SENC SPRING 2017

SE SE SE SPRING 2017

SPRING 2017

North Carolina

North Carolina

SPRING 2017

North Carolina

Broken Arrow Battle of New Bern

Happersville

Aeronautical Wonders Atomic age nightmares

Preserving history in defeat

Kinston’s red light revelries

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Description

Description

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628 S. Main St. Kenansville, NC 28349 Phone: 910-296-2040

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first because we don’t have shareholders are service marks of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. © 2017 Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. NPR-0718AO.2 (02/17)

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Editor’s Note

Keep the throttle pinned

SE North Carolina www.sencmag.com Issue No. 10

Staff / Credits / Contributions PUBLISHER Jim Sills EDITOR Todd Wetherington ASSOCIATE EDITOR Trevor Normile PRODUCTION/ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Jillian Smith Content & Photography Jacqueline Hough Michael Jaenicke Trevor Normile Gary Scott Todd Wetherington CONTRIBUTING Writers Annesophia Richards Andrew Cole Advertising Becky Cole Alan Wells CIRCULATION Lauren Guy SUBSCRIBE: Four issues (one year) $19.95 plus tax lguy@ncweeklies.com

It should be clear by now our memories are stamped with the thin soles of Chuck Taylors and sunset bike rides, sunburnt kisses on warm beach nights and the rich exhaust of the family car pulling away on a Saturday.

Many of our state’s fine publications are like modern sedans — polished, reliable, refined. We’re more like a ’93 Cherokee, muddy, with crank windows and food wrappers on the dashboard: not exactly an avatar of refinement, but more focused on where we’re going than what it takes to get there.

We’ve kept the throttle pinned on our journey through Southeast North Carolina, and here’s a taste of what we have on offer this season: First up is a trio of tales from the air, of Wilmington’s own Princetoneducated dogfighter, Arthur Bluethenthal, who was shot up fighting Fritz over France in World War I; of January 24, 1961, the date on which Goldsboro, N.C. was nearly wiped from the face of the earth in a nuclear nearmiss, and of Michael Smith, Beaufort’s hometown astronaut, a hero who reached for the stars.

Our other features this issue are more grounded. Yours truly attended an afternoon jam session with a bona

CONTACT senc.ads@nccooke.com senc@nccooke.com 1.910.296.0239 ON THE COVER SENC aerial adventure Illustration by Jillian Smith Southeast North Carolina Magazine is a publication of the Duplin Times and Cooke Communications North Carolina. Contents may not be reproduced without the consent of the publisher.

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North Carolina fide mermaid, for example. In between songs, we talked about Native American spirits, the history of the dulcimer and the meaning of life.

History buffs will enjoy our features on the Battle of New Bern, when Union General Ambrose Burnside sailed his fleet up the Neuse River and marched to New Bern in a move to cut Confederate supply lines, occupying New Bern through much of the war.

And when the Union turned and sliced through Kinston, the aftermath of the conflict, legend has it, allowed Kinston’s old dark side, the Happersville and Sugar Hill districts, to set up shop and sell shallow comforts to the lonely. This is but a footnote in Kinston’s long history, but a fascinating one nonetheless.

Readers of greener dispositions will enjoy a treatise on a leafy, many-fingered plant, sober though may it be.

It’s hemp, and despite its reputation, it’s useful for just about anything except getting stoned. It’s sort of marijuana’s more-useful, non-couchsurfing twin.

As it turns out, North Carolina may be close to cultivating hemp for the first time since the 1940s.

And if you’re one who remembers the warm mischievous evenings of childhood, see the Folk column for a tale from our editor-in-chief.

As for us — holy word alive, is it nice outside. Maybe it’s time to slip on the Chucks and go for a ride.

Trevor Normile, Assoc. Editor SPRING 2017

Mystery Photo Where in SENC is this?

Where in SouthEast North Carolina is this?

A quick explanation, in case it’s needed: Every quarter, SE North Carolina includes a cropped-down version of a landmark or scene in one of SENC’s many signature communities.

Try and guess where and what this photo shows.

Hint: This precision war machine once flew with the Angels.

See page 62 for answer

Where we are this Spring!

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Look for features or mentions of these places in SE North Carolina and beyond: • ALBERTSON 66 • BALD HEAD IS. 25 • BEAUFORT 16 • BOILING SPRINGS LAKES 66 • BURGAW 11 • CAROLINA BEACH 9, 11 • CHOCOWINITY 9 • FAYETTEVILLE 10,11,50 • FT. FISHER 25 • GOLDSBORO 10, 11, 20, 32, 66 • JACKSONVILLE 41 • KENANSVILLE 11 • KINSTON 11, 44 • HATTERAS IS. 25 • MINT HILL 41 • MOREHEAD CITY 41 • NEW BERN 11, 28, 41, 62 • PINK HILL 9, 11 • SOUTHPORT-OAK IS. 9 • SUNSET BEACH 67 • WALLACE 11 • WHITE LAKE 11 • WHITEVILLE 67 • WILMINGTON 10,11,14,36

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• emorial Park April 21-22 • M rsaw NC 28398 Wa ., Dr l ia or 309 Mem

Join us for the Down Home Dinner at Duplin Country Club 7-11 pm $100 per couple (by ticket only)

Auction & DJ Please contact Lea at Warsaw Town Hall for more information - (910).293.7814

Our Interest Is

You.

Kenansville

416 S. Main St. • (910) 296-0210

Warsaw

114 N. Pine St. • (910) 293-7176

Faison

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PROUDLY SERVING DUPLIN COUNTY FOR MORE THAN

100 YEARS!

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SouthEast North Carolina

Feedback:

No need to spit fire, but if you’ve got something to say, just say it!

Welcome to our spring issue of SE North Carolina. We hope you like it, and all of our previous issues dating back to 2014.

Now it’s time we heard from you.

Like our features and information this time? Got suggestions for future stories? Let us know. Got any thoughts on how this magazine can be improved? We’re all ears. Tell us what’s on your mind and anything else you’d like to share that would help us provide southeastern North Carolina with a magazine you’ll be excited to look forward to four times a year!

CONTACT US: senc@nccooke.com senc.ads@nccooke.com 910-296-0239 P.O. Box 69 Kenansville NC 28349

Send us a message at the address at right. We hope the information and features herein will be the kind of information you want and will look forward to each edition, in portraying our corner of North Carolina in an interesting and honest light.

And, if you want to advertise, we provide great service and coverage so your message is most effective over the 15-county region we call home— southeastern North Carolina!

SPRING 2017

View past issues at www.sencmag.com

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Contents Spring 2017

Features

In Every Issue

Snapshots

Reckoning 14

WWI Pilot

16

Challenger Astronaut

20

32

Wilmington’s sky ace

A legacy remembered

CAJOLE

Nuke Town

44

A radioactive near-miss

16

Happersville Community

50

Bearded Beauties

Eye of the beholder

53

Murmurs Satisfaction Guaranteed

Affray

32

Rumble on the Neuse

36

N.C. Hemp

The life aquatic Future harvest

25

Fort Fisher

41

Traveling Vietnam Memorial

Heading for Morehead

Playdates

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Mystery Photo

Upcoming concerts, theater and more in SouthEast N.C. A jet set Tiger’s high flying rebirth

64

People

66

Folk

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Bombardment anniversary

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50

Salt water saviors

EXTRAS

Battle of New Bern Mermaid Morrigan

Oyster Sanctuary

Kinston’s illicit playground

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09

Contributions and quirks from interesting people in our region Holes, holes for everyone!

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Ranked among the best

by U.S. News and World Report

Since starting cardiac rehab at Wayne UNC Health Care in May, Davis has lost 50 pounds, gained more energy and feels great.

Davis Whitfield, for one, is not surprised.

Davis counts on Wayne UNC Health Care for regular treatment for his heart. Like other people with chronic conditions, he needs care he can count on that’s close by.

Recent national rankings back up what Davis and hundreds of other patients already can vouch for—their hometown hospital is one of the best.

U.S. News and World Report has ranked Wayne a High Performing Hospital for the care we provide to patients with congestive heart failure and COPD*.

It’s the highest rating possible from one of the most respected, objective sources in the world.

And it’s one more way that Eastern North Carolina can see we’re delivering on our mission—to provide quality care close to home. *Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

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2700 Wayne Memorial Drive | Goldsboro, NC 919-736-1110 | North WayneHealth.org SouthEast Carolina SPRING 2017

SE Snapshot

SE PICKS: Sanctuaries

North Carolina

Parrot

NCDMF continues to ensure safety of oysters in state waterways

Carolina Beach is no longer a viable spot for oyster sanctuary

T

he N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries continues to encourage oyster growth in the state.

Currently, there are 14 sites.

A site near Carolina Beach was being considered a possibility for an oyster sanctuary.

But Curtis Weychert, an oyster sanctuary biologist with NCDMF, said the site would most likely be an artificial reef.

“The Cape Fear River is a closed area and is prohibited from oyster harvest so designating it as a sanctuary would be almost an unnecessary redundancy,” he said.

NCDMF matched their appropriation for construction/operations in a private partnership with the North Carolina Coastal Federation to increase the effectiveness of the project.

Coastal Federation was awarded a three-year grant.

In 2017, phase one will begin involving the building of new sanctuaries and enhancing existing sites.

The goal is to build about 15 acres on a site in the mouth of the Neuse River in the southern Pamilco Sound area called Swan Island Oyster Sanctuary.

Weychert said instead of making individual mounds, they will be going back to a traditional ridge

structure.

And they will be using outside contractors instead of doing it inhouse.

“It will be a good chance for us

The state continues to encourage oyster growth.

to see how much we can build and how effectively we can do that for taxpayer dollars,” he said.

In February, they received 25,000 tons of limestone material. The anticipated start date of the construction and deployment with the contractor is April.

“We would like to see completion of the sanctuary within realistically four to five months but it could take longer or could be done sooner depending on how we work with the contractor and how quickly the contractor can get the work done,” Weychert said.

The Cape Fear Parrot Sanctuary is home to a large number of rescued parrots and provides a “forever home” for the birds, whose long life spans and tendency to become attached to owners makes re-homing the animals difficult.

Located at 331 Weston Road, Pink Hill.

For more information, visit www.capefearparrotsanctuary.com or call 910-471-2186.

Chicken Chocowinity Chicken Sanctuary and Education Center gives a permanent sanctuary to abandoned chickens or chickens in need of a home. Information is given to individuals on chicken care along with educating the public about the effects of factory farming. Located at 408 Hillcrest Dr., Chocowinity. For more information, visit www.chocochickensanctuary.org or call 252946-9663.

Dogs, Cats Southport-Oak Island Animal Rescue, 3376 St. Charles Place, Southport, is a 501c(3) nonprofit no-kill animal rescue. There are dog kennels for up to 14 dogs; a large fenced-in run and training area for dogs; a cattery with open rooms as well as cat kennels and two houses for cats living with feline leukemia virus and feline immunodeficiency virus.

For more information, visit soar-nc.org or call 910-457-6340.

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Play dates Upcoming things to do in southeastern North Carolina

Wings Over Wayne SAT. & SUN., MAY 20-21 Gates open 8 a.m. each day Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, Goldsboro

SE Pick

Popular biennial airshow featuring U.S Navy Blue Angels and Tora Tora Tora Pearl Harbor re-creation, plus other performances.

Free admission, free parking. www.wingsoverwayneairshow. com

Jason Isbell with Hiss Golden Messenger

Tickets $25-$50. America’s most beloved animal expert, Jack Hanna, brings his three-time Emmy Award-winning television series to the live stage with “Into the Wild Live!” Prepare to be fascinated as Jungle Jack takes you into the wild with a spectacular array of incredible animals and humorous stories and amazing footage from his around the world adventures. www.crowncomplexnc.com

Beyond the Horizon

• Now through July 9

Cameron Art Museum, 3201 S.17th Street, Wilmington

Museum members free; Adults $10; Seniors, active military, students over 16 $8. Explore our evolving perceptions of the natural world with contemporary artists as Maya Lin, Teresita Fernández, Jason Mitcham, and Colby Parsons employ unique mediums to unearth human interaction with the landscape. http://cameronartmuseum.org

Greenfield Lake Amphitheater, Wed., April 19 Wilmington 6 p.m.

7:30 p.m. • Wilson Center Cape Fear Community College, Wilmington

Tickets $28 Advance, $36 Day of Show.

New from the “Truckers”: American Band, the 13th release

by Athens, Georgia’s Drive-By Truckers, is an elegantly balanced and deeply engaged new effort that finds the group refreshed and firing on all cylinders. http://greenfieldlake amphitheater.com.

Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, Jason Isbell comes to Wilmington for one night to share his stories, in song, from his highly-acclaimed, award winning solo albums “Something More Than Free,” “Southeastern,” and more. http://cfcc. edu/capefearstage/jason-isbell-w-specialguest-hiss-golden-messenger/

Conor Oberst plus Big Thief Sun., June 4

Doors open 6 p.m.; Show begins 7 p.m. • Throne Theater, Market St., Wilmington

Music from his new album, “Salutations.” http://www.huka.com/event/1438113conor-oberst-wilmington.

SouthEast North Carolina

6:30 p.m., Crown Coliseum, Fayetteville

Drive-by Truckers

Thursday, March 30

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• fri., may 5

Spring 2017

Bye Bye Birdie

Carolina Beach Music Festival

April 28-30

Paramount Theater, Goldsboro Tickets $15$18. One of the most captivating musical shows of our time. goldsboro paramount.com

Sat., June 3

10 a.m., Carolina Beach Celebrating 32 years, this festival is the perfect chance to dance barefoot on the sand or just sway to the beat while standing in the surf. It’s billed as “the biggest and only beach music festival actually held on the beach on the N.C. coast” and one of the longest running beach music festivals in the U.S. www.pleasureislandnc.org/carolinabeach-music-festival or call 910-458-8434

festivals Blue, Brew, and ’Cue / Mar. 31-Apr. 1 • Duplin County Events Center, Fairgrounds Drive, Kenansville.

Admission $8-$10 Fri.; $20-$25 Sat.; Children $5 (under 6 free).

Bluegrass music, barbecue cookoff, craft breweries and more. Bring the family! Soggy Bottom Boys, VW Boys, Lonesome River Band, Third Time Out and more. duplinbluegrassfest.com.

Pig in the Park at Old Waynesborough / April 8 • U.S. 13-117 Bypass, Goldsboro.

Admission and time TBA. Whole hog barbecue cookoff with up to 25 teams. Arts and crafts vendors, live music, and children’s activities.

919-735-2358.

Colonial Market Days: A Tryon Palace Renaissance Fair • Sat., June 3, 2017 - 10:00 a.m. to Sun., June 4 - 5:00p.m.

Tryon Palace, 529 S. Front Street, New Bern

“Colonial Market Days” brings a new outdoor festival to Tryon Palace that celebrates the cultures and people that colonized North Carolina from 1660-1720 with a lively outdoor market, encampments, and multiple performance stages. http://www.tryonpalace.org/blog

FREE. National musicians, street festival, food and more for the entire family. www. faydogwoodfestival.com

White Lake SUNDAY, Spring Sprint APRIL 23 a.m., N.C. FFA Triathlon 8Center, White Lake

N.C. Pickle Festival / Apr. 28-29 • Center Street, Mount Olive.

Events this year.: 750 Meter Swim, 14.3 mile bike, and 5K run. Register by April 20. Type this shortened link into your Internet browser for more information: goo.gl/5aw07J

SE Pick

Fayetteville Dogwood Festival / Apr. 28-30 • Varying times each day, downtown and Festival Park, Fayetteville

FREE. Celebrate the pickle at our 31st annual event. Street fair, bands, auto show, chili cookoff, student art show, Cuke Patch 5K run, Artisan Village demonstrations and displays. www. ncpicklefest.com.

Friday, April 14 7:30 p.m., Crown Coliseum, Fayetteville

Action packed professional night of racing comes with chills, spills and thrills and a no-holds-barred racing attitude. www.crowncomplexnc. com

Cape Fear Stage Presents

Whoopi Goldberg FRIDAY, JUNE 23

7:30 p.m., Cape Fear Community College Wilson Center, 703 N. Third St., Wilmington Whoopi is known throughout the world for her accomplishments as a performer, best-selling author, producer and humanitarian—an elite artist who has won Grammy, Academy, Golden Globe, Emmy and Tony awards. Her latest producing project, According to Alex, premieres on Centric in October and her latest book If Someone Says “You Complete Me”…Run! is available now. http://cfcc.edu/capefearstage/ Spring 2017

BBQ on the Neuse / May 5-6 • Neuseway Park, corner of Mitchell and Gordon Streets, downtown Kinston.

Barbecue, food competitions, shopping, arts and crafts, wine garden, children’s activities and more. www.bbqfestivalonteneuse.com.

Carolina Strawberry Festival / May 13-14 • Downtown Wallace

Friday night “Strawberry Jam” street concert with beer and wine garden; Saturday, strawberries, ice cream, vendors, live entertainment, carnival. www.carolinastrawberryfestival.com

Rose Fest / May 20 • 10 a.m., 100 S. Central Ave, Pink Hill. Free.

Celebration of the town of Pink Hill with special performance by Bryan Mayer, Chris Cavanaugh, and more. Visit rosefest.org.

Cape Fear BBQ Festival / June 3 • 9 a.m.-1 p.m., Old River Farms, Poplar Grove Plantation, Wilmington Admission $5. Competitive barbecue cookoff, arts and crafts, live music, plant sale, antique truck and tractor show, games and activities. capefearbbqfestival.com.

N.C. Blueberry Festival / June 1617 • Downtown Burgaw.

FREE. Voted one of the top 20 events or Southeastern N.C., NCBF celebrates Pender County’s most famous crop for the 14th year in a row under the shady comfort of the courthouse and downtown. www.ncblueberryfestival.com.

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SouthEast North Carolina

SPRING 2017

SE Reckoning

North Carolina

WWI Pilot

14

In 1916, as WWI raged in Europe, Wilmington’s Arthur Bluethenthal joined the American Ambulance Field Service, a decision that would carry him from the ball fields of Princeton to the battlefields of France. He would go on to fly bomber missions over Germanheld territory, giving his life for the Allied cause.

Space 16 Shuttle Astronaut

As a young boy, Beaufort native Michael J. Smith would watch in wonder as planes touched down behind his parents’ farm.

Years later, having logged thousands of hours in the air, he would be chosen for the mission of a lifetime — piloting the space shuttle Challenger.

Nuclear Near Misses

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Transporting the most destructive weapons ever devised by humankind is an inherently fraught task. When things go wrong, as they did over Goldsboro and Eureka in 1961, these nuclear incidents, or “broken arrows,” can have potentially catastrophic consequences for those below.North SouthEast

se • Reckoning

Story by Andrew Cole Photo from Cape Fear Museum On June 19, 1918 a telegram, courtesy of Western Union, arrived on the doorstep of Wilmington residents Leopold and Johanna Bluethenthal.

The First World War had been raging in Europe for nearly four years, yielding tremendous human cost on both sides. Despite America’s late entry to the conflict in the spring of 1917, Arthur, the Bluethenthal’s youngest son, had been involved in the fighting in some capacity for three years.

In many cases news from the front was not necessarily unwelcome — a letter from a loved one often reassured friends and family that they were indeed alive, or at the very least momentarily unscathed. Unfortunately for the Bluethenthals, the simple 6.4-inch by 8-inch slip of paper they had received in the mail carried the devastating news that their son had been killed in aerial combat over France.

In the days before his wartime service, Arthur Bluethenthal, sometimes known as “Bluie” to his friends, had gained recognition in the athletic community.

By 1911, Arthur had established himself as a star football player, playing center for the Tigers at prestigious Princeton University.

His prowess on the playing field would lead to him becoming a first pick All-American football player, receiving jobs as a line coach for Princeton and briefly the University of North Carolina after his graduation.

However, as war in Europe intensified, Bluethenthal would make the daring decision to trade the ball field for the battlefield.

In 1916, Arthur Bluethenthal joined the American Ambulance Field Service, a decision which would usher him from the safety and security of his coaching career to driving 14

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Wilmington native flew for France in WWI ambulances in the grizzly, war-torn countryside of Verdun, France.

Bluethenthal approached the new assignment with the same vigor and commitment that he had demonstrated on the gridiron.

This earned him the Croix de Guerre, an award customarily awarded to foreigners allied with France, for bravery.

After Verdun and a brief stint in the Balkans, Bluethenthal set his sights toward the sky, volunteering in the French Foreign Legion’s Air Service training at Avord and Pau. After flight school, Bluethenthal was assigned to Escadrille Breguet 227 of the Lafayette Flying Corps, making him the only American in the squadron at that time. After a brief leave spent visiting his parents in Wilmington, Arthur would once again be sent to the front lines of France, where he would fly bomber and observation missions over German-held territory.

Upon the arrival of U.S. forces on the front lines, it was decided that Bluethenthal would be transferred to an American Naval aviation unit.

However, he chose to stay by the side of his fellow Escadrille pilots with whom he had already endured much hardship while fighting for control of European skies.

The serious tone of his writings implies that Bluethenthal was thoroughly devoted to his mission and his fellow airmen. Sometime during the spring of 1918, Bluethenthal had written back home to friends. In his letter, he stated, “I love life, but my life does not now belong to me. It belongs to France, to the Allies, and to the cause for which I have pledged myself to fight till the war is over and won.”

Bluethenthal would not live to see the Allied victory which he had helped secure. On June 5, 1918, the

all-American football player, pilot, and Wilmington native was killed — shot down in aerial combat while directing artillery fire over France. His body was laid to rest by his comrades in French soil.

When the news of Bluie’s death reached the homefront, P.Q. Moore, Wilmington’s mayor at the time, or-

“I love life, but my life does not now belong to me. It belongs to France, to the Allies, and to the cause for which I have pledged myself to fight till the war is over and won.” dered all the city’s flags to be lowered to half-mast. On the 20th of June, local businesses closed their doors for an hour as mourners shuffled into The Academy of Music, now known to locals as Thalian Hall, to pay their respects to the fallen aviator.

Though his remains still lay in France, a portrait of Bluethenthal and a flag adorned with a gold star overlooked the stage. Wreaths hailing from associations ranging from the Temple of Israel to the Princeton Alumni filled the stage as speeches and prayers were SPRING 2017

read in Bluethenthal’s honor.

Nearly three years after the Great War’s conclusion, Bluethenthal’s body finally made it home to Wilmington.

In 1921 his body was in the city’s Oakdale Cemetery. Years later, on Memorial Day 1928, Wilmington’s airport was renamed Bluethenthal Field in his honor.

More than a century has passed since the war’s start and memories of the conflict fade farther from public memory with each year.

Unlike the flying aces remembered in popular culture — men like Manfred Von Richthofen or René Fonck — Arthur Bluethenthal is not known for shooting down vast numbers of the enemy, nor is he known for flying innumerable missions.

He wasn’t even the only North Carolinian to have flown for France.

Rather, he is known for his dedication to the Allied cause, commitment to his comrades, and willingness to help his fellow man in a time of need.

An Ivy League graduate as well as a star athlete with numerous coaching opportunities, Bluethenthal probably would have had it made back in the states.

Yet, he gave up those prospects in order to lend a helping hand to people whom he didn’t know, on a war-torn continent far from his own, at a time when he had no obligation to do so.

In the same letter he sent home prior to his death, Bluethenthal remarked, “At home I was on holiday.

Here we face the stern facts of life and death, and we are not afraid.

It’s hard to explain the way we feel about it all, about France – we who volunteered to fight for her before our own country was not too proud to fight.”

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se • Reckoning

The small museum is easy to miss, its contents lost in the glare of the late afternoon sun spilling through the doors of Beaufort Elementary School: a pilot’s helmet, a world globe, various military service medals, a model of a space shuttle preparing for liftoff. At opposite ends of the display,

framed photos show a man days away from embarking on a journey many humans have contemplated but few have ever realized.

Arranged neatly behind a glass display case in the school’s lobby, the items tell the story of Michael J. Smith, a farmer’s son who once walked the

town’s school halls and gazed in wonder at the planes crossing the horizon headed for the local airport. And it’s to these items, to this “mini museum,” that the town’s school children return each year on the anniversary of his death, a day that many Americans recall as vividly as past generations remember the Kennedy assassination or their first kiss. It was the day, sunlit but cold, that seven former strangers walked single file towards a dream that had once been the stuff of science fiction, a dream from which they would never emerge.

Liftoff It helps to know that Michael Smith had already received his pilot’s license before he could legally drive a car. Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s he was fascinated by anything that flew, watching for hours on end as planes landed and took off from the airstrip across from his family’s farm in Beaufort.

In a letter written to his cousin just before Smith’s 16th birthday, the teenager expressed anxiety about an upcoming solo flight and his test for a pilot’s license. The letter’s postscript, written in hurriedly scribbled letters, made clear that those worries were short-lived. “I went flying, all right. I soloed!!!!”

After graduating from Beaufort High School in 1963, Smith sidestepped a potentially lucrative career as a commercial pilot, instead challenging himself as a naval aviator. He was accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he graduated in 1967 with a degree in Naval Science.

Shorty after graduation, he married Jane Anne Jarrell, the beginning of a family that would include three children, Scott, Alison, and Erin.

As his friend William Maready recalled in a 1987 interview with the Winston-Salem Journal, Smith had

talents other than flying that set him apart from his peers.

He was “…an extremely intelligent fellow… typically would be reading War and Peace instead of a paperback,” Maready remembered.

By 1968, Smith had earned a master of science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, Calif. The following year, as the U.S. space program reached its zenith with Neil Armstrong’s “…one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” moon walk, Smith earned his naval aviator wings.

After spending two years as a jet training instructor, he was assigned to Vietnam for a two-year tour flying combat missions from the cockpit of an A-6 Intruder with Attack Squadron 52, “Knightriders.”

In 1973, Smith was one of a handful of the nation’s best pilots to be accepted to the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School. In 1976 he completed two Mediterranean deployments aboard the U.S.S. Saratoga, flying 28 different types of civilian and military aircraft and logging close to 5,000 hours of flying time.

After more than a decade in the air and the classroom, Smith finally got his chance to live out another of his childhood dreams. In May of 1980, he was selected as an astronaut candidate by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He completed his one year training and evaluation period in August 1981, qualifying for assignment as a pilot on space shuttle flight crews.

In the coming years he would serve as a commander in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory and was also assigned to the Astronaut Office Development and Test Group.

Finally, five years after his initial training, the young man who had raised his eyes to the skies above his parents’ farm, and later fretted about his first solo flight, was chosen for his inaugural

mission as an astronaut — piloting the space shuttle Challenger.

A clear winter’s day By 1986, the Space Shuttle program was five years past its maiden launch, and news of the crafts’ comings and goings seemed almost routine, just another part of ordinary American life.

Composed of an orbiter launched with two reusable solid rocket boosters and a disposable external fuel tank, the crafts carried as many as eight astronauts and up to 50,000 lbs. of payload into low Earth orbit. When its mission was complete, the orbiter would re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and land like a glider at either the Kennedy Space Center or Edwards Air Force Base.

The first fully functional orbiter, Columbia, was launched in 1981.

Challenger was the second vehicle in NASA’s space shuttle program to be

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put into service, on April 4, 1983. It had launched and landed nine times prior to Smith’s mission.

The Challenger’s 10th flight, manned

by Smith and six other crew members, was scheduled to launch on January 28, 1986. In addition to the deployment of a communications satellite, the crew’s mission also included observation and photography of Halley’s Comet, which had just reappeared in the inner reaches of the solar system.

The mission gained significant press attention due to the presence of crew member Sharon Christa McAuliffe, who was to be the first teacher to fly in space. Before the flight, Smith explained his enthusiasm during a press conference. “I’m one of the three members who this’ll be their first time to fly...We’re just excited to learn the secret handshake,” he quipped.

At 11:38 a.m. on January 28, a

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At 11:38 a.m. on January 28, a Tuesday, the Challenger executed a pictureperfect liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. One minute and 13 seconds into its launch, as a crowd of family members, NASA employees and school children watched below, the orbiter exploded in an orangeand-white fireball nine miles above the Atlantic Ocean.

In addition to Smith and McAuliffe, the explosion also claimed the lives of commander Dick Scobee, three mission specialists, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Judith Resnik, and civilian payload specialist Gregory Jarvis.

An investigation would later determine the shuttle was torn apart due to the failure of a sealing joint on its right solid rocket booster, which allowed gases in an external fuel tank to mix and ignite.

Smith’s voice was the last one heard on the Challenger voice recorder, saying “Uh oh,” as the orbiter reached an altitude of 48,000 feet.

And then he was gone.

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REMEMBERING Like most people old enough to recall that day, I know exactly where I was when the news came that something had gone horribly wrong with the Challenger launch. I was sitting in my 10th grade Biology class at New Bern High School when a student knocked on the door, obviously upset. A few minutes later a TV set was brought into the room and we all sat there and watched as the explosion, and the reaction of the crowd at Cape Canaveral, was replayed over and over. Some of the girls in my class began to cry. Most of us just sat there in mute shock. This was America; things like this didn’t happen here.

The image of the white, curling plumes of smoke visible in the Florida sky after the explosion has become iconic, a symbol of late 20th century scientific aspiration crashing headlong into reality. But what has stuck with me from that news footage is the way the crowd continued to smile and clap even after the shuttle had blown apart, like it was all part of the plan, as if they were simply unable to accept that something so horrific had happened right in front of their eyes on a beautiful winter’s morning.

Other images from that day have stuck with Ava Bryant, director of the Boys and Girls Club afterschool program at Beaufort Elementary. Bryant was seven years old when the Challenger exploded. She SPRING 2017

still remembers the knock on her family’s door that brought the news of Smith’s death.

“My family was friendly with Michael’s family. What I remember is the knock on the door, that’s the thing that stands out the most to me. My neighbor actually came over to tell us. My parents put us in the car and we headed over to the homestead, to Mike’s. That knock on the door... it just plays in your head.”

Bryant, who attended the same elementary school that Smith had years earlier, remembers standing outside each year on the anniversary of the Challenger accident for the school’s remembrance ceremony.

“In honoring him on the anniversary we would do a moment of silence around the flagpole. I can remember being cold, the feel of that weather always reminds me.”

Years later, those memories would lead Bryant to honor Smith in her own way: by teaching students about space exploration and the legacy of the space shuttle crew.

On Jan. 28, 2010, retired principal Vicki Fritz, along with family and friends of Smith, opened the Michael J. Smith MiniMuseum at the new Beaufort Elementary School to honor his memory.

Each year, Bryant’s students visit the museum and study the details of the astronauts’ lives in gravity-free space, where simple activities such as brushing their teeth and washing their hair pose serious challenges.

The students also work on puzzles and drawings related to Smith and the space shuttle program.

Bryant said her students have even written letters to the Kennedy Space Center, thanking them for the support they offered to the Smith family and the Beaufort community following the tragedy.

In turn, the center has donated several items to the school’s museum, including a shuttle tire that actually flew in space and one of Smith’s training helmets.

Standing in the school’s hallway beside the display, five-year-old Colton Forsberg, Smith’s great nephew, holds the helmet in his arms and smiles. “This one’s my favorite,” he says, his sky-blue eyes growing wide.

The Beaufort Elementary kindergarten student says he would like to one day follow in his great uncle’s footsteps. “I flew in a plane and it was neat. I liked it,” he offers.

Looking over newspaper accounts of the Challenger explosion, second-grader Omari Billings says he’s proud to know Smith came from his hometown. “A person who grew up on a farm became an astro-

naut, that’s pretty weird. I don’t know if I’d be brave enough to do that.”

“Ever since I learned what happened, I think it’s really inspiring that someone from our county has gone into space,” says

“The inspiration he can give for kids to achieve their hopes and dreams are what we hope continues.” student Jordan Clemmons, who’s already logged several airplane trips. “It’s pretty awesome to know he lived here and that you can do whatever you want to do.”

Bryant believes teaching the students about Smith’s life serves a larger purpose.

“We teach them to dream big. I always tell the students about the high school football coach who would get on Michael all the time for gazing over at the airport as the planes would land, because it took his attention away from the football team. But he knew what he wanted to do, even at that age, and he went for it.”

ONWARD AND UPWARD On the night following the Challenger tragedy, President Ronald Reagan was scheduled to give his State of the Union Address. Instead he delivered a televised message to the nation paying tribute to Smith and his six fellow astronauts.

“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives,” said Reagan. “We SPRING 2017

will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’” In addition to the museum at Beaufort Elementary, a monument on the town’s waterfront was erected in Smith’s honor.

And the tiny airstrip behind his family’s home, where a young boy once dreamed of an impossible future, is now named Michael J. Smith Field.

Smith was awarded the Space Medal of Honor and the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, as well as promotion to the rank of captain, all posthumously. The honors joined a host of others earned as a naval aviator, including the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross, the Navy Commendation Medal with Valor, the Navy Unit Citation, and the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star, among others.

Capt. Smith’s family, many of whom still live in the Beaufort area, created a scholarship in his name that is given out each year to county high school students.

Smith would have been 71 on April 30 of this year.

In a statement issued for this story, Smith’s family said they hope that his example will help others follow their dreams, wherever they may lead.

“We just want everyone to know that we’re all really proud of Mike. The inspiration he can give for kids to achieve their hopes and dreams are what we hope continues. We hope his passion for what he did was something that can inspire somebody else to carry on.”

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Broken Arro

se • Reckoning

“One simple, dyna between the Un

“T

Story:

Trevor Normile

A historic marker in the small Wayne County town of Eureka denotes the crash of a B-52 and its two hydrogen bombs in the nearby Faro community.

here has never been even a partial inadvertent U.S. nuclear detonation despite the severe stresses imposed upon the weapons involved in these incidents,” reads the Department of Defense’s “Narrative Summaries of Accidents Involving U.S. Nuclear Weapons.”

The declassified report tells the unsettling story of how U.S. nuclear weapons have been crashed, burned, lost or blown up, from 1950 through 1981.

Nuclear accidents didn’t end with the Reagan administration, but in the 67 years since the first accident recorded in the declassified report (a malfunctioning B-36 bomber dropped its payload in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of British Columbia to stay airborne), the fail-safes have always worked.

In the 1950s and ’60s though, the rate of incidents was much higher than in the following decades. Not only was the bomb technology relatively new, but the carrying mechanism, the airplane, comparatively old.

It was the era of Operation Chrome Dome, when monstrous B-52 long-range bombers ran a never ending nuclear-armed marathon from Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, north through New England, up around the Canadian border, right past Greenland, back south around the Canuck border, into Alaska, right up to the Russian border and back down to Texas — all just ensure the U.S. could nuke Russia into charred oblivion at a moment’s notice.

From 1960 to 1968, America, obsessed with pop culture and civil rights, wore an atomic halo. Every peace sign pendant held to the light cast a swept-wing B-52’s shadow behind it.

In addition to the rise of the ICBM, the report shows another reason Airborne Alert ended in 1968 — planes just weren’t reliable enough.

ows

OVER GOLDSBORO

amo-technology, low voltage switch stood nited States and a major catastrophe!”

April 11, 1950: B-29 departs Kirtland AFB, New Mexico. Three minutes later, it crashes into a mountain, killing the crew.

The bomb’s high explosive material catches fire, but its detonator isn’t triggered.

July 13, 1950: B-50 on a training mission noses down near Lebanon, Ohio and crashes into the ground. All 16 on board die. High explosives detonate, but no nuclear capsule is aboard.

Aug. 5, 1950: B-29 experiences propeller and landing gear problems. Plane crashes and explosives detonate.

Nov. 10, 1950: B-50 jettisons a nuclear weapon without capsule over water.

The list goes on — simulated combat missions and bomb transports sometimes went awry, often with deadly consequences for U.S. servicemen, of whom an estimated 72 died (in the DOD’s reported incidents alone) ensuring the constant lethality of America’s nuclear arsenal.

Broken Arrows over Goldsboro “Broken Arrow” is the designation given to nuclear accidents that are unlikely to cause war.

In cases so far, some Broken Arrows have involved explosions, but never detonations.

The distinction is important since nuclear

The bomb: a Mark 39 hydrogen weapon, likely photographed by the U.S. Air Force at the Faro site.

bombs at the time carried high-explosive materials to kick-start the nuclear chain reaction, but only a controlled detonation was likely to cause Armageddon.

Contamination was the main concern in most incidents, such as Operation Chrome SPRING 2017

Dome’s final embarrassment, the January 1968 crash of a B-52 near Thule, Greenland.

Greenland is owned by Denmark and the Danes publicly had a nuclear-free policy. So when a bomber equipped with four hydrogen bombs smashed into the ice, littering the area with plutonium and tritium, a slight diplomatic problem arose and ended the airborne alert program (Air Force Magazine, Aug. 2011).

But the Thule incident was not by far the most terrifying of the Chrome Dome incidents in terms of risk to human life — it pales in comparison to the accidental bombing of Wayne County, North Carolina.

Commonly referred to as the “Goldsboro Incident,” the January 24, 1961 breakup of a nuclear equipped B-52 bomber actually happened closer to the little town of Eureka, just outside the city and half way to nearby Wilson.

According to the declassified document, the B-52 was on an airborne alert mission over North Carolina when it experienced structural failure in its right wing.

The failure “resulted in two weapons separating from the aircraft during aircraft breakup at 2,000 - 10,000 feet altitude.

The breakup killed three of the eight crew aboard and sent two Mark 39 hydroS outhEast North Carolina

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gen bombs tumbling through the air toward Goldsboro.

According to George Washington University’s National Security Archive, the weapons each had a yield of about 3.8 megatons of TNT, 253 times the power of the Little Man weapon dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

As the Mk. 39s entered the air, one bomb’s parachute (we’ll call this “Bomb A”) deployed, causing little impact damage, according to the Deptartment of Defense. The other (“Bomb B”) struck the ground at nearly Mach I and broke up on impact with the mushy Wayne County soil.

Mercifully, no explosion occurred.

‘Always/Never’

nal,” adds retired Sandia systems engineer Charlie Burks.

So Bomb A didn’t detonate, and operated as intended — one 28-volt toggle switch standing between Wayne County and Superfund status.

“Unfortunately there had been 30some incidents where the ready-safe switch was operated inadvertently,” Burks says.

“We’re fortunate that the weapons involved at Goldsboro were not suffering

visor of Sandia’s nuclear weapons safety department.

The document was declassified in 2013 through a Freedom of Information Act request from Eric Schlosser, an investigative journalist writing about nuclear accidents.

It indicates Bombs A and B had four safety mechanisms, not six as has often been reported, but the fact remains that the 28-volt mechanism is the only thing that prevented an explosion.

The memo also includes some apparent inconsistencies — Lapp states that the accident as involving only one bomb, and also refers to it as a “24-megaton” device, neither of which are accurate according to official sources.

While the memo contains some academic snark from Jones, he apparently agrees with Lapp’s basic point.

“One simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe!” he writes.

“There is no need to do a safety analysis of the Goldsboro caper ... but, in today’s atmosphere, one more conclusion would have been drawn. The Mk. 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety in the airborne alert role in the B-52.

“If a short to an ‘arm’ line occurred in a mid-air breakup, a Photo credits: (top) Glenn’s Computer Museum, (bottom) postulate that seems credible, the Nuclear Weapons Archive Mk. 39 Mod 2 bomb could have Top: the small 28-volt switch that saved southgiven a nuclear burst.” eastern North Carolina from what would have

Despite the violent impact of Bomb B, it was the gentle touchdown of Bomb A that is most sobering, according to information posted online from Sandia National Laboratories, who design switches for nuclear weapons.

In an internal documentary produced by Sandia in 2010 entitled, “Always/Never: The Quest for Safety, Survivability” posted to the company’s website, retired engineers discuss the Goldsboro incident and other accidents in detail.

The goal, a philosophical extreme on par with ancient mythology, was to ensure these worldending devices to always detonate when they’re supposed to, and been on of history’s worst nuclear disasters. never otherwise.

Bottom: a technician examines the Mark 39 As it left the fatally-wounded “trash can” hydrogen bomb.

B-52, Bomb A had its arming rods pulled. Its barometric switches, which used air pressure to determine pre- from that same malady.” ferred blast altitude, began to function.

Sandia has recently been in the news Next, its timing sequence began to oper- due to a recently declassified internal ate. memo, which was attached to an excerpt “When it hit the ground, it tried to from Dr. Ralph Lapp’s book “Kill and fire,” says Dan Summers, nuclear weap- Overkill.” ons safety engineer, in the film. The movie The memo is called “Goldsboro Revisprovides a sobering look into the safety de- ited (or) How I Learned to Mistrust the vices on early nuclear weapons.

H-Bomb (or) To Set the Record Straight,” “There was still one safety device that its droll title referring to Stanley Kuhad not operated. And that one safety brick’s film about nuclear holocaust, “Dr. device was the pre-arming switch which Strangelove.” It’s annotated in the margin is operated normally by a 28-volt sig- by colleague Parker F. Jones, then-super22

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‘Eureka!’

Archimedes called out “Eureka!” when he discovered a method to measure the volume of irregularshaped objects.

In Greek, it means, “I have found it!” Ironic that the U.S. government lost a nuke near a town bearing the same name.

On the evening of January 24, 1961, the local fire department quickly responded to the plane’s impact outside town.

Residents at the time reported seeing the part of the plane spiraling out of control before their fiery impact with the

ground near Shackelford Road.

Soon after, Air Force personnel arrived and collected Bomb A from a field outside the Faro community. The out-ofcontrol Bomb B however had slammed into the ground near Big Daddy’s Road, barely a stone’s throw southwest.

While most sources give the location as “Faro, N.C.,” Eureka is just about as accurate, having been well-within a Mk. 39’s blast radius.

A visit to the town of shows it is very much not equipped to withstand nuclear apocalypse.

It has a gas station, a combined town hall-post office, some nice-looking homes and a café called “BJ’s” which becomes busy at lunch time. In the center of town is a plaque memorializing the accident and the dead servicemen. It reads, “NUCLEAR MISHAP.” According to the Nukemap simulator developed by Alex Wellerstein, a historian with the Stevens Institute of Science, a four-megaton ground blast would have leveled Eureka and fatally burned people as far as away as Goldsboro and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.

Depending on wind conditions, fall-

out could have reached Norfolk or Washington D.C., or covered Raleigh, Fayetteville or Wilmington.

According to the collection of DOD narratives, the uranium-equipped thermonuclear stage of the crashed bomb plunged deep into the farmland, and a 50-foot excavation failed to locate it.

So, the Air Force filled the hole, bought an easement and forbade digging there.

Linda Wise, 75, works in Eureka Town Hall and while she wasn’t a witness to the crash, she remembers the disquiet that followed.

“In 1961, I went to college and I probably left that morning and went on to school. We heard that there was a big explosion and of course everyone was scared [the bomb] was going to explode.

They said we were lucky that it didn’t,” she recollects.

“But I heard my daddy talk about it, there was a store across over here. All the men would go in there and sit in the mornings. He got the news and brought it back to us, but back then in ’61 you really didn’t have a car or anything.

“Billy Reeves, he lived right across the road. He said he was asleep and it woke

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him up. His daddy told him a plane had [crashed].”

Wise recalled the “great big hole” left by the plane on Faro Road, near eyewitness and former Faro Vol. Fire Dept. assistant chief Earl Lancaster’s property.

Lancaster was reached by phone but declined to be interviewed.

Wise remembers the town’s unease, knowing the uranium was irretrievably buried in the soil nearby. The Air Force determined at the time that the material posed no threat to nearby residents, but their fears weren’t totally abated. “[My husband and I] got married in ’63 and lived in Wilson, and then moved back in 1989 to Eureka. A lot of people would say they thought it had affected the water, that so many people had gotten cancer.

“But you know, cancer is so prevalent everywhere, so I don’t know that it had.

You would hear people say, ‘I wonder what that bomb left in the ground,’” she chuckles.

“They said if it had exploded, it probably would have destroyed just about this whole side of eastern Wayne County.”

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North Carolina

Snapshots

Battle of Fort Fisher 152nd anniversary

Civil War-era landmark was the site of Federal amphibious assault

O

n Jan. 14 Fort Fisher State Historic Site hosted a living history program “Desperate Bravery and Brilliant Valor: the 152nd Anniversary Commemoration of the Second Battle of Fort Fisher.” The program commemorated the 152nd anniversary of the Battle of Fort Fisher, which occurred near the end of the American Civil War in January 1865.

Sometimes referred to as the “Gibraltar of the South” and the last major coastal stronghold of the Confederacy, Fort Fisher had tremendous strategic value during the war, providing a port for blockade runners supplying the Army of Northern Virginia.

On Jan. 15,1865 Union Army gunboats opened fire on the fort, eventually silencing all but four of its guns. Soon after, naval forces landed and moved against the fort, taking heavy casualties in the process. During a subsequent assault

by Union Army brigades, gunboats helped maintain the Federal momentum.

The grueling battle lasted for hours, long after dark, as shells plunged in from the sea and Union divisions became increasingly disorganized as regimental leaders and brigade commanders fell dead or wounded.

By 10 p.m., the Confederate surrender of Fort Fisher was all but in-

evitable. The fort’s seaward batteries had been silenced, almost all of the north wall had been captured, and Union forces had fortified a bastion within the interior.

The loss of Fort Fisher sealed the fate of the Confederacy’s last

SE PICKS: War Relics Graveyard of the Atlantic Markers in the parking lot of the museum at the southern tip of Hatteras Island describe Civil War events at or near the site, including the capture of Forts Hatteras and Clark in 1861, the sinking of the U.S.S. Monitor in 1862, and other wartime shipwrecks.

CSS Neuse Sister ship of the famous C.S.S. Albemarle, this ironclad gunboat was one of 22 commissioned by the Confederate navy.

The Neuse’s remains are on display in Kinston. With nearly 15,000 artifacts preserved, the Neuse collection is one of the largest for a Confederate naval vessel, and provides valuable insight into 19thcentury shipbuilding and naval warfare.

Fort Holmes

A wet plate collodion print from 1865 shows a cannon damaged by the bombardment of Fort Fisher by Union forces.

remaining sea port and the South was cut off from global trade.

Today, the Kure Beach historic site is one of New Hanover County’s most visited attractions.

Approximately 10 percent of the original fort still stands, along with a restored palisade fence.

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Now known as Bald Head Island, Fort Holmes was a series of Confederate fortifications guarding the ocean inlets to the Cape Fear River.

Its large seacoast guns were used to shell Union ships that came near the island.

Parts of the fort can still be seen today.

The defenses from the lighthouse battery No. 3 are largely intact. However, the walls that ran next to the Cape Fear River and along the Atlantic Ocean have disappeared due to erosion and post-war use.

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SE Affray

North Carolina

Battle of New Bern

On March 14, 1862, Union troops

made their way up the Neuse River and wrested the city of

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New Bern from the hands of the Confederacy. The victory would prove critical to the Federal war effort, and essential to the preservation of the city’s uniquely rich history.

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Though it’s a close cousin to marijuana, hemp’s leafy greens are better suited to making linen and rope than rolling smokes.

SPRING 2017

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se • Affray

Battle of New Bern Civil War occupation still echoes in twin rivers city Standing on the waterfront in downtown New Bern, it’s not hard to imagine the city as it was during the years of the Civil War, in the early 1860s. As in most southern states, many cities in North Carolina paid a heavy price during that time, as Union forces and artillery laid waste to Confederate strongholds and ports throughout the region.

But unlike many cities in the state, much of New Bern’s midnineteenth century architecture still stands. In fact, its unusually swift capture by Union forces proved a blessing in disguise, helping to preserve the core of its historic downtown, which over 150 years later has become a thriving tourist destination.

In 1862, New Bern was the second largest city in N.C., just behind Wilmington. Due to their importance as major ports, both cities became part of the overall Federal strategy known as the Anaconda Plan, which aimed to cut off Confederate shipping routes.

The Battle of New Bern on March 14, 1862, was the second of three major engagements on the N.C. coast

in the second year of the Civil War. On February 7-8, Union troops under General Ambrose Burnside captured Roanoke Island, thereby securing control of the sound region. In March, those same forces attacked New Bern.

chored at the mouth of Slocum’s Creek and early on the morning on March 13, shelled the shoreline and disembarked. Bonfires were set upriver by Confederate troops to announce the Federals’ approach.

Huge clouds of billowing black

But unlike many cities in the state, much of New Bern’s mid-nineteenth century architecture still stands. In fact, its unusually swift capture by Union forces proved a blessing in disguise, helping to preserve the core of its historic downtown, which over 150 years later has become a thriving tourist destination.

Burnside’s fleet sailed from Roanoke Island on March 11, stopping at Hatteras where they were joined by an additional 13 gunboats, making a combined force of 11,000 men. The expedition was made up primarily of soldiers from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. On March 12, the fleet entered the Neuse River.

Burnside’s troops an-

smoke poured out of the city’s wooden warehouses as they were set ablaze by Union artillery.

Burnside’s scouts had visited New Bern prior to the battle, and had provided the Union general with detailed information on the city’s defenses, surrounding fortifications and other important military information. A few days prior to the battle, Union saboteurs attempted to burn the Trent River bridge.

The troops marched overland about two miles to reach the Beaufort-New Bern road. One soldier wrote of the “muddiest mud ever invented, being knee-deep and of a black, unctuous, slippery character.”

Burnside’s army pressed on, a total of 13 miles, to New Bern.

The next day, March 14, the town fell to the Union soldiers and remained occupied for the remainder of the war.

Story and photos: Todd Wetherington

The Confederates tried three times to retake New Bern (1863 and twice in 1864) but failed. The Federal victory also resulted in the fall of Fort Macon on Bogue Banks a month later, which allowed the Union to control the Confederate coastline.

After the occupation, the Union Army chose New Bern as its base of operation in the region. Thousands of escaped slaves congregated in the city and the surrounding area, making it a symbol of emancipation and a key recruiting ground for the U.S. Colored Troops.

According to Jonathan Miller, manager of New Bern Battlefield Park, during an occupation which lasted until two years after the war, the city’s population increased from roughly 2,000 to almost 14,000.

That number would continue to grow as word spread throughout the South that New Bern was a refuge for the state’s slaves. Nearly 10,000 “refugees” as they were called, arrived in the city during the war. So many, in fact, that a refugee camp was established on the south side of the Trent River, in what is today James City.

One of the central figures in the early battle for civil rights also grew out of New Bern’s occupation. Abraham Galloway, who was born into slavery in Smithville (now Southport), managed to escape to Canada in 1857, where he was instrumental in leading the abolitionist movement. When the war started, he became a spy for the Federals, was captured, passed himself off as an escaped slave, and managed to escape once more to New Bern. There he was instrumental in forming the U.S. Colored troops, 5,000 of whom came from

New Bern. After the war he helped lead the National Equal Rights League and also became an N.C. state senator.

“The battle shaped the demographics of the city drastically,” says Miller. “It also changed it economically in that all the wealthy white traders, shippers and other busi-

nessmen fled the city, leaving only those too poor to flee the Federal advance.”

Miller says the battle shaped the city’s future in ways still being felt today.

“At the end of the war, the city had a substantial population of blacks who by that time held skilled

jobs and many were literate. The city had a thriving black middle class and some wealthy blacks until the onset of Jim Crow laws.

By the 1920s, many of these were displaced from their homes by white landowners who sued after the war to reclaim their property.

Nevertheless, New Bern had a very diverse population compared to other southern towns.”

While the city never regained its pre-war prominence as a trading port, the reconstruction era led to a boom in the lumber business, and a profitable mill industry was established in the city.

The park that Miller oversees, located just south of New Bern, includes over 30 acres of the original battlefield. With the help of a grant from the Craven County Tourism Development Authority, the site was awarded recognition by the National Register of Historic Places.

The park isn’t the only reminder of the occupation to be found throughout the city. Historical

markers and signs along the river at Union Point Park and in James City also tell the story of Burnside’s March 1862 invasion.

In 2010, as part of New Bern’s 300th anniversary celebration, a re-enactment of the battle was held on the city’s downtown waterfront. The event included bombardment of the city by Federal gunships and mock engagements between Union and Confederate troops.

The city’s willingness to embrace a sometimes painful past points to its recognition of a strangely paradoxical truth — New Bern’s battlefield defeat accounts for the preservation of much of its historic architecture, and proved fortuitous for the city’s economic future and cultural heritage.

SE

Civil War-era homes of New Bern • Attmore–Oliver House 511 Broad Street.

Originally built in 1790 and enlarged around 1834. The house features three stories and a large porch in both the front and the back. The Attmore-Oliver House is currently owned by the New Bern Historical Society and is open for guided tours by appointment. It is supposedly one of the most haunted houses in New Bern.

• Bellair 100 Washington Post Rd. Bellair is a historic plantation house near New Bern, built about 1792 and is a twostory, seven-bay, central hall plan Georgian style brick dwelling. Built during the preRevolutionary War, it has belonged to the same family since 1849, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

• Coor Bishop House 501 E. Front Street.

The original home was designed in the Georgian style by John Hawks and built about 1767. Between 1904 and 1908, the house was extensively remodeled to incorporate both Queen Anne and Georgian Revival concepts. The two-story frame dwelling features a high deck-on-hip roof, a projecting entrance pavilion, and a wide wraparound porch with Corinthian columns.

• Harvey Mansion 219 Tryon Palace Drive.

Built by John Harvey, a merchant and ship owner, around 1793, the three-story, brick dwelling with an exposed basement illustrates the dependence of early 19th century New Bern upon sea trade. It is currently occupied by Circa 1810 Restaurant and Bar.

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se • Affray

A choir of wind chimes warbles in the doorway of the shop, hanging over a plate of burning incense.

Cindy Rhodes, 59, sits behind a massive wooden instrument lined with strings and crisscrossing bridges.

She talks about the place from which mermaids come.

August, 2009: residents and tourists in Kiryat Yam, Israel, report sightings of a woman sunbathing on the beach before leaping into the ocean, performing tricks before the stunned onlookers.

The townspeople of Kiryat Yam aren’t alone — even the epic One Thousand and One Nights mentions mermaid societies dwelling in the ocean, as do societies in nearly every corner of

the world.

The legends have stirred the imaginations for thousands of years, so much so that even the U.S. government feels the need to weigh in: “No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found,” decrees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

“I have a lot of stories, but that’s what happens when you’re almost 60 years old. There’s something about the ages of 30 and 60 that are very special in a person’s life,” Rhodes says.

“They are turning points. Jesus at age 30, a whole new mission, right?

That’s the way it is for most of us. We finally realize what we’re supposed to do and we focus on it. Then at around age 60, if you haven’t burned yourself completely out, and you’re still searching, it comes back again.”

Rhodes, covered in bright blue-green tattoos and with electricity in her eyes, is the type of person a writer is drawn to from instinct. She calls herself “Mermaid Morrigan” while sitting behind her dulcimer and welcomes the writer and his companion to a jam session, happy in these times to make a friend.

So the writer and his companion bring a guitar to the mermaid’s hideaway, which is near Goldsboro. Outside, husband Sam, Keeper of the Flame, works the homestead under the watch of Native American god statues.

Rhodes is a person of ancient runes and energies. I don’t understand these things but I feel as though I understand Rhodes — she is not some New Ager spouting Imitation Wisdom™ at the Unenlightened. She sees the connection between things and has the grace to put them in simple terms.

Rhodes, a musician and visual artist, is sweet but has a cutting and occasionally dark sense of humor. Her mermaid motif goes beyond the tattoos — her life

is a celebration of the legend.

The mermaid was born not in the ocean but in Johnston County, where she grew up on a farm cropping tobacco.

She learned harmonica and played hymns in church with it.

Her family’s involvement in church got Rhodes into piano lessons at age seven and music flows from her heart.

This is obvious when she hammers her dulcimer.

“Music was a really big part of my life,” Rhodes says after a song.

“Unfortunately, I made really good grades in school, so they said, ‘you can’t go [to college] for music, you have to go to State for engineering.’ I didn’t want to, but I did because I thought it would please my folks.”

But a mermaid sometimes must find her own way. Rhodes left her major and played piano with a big band orchestra which eventually led her to other outlets for her art.

Rhodes’ body of work is substantial.

Under her mermaid persona, she has released eight albums and her studio is lined with visual artwork, clothing, colored pencil drawings.

The eclecticism that underlies Rhodes’ artistic drive seems to have steered much of her life — the mermaid spoke of her former husband’s preference for metropolitan jazz and her fondness for world music.

“I loved didgeridoo and bagpipe.

He hated didgeridoo and bagpipe. So we would go on roadtrips and I would make sure to have CDs... of didgeridoo and bagpipe,” she says, giggling.

“And in fact, I taught our son how to play the drone of the bagpipe, [hums loud bagpipe notes]. I was doing that in the car all the time. And when I started

Story and photos: Trevor Normile

playing hammer dulcimer, I think that was the clincher. We were different.”

Rhodes is giggling almost uncontrollably now. Her mermaidic wisdom, informed by the teachings of Jesus Christ and others, dictates that things happen, and that is okay, because that is how life happens, and it is better that it does happen than that it does not happen.

Like Christ, she was given circumstances and God will always provide.

BIRTH OF A MERMAID Rhodes’ journey naturally took her to the water’s edge, but not before a brush with the unknown would change her life.

“Mermaid Morrigan started when I was living in Durham. I was up in my little room, and the room was on the second floor ...

I always was just trying to find a place of severe silence, where I would just not be inundated by any outside forces. I just wanted to do some introspection,” Rhodes explains, the bitter smell of incense drifting through her studio as Sam works in the yard. “... Every thing I’d ever read and listened to, about what I was doing, directed me to Celtic lore, because it was all about feminine strength.”

In her time of research, Rhodes would have learned that in Celtic societies, women often held ranks of status in their

communities, and tribes often counted women among their fiercest warriors.

But even the myth-obsessed Celts (“Mórrígan” herself is a powerful figure from the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology) couldn’t have imagined what happened next.

“I’m not exaggerating any of this ... I would be in my room drawing, listening to music. I heard ‘creak, creak.’ I would prepare for a visit, and no one would knock on the door.

On the third or fourth time, I go and open the door, there’s nobody there. I thought, ‘that’s interesting.’ Another time that happens, no human’s there, but I sense that there are shadowy figures. One was a tall man, very stern, one was a small child.”

Rhodes tells the story with what appears to be a measure of discomfort, at the time sensing something was seriously amiss.

These sensations continued over the course of two weeks, she explains.

“Maybe it’s a fear I needed to get out, whatever, it happened.

It happened a number of times, and I was starting to feel very disturbed for the child,” she says.

These experiences came to a head when her upstairs shower sprung a leak requiring a carpenter.

Finished with his work, the man returned with a pair of child’s underwear he pulled from the wall.

“For me, that was a connecContinued on page 34

tion with the sad child. We don’t have to talk about what that means, but to me, that was a situation that needed to be fixed.”

Rhodes felt the need to address her connection with the spiritual, “So I went on a quest to find out about spiritual healing ... That incident fueled my interest in people’s emotions, my own, what do I project on other people? ... I want to be a person who brings in light and love. It’s not some corny little sweet thing, it’s the truth.”

Rhodes draws inspiration especially from sound — she finds a common thread between the Genesis story, God’s spoken-word creation of the cosmos, the assigned pitch of ancient Hebrew letters, the power radiating from her hammered dulcimer as she strikes the notes.

The tone is intoxicating.

The writer and his companion learn some mermaid songs from Rhodes, who accommodates them. She plays chords that allow one to skip across harmonies and drones. It’s obvious this playing is a mere tidal pool compared to the ocean of music of which Rhodes and her dulcimer are capable.

The dulcimer, a name conjoining “dulce,” Latin for “sweet” and “melos,” Greek for “tune,” has been used in music and worship since at least Biblical times.

More than four thousand-plus years ago, the instrument was developed as the “Santur” in Mesopotamia, where it is still played today under similar names.

The tones emitted by hammering the long strings are shiny and resonant, with bright basso tones and sparkling high notes.

Just as it did when this writer and his companion met Rhodes at the Sampson Arts Council in Clinton, the instrument draws the listener near.

“The music is what drew the right people to me, I didn’t have to go out and meet people ... your friends come from what you do in life,” Rhodes says.

She later moved into a beach house in Hampstead and became a regular visitor to Poplar Grove Farmer’s Market, her dulcimer in tow.

It was also a time of spiritual growth for Rhodes, who found a connection with an Inuit deity whose death, according to myth, created the sea creatures.

“When I was in Hampstead, in my research I found out there

was one deity that I sort of identified with, that is Sedna. She’s an Inuit deity, basically the Inuit Jesus, because through her suffering, creation came forth. And she’s a woman,” Rhodes explains, which defies the trend in many organized religions of male figures dominating their cosmologies or messianic positions.

“Mermaids walk on water ... it’s about living with wisdom, using it to build a good life, and knowing what’s important and not important. In the Bible, it says Jesus walked on water.

It means that water is a symbol of wisdom, and so wisdom can be your support mechanism, and it should be. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll make all kinds of mistakes, but after a while, you’re solid,” the mermaid explains.

“I love swimming in it, and walking on it. But I really enjoy the process. Someone asked me why I call myself ‘mermaid.’ He was very sensitized; he thought it was wrong that I would call myself a mermaid.

Some people are very fundamentalist.

“I said, ‘that’s okay, you can call yourself whatever you want to, but I do it, and I’ve embraced it, because it’s all about swimming in that water, loving the experience. You know what to leave behind and what to pursue, you build something really solid and beautiful.”

THE INSIGHTFUL MERMAID If life is a journey across the sea, then the 30-year mark is a visit from a gull and the 60-year mark is the sighting of land. An image of a mermaid sans mammaries appears on the counter in Rhodes’ studio. A good writer uses caution asking about deeply personal things.

But the tattoos — these are fascinating. A woman in late middle age with fresh tattoos and more drive than a scalded cat, something has happened to her.

Two years ago, Rhodes discovered that she had developed breast cancer. Rhodes talked about it dismissively; she dismissed her cancer (full remission) and dismissed her ta-tas, so why cling on any longer?

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HEMP

se • affray

Story & Photos: Jacqueline Hough

W

hen most people think of hemp, they think of its relative – marijuana.

And while they are part of the same species of cannabis sativa, there is one notable difference.

Hemp will not — unless they’re planning to smoke a joint the size of the average telephone pole — get a person

Legislative action could spell stoned.

That’s a point often stressed by Matt Collogan and others as hemp is beginning to be seen in a new light by the state and federal government.

As Education Director and Government Liaison at the Hemp Farmacy in Wilmington, Collogan is excited that the business is riding on the coattails of the state forming the Industrial Hemp Commission, which will allow for the first time the cultivation of legal industrial hemp in North Carolina.

The Farmacy was the first cannabis dispensary in the state.

“We have products that don’t get you high but they do reduce inflammation,” Collogan said.

Industrial hemp by law is defined as having below 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) by dry weight.

Marijuana has above 0.3 percent THC. The products in the Farmacy store are from states which have already formed their own industrial hemp commissions.

Collogan was quick to point out that he and other staff are not doctors. “We are not selling anything that is FDA approved but all products in here are third-party tested,” he said.

In addition to the nutraceutical aspects, more than 30,000 products can be made from hemp: things such as the interior door paneling of Mercedes and BMW cars on the road are made with hemp fiber.

“North Carolina has all the right tools, the right people and the right land,” he said. “It is warmer down here. We can produce. We have tobacco farmers still trying to find the next thing.”

The Agricultural Act of 2014, known as the Farm Bill, got the ball rolling by opening the door to a new industry for many states. It allowed all states to pursue pilot research cultivation programs for industrial hemp.

The Industrial Hemp Farming Act, passed the following year, allowed 36

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Industrial hemp is defined by law as having below 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol by dry weight.

More than 30,000 products can be made from it.

IN N.C. farmers to produce and cultivate industrial hemp. The bill would remove hemp from the controlled substances list as long as it contained no more than 0.3 percent THC. Since then, more than 33 states have passed pro-hemp cultivation legislation.

N.C. legislators have also passed Industrial Hemp Bill SB 313, which allowed for the formation of the Industrial Hemp Commission.

As chairman of the commission, Dr. Tom Melton and eight others have worked to establish rules for hemp production.

It has a diverse membership, ranging from farmers and agricultural

new life for an age-old crop

Applications are being accepted for the 2017 planting season. Applicants can find eligibility requirements online at www.ncagr.gov/hemp/Rules.

consultants, to law enforcement and representatives from N.C. A&T State University and N.C. State University.

Once rules are established, farmers will be able to apply for a license. Once they have the license, it will be legal for them to grow hemp.

“Technically right now, it is not legal for them to grow hemp in North Carolina,” Melton said. “You cannot grow it legally without a license.”

And while industrial hemp has less than 0.3 percent THC, it is still classified as a schedule I drug under the DEA’s 1970s law.

“If you go out and plant it without a license, it is by the law’s standards, you are planting an illegal crop of marijuana,” he said.

It didn’t used to be like this, Collogan said, because hemp has a long history, with more than 10,000 years of cultivation.

In the United State, the first Jamestown colonists were required to grow it or a tax was levied against them.

Several drafts of the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper. The final versions were written on parchment.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Ben Franklin cultivated hemp. The hemp harvest is featured on the 1914 ten-dollar bill.

Collogan noted the best research concerning hemp was from 100 years ago by Lester Dewey. His hemp trials grew where the Pentagon stands today.

“There on the banks of the Potomac in northern Virginia at Arlington farms was where the USDA did some amazing research growing some varieties 20 feet tall,” Collogan said.

The seed is nutritious. Three tablespoons of hemp seed in your SPRING 2017

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“Getting anybody to grow hemp at this late stage is difficult but by getting what we’ve done this year, we are ahead for this year,” Collogan said. “It is about keeping North Carolina moving forward.” diet provide about 11 grams of protein; N.C. Department of Agriculture and Con- and enhance their businesses and their local they also contain many essential amino sumer Services’ Plant Industry Division economies. acids. Even clothing can be made from and law enforcement for sampling in the “It will probably be a couple of years the fiber in the stalk. field or in storage. before we fully have an idea of how much it Collogan said it was a wonderful plant Applicants can find more eligibility could mean,” Melton said. to have as part of a homesteading operarequirements online at www.ncagr.gov/ He said he and other members of the tion for a small farm. hemp/Rules. commission take their responsibility seri“Somewhere this propaganda machine Hemp Inc. in Spring Hope is investously. with yellow journalism of the time creing in a plant with a 70,000 square foot “I think it is a great opportunity for us ated this narrative that was false,” he said. warehouse for growing hemp. to be able to try a crop like this,” Melton “It said marijuana caused people to do But no one is guaranteed a right to grow said. “And see if growers can successfully very bad things.” grow it.”

The marijuana tax act Collogan spoke about of 1937 effectively stopped the anatomy of hemp, hemp production in the which has three layers – U.S. It lumped hemp and stalk, hurd and bast fiber. marijuana together and Companies are looking outlawed both varieties. at using the outer layer of Hemp was brought the stalk for biomass and back briefly during World biofuels.

War II. In 1937, producThe hurd can be used as tion of hemp was ramped insulation, making hempdown but the U.S. was still crete or paper. The interior importing it from places of the plant, the bast core, like China and the Philipis used to make fine linens, pines to make products. ropes, and insulation panWhen Japan invaded both els for cars. of those countries, the sup“There are even folks ply was cut off. finding that this is a great Farmers were asked to way to replace semi-predust off their equipment Lester Dewey conducted research on hemp more than 100 years cious metals and circuitry,” and start growing hemp he said. “The fiber of the ago for the United States Department of Agriculture. Some of his again. bast core is conductive. So research showed hemp could produce four times the amount of fiber per acre than forest products over a 20-year cycle.

Then in 1970, the imagine replacing the copControlled Substance Act per wire with hemp fiber.” made all cannabis a schedule I narcotic. the plant until they have gone through the Upstairs at the Hemp Farmacy, ColIt didn’t matter whether it was industrial licensing process. logan teaches free classes 5:30 to 6:30 hemp or marijuana.

“Getting anybody to grow hemp at this p.m. Thursdays and at 3 p.m. on the first “Basically, putting it on the same late stage is difficult but by getting what Saturday of every month. schedule as heroin,” Collogan said we’ve done this year, we are ahead for this “People just need to know,” he said. “It’s shaking his head. “They are very differ- year,” Collogan said. “It is about keeping not a scary thing. It’s a plant just like many ent things.”

North Carolina moving forward.” others. We should be using it. We’re pretty Applications are being accepted by the When licensing is done, Melton said, much the only industrialized nation not N.C. Industrial Hemp Commission for they would be issued for one or three years using the plant.” the 2017 planting season. to give growers options.

Farmers in Europe, Canada and China There is no deadline to apply for the Some might want to try it out for one all grow hemp and more than $600 million program, which is open to farmers who can year while others may feel, in order to in imported hemp products were sold in show evidence of income from a farming get a return on their investment through this country in 2016. operation. contracts and buyers, they need to grow it U.S. Congressman James Comer (RUnder the rules, farmers will need to for at least three years.

Kentucky) plans to file a bipartisan bill to apply for a license, which will allow the But what does hemp production mean seek to reclassify industrial hemp from a holder to plant, harvest and market the for the state? controlled substance to an agriculture crop. crop. Licenses can be for one or three years.

Melton said he would love to say it Ultimately, hemp could be another Applicants will have to pay an anwould mean several hundred million dolsource of income for the agricultural indusnual fee, must provide evidence of having lars in additional revenue. But we really try in the state. income from a farming operation, must don’t know. That’s the main reason for the “I think this is another color in the provide a written statement of the research pilot program, to find out whether farmers palette,” Collogan said. “North Carolina is objective, and must provide access to the can grow the crop, make money off of it really suited to hemp.”

SE 38

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Kinston-Lenoir County

Visitor & Information Center

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Our home healthcare can help you get your loved one the care they need and restore some of your peace of mind. Maybe that’s why so many turn to us for skilled nursing, rehabilitation and therapy services.

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Home of friendly faces & a southern atmosphere.

We offer a variety of home décor, refinished furniture, apparel, jewelry, floral supplies and gifts.

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Offering a variety of gifts, refinished furniture, apparel, home decor, floral supplies, custom wreaths & bows, & seasonal outdoor plans.

100 Northeast Blvd / Clinton, NC / 910-249-4646 M-F 10am-7pm / Sat. 10am-3pm

Kinston-Lenoir County Parks & Recreation Department 2602 W. Vernon Avenue, Kinston NC 28504

252.939.3332

www.kinstonrec.com

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SE Snapshot

SE PICKS: War Monuments

North Carolina

Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall Monument to fallen service members will be in Morehead City in May

T

he Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall is coming to Morehead City for Memorial Day weekend to honor American soldiers lost during the conflict. The Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall will provide a venue that allows Vietnam veterans, families, and local residents the ability to see the memorial and learn about the Vietnam War. The Otway Burns Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), with presenting sponsor Big Rock Blue Marlin Fishing Tournament, is hosting the memorial at Glad Tidings Church, 4621 Country Club Road, Morehead City on Friday, May 26 through Tuesday, May 30.

At approximately 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 25, the memorial and a motorcycle escort will leave the New River Shopping Center in Jacksonville, and proceed east on N.C. 24. In Morehead City, the escort and memorial will proceed across U.S. 70 onto Bridges Street, then turn left on Country Club Road, and enter the Glad Tidings Church property.

Groups and individuals interested in helping escort the Wall should contact Cindy Knigge at cdmidgette@ aol.com.

Round-the-clock viewing of the memorial will commence following the opening ceremony sched-

uled for 11 a.m. on Friday, May 26 until 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 30 when the brief closing ceremony will begin.

The Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall will be in Morehead City in May.

Chapter Regent Linda Phelps said the Otway Burns Chapter is sponsoring the monument in Morehead City, which has a large veteran population, for healing and to allow people the opportunity to visit who otherwise may not be able to make the trip to Washington, D.C. Phelps said she looks forward to seeing people from across the state and beyond during the weekend.

For more information, find the Facebook event “Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall Morehead City” or contact Otway Burns Chapter NSDAR Regent Linda Phelps, 910- 3266164 or rphelps@ec.rr.com.

SE SPRING 2017

New Bern National Cemetery This New Bern landmark, which was officially established Feb. 1, 1867, contains the remains of the Union soldiers, including 300 U.S. Colored Troops, originally buried throughout the Inner Banks region.

The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

Korean War Memorial Located in Mint Hill’s Veterans Memorial Park, this memorial honors North Carolinians who fought — and are still serving — to keep South Korea free from tyranny.

There were 788 members of the military from N.C. who were killed or went missing in action during the war.

The Korean War Veterans Memorial is one of the few of its kind in the state, ensuring that the soldiers’ sacrifice will be remembered.

Montford Point The Montford Point Marine Memorial is dedicated to the African American Marines who trained at Montford Point, a facility at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville.

Approximately 20,000 African American recruits received training at Montford Point Camp. In September of 1949, the facility was deactivated, ending seven years of segregation. The memorial can be found at Lejeune Memorial Gardens in Jacksonville.

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SE Cajole

North Carolina

happersville Once upon a time,

in the not so distant

44

past, the quaint Kinston neighborhood that now encompasses the Neuseway Nature Park was home to a much different variety of wildlife. The Happersville and Sugar Hill communities were known for their gambling houses, liquor joints, and shapely, illicit comforts.

bearded beauties

50

What could possess a group of hardcore beardies to don lipstick and high heels?

The Bearded Beauties pageant, of course.

The annual fundraiser provides health care to children and their families and a chance to show off the hearts beneath the follicles.

murmurs

53

In a world where “designer� children are the norm and imperfection equals

shame, how far does a family have to go to keep up with the Joneses?

As they wait for a very special bus to arrive, a young wheelchairbound boy and his parents are about to find out.

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se • Cajole

The Red of old

Story: Michael Jaenicke

N

umerous species of birds fly freely in and out of the Neuseway Nature Park in Kinston, as if they had a license to come and go.

Some get a drink or wash in the river, where a whole other world exists.

The “animal kingdom” co-exists in this largely wildlife environment with a planetarium, hands-on health and science exhibits, a museum and other outdoor pleasures, which include hiking, kayaking, canoeing, picnicking and fishing from the comfort of two decks.

Yet for more than a century, this was the Las Vegas strip of the East, and while not called that it was an apt description of the area for many military personnel and laymen of all trades.

It was a place to escape to, where men could drink alcohol, gamble and carouse for quick encounters with “ladies of the night.”

The latter became the calling card for the Kinston communities of Sugar Hill and Happersville, although the former were also key in the equation.

It wasn’t Vegas in the sense of a lightshow, but it was in terms of “what happened here, stayed here,” and these activities were likely a driving force for many of the town of Kinston’s countless “happy-ending” visitors.

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City’s ‘den of iniquity’ a center included ‘Happ It started during the Civil War, and continued through two World Wars and the Korean Conflict, coming to a halt just before the beginning of the Vietnam War. It took major orders from top generals at Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg and a massive venereal disease outbreak to end the lucrative prostitution sector.

Kinston was known far and wide for its brothels.

Some locals today often say there were three types of prostitution. Lower class, middle class, which was Happersville, and high class, which came from Sugar Hill.

During its brothel heydays, few opposed it, with those not in favor in principle giving it approval because it was a spoon

d Lights Kinston

mid a bustling commerce ersville’ and ‘Sugar Hill’

Foster’s troops overpowered the Confederate forces and burned the bridge down. About 577 Union soldiers were killed and 738 Confederate soldiers died, with the wounded and missing casualties numbers three times that amount for fighters on both sides.

The women, left on Sugar Hill, were a forgotten sidebar during Gen. Foster’s hasty trip back to New Bern.

Kinston’s population at the time was about 1,000, a figure that grew to 4,000 in the early 1900s and 10,000 by 1920.

The business district became involved with the women because they paid for everything in cash, although their physical presence wasn’t always welcome in Kinston proper.

Yet Sugar Hill didn’t get its name because of these ladies.

It got its tag from the fact that it was a dumping ground for sewage.

In the early 1900s, Kinston had 20-plus saloons and was a thriving town, particularly during a harvest period.

The Sugar Hill business ladies operated 24/7.

Local merchants wanted their business, but often brought racks of clothing, lingerie, jewelry and other goods to the women rather than have them seen in the business district.

And while they were not welcomed, these women, many of whom defied stereotypes, were hardly escorted out of Lenoir County. Many were beautiful and cultured. They came from all over the world. Some even married respected businessmen in Kinston, later becoming prominent in the community at large.

Yet the houses of ill repute were swamped, and there were reports of lines that ran a city-block long.

By the early 1920s, many townsfolk wanted to see these

that helped stir the economics in Kinston.

Here’s how the whole thing started (keep in mind Happersville and Sugar Hill were not one and the same but are best thought of from that perspective.)

Legend has it these women were “left behind” at Sugar Hill in 1862 by Union Gen. John G. Foster.

Foster’s troops, which came from New Bern, captured Kinston on Dec. 14, but their ultimate mission was to secure the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad Bridge in Goldsboro.

The women were a part of the Union’s camp followers, which provided basic necessities (meals, clothing, support for the troops) and trailed behind the main line of attack.

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The Red Lights

A view of Kinston’s Happersville community circa late-1800s or early 1900s. Once known for its illicit activities, including gambling, drinking and prostitution, the area now encompasses the Neuseway Nature Park.

women run out of town.

That’s when Millis Happer entered the picture.

Happer ran his 1921 candidacy for mayor on ridding the city of its dens-of-illrepute. He favored Blue laws and was hellbent on cutting taxes, while also curtailing spending.

Shortly after he beat incumbent Mayor Joseph Dawson, Happer went after the morally questionable in Kinston.

He moved the women of Sugar Hill to Happersville, and had a plan to keep them from lurking into Kinston, which included a slap-your-hand first notice to violators and then a 24-hour notice to leave without being punished and ended with an arrest.

While his intentions were well-intended and his do-gooder followers loyal, Happer did little to change the landscape of Kinston, despite many promises.

Those who were charged with offenses were more often than not set free, as nearly the entire town had their hand in the seedy pie.

One judge even went so far as to say a precedence was set in the Gospel of St. John, when Jesus spoke to a prostitute woman seeking forgiveness. He was referring to the famous “Let he with no sin cast the first stone at her,” passage from John 8:7.

Prostitution was just normal business when the police chief and prosecutor were in on the action.

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Happer and his do-gooders were also disappointed during more than one wellexecuted raid on the Happersville women.

The women named the area Happersville in opposition to the mayor.

Happer’s two-year term ended and he finished fourth among four Democrats dur-

ing a primary election. He left Kinston and died 11 years later on his 60th birthday, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

In the end, the vice district took down the mayor, rather than vice-versa.

Carrying on the tradition of

BULK & MORE We have all your breakfast needs!

Fresh bread baked daily • Flour, Sugar & Spices • Homemade Ice Cream • Fresh Popped Kettle Corn • Cookbooks & Much More!

Don’t forget the awesome chocolate milk and a fresh loaf of sourdough!

Bakery and Bulk Food Family Owned

Tuesday-Saturday 9am-5pm Thursday Open til 6:30

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SPRING 2017

SE

Fireflies don’t have to be the only thing lighting up your porch this spring!

The Lighting Gallery 1144 US Hwy. 258 N. Suite B, Kinston, NC 28504 Open Mon. - Fri. 8 - 5:30 • Sat. 9 - 1

252-523-7878

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The Noun

Come. Shop. Enjoy

A Person’s PlAce For Things

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Monday – Friday 10AM–6PM Saturday 10AM–3PM Sunday Closed

608 S. MAIN STREET • (910) 296-1999 SPRING 2017

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SPECIAL

COLLECTION Consignment Shop

3503 Hwy 24 East • Beulaville (in the Blizzard Shopping Center)

910-298-3432

OPEN MONDAY-FRIDAY 9:30-5:30 SATURDAY 9:30-4:00

748 NC HWY 24/50 Kenansville/Warsaw

You’ll love our selection of quality clothing and GENTLY USED MERCHANDISE useful ~FIRST-RATE SELECTION items.

Why pay more?

910-296-1727

www.countrysquireinn.com

“Memories...just waiting to be made”

Pleasing ambiance, relaxed dining, the Squire’s own wines, performances, events, accommodations, and lodging. We host all kinds of special events.

Make the Country Squire the perfect choice for customizing your wedding destination or other special life moments.

“Greenleaf Home Fragrance”

WINERY

Tartan Tasting Room & Gift Shop: Tuesday - Friday: Noon - 7 p.m.

Saturday: 2 p.m. - 9 p.m.

DINERY

Lunch: Sunday-Friday 11:30a.m.-2:00 p.m.

Dinner: Nightly from 5:30 p.m.

Come to a...

COOKING CLASS!

Onl a pe y $15 rson !

Here’s what people are saying...

“I really enjoyed the class. I have been several times and it “I enjoyed all the cooking tips, it was very gets better each time. I really informative. I loved the stories and jokes appreciate the healthy ways and the food was delicious. The salmon that you prepare the food. Keep was out of this world!” up the good work!”

- Pine Tops Red Hatters- Pine Tops, NC - Lenoir Co. Retired School Personnel- Kinston, NC

“I feel like you should cook for the whole world!”

- student at Frink Middle School- LaGrange, Kinston NC

www.SpiceBouquet.com For more information

252-527-7000

Hours: Monday - Friday 9am-5pm, Saturday 9am-3pm 1200 US Hwy 70 East, Kinston, NC

Spice Bouquet is locally owned and operated by Frank Crowley 48

SouthEast North Carolina

SPRING 2017

Find us on Facebook!

NC’s

First in Integrity

Modular & Manufactured Home

MEGASTORE DOWN EAST HOMES

Has Been Voted #1 Independent Retailer in North Carolina The Latest Homes... at the Best Savings Available... Talk to us Today! Jeff Jones, Owner

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3463 East NC 24 Highway, Beulaville, NC 28518 3 LOCATIONS: New Bern • Morehead City • Beulaville NC SPRING 2017

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se • Cajole

They are real men 364 days of the year, complete with swirling mustaches, flowing beards, well-manicured goatees, and soothing sole patches.

They are men who know how to fix the many things that break in life.

Meat-eating, barbecuing masters who are not afraid to work, compete, and play hard.

But for one day a year they let their hair down for the sake of children.

That’s when members of the Cape Beard: Follicles of Freedom, a beard and mustache club, put on the ritz and dress to the nines, donning lipstick, blush and eyeliner, and squeeze into sequin dresses, high heels, bathing suits and all things womanly.

Yet what shows the most is their hearts.

They do all this and much more at the Bearded Beauties Pageant, which is more of an entertaining runway showcase than a competition, although contestants look for ways to outshine their fellow brothers-in-ladies-attire.

When these ladies-for-a night finished the club’s fourth annual fundraiser Jan. 24, they were able to write KidPeace a check for $14,600.

The charity provides emotional, psychological and physical health care to children and families.

“It was our biggest fundraiser since we started doing charities in 2012,” said Johnny Ivey, who’s know as Johnny Awesome to members on the beard circuit.

“This is really at the heart of what we are. We throw parties for charities so they can show up and raise money.”

Other follicle clubs followed the trail of fun to Fayetteville as part of the more than 500 people who showed up at the Rock Shop Music Hall.

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“Eight different beard and mustache clubs had members there from different states to watch, enjoy and support us,” Ivey said. “For us to get 535 people was amazing.”

The gentlemen contestants competed in several categories, including evening gown, swimsuit and talent.

They sang, danced and strutted their way into the night creating a logjam of laughs and raised eyebrows.

Cape Beard, with more than 50 coin holders, is working its way toward 501C3 non-profit status. It is not the largest club of its kind in the state but the most civic-minded.

“We want to set an example in

what and how we do things for charities in our community,” Ivey said. “I kind of like the idea that we do everything and then give every dime away.”

Club member Steve Brack competed in the beard and mustache world championships last year, and most members travel for at least a handful of show competitions regionally.

Charles Strachan paraded off the stage with the pageant tiara. Brandon Nichols, Doug Cameron and Brandon Bigun were in the honor court.

“It was so fun, so different and yet so much a gas,” said Pamela Smith, who attended her first Bearded Beauties Pageant. “And younger people also had a blast. I really have a hard time believing anyone wouldn’t like this.”

While it was the most successful event in the club’s history, they recently passed another significant milestone.

“We’ve raised more than $100,000 and I have to tell you, I think to a man that is what we are most proud of,” Ivey said. “That’s pretty good and we didn’t even start raising money

“We’ve raised more than $100,000 and I have to tell you, I think to a man that is what we are most proud of,” Ivey said. until the club was a year old.”

On March 5, the club will put on a party for itself as a way of thanking members.

“That’s going to be a switch because we’ve never promoted a day to acknowledge what we’ve accomplished,” Ivey said. “Our coin holders show up at functions and come from all walks of life, which makes us an eclectic group. Everyone shows up ready to work.”

Another charity the club organizes is a pig picking for autism. Proceeds have gone to the Cumberland County Autism Society the past four years.

The club’s biggest stock-andtrade shows is Beardtoberfest, a beard and mustache competition.

SE Pageant Winner: Raul Rubiera

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FREE Automatic Fill Service

Don’t worry about running out of propane!

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Since 1971

Westwater Country Ham

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Owned & Operated

by the Smith Family for over 60 years

Chad Smith - Manager • Bobby Smith - President

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910-289-3391

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Westwater Country Hams cures hams the old-fashioned way— the way you remember it... like it ought to be. Over 40 years experience and thousands of satisfied customers say we know how to do it right!

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Antique Furniture Mid Century Modern Furniture Vintage ● Mid Century ● Modern Down East Decoys ● Gifts and Collectibles

The Blue Barn Treasures A marketplace of vendor booths selling handmade, vintage and upcycled collectibles, furniture and more.

The Blue Barn Treasures

2475 E Hwy 24 | Beulaville | 910-298-3331

www.

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uniqueantiquesnc.com

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Satisfaction Story: Annesophia Richards Illustration: Trevor Normile

“So where is it?” Bob called out from the kitchen window. Nancy turned to him and shrugged, then focused her eyes back on the road.

Hearing a huff behind her as the window slammed shut, Nancy began to sweat. Please let it come already, she prayed.

At the sound of an approaching engine she turned, but then sighed when she realized it wasn’t her son’s bus. Kyle sat in his wheelchair next to the mailbox, his hands caressing the dangling, limber legs of a fuzzy monkey puppet that Nancy had given him the week before on his sixth birthday. She felt a familiar twinge of guilt as she recognized the wistfulness on his face. Flashing him their signature “thumbs up” sign, he quickly grinned and returned the gesture.

“Don’t worry kiddo, they haven’t forgotten about you. I’m sure the bus will be here any minute.”

“Do I have to go, Mama?

Can’t I just stay home with you and Daddy?”

Nancy walked over to the chair and squatted down next to her son, placing one hand on his knee and giving his puppet a quick pat with the other. “No kiddo, I’m afraid not. You have to

Guaranteed go. It’s time.

Don’t be afraid, there’ll be lots of other boys and girls just like you there.

I’m sure you’ll make a friend of two before you know it. You’ll forget about us in no time.”

Kyle lowered his head and stared down at his misshapen legs, clearly unconvinced. Just then the front door of the neighboring house opened, and a curvy, gorgeous blonde stepped out. Noticing them, the woman took a quick step back, reaching behind her for the knob.

“Oh, good morning, Nancy.

Hey, Kyle! So today must be the big day, huh?” Sheila waved uncomfortably, her fake smile matching her fake hair and fake boobs.

Nancy smiled back, wishing that she had gotten dressed and applied lipstick before coming outside.

Sheila would never step out of her house looking like this. Nancy glanced down at her own pajamas in disgust. Brightening instantly, Kyle waved back. “Where’s Johnny? Is he going on the bus today too?” he asked, a look of hope forming on his face. “Oh, no, Honey, Johnny won’t be taking that bus. That bus is for special children, like you.”

Sheila’s smile faltered a little as she gazed behind her toward her own son’s bedroom window. “Well, good luck, Kyle. Johnny will miss you, I’m sure…” Sheila turned and scurried back inside. No doubt to check on her perfect child, Nancy mused.

Nancy turned as the sound of the kitchen window re-opening signaled her husband’s return, but he did not

stay long.

As Kyle began to recite the ABC’s that Bob had taught him only a few nights ago, her husband finally decided that he had had enough. “I’m getting in the shower. I can’t watch this. Not again.”

Nancy nodded to him but kept her eyes focused on Kyle, determined not to lose her resolve now. Just as she began to wonder if there had been some mistake, a short, compact old school bus came rolling through their picture-perfect neighborhood, bringing a smile to her face. “Is this it, Mama? Is this my bus?” “Yes, Kyle, this bus is here for you.”

The bus slowed to a stop in front of them, and for a moment nobody moved. Nancy wished that Bob had 54

SouthEast North Carolina

stayed. He should be here to support Kyle, to support her. But no, Bob refused to be a part of this. He blamed her for their situation, for Kyle’s defect, for everything. He had wanted to go the “natural” way from the very beginning. Even if it meant that they would never have a perfect family.

He said he didn’t care

about that.

But Nancy cared, very much.

All she wanted was what Sheila had. What all the neighbors had.

Was that too much to ask?

“Why, hello there! Are you ready to take a ride, young man?”

A burly, kind-faced bus driver in a white jacket grinned at Kyle, then winked over his head at Nancy as if SPRING 2017

they shared some special secret. He stepped down to scoop Kyle out of his wheelchair and up into one of the faded plastic seats.

“Bye, Mama!” Kyle waved, his chin quivering as he gave her the thumbsup over the driver’s shoulder.

“Bye, Baby,” Nancy whispered, her eyes beginning to sting. For a second, panic and doubt swept through her as she watched her tiny son disappear inside the uninviting vehicle.

Was she doing the right thing?

Would she regret this later? No, she

night never to go “designer” again, cursing the scientists who had obviously failed, ripping apart the baby catalog that Nancy handed him after Kyle had gone to bed. “But, Honey, what are the chances that we get a bad one again? And even if we do, they still say they offer their money-back guarantee!”

Bob hadn’t wanted to hear it. Not last night, anyway.

Nancy wasn’t done trying, though. The third time was bound to be a charm.

We’re There When You Need Us!

shook her head as she lifted her thumb in the air one last time. They had promised perfection. Isn’t that what she deserved?

Kyle’s small face peered out at her from the side window, one hand against the glass and the other holding up his precious monkey. Both sets of eyes followed Nancy as she turned and walked back towards the house.

Both sets of eyes continued to follow

her until they could do so no longer, the small bus disappearing down the road. Nancy didn’t notice them, however, distracted already as her hand reached inside the pocket of her robe and pulled out the folder warranty she had signed at the genetics lab six years ago. Clutching the paper to her, she headed back inside.

She hoped that Bob would be excited about the refund they would be getting, once the initial sting of the return wore off. He had sworn last SPRING 2017

Service n Maintenance n Replacement Residential New Construction Wilmington: (910) 473-6831 Jacksonville: (910) 459-4182 Dunn: (910) 292-3448 Kinston: (252) 653-4405 NC License #31589, 29077, 32508 & 30936

www.carolinacomfortair.com See our offers on page

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Trusted for generations...

Trusted for

generations...

Since 1916, Auto-Owners Insurance and your local independent agent have been Since 1916, Auto-Owners there when it matters most.

Insurance and your local independent agent have been there when it matters most.

THE BEST LOCAL Kornegay Insurance INSURANCE AGENCY • 000-000-0000 939 North BreazealeCITY Avenue 201 West Broadway Street www.bestinsuranceagency.com Mt. Olive, NC 28365 Pink Hill, NC 28572 919-658-6027 251-568-3911

THE BEST LOCAL INSURANCE AGENCY www.kornegayinsurance.com

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SouthEast North Carolina

SPRING 2017

SERVPRO® of Lenoir, Duplin, and Jones Counties and of Wayne County offers a complete line of cleaning and restoration services. Our trained technicians are on call 24 hours a day for emergency situations that demand quick response.

Our Professional Services Include:

Pink Hill, NC

Your Hometown Pharmacy handling all your healthcare needs.

•Drying and Dehumidification •Water Removal • Deodorization • Antimicrobial Treatments •Structural and Contents •Carpet Cleaning Cleaning •Upholstrey Cleaning •Fire and Smoke Damage • Document Drying Restoration •And Much More!

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of Lenoir, Duplin & Jones Counties of Wayne County

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Like it never even happened.

107 West Broadway • Pink Hill, NC 28572 Ph: 252-568-3161 • www.realopinkhill.com

SPRING 2017

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North Carolina

BURGAW NC

Voted Best Pizzeria in Onslow County Richlands

109 Sylvester St. Suite B & C 910.324.6600

Lasagna - Ravioli - Spaghetti Strombolis - Calzones

Pizzas Pies & By The Slice

Sub Sandwiches - Half or Whole Wings, Salads & Desserts

Dine-In Take-Out Delivery 58

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SPRING 2017

Our corner of North Carolina offers much more than just scenic beauty... Here are some great places you can appreciate for the good foods, good times, history, and oldfashioned SENC hospitality!

travel P lanner LENOIR COUNTY

The CSS Neuse Civil War Interpretive Center offers state of the art exhibits that invite visitors to larn about the ironclad gunboat. The Confederate Navy launched the Neuse in al ill-fated attempt to gain control of the lower Neuse River and the occupied city of New Bern.

SEE OUR AD ON PAGE 3

www.nchistoricsites.org/neuse

ONSLOW COUNTY

Country Store & Restaurant We offer multiple venue locations for everything from family cook-outs to elegant weddings. We have a large covered shelter, a large banquet room, and The Barn.

The Barn is our newest upscale venue for weddings and other events.

Thursday & Friday 4:30-8 p.m Saturday 4:00-8 p.m.

1600 Haw Branch Rd. Beulaville See the world’s only full-size replica of a Confederate Ironclad.

SEE OUR AD ON PAGE 3 www.cssneuseii.org

LENOIR COUNTY

Kinston-Lenoir County

Visitor & Information Center

OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK

“Make us your first stop in Lenoir County”

KENANSVILLE

Celebrate the grape!

THE N.C. MUSCADINE FESTIVAL BRINGS YOU OVER 250 N.C. WINES FROM MORE THAN 20 WINERIES!

Sept. 29-30 Duplin County Events Center Kenansville

TAILGATING! CONTESTS! VENDORS! N.C. WINES!

DANCE TO THE MUSIC!

NANTUCKET !

Sat., Sept. 30 • 4-7 p.m.

THE ENTERTAINERS

Sat., Sept. 30 • Noon - 3 p.m.

THE FANTASTIC SHAKERS Friday., Sept. 29 • 6-9 p.m.

SEE OUR AD ON PAGE 67

Call for Details 910-324-3422

www.ncmuscadinefestival.com

www.mikesfarm.com

muscadinefestival@gmail.com

BEULAVILLE

TICKETS & INFO:

910-271-0030

GOLDSBORO

No matter how you slice it...

WINGS

PIZZA VILLAGE

WAYNE

Is Still Beulaville’s Favorite Restaurant!

OVER

AIR SHOW

MAY 20 & 21, 2017

101 East New Bern Rd., Kinston, NC 252-522-0004

Kinston-Lenoir County

Parks & Recreation Department

Daily Lunch Buffet, Monday ~ Saturday

2602 W. Vernon Ave., Kinston, NC

811 W. Main Street 910-298-3346

252-939-3332

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information visit Facebook or WingsOverWayneAirShow.com

75th Anniversary of the 4th Fighter Wing

WHAT ARE PRE-PACKAGED MEDS?

Pre-packed medications help patients manage their daily medications. All pills are in an individual pre-pack bubble and labeled when dosages need to be taken!

WHAT IS A COMPOUND MED?

Medications customized just for you. Meeting the individual needs of children, adults and animals by different strengths and dosages.

COMPOUNDING LAB ON SITE Specializing in • Hormone Creams • Pet Medications Pain Creams • AND MUCH MORE!!!

MATTHEWS HEALTH MART Jordan Shopping Center, Clinton NC 28328 910-592-3121 www.matthewsdrugs.com

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SPRING 2017

Care, Compassion and Dignity

Duplin County’s Original

Farm Equipment Dealer

Count On Us!

Community Funeral Home 840 West Main Street • Beulaville 910-298-4678

Family-owned for three generations with integrity you know and trust

...Still Number One For Sales and Service!

KENANSVILLE

EQUIPMENT CO., INC. 110 N. NC 11 Hwy.

●

Bush Hog

Kenansville

910-296-0777

Clegg Grady, Owner

Open Mon.-Fri. 7:30 am-5:30 pm; Sat. 8-noon

Duplin Eye Associates

, O.D., P.A.

“NEW Patients Welcome!”

Dr. John Mason

“Comprehensive Eye and Vision Care Since 1975”

Duplin Eye Associates, OD, PA specializes in diagnosis and management of: glaucoma, retinal cataracts, eye infections and injuries.

Dr. Eric Yopp disease, We offer contact lenses, optical dispensary and complete eyeglass service. Outside prescriptions are welcome. Surgical consultations and referrals are available. We accept most major credit cards, as well as CareCredit and also accept most major insurances. Call or stop by today!

304 N. Main Street • Kenansville

Come see us!

R. Dax Hawkins, M.D.Surgical Eye Care, P.A.

1-910-296-1781 or 800-545-8069

Nights, Weekends, Emergencies: 910-296-1781 SPRING 2017

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North Carolina

Forbes Mobile Home Supply of Kinston

We offer RV Parts, Doors, Windows, Skirting, Plumbing, Set-up Material & Goodman Units Package or Split.

Where in SENC is this?

F-11A Tiger

Lawson Creek Park 1309 Country Club Rd. New Bern This season’s mystery photo: A U.S. Navy Grumman F11A Tiger fighter jet that once flew with the Blue Angels.

This particular Tiger was put into service in 1958 and served with several Navy units until 1965. The following year it was sent to the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point for overhaul before reassignment to the Blue Angels precision flight team for their 1966-67 season.

Beginning in1973, the plane went on display directly across from New Bern High School, where it remained for the next 37 years.

In 2010, it returned to Cherry Point Fleet Readiness Center-East for extensive restoration. On the rainy morning of June 29, 2011 the F-11A Tiger was hoisted onto its pedestal at New Bern’s Lawson Creek Park, the last stop in its high-flying history.

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1716 Hwy. 11/55 South, Kinston

252-527-2166

www.forbesmobilehomesupply.com Hours: Mon.-Fri. 7:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. • Sat. 8:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

For the love of sewing and embroidery Machines for the beginners and the professionals

Destiny II Valiant ANN’S SEW-N-VAC 360 Faison Hwy, Clinton, NC

SPRING 2017

910-592-8071

Continued from page 34

“A tattoo, whether a person realizes it or not, is always a right of initiation, even if it’s just a little strawberry, something happens there.

“The most profound initiation I had was two years ago, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and both my breasts were removed. I opted not to have reconstruction because, well, I like having the chest of a five-year-old. I don’t have to wear a bra anymore. My shoulders had been so worn out, I felt like an ox or something,” Rhodes is giggling again. My female companion, to whom I am engaged, is egging her on. Breast cancer is very bad.

“It’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Everybody has something, and everybody dies. When I was diagnosed [chuckles more] I think I laughed, because I kind of knew it.

It was stage two, but that doesn’t mean anything. Basically for me, something was just not right within me. When they said my mammogram was abnormal, I said I wanted to see it. ‘Okay, I’ve got breast cancer,’” Rhodes remembers.

“I had a week to think about that before it was confirmed.

The surgeon called me in and said, ‘you know what, you’ve got breast cancer.’ I said, ‘okay, cut ‘em both off!’ He’d been there waiting all day, he allowed my appointment to be last, he knew I would be there in his office crying and all this crap. I said, ‘great, cut ‘em off. When can we do it?’ He told my husband, ‘she’s really taking this well.’ My husband [Sam] said, ‘yeah, well she’s not like everybody else.’ ... Everything in my life came before me again. I asked myself, was I proud of what I was leaving behind? And did I really want to go? I didn’t.”

It could be that the mermaid’s aquatic foundation and balance carried her through the disease and treatment. Rhodes remembers the first song she wrote for dulcimer — fifteen minutes into the car ride after she obtained it, Rhodes had already written “Anemone’s Dance.”

The story: an anemone leaves its polyp and travels the currents until it lands. It lands where it’s supposed to be, Rhodes says. Far above are the churning waves and predators, but deep below, the anemone “is very confident that the universe is going to bring him what he needs.”

“And that can bring a person spiritual comfort, contentment and joy.”

SEDNA, FAR AWAY PLANET Far in the future, in a meaningless amount of time from now, a number of years represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeroes, all of the energy in the universe, so says Lord Kelvin, will be uniformly spread apart as entropy has done its job.

After all, that’s what happens: when Cindy lights her

incense, the energy clumped together in the sandlewood and frankincense isn’t lost, it’s distributed as heat and light.

After each star has burned out and each black hole has sucked its last cosmic breath, the energy from the incense and chimes and dulcimer will have long ago spread to the corners of the universe and no physical work can be performed.

So those vibrations matter, if only for a little while. What the mermaid does today is important.

“When you go through something that drastic (cancer), the most horrible thing, the only chair I could sit in through the chemotherapy — if the chemo don’t kill you, I don’t know what will — and one night the massive coyote population pulled down a deer right outside my window,” Rhodes remembers.

“I heard that deer in his last death-cry. I didn’t think I could get any lower than I was, and then that deer died right behind me. It was a very hard statement that life is tough, birth and death are the same. They’re transitions, neither is easy, but they’re facts of life.”

This is where Rhodes is fleshed out fully and we see her bubbly demeanor is not a shield against the world, but a weapon against its foulness.

“That week when you had to think about your cancer, was that a peaceful time, or no?” I ask.

“No, because if we’re wise when faced with major complications, we have to think about every possible outcome. And every possible course of action we can or can’t take,” Rhodes says.

She is free of cancer today, but what if things turned out differently? In this time of her life, Rhodes must think about these things sometimes. Where do mermaids go when they die?

“Where do mermaids go when they die? Their energy goes to a beautiful, red, swirling planetoid, called Sedna. It’s a place of harmony for music and color and every good intention,” Cindy Rhodes says sweetly.

Of course this makes sense. Scientists believe 90377 Sedna, a planetoid far beyond Neptune, is a water-bearing object. Below its thick ice sheets, Sedna’s core heat and other conditions (Icarus, Nov. 2006) are believed to allow subsurface liquid oceans to exist.

“Some of us gather into a little ball, and we swirl around, and we find another worthy person to bestow this light upon.

We go into a very important part of the development of a brand new mer-person. We have to continue that light,” Rhodes explains.

“I do this because I find joy in it, and I find answers. We’re not alive if we’re not asking questions. I want to learn as much as I can about every single thing. If you stop learning, you start dying. How can you share anything if you’re not always filling up your bowl?”

Following our interview, I asked to play my favorite tune once more. She tells the name, “Anemone’s Dance.”

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Carson Clark (l) and Zak Fein SE North Carolina / Jacqueline Hough

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Brew gives airmen duo new business purpose What do you do when your six-year stint in the U.S. Air Force ends? For two airmen who wrapped up their terms in 2015 at Seymour Johnson AFB in Goldsboro, the answer was opening a craft beer taproom.

Well actually, Zak Fein and Carson Clark began their endeavor even before they exited the USAF. While drinking their own brew in Fein’s garage in 2014, the two came up with the idea of going

Hunting for fish stew and dog trophies

SE North Carolina/ Trevor Normile

Willie Rouse has seen his share of fox hunts in his home community of Albertson in northeastern Duplin County. Albertson is known up and down the Atlantic seaboard for its annual “Washington’s Birthday Fox Hunt” in February, and Rouse has played a major role in that event for 54 years.

But the event is no longer a real fox hunt. With a dwindling population of foxes and social changes in people’s lives, the fox hunt morphed into a day of field trials for hunting dogs and a fundraising event for local community groups like the Albertson Ruritans, the local volunteer fire department and the Albertson Parks and Recreation which sponsors summer activities, including a softball league for the rural area each summer.

The last actual fox hunt was held in the early 1980s.

This year’s just completed event—the 70th annual event—raised more than $15,000 for the community. Most of that comes from the sale of fish stew, barbecue pork and chicken and other local treats.

It also comes from proceeds from a gun raffle each year. It’s not unusual for the food to sell out.

“We had a beautiful day weather-wise, we didn’t have any major problems. We also had plenty of volunteers who did an outstanding job,” Rouse said.

Ruritans take care of the advertising, organization and procuring of supplies. Volunteers from the fire department, recreation department and others cook and man the stations needed for the event, including getting about 30 judges for the field trials.

Miles away from all the hustle of the staff cooking and cleaning at the Ruritan Club building, about 250 or more yelping dogs are released at 7 a.m. sharp, chasing deer through the woods as their owners watch and wait, hoping their dogs emerge from the competition to allow them to take home one of the event’s big trophies. Hunters and their dogs from Maryland to Georgia take part in the competition each year.

into business together, and soon Goldsboro Brew Works had its beginnings.

Fein, originally from Marshall, N.Ç., and Clark, a Jacksonville, Fla. boy, began working long hours nights and weekends prior to their discharge perfecting their product and preparing for a location in downtown Goldsboro for what has already become — in three short months — a popular hangout in town.

“We were very lucky when we chose Goldsboro as the place we were going to do this,” Clark told the Goldsboro News Argus. “Us starting a business here, I can’t tell you how may times somebody would hear what we were doing … and they’d say, ‘You stayed in Goldsboro? Thank you.’”

They have yet to begin selling their own beer but are working hard on their plan to open a small-scale brewery in the business soon to sell their home-crafted brew.

“We thought we worked hard in the military,” Fein said. “Right now, we are averaging 113 hours a week. We’re never not here… If you don’t suck at what you do, then you’re going to devote every single iota of yourself to it.”

6-yr.-old’s food pantry Six-year-old Joseph Hicks has a soft spot for helping others, but instead of just talking about what other people should do to improve the lives of others in his hometown of Boiling Spring Lakes, he took it upon himself to do something.

Joseph, the son of Ronnie and Dan-

Contributed photo Joseph Hicks and his dad, Ronnie

Worldly painter reconnects with Columbus County roots

Contributed photo

Years after leaving Whiteville for a worldly artistic “career” that led her to exhibitions of her work in such far-flung places as Sarajevo, Zagreb, Cres, Berlin, Boston, Joliette (Quebec) and Wexford, Ireland, Willie Marlowe returned to Whiteville for a display of her art in 2006 at the Columbus County Arts Center, where she enjoyed meeting up with old friends and acquaintances.

Marlowe has been an artist-in-residence in Barbados, West Indies; Cortona, Italy; Wexford, Ireland; the Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, New York; and at the Cill Rialaig Project in Ballinskelligs, Ireland. These extensive travels and experiences have each added to her unique and growing iconography. She had a residency in the Czech Republic in 2014.

She is best known for her small, intimate acrylic and mixed media work on paper. These luminous, brilliantly colored pieces are reminiscent of looking through a microscope at an entirely new, miniscule living world. She makes playful use of geometric and organic shapes and symbols, all of which reflect her interest in botany, marine life, Celtic

to help feed local hungry ielle Hicks, wrote a letter last fall to the Boiling Spring Lakes mayor and board of commissioners requesting permission to build a small, restockable food pantry and place it on city property.

Hicks’ concept was similar to the little libraries that have appeared in many places in southeastern North Carolina. But instead of books, Hicks’ project would hold non-perishable foods.

The town commissioners agreed to let Hicks set up his pantry at the town’s community center. Already he’s set up boxes to collect donated foods items and even has a commitment from a local grocer to donate items. In late February, he and his father were finishing up building and painting the “pantry” in anticipation of setting it up in town very soon.

According to his mother, in the State Port Pilot newspaper in Southport, Joseph’s idea was sparked during a routine trip to a grocery store.

“Someone in line didn’t have enough money for their groceries, so we helped them pay,” she said.

“He started asking questions.”

Joseph didn’t hesitate to speak up about his passion project.

“People who are homeless or don’t have enough money to buy food, all they have to do is grab the food out of the pantry,” he said.

Joseph hopes other residents will be inspired to help pitch in and refill the pantry once those in need begin accessing it to make “withdrawals.”

culture and the archaeology of Europe, the Yucatan and Russia.

Today, Marlowe resides in Albany, N.Y., but her work is still on display much closer by. Through her association with Charlene Newson at Gallery C in Raleigh and in Charlotte’s Mint Museum, as well as in several private collections, Marlowe maintains closer ties to her Whiteville roots.

She graduated from East Carolina University where she studied under the legendary Francis Speight and earned a B.S. in the School of Art. She earned an M.F.A. at the University of Idaho and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She has also taught painting and watercolors at Sage College in Albany for more than 20 years.

She just completed an exhibit in February in the “Big Idea” show at The Painting Center in New York City of four of her paintings of Venice. She and husband Tom have a joint residency in the Netherlands during the month of April.

“He will be doing research in physics and I will be working on an installation of 40 miniature paintings and drawings that will be shown in Sacramento in November,” Marlowe told the Whiteville News Reporter. “We will both make a presentation at the end of our stay.”

‘Mayor’ reflects on his ‘playground’ “Anybody that goes down to the ‘kindred spirit’ mailbox is a kindred spirit,” Frank Nesmith told the Coastal Review Online. He should know. Nesmith, dubbed as the “Mayor of Bird Island,” is responsible for all things Bird Island, including the “Kindred Spirit” mailbox that now draws thousands each year to the uninhabited state-owned beach island.

Trista Talton/ The 90-year-old Nesmith rarely goes out himself anymore to collect Coastal Review the notes and journals visitors leave in the mailbox, sharing their joy, Online their pain, their fears, their memories and aspirations. Instead, other people help Nesmith collect the missives which are now archived at the New Hanover County Library in Wilmington.

Nesmith and a friend erected the mailbox on a tiny island north of Sunset Beach more than 40 years ago. The island eventually washed away and the mailbox was re-established on Bird Island. In the 1990s, Nesmith began giving tours of the island, advertising them on homemade signs posted on trashcans around town. It was about then he began his campaign to save the island from development.

“I realized how much people enjoyed the island. Good gosh, sometimes we’d have 200 people [at a time] out there in the summer,” Nesmith recalled. Over the years, thousands have made the 30-minute walk from the southernmost beach access in Sunset Beach to the mailbox to write messages.

In 2002, his efforts were rewarded when the state bought Bird Island for $4.2 million. After several years, he stopped giving tours. He was getting tired, he said. Tours were taken over by a group of Bird Island stewards.

While he doesn’t collect notes left in the mailbox as often, he still loves going there, riding his threewheeled cycle on the beach. “I just love it,” Nesmith said. “Oh, my Lord have mercy. I never go down to Bird Island where I don’t say, ‘Thank you Lord for giving us this place.’”

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Holes! Holes for everyone!

Story: Todd Wetherington Illustration: Jillian Smith

H

ellfire and damnation, it’s all too much — pesticides and genocides, global calamity and spray tanned insanity, death spirals and murder trials — what’s a man to do?

Well, here’s an idea.

Let’s all get low, as in down on our knees and down into the ground low. The lowest of the low.

You see, lately my thoughts have turned to a certain pastime of my highfalutin youngster years. There were spells, many moons ago, when myself and several like-minded playmates spent a not insignificant number of our free hours exploring the dank, twilight realms of the underworld, or at least what passed for it in my hometown of New Bern.

It would start innocently enough, with a bicycle excursion around the neighborhood after school or on a Saturday afternoon. And then, with little or no discussion, it would happen. Out of the summer heat we would descend into the dark mouth of the nearest earthcaked drainage pipe, into its cool blue concrete depths we would bend our bodies and scuttle like refugees from the too-bright world above.

The unspoken challenge (and everything was a challenge in those days) was to make it to the other side without flipping your wig and crying out in terror. The longer the tunnel, the

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better. Ones that weaved beneath streets were the best, the sound of cars passing overhead echoing around you like a spectral symphony, the small aperture of light at the other end beckoning you ever forward.

You knew there were things in there that shouldn’t be touched, that you wouldn’t want to see: spiders, snakes, the tiniest of pale green frogs crouched amongst the roots and dead leaves.

And of course, the cast-off human crap: bottles and candy wrappers, other things you knew to stay well clear of. It was all mingled down there in the substrata of our town, like chapters of a book.

And there was always the question “Would you make it to the other side before something (some thing) bit, clawed, snagged, stung, sliced, or grabbed you, or just crawled inside your pant leg and took up residence there.

It was frightening and it was strange and it was damn fun, like climbing a pine tree as a storm moves in and the wind picks up, grasping its trunk with skinny arms and legs and swaying side to side, further and further. Technically, yes, you could die this way, but how else to learn about those things never mentioned in class or polite company, things only hinted at in comic books, the Brothers Grimm and the Friday night pop music ether?

Because when you emerged on the other side, it all seemed different, clearer, the ordeals of school, parents, life were cleansed, recast in a softer light, placed SPRING 2017

in context against the elemental truths found down in those tunnels. You didn’t need to live there, you just needed to visit once in awhile, to be reminded that there are unimaginably old, slow and inexorable forces at play beneath us, always. You’d come back from that dream land, one that left you filthy and tired, with new eyes for this dreary world.

It seems almost impossible now that we were ever allowed such freedom, that kids ever left their houses to explore the world around them. It was a different time, as the geezers say.

But I don’t have any problem understanding why I did such a thing.

I’m sure psychologists have a name for it, something about kids on the brink of adulthood trying to find their way back to the womb. I think it goes back even further though, to that great hole we all come from, not the womb, but the void.

Maybe that’s something we need to be reminded of today — the eternal; that there are things that will persist despite the ignorance that reigns above.

But then again, maybe not. I suppose these are things most people don’t want to acknowledge at all, much less dwell on.

For them, I’ll share a piece of folk wisdom from the late great singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, a man who knew a thing or two about the dark.

“So walk my friends, in the light of day Don’t go sneakin’ ‘round no holes There just might be something down there Wants to gobble up your soul”

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