PEOPLE
SUNDAY May 16, 2010
SALISBURY POST
Katie Scarvey, Lifestyle Editor, 704-797-4270 kscarvey@salisburypost.com
www.salisburypost.com
Life with
Gerry Celeste and Bill Ward share their home with a young starling who likes to talk, eat sausage and drink iced tea Gerry perches atop Bill Ward’s glass. A starling adopted as a baby by the Wards, Gerry is quite comfortable living with humans and cats. JON C. LAKEY/SALISBURY POST
BY KATIE SCARVEY kscarvey@salisburypost.com
In August of 2008, the Post ran a story about Celeste Ward and her rescued starling named Geronimo — Gerry for short. We recently checked back in with Gerry, who’s still living with Celeste and Bill Ward at their home in Salisbury. erry is now a single child. And it would appear that he likes it that way. Gerry was one of five baby starlings Celeste Ward raised by hand several years ago. She found them in some venting outside of her attic after hearing them chirp. They were about two weeks old when she found them, she believes. Celeste was tired of finding baby birds dead on the ground, so she decided to do something so that these starlings wouldn’t suffer a similar fate.
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Initially, she simply moved the nest to protect the birds, which were in danger of tumbling out of the vent. But the parents didn’t reclaim the nest. So Celeste took over the parenting role, putting the birds into Styrofoam cups and feeding them frequently. After they were old enough, Celeste helped the others return to their wild ways. Gerry, however, seemed to have other ideas. She set him free as well, but freedom didn’t sit as well with Gerry, who was the runt of the nest and perhaps never quite recovered from an injured foot and wing. Flying was harder for him, and he returned before the day was over, hanging out on the ground. He refused to leave. So Celeste and Bill took him in again, and now Gerry lives happily among his two humans and, more remarkably, with the household cats, who find him curious but don’t
seem tempted to attack him, as cats males and females. are wont to do with birds. He no longer has his soft gray The Wards believe that Gerry is baby feathers but has a black specka male, as his name might suggest, See GERRY, 2E which they determined by the subtle differences in coloring between
Gerry perches on a dish with a snack of bloodworms and bananas.
Memories of high school and Phil Kirk he first day of high school rials. He put me can be exciting and traumatin the sports deic for lots of kids. Mine was. partment, not On my first day of high school, because I wantin 1971, Phil Kirk — ed that, either, my journalism and but because English teacher — that’s what was put me on the spot. needed. “Your mother My first assaid you would be signment was to our photographer,” interview Coach he told me and Pete Stout KIRK everybody else in about the footthe class. ball team. I She did? That wasn’t much of a student of the SAM was news to me. game, so I asked Mr. Kirk what I POST I was possibly should ask him. I still remember the youngest and the look on his face. Many others smallest person in the room. have given me the same look He was also the youngest — the many times throughout my life. youngest person ever elected to It’s the figure-it-out-do-you-havethe N.C. Senate . to-ask-me-everything look. I got a really nice note from “Ask him if they plan to pass a Mr. Kirk the other day, and it was lot,” he said. fun thinking about that time when I had other assignments. I rehe scared me a little and taught member interviewing Harold me a lot. Isenberg, the superintendent of These days, with a digital camthe Salisbury City Schools. I era in every phone, it’s hard to be- thought it was clever to record the lieve that a 15-year-old had never interview and turn in a verbatim taken a picture before, but most of Q&A. In fact, I’m pretty sure I us back then had not. Shutter thought I was the first person to speed. F-stop. Film speed. All ever think of that, that I was actuGreek to me. ally inventing the Q&A. I wanted to be on the newspaMr. Kirk was less impressed. per staff not for photography, but “Didn’t take much effort,” he said. so I could write stories and editoI won’t even begin to describe
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my performance in his English class that year. The photography was not a topic for discussion. Mr. Kirk had worked his way through high school and college with my mother at The Post. They were close friends for many years. The Hornet staff needed a photographer. They had struck a deal. I’m guessing that neither senators nor teachers were well paid in those days, because I’m pretty sure I remember Mr. Kirk spending his Christmas break working on South Main Street at Belk’s. Down on North Main, next to our family store, Zimmerman’s, was a store called Carolina Camera. My dad got me a used Minolta, a used enlarger, some chemicals, pans, a darkroom light and some bulk film. Dad advised me, when taking a person’s picture, to “get close.” He gave me a few lessons on how to put film in a camera, adjust the settings and develop pictures. My father was a good photographer and these things came easily to him, so his teaching methods were fairly straightforward. My learning methods could be a little tedious. He eventually gave me a book and told me to just read it and figure it out.
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Our bathroom became the dark room. I didn’t take many sports pictures. Fortunately, The Post provided some of those, along with the more skilled annual staff photographers at the school. I was assigned the basic pictures of clubs, projects, features: the people in the school, during school. One day, a few months into the school year, Mr. Kirk asked me if my mother was telling the truth when she told him that I stayed up all night developing pictures. “Uh, yeah.” He might have had some sympathy, but I doubt it. Mr. Kirk was such a hard worker; he probably thought I needed to work a little faster. James Barringer, the Post photographer, tried to give me a few pointers. He was nice enough to say that the problem with my pictures was the camera. Bill Billings, whose father, Horace Billings, was sports editor, was the photographer for the school annual. Bill’s pictures were excellent. Mr. Barringer said that’s because he had a better camera. I’m not so sure about that. I’m not sure I had much apti-
See KIRK, 3E
Boy meets girl, mom feels old I
’m not sure what makes me feel older, my impending 40th birthday or the fact that my 14-year-old has a girlfriend. An introduceher-to-the-family, arm-aroundher-chair, texting-her-at-thedinner-table girlfriend. Henry announced his new relationship on Facebook. WithEMILY in hours, I had eFORD mails from friends and family with lots of exclamation points and question marks. Did I know?!? Have I met her??? This is so exciting!!! Yes, I actually had firsthand knowledge of this development in my son’s life before I read it on his Facebook page. For some reason, Henry decided to casually share this tidbit one afternoon with his information-deprived mother, who despite her journalistic instincts is learning to ask questions less and bite her tongue more where her adolescent son is concerned. The information didn’t shock me. The fact that Henry imparted it did. Sometimes prone to exuberant reactions, I tried hard to remain motionless and keep my voice in the same register. “Girlfriend, huh? Well, that’s nice.” I asked a limited number of questions. Three at the very most. OK, maybe six. But it quickly became clear that Henry had reached some kind of self-imposed maternal information quota with his threeword utterance, “got a girlfriend,” and would go no further. No name, no grade, no identifying characteristics. But a few days later, Henry surprised us by suggesting that he invite her to the musical “Footloose” at Carson High School, where we were headed for Mother’s Day. The family tried hard to remain motionless and keep its voice in the same register. “Inviting a real girl to a family event for the first time ever, huh? Well, that’s nice.” Henry’s younger sisters were in complete awe and disbelief during the entire encounter. Nellie and Clara managed to behave themselves. Since then, however, the initial shock has worn off and Henry’s behavior is ripe for ridicule. One night, he had to surrender his phone after he was repeatedly caught texting during supper, a big no-no. When he declined to share the contents of the crucial missives to his girlfriend, Nellie, 11, imagined aloud what her brother was typing. “I’m eating. Now I’m chewing. “I’m moving the food to the right. Now I’m moving it to the left. “Inhaling. “Exhaling.” Henry tried hard to remain motionless and keep his voice in the same register. He did not pummel her — a sign of maturity. Or just a sign that he really wanted his phone back? Henry soon will have two sisters giving running commentary on his relationships. Clara, 6, has started developing her own pointed sense of humor. She and Nellie were negotiating recently. Because we suffer a mysterious dearth of childsized glasses, Clara was sipping juice from a coffee cup. As the negotiation came to a close, Nellie made her final offer. Clara thought it over, took another sip and said calmly, “I can live with that.” She brought the house down. Daughters honing their dry delivery and a son with a girlfriend make this 39-and-holding feel old, but it could be worse. If we lived in South Dakota, Henry would already be driving. Contact Emily Ford at eford@salisburypost.com.