Posted on 09/16/2002 8:50:34 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo
By Reporter Chris Fincher
The American flag in the front yard of Eunice Stone’s home is a proud reminder of what people need to do to undermine terrorist attempts to subvert freedom, neighbors said. Tattered and faded, the large flag sat high on a pole in front of Stone’s two-story gray house east of I-75 in a rural community south of Adairsville.
Residents near her Crowe Springs Spur home said the woman, being hailed as a citizen soldier, was a quiet homemaker who kept to herself. But Friday it wasn’t her quiet nature that caught the nation’s attention. It was her willingness to warn authorities of a potential terrorist plot.
Stone relayed to authorities a troubling conversation she overheard at the Red Bud Road Shoney’s in Calhoun Thursday morning. She was seated behind three men of Middle Eastern descent and heard them make “alarming comments,” said Mickey Lloyd of the Georgia Department of Public Safety. Stone said she took notes of the conversation and then wrote a description of their cars and tag numbers as the men left the restaurant.
The men were stopped early Friday along I-75 in South Florida after Stone called the Georgia State Patrol and a lookout was posted. The men, who not identified, were detained 17 hours before their release after searches of their cars with dogs and a robot turned up no explosives. Officials said the men, whose nationalities are Jordanian, Iranian and Pakistani, had no apparent link to terrorism and they appeared to be medical students going to a medical conference in Miami.
Although there were no arrests, Stone’s action is being praised as the response needed by Americans in these days of terrorist activity. “What she reported would lead a reasonable person to believe a criminal act was pending,” said Vernon Keenan, acting director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. One of the comments Stone told reporters she overheard was: “Well, if they’re mourning 9/11, what are they going to do about 9/13?”
“In this time of heightened vigilance, I think it is important to show this system works,” agreed Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Customers outside the Calhoun buffet restaurant praised Stone. “If more of us did that, it could save more lives,” said William Broughman, a retired plumber from Calhoun.
Mechanics at the Texaco service station next door to Shoney’s said it was frightening that a potentially dangerous situation was unfolding under their noses. “Sept. 11 was enough,” said mechanic Ken Franklin. “There didn’t need to be any more. Enough is enough.” Franklin, a regular at the lunch buffet, said although he has never met Stone she sounds like a true American hero. “I’m glad people are on edge,” he said. “What would have been done if they had hit a hospital somewhere?”
Franklin criticized the U.S. government for not keeping terrorist suspects out of the country. “They could have had bombs on them and we wouldn’t have known it,” he said. “You just don’t ever know what will happen.”
Stone, a mother of two about whom little is known, suddenly became the focus of national and local media attention Friday as Americans watched her rehash the conversation she overheard while eating breakfast a day earlier. Newspaper and television news crews flocked to Northwest Georgia as the story unfolded.
Reporters busied themselves all morning thumbing through local telephone books to find a listing for the watchdog. Beleaguered by calls and visits to their homes, some Gordon County residents whose last names were Stone - especially those named E. Stone - tried to deter unwanted media visits. One resident posted a driveway sign stating: “This is not home of Eunice Stone.”
When Stone’s home was finally located in eastern Bartow County, local media and even the GBI and FBI found no trace of her because a national cable network swept her away under a cloak of secrecy. Her amused neighbor Eric Finch watched from a few houses away as satellite news trucks and photographers sipped coffee and wandered around outside the Stone home.
“I saw it on TV when I got up this morning,” Finch said. But it wasn’t until he received a call from Turner Broadcasting that he put together the final pieces of the puzzle and realized the hero of the day lived a few houses away.
“What she did was great,” he said. “She sounds stern.” The Associated Press contributed to this article.
But watch her get the "Linda Tripp treatment", though. They are going to try to trash her fully. I hope she has a strong circle of support.
She'll need it after the national liberal media and various PC agenda groups are through.
Keep us informed, we'll support her.
I don't know if they were joking or if they, like the Buffalo cell, are really undercover Al Qaeda, but they deserve to be watched for the next year or two.
Ridge should publicly support Stone's action as being a good example of what a good American should do. Then, he should announce that the three men will be investigated fully and will face full prosecution under the law as a warning that people better think twice before playing games about September 11, 2001.
So many of these foreigners understand better than the average U.S. Citizen that MILLIONS of Illegals are continuing to flood into our country and rip off our system in any way they can.
They would NEVER allow such disrespect to take place in their own country, and thus don't respect Americans for being so stupid and care-less for allowing it to happen in our own country, that we say we love.
It's time we start some HEAVY pressure on our elected officials, including Presidente Jorge, and the other appointed bureaucrats to STOP THIS INSANE ILLEGAL INVASION NOW.
SAVE OUR AMERICAN CULTURE BEFORE WE BECOME JUST ANOTHER 3RD WORLD CESSPOOL.
I am sure her definition of an "American" is the bastardized version that has morphed away from true "Americanism" 20 years ago.
To Be An American means this country owes you everything, that you don't have to follow rules or courtesy, to threaten your wife behind close doors that you will beat her with a brick if she refuses to wear her black abaya from head-to-toe on 100+ degree summer days in Michigan, that you have the right to complain/bitch about everything but have no responsibilities, to sign up for the Taliban while Mama and Papa in the hot tub smoke a reefer and look the other way, to displace a job that has held by a native born American, to criticize our system yet take advantage of loose INS laws to get everybody and his uncle in from the Gulf states, to be on the public dole, to preach the enslavement of women and the defeat of non-muslims in open forum in mosques throughout the Land, to angrily scowl into a TV camera for a public service announcement that "I AM AN AMERICAN" devoid of all reference as to what Americans owe their country but rather that we are owed everything and this plot of land is just some big PX in the sky for us all too leech off to our hearts' desire. Americans! Freedom! Yep, that is an "American".
And in that sense Mama is right. These boys are GOOD AMERICANS. GOOD AMERICANS FOR 2002.
Of course I and a lot of Freepers would have a different definition of an American I am sure.......
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