Legal Defense Fund for Cathy Latham

I am Cathy Lath­am and have been indict­ed by a Ful­ton Coun­ty grand jury being led by DA Fani Willis. While you may know me as an alter­nate elec­tor and for­mer Coun­ty GAGOP Chair, I am also a retired pub­lic school teacher liv­ing on a teacher’s pen­sion. I am ask­ing for your help today to help me cov­er legal fees dur­ing this time.

I don’t like talk­ing about myself, but my daugh­ter wrote this:

The news has been telling you a one-para­graph sum­ma­ry about Cathy Lath­am. But the Cathy Lath­am I know is not the one I have been read­ing about. So, if you are curi­ous, let me intro­duce you to the Cathy I call Mom.

My mom grew up in the small town in Texas. Cathy was the daugh­ter of Ray, a WWII and Korea war vet­er­an, and Mary Lou, a VA Nurse. Her dad gave her the nick­name Cash. She played the flute in the march­ing band.

When she was 9 years old, she thought she acci­den­tal­ly caused Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon to resign. She had writ­ten him a let­ter com­plain­ing that the scan­dals were inter­rupt­ing reruns of her favorite show, The Brady Bunch. Whether the let­ter ever made it to The White House, we will nev­er know.

While in col­lege, she mar­ried at the young age of 20. My dad was trans­ferred for work a few times before land­ing in South Geor­gia where mom got a job teach­ing Eng­lish at Cof­fee High School. My dad was trans­ferred back to Texas, but mom stayed behind with me while fin­ish­ing up the school year. I was only 5 years old at the time, but I still remem­ber the “for sale” sign in the yard, and proud­ly telling all of my friends at school on the last day that I was mov­ing to Texas. I was real­ly just excit­ed to be near my grand­par­ents.

But we did­nt move to Texas that year. My par­ents filed for divorce and my mom knew that the best chance she had to raise me as a sin­gle mom would be to stay where she was a tenured teacher, instead of Texas where she would have to start all over. I was heart­bro­ken and did­nt under­stand at the time the major sac­ri­fice she had made for me.

After school every day, I would ride the bus from my school to Cof­fee High. I would always catch her last class of the day about 15 min­utes before the bell rang. I remem­ber the pho­tos of her stu­dents sta­pled up to the bul­letin board and being fas­ci­nat­ed by the girls’ prom dress­es. I would run up and down the hall­ways and I would proud­ly declare I want­ed to mar­ry the pho­tog­ra­phy teacher, who just hap­pened to looked like San­ta Claus.

Her class was cov­ered in posters proud­ly show­cas­ing all of her favorite things includ­ing “The Big Bang The­o­ry”, Ronald Rea­gan, “Star Trek”, and var­i­ous Chuck Nor­ris jokes. She had pic­tures of me and her fam­i­ly taped to her com­put­er (includ­ing one of me in a dress she had sewn for me for a dance). She sold Mary Kay, start­ed a soy can­dle com­pa­ny, and taught SAT prep class­es to help stu­dents get into col­lege.

She was not an easy teacher, but she was a very good one. She tran­si­tioned from being an Eng­lish teacher to final­ly get­ting to teach her pas­sion, US His­to­ry and Eco­nom­ics. She even came up with cre­ative things like “Mil­ton Fried­man Day” where stu­dents cel­e­brat­ed Mil­ton Fried­man in what­ev­er way they chose. I remem­ber one stu­dent post­ed fly­ers all over town say­ing Hap­py Mil­ton Fried­man Day. Need­less to say, bystanders were con­fused.

My mom would wake me up ear­ly every Sun­day morn­ing to get to church before the ear­ly ser­vice so she could help cook break­fast for the entire con­gre­ga­tion with her best friend, Peg­gy. Every Decem­ber, she would vol­un­teer at the local Sal­va­tion Army to sort through donat­ed used toys and would deliv­er them to local kids. We would ring the bell out­side of Wal­mart where I proud­ly came up with the idea to sing a song if some­one donat­ed a dol­lar. After she retired, to fill her time, she vol­un­teered at the local food bank.

My mom is not a lawyer, politi­cian, or any­one who would find them­selves in the nation­al spot­light. Nev­er once did I ever think I would see her on the front page of the “New York Times” or men­tioned by my favorite dai­ly news pod­cast. Hon­est­ly, the only thing that comes to mind is the movie “For­rest Gump” where For­rest finds him­self on the news time and time again by acci­dent.

My mom has always lived her life with integri­ty. She has always tried to do what was right, even when peo­ple pushed back. When coach­es would ask her to change grades, she would offer to work with the play­er, but the stu­dent would have to earn it.

She taught me to be a free thinker. My mom and I have nev­er real­ly seen eye-to-eye on polit­i­cal top­ics. I vot­ed for Barack Oba­ma, Hillary Clin­ton, and Joe Biden. I even vol­un­teered for Hillarys cam­paign in New York City and was at the Jav­its Cen­ter the night of the 2016 elec­tion. How­ev­er, my mom has nev­er stopped being proud of me despite our polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences.

Most impor­tant­ly, she taught me to stand up and speak out when I know some­thing is wrong, so that is what I am doing right now. I want to speak up for the per­son who raised me to be who I am, the per­son I love, and the per­son I call Mom.

**All dona­tions to this cam­paign will be sent to the legal team of Cathy Lath­am**