| August 2005 | |
Ex-president injured in 1-car accidentLongtime Gilmer Mirror publisher Sarah L. Greene sustained throat and spine injuries in a one-car auto accident in Big Sandy on July 14. She had two broken vertebrae, shredded tendons and ligaments in her neck, a broken sternum, a broken rib and partially collapsed lungs. Greene, who was TPA’s 118th president in 1995-96, had an operation to fix the injuries July 19 and was recovering in East Texas Medical Center Rehabilitation Center in Tyler. Greene reportedly fell asleep Thursday afternoon, July 14, while driving her 2003 Mercury Sable from Dallas to Gilmer. She ran off State Hwy. 155 in Big Sandy and crashed into a tree in the front yard of Big Sandy resident Melissa Sims, taking out a green Texas Department of Transportation mileage sign. No other vehicles were involved, the Mirror reported. The accident occurred at around 3:30 p.m. Police and emergency personnel from Big Sandy immediately arrived on the scene followed by an ETMC ambulance crew from Gladewater. Greene later said she had been driving back from Dallas where she had attended the funeral of a former co-worker at The Dallas Morning News, where she worked in the 1950s after graduating from The University of Texas at Austin. She said she had only gotten about four hours of sleep the night before and had thought about pulling over to take a nap just before the accident occurred. She was awakened by the commotion of leaving the road and hitting the sign, but then panicked and hit the accelerator rather than the brake pedal. She was wearing safety belts, but her air bag failed to deploy, the Mirror reported. The empty passenger side air bag deployed as designed. Greene is a third-generation newspaperwoman, following her parents, the late Georgia and Russell H. Laschinger, and grandfather, George Tucker, as publisher of The Gilmer Mirror. She recently became publisher emeritus and the fourth generation, son William R. “Russ” Greene, took over as publisher.
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