Tune in to Tune out (cancer

Oak Ridge Heritage Day Heritage Day

Saturday, Sept. 24

10am-4pm

Redmon Field at Oak Ridge Town Park (on Linville Road across from Scoggins Road)

Plans for this FREE event include:

• Revolutionary & Civil War re-enactors with interactive displays • Live music and clogging demonstrations • Food • Games & kids’ activities • Exhibits of household goods, farm items, tobacco equipment, etc. • Blacksmithing & outdoor cooking demos • Meet our military vets • Displays –

Fire Dept., Horse Show, town committees, civic groups, etc. • Cannon ring at 11am, 1pm and 3pm • “Old Fashioned Pound Cake” contest with prizes (for rules, visit oakridgenc.com) • Characters in period dress • ALSO THIS YEAR – vendors selling arts & cra s, homemade items, foods, and vintage/antique/re-purposed items

A blast from the past!

For additional information, visit oakridgenc.com and click on the “Events” tab oakridgenc.com located under the Parks & Recreation header,located under the or call town hall at 336-644-7009

Changing childhood cancer – one mailbox at a time

Casey Crossan sells gold mailbox bows each September during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month to help kids undergoing cancer treatment

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and with the support of the Oak Ridge and surrounding communities, one local mom is determined to help kids undergoing cancer treatment. Casey and Bryan Crossan’s son, Conner, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma (a type of bone cancer) in 2016 when he was 9 years old and in the third grade at Oak Ridge Elementary. Conner passed away from this disease in 2018 at the age of 11.

“When we came home on hospice, our neighbors had gold bows on their mailboxes as a show of love and support. After being in the hospital in Cleveland for a month, the gold ribbons felt like everyone was hugging us,” Casey said. “I knew then that we could use their act of solidarity as a fundraiser to help change childhood cancer.”

“When you buy a gold mailbox bow for $25 in September, you give hope to kids fighting cancer,” Crossan said. This year, every donation received or bow that is purchased will enable kids in treatment for cancer to receive a “Tune In to Tune Out” box, which includes a Kindle Fire tablet, noisereducing headphones, an Amazon gift card and a personal note from Conner.

“During his treatment, Conner depended on his tablet and headphones to ‘tune in to being a kid and tune out cancer,’” Casey said.

Photo courtesy of Casey Crossan Oak Ridge resident Casey Crossan (shown in photo) and her husband, Bryan, lost their son Conner to osteosarcoma at age 11. Each September, Casey sells gold mailbox bows for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month; proceeds from this year’s bow sales will be used to purchase “Tune in to Tune Out” boxes for children undergoing cancer treatment.

want to help?

Purchase gold mailbox bows for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month or simply make a donation at www.donorbox.org/ gold-bows-for-childhood-cancerawareness. For questions or more info, email Casey Crossan at c3tunein2tuneout@gmail.com.

WE’LL BE BACK IN PRINT SEPT. 15

To place a DISPLAY AD in our next issue or in our upcoming At Home (Sept. 29) publication, contact Laura: (336) 644-7035, ext. 11 | advertising@nwobserver.com

Since 2010, the nonprofi t has partnered with local schools to help northern and northwest Guilford County area students

by PATTI STOKES

NW/NORTHERN GUILFORD – Families with school-age children in need of food, and those able to help others, are brought together through Guilford Backpack Ministry. Now in its 12th year, the Oak Ridge-based, 100% volunteer organization helps fight food insecurity for children in northern and northwest Guilford County area schools. Because the ministry is operated entirely by volunteers, 99% of financial donations go directly for purchasing food (the remaining 1% is used for supplies).

“Families in our area have limited access to food pantries and feeding centers because most programs are in more densely populated areas and transportation and time can be an issue,” a statement from the nonprofit reads.

During the school year, the backpack ministry provides all food-insecure students enlisted in its program with supplemental shelf-stable food for the weekend. Additional food is supplied for school breaks as well as special meals and treats for holidays such as Christmas and Easter.

“Without this food, many of these students would return to school hungry,” the nonprofit states.

Basically, here’s how the program works: To ensure children are not embarrassed, elementary school students served by Guilford Backpack Ministry have a weekly bag of food slipped into their bookbags by their school counselor or social worker while the children are out of the classroom. The child’s teacher is also given five individually wrapped snacks for snack time the following school week, such as granola bars, peanut butter crackers, cereal bars and goldfish crackers. Since older students are especially uncomfortable with the possibility that friends might see them receive food donated by others, the student’s school counselor, social worker or program director arranges a time for parents to pick up the food each month (these students receive the same amount of food as the elementary students).

Guilford Backpack Ministry serves students with food insecurity at the following northwest/northern Guilford area schools: Northern Guilford Elementary; Oak Ridge Elementary; Stokesdale Elementary; Summerfield Elementary; Greensboro Academy; Revolution Academy; Summerfield Charter; Northern Guilford Middle; Northwest Guilford Middle; Northern Guilford High; and Northwest Guilford High.

The nonprofit operates out of Oak Ridge United Methodist Church, 2424 Oak Ridge Road in Oak Ridge, and relies on monetary and food donations from community members and businesses.

Adobe Stock photo

need help/want to help?

If your student, or another student you know, needs the services of Guilford Backpack Ministry, contact your school’s counselor or social worker. For more info, to donate food/money, or to volunteer with the ministry, email GuilfordBackpackMinistry@gmail.com or visit www.OakRidgeUMC.org/Backpacks, or find the group at www.facebook.com/ GuilfordBackpackMinistry.

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EMPLOYEE OWNE D

Class ring fi nds its way home after 50 years

Photo by Sandra Smith

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by guest writer SANDRA SMITH

The writer is a lifelong resident of Oak Ridge and has served as town clerk for the last 10 years OAK RIDGE – Bill Edwards, Oak Ridge Parks & Recreation Commission’s former chairman, was inspecting the early construction of Oak Ridge Town Park about 15 years ago when he spied an object on the ground. After scraping away the dried mud, he discovered a woman’s 1953 Wake Forest class ring which bore the initials “BLY.” Wake Forest University (then College) was located in Wake Forest, North Carolina, north of Raleigh, until it moved to Winston-Salem in 1956. Who the ring belonged to and how it came to be in Oak Ridge’s town park remained a mystery for many years. The Northwest Observer • Totally local since 1996 Edwards asked around and posted his find on Craigslist, but no one came forward to claim the ring. So, he placed it in his desk drawer and forgot about it. The memory of the ring was sparked while Edwards was recently sorting through his parents’ belongings after their deaths. He dug the ring out and again posted it on Craigs list. But he also sent me an email, hoping that as Oak Ridge’s town clerk and a lifelong resident, I might be able to help. Not knowing “BLY,”

Photo courtesy of Bill Edwards I posted the information Bill Edwards found this 1953 on the Town’s Facebook Wake Forest class ring around pages. Within hours, 2006 when Oak Ridge Town people responded. Some Park was being built. combed through old Wake Forest yearbooks and graduation lists. Deputy Clerk Ashley Royal reached out to a friend, Elizabeth McIver, who works at Wake Forest. She and another Wake Forest employee, Sara Gravitt, unearthed information on Barbara Lake Young Aderholt, a 1953 graduate. Unfortunately, their digging also found the 2010 obituary of Aderholt, then living in Birmingham, Alabama.

Rebecca Stafford (left) and Barbara Tysinger (right) stand with Bill Edwards, who is holding the class ring he found in Oak Ridge Town Park around 2006. After strangers responded to a recent post about the ring on Oak Ridge’s Facebook page, it was traced back to Stafford and Tysinger’s late mother.. Ridge and has served as town clerk for

it in his desk drawer and forgot about it.

The memory of the ring was sparked while Edwards was

Although Aderholt could never retrieve her ring, the obituary listed her children. I searched the Internet for phone numbers and several were no longer valid, but I left a message on one.

The following day, Barbara Tysinger of Madison, North Carolina, returned my call.

Tysinger and her sister and brotherin-law, Rebecca and Doug Stafford, met Edwards at Oak Ridge Town Hall on Aug. 5. The Staffords had met as students at Oak Ridge Military Academy (she was among the first class of female cadets to graduate from the school when women were readmitted in 1971) and now live in Concord, North Carolina.

Although Barbara had visited Oak Ridge, she had never lived here. A biology teacher, she was a master gardener, an active Daughters of the American Revolution member, and loved horseback riding. She and friend Gladys Young, a longtime Northwest High School English High School English teacher, spent much teacher, spent much time riding this area’s wooded trails and open farmland – apparently, it was during one of these rides that she lost the ring.

“She was just heartbroken when she lost it,” Rebecca Stafford said. “It was a major loss,” which their mother still lamented a few years before her death.

Along with the ring, Tysinger and Stafford learned of another unusual connection to Edwards. When Edwards mentioned his childhood in Jamestown, the sisters recalled also living there (their father, who worked in the textile industry, was often transferred for his work, requiring the family to move every

Photo courtesy of Barbara Tysinger A photo of Barbara Lake Young Aderholt, alongside the 1953 class ring that was lost around 50 years ago and was just returned to her family. covering northwest few years). Guilford County’s Surprisingly, they lived only a few local houses apart, and remembered each other’s families matters and other neighbors.

With the ring back to its rightful since November 1996 owners, Tysinger and Stafford said they couldn’t wait to share the find with their other sister, the guardian of /NorthwestObserver their father’s Wake Forest class ring.

When asked what would happen to www.nwobserver.com the ring, Tysinger didn’t hesitate.

“I’ve got Mama’s jewelry box. It’ll probably rest there awhile,” she said.