Growing up in Vansant, Dia Owens says she always wanted to become a doctor. What she didn't realize was how she would be called back to her hometown to practice medicine.
       "When we first left, we said we'd probably never come back," she says.
     She left her home in Vansant with her husband, David, in 1994 after graduating from Grundy High School, but now, 12 years later, Owens is back, the newest physician at the Thompson Family Health Center in Vansant.
       Owens, 29, enrolled at East Tennessee State University after graduating from Grundy and in 1998, she graduated with her Bachelor's Degree in Biology and enrolled at the ETSU James H. Quillen College of Medicine. With the support of her husband, who worked three jobs from 1998 until 2000, she graduated in 2002 with her Doctorate.
       "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my husband," she says.
       It was during her residency at the ETSU Family Physicians of Bristol that Owens says she saw an old classmate from GHS. Homesick just from the sight of someone from Buchanan County and bothered that he had driven such a long way to receive health care, she says she realized at that moment that not only did she want to come back home, but she was needed, as well.
      "Through my training. I felt a need to come back," she says. "I felt that this community made me who I an, so I felt I needed to come back."
       She applied to Stone Mountain Health Services and started at the Thompson Family Health Center in Vansant in September 2005. She didn't even apply anywhere else.
 

by Cathy St. Clair
News Editor
       Contributions totaling some $12,094.88 were approved by the Buchanan County Board of Supervisors in two meetings in the past week.
       During Monday’s meeting, there was some discussion among board members about whether they should change the method of approving contributions for the future and give a set amount to the school system and then require the various groups seeking monies -- many of them for school-related ventures -- to seek that funding from the Buchanan County School Board.
        South Grundy Chairman Roger Rife pointed out that often what happens is the board of supervisors opens the door for one group and then is put in the position of being unable to turn down the next request because the first one was approved.
       On trips, he said, any group can plan a trip, but he added there are differences between regular trips and trips to allow students to compete on the next level.
         Contributions approved in the past two meetings, the amounts, which groups requested them and which supervisors authorized them were as follows. Contributions were approved by the full board.

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         A number of area churches have special services planned this week and over the weekend in celebration of Easter.
       The Buchanan County Ministerial Association, in partnership with area churches, will be sponsoring Easter sunrise services at two locations in the county. Both will begin at 7 a.m.
         One will be held in the Garden/Oakwood area at the TMI Park at Garden United Methodist Church with the Rev. Lester Frank delivering the message.
         The second will be for the Grundy/Harman/Vansant area and will be held at Mountain Valley Cemetery at Big Rock with the Rev. Shea Shrader delivering the message.
         A sunrise service will also be held at the Breaks Interstate Park at 6 a.m. at Potter’s Knoll. An Easter egg hunt is planned on Saturday at the park at noon.
Church services of which the Mountaineer was notified are as follows.

For more of the story, see the print edition of the Mountaineer, on sale at newsstands now. For more information on how to subscribe to the Mountaineer, call 276-935-2123 today!