Be sure and join us tonight for Thomasville's Victorian Christmas Celebration! Tonight and Friday evening from 6-10 pm. The brick paved streets of Downtown Thomasville will revisit Christmas past during this annual event with Victorian Costumed Strollers, Caroling Groups, an Organ Grinder, a Live Nativity, Marshmallow toasting, street performers, and of course, St. Nicholas will be there as well! It’s a great start to the holiday season with the twinkling lights down the streets and downtown merchants with their windows all decked out in their holiday finest. Bundle up, and enjoy another great Thomasville event!

25-year-old Spc. Shannon Chihuahua of Thomasville, Ga., was serving as a medic with the 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) in Kunar province, Afghanistan when he died Nov. 12 of "wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit using small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades" according to the Department of Defense report. Chihuahua was attending to a wounded soldier.

On Sunday, November 21st, Thomasville welcomed their hero home, lining the procession streets with flags. Then on Saturday November 27th, thousands from not only Thomasville, but the surrounding communities turned out to line the 40 mile funeral route with flags and pay tribute once again to a Thomasville hero.

To see the Video Tribute click here: 

The following column appeared in the November 23^, 2010 edition of the Thomasville Times Enterprise written by Randy Young.  We post it here because it speaks directly to the type of community that we live in here in Thomasville and Thomas County.

For the second time in as many months, Thomasville has welcomed home one of her fallen sons and heroes.

Shannon Chihuahua, a member of Thomas County Central’s class of 2004 and an Army medic, arrived home Sunday after falling in the line of duty during an ambush in Afghanistan.

His escorted route from Tallahassee to Thomasville was greeted at our city limits by as many people — perhaps even more by some accounts — than had done so just when Blake McClendon came home under similar circumstances.

I only point that out because this past week I have quietly seethed about unpublished comments sent to this newspaper from a predictably anonymous coward who had the gall to question whether or not Thomasville and Thomas County would respond as favorably to Shannon’s homecoming since, according to this coward, his Hispanic “name” would not be equally embraced by this community.

Since I know the guilty party won’t be brave enough to admit it, I’ll gladly do it for him/her: you were wrong. You obviously don’t know our home very well. The thousands of people who lined the road with their flags and families Sunday proved that much when they spoke far louder with their actions than your myopic words ever could.

Mr. or Mrs. Coward, the people you were trying to cast judgment on were much bigger than you in your sad view of life apparently imagined they could be. Actually, that you would even suggest as much in such a circumstance is, for lack of a better way of putting it, pathetic.  Period.

See, unlike you, the good people in this place my family has called home for 185 years recognize a real hero when they see one, and see them as only that — a hero. Unlike you, they don’t see something as insignificant as skin color or ethnicity as a consideration for anything in regard to their feelings.

As in Blake’s case, I saw faces of every color at Shannon’s homecoming — faces united in one common cause: to pay respect to a homegrown soldier who deserved that and so much more.

In times of need, the people of this county do much more take verbal pock shots while veiled in anonymity. When it is time to step up, when it really matters, almost unfailingly this place simply does and does so visibly, proudly, up front and center. When all the plans for the public salutes to Shannon were being formulated, never, not once, did anyone question whether or not they’d be there when they needed to be.

Nope, they would be there because they needed to be, they had to be — for Shannon, for his family…and, in reality, for themselves.

Shannon Chihuahua obviously understood that mere words are cheap. Talking the talk means nothing if you aren’t willing to walk the walk. He learned to talk the talk of a soldier, and being a soldier became his path of life. When the chips were down, he walked that same walk, laying down his own life while trying to save a fellow soldier who had been wounded in that ambush.

If that doesn’t define “hero” I don’t know what does.

If by some chance someone wanted to question where the intestinal fortitude he found to make that, the ultimate sacrifice for his compatriots and country might have come from, I would tell them to take a look around right here in the place he called home. Young people normally reflect the experiences of their upbringing, and based on what I know of Thomasville and Thomas County, I know that bravery, the courage under fire, was originated and forged here.

So, on Thanksgiving Day when you are filling your plate with food and, hopefully, offering your thanks to God for the multitude of blessings you have in your life, take a moment to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned here recently — some of them difficult. That freedom is anything but free. That good people are just good people, and they come in all shapes, colors, and sizes. That the only way we’ll be able to stop judging others by their color or anything else is to simply stop judging, period.

And, that in the end, a hero is defined by their willingness to walk the walk, and not just talk the talk. I think we’d all be a little better off if we would emulate that philosophy in our own daily walk of life.

Be thankful, Thomasville and Thomas County, for soldiers and heroes like Blake McClendon and Shannon Chihuahua, who learned that lesson growing up here.

And while you are saying that prayer of thanks, remember the families of our fallen heroes during this holiday season, and pray this proud community doesn’t have to go through this again.

With that said, however, know that if we do, those of us who know that actions always speak louder than words will be there, for as many times as we must.