Plans to hang a huge Maria Gomez-Perez banner from the pedestrian bridge over Jesse Jewell Parkway Friday were thwarted when the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) squelched the idea. But the group behind the effort regrouped and placed it at an intersection near the bridge.
GDOT officials said that instead of putting the banner on the bridge they would rather see the missing 12-year-old’s picture on billboards. There are already several of those.
Maria was last seen at her Westside Drive home May 29 and a $50,000 reward is being offered for her safe return. HCSO: ‘Solid’ leads in Maria Gomez-Perez case lead nowhere (wgtjradio.com)
About the Author
Ken Stanford is Online News Editor for GLORY 97.5, a position he has held since August 2022.
Ken was born in Moultrie, Georgia, and says he knew from the time he was 5 or 6 he wanted to be a “radio announcer.” That dream was realized when he was hired by Moultrie radio station WMTM in 1960 at the age of 15 as a weekend disc jockey. A 1963 graduate of Moultrie (now Colquitt County) High School, he has spent his whole career in Georgia working for stations in Atlanta, Marietta, and Gainesville – most recently as News Director for 40 years at WDUN in Gainesville. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force Reserves.
Ken retired in 2011 but came out of retirement last year to help GLORY, on a part-time basis, beef-up its online news presence.
He is the recipient of many Associated Press awards and is a former judge of state and national Associated Press broadcast news contests. In 2005, he was presented with the Georgia Associated Press Broadcasters Association’s President’s Award for Excellence in Journalism and in 2019 was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame.
He lives in Gainesville with his wife of 52 years, the former Sandra McKnight of Clio, Alabama, and they have one child, a daughter, Lisa, who lives in Cumming with her family.
