The Homewood Star Volume 4 | Issue 11 | February 2015
Moon pie toss
neighborly news & entertainment for Homewood
Repurposed cheer
A children’s Mardi Gras parade will descend on Homewood Central Park this month. Find the details inside.
See page B1
Festival of food
HHS students recreate floral arrangements to give away By MADOLINE MARKHAM
Rosewood Hall will be filled with local eats for the annual Taste of Homewood event. Read more about it in this issue.
See page B3
INSIDE Sponsors ...................A4 City .............................A6 Business ....................A9 Community ...............B2 School House ...........B6 Sports.....................B9 Calendar ................. B14 Opinion .................... B15
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One man had recently had a stroke but had few visitors. Another lost his wife three months earlier. But they didn’t feel as alone on a Sunday afternoon when four teenagers came into their rooms at Mount Royal Towers to deliver flowers they had arranged. In fact, one of the men’s children later
Emerson Neely, Margaret Neely, Julia Neely and Camille Smith arrange flowers to deliver to area nursing homes and hospitals. Photo by Madoline Markham.
thanked the girls for coming and said how much it meant to him. Homewood High School students Julia and Margaret Neely and Camille Smith have played soccer together for years, but now they have a new reason to spend time together. The girls have organized Petals with a Purpose, a group that rearranges flowers left over from weddings or other events and delivers them to senior living facilities and other people in
need of cheer. Camille has long lived in a world of flowers. Her mom, Suzanne Martenson, owns Stems & Styles, and Camille has helped her create corsages for Homewood homecoming and other events. Often Suzanne would leave arrangements from leftover flowers for Julia and Margaret’s mom, Amy, on their porch.
See FLOWERS | page A23
City considers new public safety building By SYDNEY CROMWELL Police Chief Jim Roberson has to drive 10 minutes across Homewood to talk to many of his officers. The center of Homewood’s police activity is the department’s headquarters on 29th Avenue South, but the building no longer has room to house motorcycle scouts, traffic patrol, narcotics, warrant detail or the training center. The department has grown so large that it no longer fits in the original headquarters, which was built in 1980. The police department currently has 102 employees who answered 38,759 calls and issued 11,212 traffic citations in 2014, according to numbers provided by Sergeant Andrew Didcoct. These operations are spread out across four rented or city-owned buildings on 29th Avenue South, Oxmoor Boulevard, Citation Court and Bagby Drive.
See POLICE | page A22
The Homewood Police Department has outgrown its 29th Avenue headquarters, which were built 35 years ago. Photo by Madoline Markham.