BAILEY &mdash; Jimmie Lee Godwin, 89, died Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021. Arrangements are by Wilson Memorial Service.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Jimmie Lee Godwin 

A Wilson man died in a single-car wreck on Interstate 95 in southern Nash County&rsquo;s Coopers community on Thursday.
Ronald Tyson, 53, died when his 2003 Saturn left the interstate and ran into a ditch, then overturned and struck a tree, according to the N.C. State Highway Patrol.
The wreck occurred around 7 p.m. at mile marker 130 near the N.C. 58 overpass.
Tyson was alone in the car. He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a duty dispatcher for the Highway Patrol.

Wilson man dies in Nash County crash

state trooper FILE 1 1-11-2021 DW.jpeg

At last, I&rsquo;m not tracking through yellow pollen on the porch. Even though there is still some hanging around, there is not a heavy layer of it every place. 
According to those folks who keep track of important things like that, this is the worst year ever for pollen &mdash; and far be it from me to disagree with such important data. I&rsquo;m just glad that it&rsquo;s coming to an end and I can wash my car again. 
Yep, that&rsquo;s right. I just let it stay yellow each year until the season ends, unless the rain washes it away. 
I saw the first tobacco planting of the year Thursday afternoon and have watched farmers moving equipment from field to field preparing tobacco rows (or making sweet potato beds) for some time now. It&rsquo;s the time of year when riding with farmers becomes life-threatening as they watch the fields of fellow farmers to determine who has the prettiest stand of tobacco. 
Also, if you&rsquo;re driving as the sun sets and see a huge piece of equipment coming down the road toward you with a multitude of bright lights, please slow down, move to the edge of the road and let the vehicle pass. What you can&rsquo;t see are the plows or discs that are attached to that equipment and extend into your lane. 
This past week, I was in traffic at a stoplight near Knightdale and heard the distinct rumble of glass pack mufflers. There was a black pickup truck in front of me with what appeared to be a CB radio antenna with three tennis balls on it. The front end was jacked up, the back end was sitting low to the ground and the noisy mufflers were working hard. 
I remembered having a Jeep Cherokee back in the day with the gear stick in the floor and glass pack mufflers, and I could get a wheel in every gear. It also reminded me of the days when the boys with fast Fords, Chevrolets and Plymouths met on Saturday night out on the dirt road near the Peachtree Hills Country Club after taking their date home. 
I&rsquo;m told that a certain Ford could outrun them all, but there was a white Plymouth that was a strong contender. Names are being withheld to protect them from further questioning by their children and grandchildren. 
To my children and grandchildren, I wasn&rsquo;t there &mdash; pinky swear.
Jan Mills is The Enterprise&rsquo;s customer service representative. Reach her at 252-478-3651 and jmills.enterprise@wilsontimes.com.

Tobacco planting and dirt-road racing

Jan Mills.jpg

It&rsquo;s been a year since the pandemic first hit our state prison system.
We&rsquo;ve endured an awful year of heartbreak, surprises, adaptation, perseverance and the most logistically complicated mass vaccination initiative since the polio vaccine was rolled out in the 1950s.
The hard work is paying off. The vaccines are making a huge difference. They are working.
A year ago, the first handful of COVID-19 cases emerged in the offender population, and we were about to realize the impacts this awful virus would have on our prison system, our communities and the nation.
Faced with our first outbreak of the virus, we provided mass testing of all the offenders at Neuse Correctional in Goldsboro a year ago last week, on April 15-16.
We were shocked to discover more than 450 offenders were infected, and almost none of them (around 98%) exhibited any symptoms at all and never developed symptoms.
We didn&rsquo;t fully realize until then what was about to hit us. No one did.
While some questioned the likelihood of such extensive viral spread from asymptomatic offenders, we didn&rsquo;t doubt. Instead, we prepared.
Our Correction Enterprises plants began production of hundreds of thousands of face masks and thousands of gallons of disinfectant, and we ordered large supplies of medical-grade PPE.
We created medical isolation and quarantine protocols, housing unit cohorts, offender transfer requirements and COVID-19-testing procedures.
We shut down the prisons to all but essential prison personnel. We stopped offender work release. And we did much, much more.
Over the past year, we&rsquo;ve been resilient. We&rsquo;ve adapted. We did not give up. We did not give in. We persevered. It&rsquo;s been tough on everyone.
There were dark days, incredibly bleak days, but we did not despair. We stuck with the three Ws. We stuck with our virus prevention and mitigation strategies. We stuck close to our partners at the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
When the days were darkest last fall and winter, we doubled down and worked even harder.
We ramped up offender COVID-19 testing (we&rsquo;ve now completed 127,000 tests and counting). We implemented testing of all prison staff every two weeks (now at 114,000 tests and counting). We further tightened our protocols.
Thanksgiving and Christmas were awful for the prison system, just about the darkest times we faced in this pandemic.
How bad was it?
At Christmas:
&bull; 36 prisons (more than half) were designated either red or orange due to outbreaks.
&bull; One prison was designated a hotspot.
&bull; 430 offenders had active cases of COVID-19.
&bull; Seven were in the hospital.
&bull; 577 staff members were off the job due to COVID-19.
At one point in January, more than 700 staff members were off the job due to COVID-19.
We began receiving weekly vaccine allocations from DHHS on Jan. 20.
As those initial shots were going into arms that day:
&bull; Half of our prisons (28 of them) were on red or orange status.
&bull; 465 offenders had active cases of COVID-19.
&bull; 33 new offender cases were discovered just that morning.
&bull; 566 staff members were off the job due to the virus.
Today, three months later, we are in a vastly improved position. This is due to our hard work, safety protocols and the vaccine.
So far, more than half of the offenders are partially vaccinated and almost half the employees are partially vaccinated.
Here is where we are as of Thursday, April 15: 
&bull; After a day with more than 550 tests on offenders, zero new positives!
&bull; 21 offenders have active cases of COVID-19.
&bull; One offender is in the hospital.
&bull; No prisons are on red status.
&bull; Only nine prisons are designated orange.
&bull; Around 130 staff members are off the job due to the virus.
It&rsquo;s an amazing improvement!
Along the way, we were heartbroken to lose 12 staff members to this awful virus, and more than 50 offenders with serious underlying health conditions.
Along the way, we worried every day about our health, our families&rsquo; health and the health of our colleagues.
This is not over. The pandemic is not defeated. I am now, however, cautiously optimistic.
This substantial improvement since the vaccines arrived in mid-January is not a coincidence.
This is the result of our staff&rsquo;s hard work, meticulous attention to detail and to employees&rsquo; commitment and resiliency over the past year. They are heroes.
And this improvement also is a result of this simple fact: The vaccines work. They help protect people from the potentially deadly, or in some cases debilitating, virus.
The vaccines used in our prisons are safe. They are effective. They are tested.
We&rsquo;ve all been in this together. We need to get out of this together.
Everyone should, at the very least, talk with their doctor about getting the shot and then roll up their sleeves.
They should do it for their families. They should do it for those they work with and for everyone around them.
If nothing else, they should do it for themselves.
The vaccine is the path out of this pandemic. It&rsquo;s working!
Todd Ishee is North Carolina&rsquo;s commissioner of prisons. The state&rsquo;s 56 prisons include Nash Correctional Institution outside Nashville.

Prisons' pandemic resilience paying off

ENT LOC COL W Todd Ishee mug.jpg

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