Area realtors give back to Murphy Harpst
The Greater Rome Board of Realtors opened their hearts and their pocketbooks to a Cedartown organization that for decades ensured that children no matter their circumstances have someplace to call home.
Last week during a luncheon held by the Board of Realtors at the Darlington School, they presented Murphy Harpst Children’s Centers with a donation worth $1,148 to help the Cedartown-based children’s home always-needed financial support.
Murphy-Harpst is a agency of the United Methodist Church that helps children with a variety of issues find care and support they need in an environment tailored around at-risk young people. Scott Fuller accepted the check on behalf of the organization.
“We have been serving some of the most vulnerable youth across the state for about 100 years now,” Fuller said. “Today we’re serving some of the most abused, neglected, trafficked and exploited young people. These are people who are coming to us with terrible histories, suffering the traumas of their circumstances and behavioral disorders.”
Fuller said the youth need therapy and a safe place to recover, and that MurphyHarpst provides that to around 60 children in the program currently. The funds provided by Greater Rome Board of Realtors will go toward helping those children recover and succeed.
The gift was — at least to the best information available to Vice President Derinda Stephens — the first time that the group gave outside of Floyd County.
The Greater Rome Board of Realtors is made up of individuals from Chattooga, Floyd and Polk counties.
Realtors also got a chance to hear from Georgia’s Attorney General Chris Carr about his office’s efforts to curtail gangs, human trafficking and more. He has hundreds of lawyers on staff around the state and in Atlanta to represent the state’s interest. He compared the numbers to a state like Texas, with 3,000 lawyers and 1,200 support staff.
“I will say taxpayers, you get the bang for your buck for our little law firm,” Carr said.
Carr did not get into specific cases that his office is pursuing during the event, but talked about the need to continue work on fighting online sex predators through a statewide task force, tackling the violence caused by organized crime and tackling the opioid epidemic by joining in nationwide lawsuits seeking to hold manufacturers and physicians who over-prescribed opiates accountable. He said the state is even trying to curtail robo-calls.
The attorney general also talked about economic development, and the way that pursuing crime provides a boost to the state’s moneymaking fortunes.
“We have worked together as the private sector and the public sector to make sure that we have a good business environment,” Carr said. “We have a consistent, predictable legal and regulatory environment and I want to make sure that companies know that we take to heart that everyone follows the law and upholds the law, but also know that they have a partner in us.”