From Decatur City Commissioner Patti Garrett…

Memorial service planned for Oakhurst Garden co-founder Sally Wylde on September 11
A celebration of Sally’s life will take place on September 11, 2010, at 5 p.m. at the Oakhurst Baptist Church (222 East Lake Drive). If you live in the Oakhurst neighborhood, we encourage you to walk to the Church. The service will be followed by a Sally-inspired puppet parade. If you made a puppet with Sally for Earth Day a few years ago, please bring it out — or create a new one (you may store your puppet at the church during the service). The parade will process from the Oakhurst Baptist Church to the Oakhurst Community Garden Project along the East Lake Drive and Oakview Road route. You may join the parade anywhere along the route. A reception, to be held at the Oakhurst Community Garden Project (435 Oakview Road), will be a covered dish meal, Sally style! If you can bring a dish to share, dishes may be dropped off at the Oakhurst Garden between 3:30-4:30 p.m. In case of rain, the reception will take place at the Solarium (321 West Hill Street).

Gifts may be made in memory of Sally to the following organizations:
The Oakhurst Community Garden
The Community of Hospitality
The Global Village School

Photo Courtesy of CBS News

Pastor John H. Cross Jr., who’s Birmingham Church was bombed in 1963, resulting in the deaths of four teenage girls, died this past Thursday night after suffering from a series of strokes. Back in 1972, Cross was appointed associate pastor at Oakhurst Baptist Church.

Daughter Barbara Cross remembered her father in an interview with the AP…

“After the dynamite went off, it dug a large crater,” she recalled. “He had to go through that rubble to make sure all of the children were OK.”

As he dug, other people there told him to stop, worried that there could be another blast.

“But he said, ‘Don’t let another charge go off. I’ve got to go in,”‘ she said of her father.

Cross later presided over a mass funeral for three of the four girls where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the eulogy.