CMYK Thankful Americans see parades, feast
The nuts and bolts of Black Friday
Cowboys win on Thanksgiving Day
Local News, Page 4A
Business & Farm, Page 5A
Sports, Page 1B FRIDAY, November 27, 2009
Volume XCV, No. 278
(252) 436-2700
www.hendersondispatch.com
50 cents
Crash kills mom, two children
NCDOT planning upgrade of I-85 in Granville in spring
Police: All were wearing proper seat restraints
Work will be on concrete part from N.C. 56 to Vance By WILLIAM F. WEST Daily Dispatch Writer
By DAILY DISPATCH STAFF
WILTON — A 26-yearold Franklin County woman and her two children are dead as a result of a Wednesday evening one-vehicle wreck at the southeastern edge of Granville County, the N.C. Highway Patrol said. Melissa Jo Bullock was driving westbound on Mays Store Road when she overcorrected and the vehicle struck a ditch and a tree, the patrol said. The two children were Georgia Lee Godfrey, 5, and Wyatt Anthony Godfrey, 4, the patrol said. The patrol said the three lived at 371 Stone-Southerland Road, which is a Louisburg address. Bullock was wearing seatbelts and the two children were wearing proper restraints at the time of the wreck, which happened at 9:54 p.m., the patrol said. The person answering the patrol’s phone in Raleigh did not have the make and model of the vehicle. Trooper David Stuart responded to the wreck, which happened 9.4 miles southeast of Creedmoor and near the Granville County-Franklin County line. Stuart said original information police had reported that Bullock was pregnant. He said her family said she was not pregnant, the Associated Press reported. Send comments to news@ hendersonsondispatch.com.
Index Our Hometown . . . . . 2A Business & Farm. . . . 5A Opinion . . . . . . . . . . 10A Light Side . . . . . . . . 11A Sports. . . . . . . . . . 1-4B Comics . . . . . . . . . . . 5B Classifieds. . . . . . . 6-7B
Weather Today Mostly sunny
High: 52 Low: 33
Saturday Lots of sunshine
Happy Thanksgiving breakfast
Daily Dispatch/EARL KING
Good food and good friends once again made the Warrenton Rural Volunteer Fire Department’s annual Thanksgiving breakfast a hit. The 5 to 10 a.m. buffet served 573 people and had to be extended by a half hour to accommodate them. The VFD only asked for a donation.
Christmas parade coming Dec. 6; not too late to enter floats, groups By DAILY DISPATCH STAFF
Santa’s already signed up for the Henderson Christmas Parade on Sunday, Dec. 6, but there’s room in front of him for more bands and more floats. The annual parade through downtown Henderson will begin at 2:30 p.m. at Dabney Drive Extension and will proceed down Garnett Street to Rose Avenue. The event is again being sponsored by the Henderson-Vance Downtown Development Commission (HVDCC). Parade rules and entry forms are available online at the commission’s web site at www.hendersondowntown.us. (Click on Downtown Events and then Christmas Parade to get to the forms.) Forms may also be picked up at the commission’s office at City Hall on Rose Avenue . All entries are required to have a Christmas theme, according to Phil Lakernick, HVDCC director and the Main Street Program manager. Additional rules are available from the HVDCC. Only preauthorized groups will be allowed to
‘Light the Night’ ceremony Tuesday The new lights are on display in downtown Henderson already, but there’s an official ceremony planned to celebrate the start of this season next week. The “Light the Night in Downtown Henderson” lighting ceremony will be held Tuesday evening, Dec. 1, at 6 o’clock. Sponsored by the Henderson-Vance Downtown Development Commission, the ceremony marks the official “lighting of the greens” in downtown Henderson . The choirs from Greater Little Zion Holiness Church and Room at the Cross Pentecostal Holiness Church will be singing Christmas carols. The ceremony will take place on Garnett Street in front of the Vance County Senior Center . participate in the parade, Lakernick noted. Entry fees are $50 for floats, marching units, horse units, vehicles and non-profit groups. There is a $200 charge for semitractor/trailer vehicles over 10,000 pounds. The HVDCC has information on where groups may order floats if they wish and information on how to order float preparation kits to create original floats. The parade lineup will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Dabney Drive Extension between Walgreen’s on
OXFORD — At least $1.8 million worth of improvements to Interstate 85 are scheduled this coming spring in Granville County, the N.C. Department of Transportation said. The work will be on the segment of I-85 from slightly north of the N.C. 56 interchange to the Granville County-Vance County line, Michael Kneis, an NCDOT project manager and contract officer, told the Dispatch. Specifically, plans call for grinding the two northbound lanes to smooth the concrete surface and to correct faulting, which is when one slab becomes lower than the preceding one because of the constant pounding by tractortrailers. And plans for the northbound side additionally call for resealing the joints to keep water from seeping into the concrete, for putting down new reflective center markers and for spray painting new lines. Kneis said there are no plans to grind the southbound side because those two lanes are not experiencing the faulting found on the northbound side. Still, Kneis said, the southbound side is being remarked now, with plans to include replacing the reflectors and resealing the joints. NCDOT in February will take bids for the project,
I-85 improvements in Tri-County area Crews are working to complete a $26 million restoration of Interstate 85 from the Granville County-Vance County line to near the N.C. 39/ Downtown Henderson interchange. The N.C. Department of Transportation says the temporary 55 mph speed limit in the project zone will remain in place because of the possibility of some work carrying over into next year. The only major contract work left to be done includes installing two overhead signs next month. Additionally, the contractor will be provided with a punch list after NCDOT conducts a final inspection of the project. The punch list work will include a variety of items, from making minor pavement repairs to dressing and seeding shoulders and medians. Crews in the fall of 2008 completed a more than $8 million I-85 restoration project from N.C. 39 to the North Carolina-Virginia border. with work anticipated to start the middle of April, Kneis said. As for the funding, $1.5 million for the northbound lanes will come from interstate maintenance funds and $300,000 for the southbound lanes will come from the division’s maintenance funds. Contact the writer at bwest@ hendersondispatch.com.
Oxford Road and Burger King on Raleigh Road . The official lineup will be printed in The Daily Dispatch a couple of days prior to the event. Floats and bands will be judged and prizes awarded in one of three categories: $200 for first place, $150 for second, and $100 for third, according to Lakernick. A total of 75 entries participated in the 2008 edition of the parade. Send comments to news@ hendersondispatch.com.
Shaq pays for N.C. girl’s funeral
High: 56 Low: 34
Details, 3A
Deaths Henderson Bobby Arnold Dail Sr., 69 Nannie Ruth Waverly, 51 Florence Boyd West, 80
Obituaries, 4A
FAYETTEVILLE (AP) — Basketball star Shaquille O’Neal paid for the funeral of a 5-year-old North Carolina girl after being moved by national news coverage of the case of Shaniya Davis, who police say was kidnapped and killed. The Cleveland Cavaliers player was touched by the stories he saw and got in touch with the family to see what he could do to help, a spokeswoman for O’Neal said Thursday.
More than 2,000 people attended the girl’s funeral Sunday. Her body was found Nov. 16 beside a rural O’Neal road. Her mother, Antionette Davis, who had reported the child missing six days earlier, is charged with human trafficking and child abuse involving prostitution. Mario McNeill is
charged with murder, rape and kidnapping in the case. “I was sitting at home watching it on the news and the story brought a tear to my eye,” O’Neal told The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. Corey Breece, of Rogers and Breece Funeral Home, which handled the service, declined to tell the Fayetteville Observer newspaper how much it cost but added Please see SHAQ, page 3A
Daily Dispatch/WILLIAM F. WEST
Turkey Trot the fun way Blaise Gruchacz, 11, a student at Vance Charter School, approaches the finish line of the annual two-mile Turkey Trot fun walk and run in central Oxford — on rollerblades. Finishing second behind Blaise is Justin Commee, 16, a student at Kerr-Vance Academy. The 153 participants each provided a can of food or a donation to Area Congregations in Ministry (ACIM), which is a non-profit organization assisting the needy. ACIM received $2,700 in checks prior to the Thursday event, $1,495 in checks from the event and $136 in cash from the event. And ACIM said the totals included 720 pounds of food.