fair to say that no one in Talbot County had any idea how the first year of Talbot Goes Purple was going to go. The commitment was there from the two host organizations, the Talbot County Sheriff’s Office and the Tidewater Rotary Club; dozens of volunteers were ready to go; both the Star-Democrat and Easton Utilities were on board; and the county’s public and private schools were all in, but until the first purple light was turned on, it was anyone’s guess how this would all turn out.
The answer came quickly. Within days of the launch, it was clear that Talbot County’s towns and residents got the message. In short order, the entire county almost turned purple overnight, and Talbot Goes Purple must go down as one of the region’s most successful public education campaigns in its history.
It’s hard to repeat this kind of success, but even before plans were worked out for 2018, Talbot Goes Purple had already started with the best of news; the other four counties of the Mid-Shore, Caroline, Dorchester, Kent and Queen Anne’s, would launch their own programs starting September 1.
The Spy thought it would be a good idea to catch up with Lucie Hughes, who worked with Sheriff Joe Gamble last year to launch Talbot Goes Purple, to assess that critical first year and what is planned this year.
This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information about Talbot Goes Purple please go here.
The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.
The first time the Spy met Joe Gamble to talk about a drug crisis in the region, it was four years ago last May. At the time, Joe was heading up a homicide division as a lieutenant with the Maryland State Police and had just declared his candidacy to become Talbot County Sheriff. What made Gamble so unique in that race was that his entire campaign platform almost exclusively focused on his concerns about a looming drug crisis with a substance most people had never heard before called fentanyl.
Joe Gamble won that election, and sadly his grim predictions about the power of fentanyl were entirely correct. But it did not stop Gamble from implementing a major paradigm shift in not only the way his department would respond to this epidemic but how the community itself must take a leading role in prevention and recovery.
That was one reason that Joe, along with Tidewater Rotary’s Lucie Hughes, incorporated a nationally-based awareness campaign into a locally-driven, month-long health education initiative entitled Talbot Goes Purple. It was universally embraced by Talbot County residents and businesses, and based on its first year success has now become a model which Caroline, Dorchester, Kent and Queen Anne’s counties are replicating this September.
The Spy thought it would be helpful to start our series on the Mid-Shore Goes Purple with Joe and understand more clearly what the use of the drug has saved Talbot County’s current status on both drug overdose fatalities and how many addicts. We also discuss his observations about the community’s response to the opioid crisis and how this tragedy has impacted almost everyone in a community he has called home for decades.
This video is approximately seven minutes in length. For more information about Talbot Goes Purple please go here.
The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.
In the field of advertising, the old saying goes that it takes at least seven uniquely different exposures to a product before the consumer actually decides to purchase it. In the marketing of awareness and prevention of the opioid crisis, one should apply a multiplier effect of a 1,000 when the aim is to reach out to young people of the fatal consequences of a drug epidemic that killed 70,000 Americans last year.
Like other public health campaigns that have came before it, including such great successes as with the war against tobacco and AIDS, the strategy for drug awareness is simple; pound on the table as much as you can for as long as you can.
And that is the power and magic of the Purple project for the Mid-Shore this September.
Started last year in Talbot County by the Sheriff’s Office and the Tidewater Rotary with modest expectations, it turned out to be remarkably successful for reasons large and small as the community responded dramatically to “Talbot Goes Purple” through rallies, games, high school programs, and most importantly, the profoundly moving sight of entire towns lit up purple on almost every porch, storefront, street lamp, or dozens of other creative ways to show solidarity with oppied prevention.
As a result of this overwhelming response, Talbot Goes Purple became a model for other Mid-Shore counties to replicate, and it is profoundly moving that Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, and Queen Anne’s counties have formed community partnerships with their schools, businesses, and neighborhoods to join “Mid-Shore Goes Purple,” including the Spy, which will become, we hope, a portal for news and stories from the five different purple campaigns.
But how do we know all this purple in September is working? Is this the most effective way to reach potential users of opioids?
The answer is an unequivocal “yes,” at least from the perspective of someone who is on the battlefield; Talbot County Sheriff Joe Gamble. In his Spy interview to be broadcast today, Gamble points to data where deaths by overdoses have been reduced, and those receiving police-administered Narcan treatment (and therefore should be counted as lives saved) has increased.
Statistics like these remain the final test for how a county on the Shore is succeeding or failing on a drug epidemic, but one can not overlook the collateral benefits that have come with Talbot Goes Purple. From the creation of group homes for recovering drug users, the widespread training in the use of the life-saving Narcan, or the creation of student awareness groups at local schools, these examples demonstrate that Talbot’s collective response to the crisis is serious and sustained.
Our region has a long way to go before we are out of harm’s way with this horrific danger. The opioid crisis will take years, perhaps more than a decade, to be totally defeated. In the meantime, there can never been enough purple in September on the Mid-Shore and the Spy is proud to turn that color.
For information on how to help, volunteer, or just where one can pick up a purple light bulb for their home, please go here
The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.
