Marty has knocked himself out for this community in so many ways, for so
many years. Most people have no idea.
-- Tony West
This is terrible. Marty is losing his home? I guess I missed the
article. I don't think anyone deserves to lose their home, but
certainly not Marty
Jim
On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Karen Allen<[email protected]> wrote:
For those of you who may not know him, Marty Cabry is the older white
gentleman who works for Jannie Blackwell as her Zoning point person (among
other things). You've probably seen him at Zoning Board hearings, or
representing Jannie at community meetings.
Marty had been sick for a number of years and had to take an oxygen
tank everywhere until he had a full lung transplant about 2 or 3 years ago.
But before that, one of his children was born with a debilitating disease,
and has been confined to a wheelchair all of her life. She is in her 30’s
now and still lives with him. The front of his house had to be reconfigured
to install a wheelchair ramp for her, although the ramp didn't appear to be
in the photo included in the online version of the Inquirer story.
It's very unfortunate that Marty hasn't been paying his real estate taxes.
But it isn't a situation where he is a deadbeat trying to game the system or
his job. For the last 30+ years he and his wife struggled to raise and
support a severely handicapped child, and in his later years he himself
suffered from a debilitating health problem.
But in spite of all of that, Marty has also been a very tireless worker for
Jannie, and he very likely puts in 10 to 12 hour days. Even when he was
really sick, I often saw him come to our community meetings, having just
come from one meeting and probably on his way to another one. Some of those
meetings ran until 9 or 10 o'clock at night. And in spite of any bad press
that she may have gotten for doing it, Jannie Blackwell repaid that
dedication by trying to help him, instead of simply turning on him or
throwing him under the bus.
I'm really sorry Marty's going to end up losing his house. I'm also sorry
that the Inquirer couldn't give the same attention to his personal struggle
as it did to the fact that he was a city employee who didn't [couldn’t] pay
his property taxes. If anything, Marty is a perfect illustration of what's
wrong with the current health care system, where medical expenses can force
people onto the street.
Maybe this story reveals flaws in the current health care system or with the
real estate taxation system. But the story does not reveal a flaw in Marty's
character, which the Inquirer story tried to imply.
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