Page 35 - Winter 2021

Lerch met his goal of breaking a 20-minute 5K on the cross-country team.
her grandmother Ann Kimsey, and she runs cross-county and track for Malcom Bridges Middle School. Besides training for speed and endurance. The siblings train for events to use their long frames to their advantage.
“He’s 6-foot-4-inches and sort of slim,” Kimsey described her grandson. “Football and basketball coaches wanted him, but he just never has really been that interested in it. He loves to watch football, but then he got interested in cross country and track.”
Just before the shutdown in March, J.D. competed in his first and only pole vault competition. He took 4th place in a George Walton Academy meet. The only thing that can stop J.D.’s senior track season is the same thing that could interfere with his family’s holiday plans. He was quarantined early in the school year after contact tracing linked him to a positive case, and more
recently, his sister was quarantined two weeks before Thanksgiving.
They planned on spending the holiday at a farm in Madison. Kimsey lived on the farm with her husband, who died in 2017 after 51 years of marriage.
J.D. and his sister helped raise cows and move hay bales over the years. J.D.’s stepfather, Dr. Jeffery Magnuson, is a traveling surgeon who specializes in robotic head and neck surgery. He was in Italy and China last
year before the virus spread to the U.S.
Kimsey will support her grandson’s college of choice, but she’d prefer if
J.D. enrolled at the University of Georgia.
“I really wish he would decide on something closer,” Kimsey said. “But
these days, the grandchildren are just a joy to be with right now.”
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WINTER 2021 | OCONEE THE MAGAZINE | PAGE 33
Courtesy Ann Kimsey