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FROM THE EDITOR
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CATHY MARTIN EDITOR editor@southparkmagazine.com
efore the Whitewater Center opened in 2006, if you wanted to experience the thrill of whitewater rafting or kayaking, you had to pack up the car and head west. About the time I graduated from college, a friend told me about a place in the mountains where a bunch of cool, outdoorsy kids liked to hang out. Back then, all I wanted to be was cool and outdoorsy, so a group of us drove four-and-a-half hours from Chapel Hill to a small river outpost on the Nantahala River in Bryson City. It didn’t look like much — a simple wooden building on the side of the road — but Nantahala Outdoor Center had begun quietly building a reputation as a premier outfitter for both beginners looking for an exhilarating ride on the river and serious paddlers. We weren’t there to raft or paddle, but to hike. Since the Appalachian Trail runs right through the center, we decided NOC would be a great home base for our first-ever backpacking trip. Our rookie status must have been glaringly apparent to all the seasoned through-hikers and rugged adventurers, with our brand-new backpacks bulging with way too much stuff. When we weighed our packs in the outfitters center — where we quickly realized we’d need to shed a few items before heading out — I asked an employee, “How’s the trail?” Easy, he said, and clearly marked — we should have no trouble. Rookie mistake: The first time you attempt an overnight hike with an extra 20 pounds strapped to your back, perhaps don’t start out at the bottom of a steep river gorge. The hike we’d planned, as well as I can remember, was an 8.4-mile trek to Cheoah Bald. Because we were young and invincible, we didn’t even consider the added challenge of a 3,300-foot ascent. I’d been too enthralled by the descriptions of big views, amazing rock formations, lush rhododendron groves and other natural wonders described in the guidebook (this was the pre-iPhone, pre-All Trails era — our GPS was a pocket-sized, printed guide). I’m not sure we ever made it to Cheoah Bald. But I was captivated by the area, returning again a few years later, this time in better shape and better prepared. All those memories came flooding back after reading Jennings’ story about the NOC (Page 82), which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Cleaning out the garage a few months ago, I came across the musty old Lowe Alpine pack I’d bought for that first backpacking trip. I probably used it fewer than a dozen times, yet I’d clung to it all these years, hopeful that I’d set out on the trail again someday. In the end, I got rid of it. I still love walks in the woods and spending time outdoors, but the idea of sleeping on the cold, hard ground and eating nothing but granola bars and dehydrated food for days holds little appeal. We’ve got our own incredible outdoor playground right here in Charlotte in the Whitewater Center. But we’re equally lucky to live just a short drive from places where, if you’re willing to wander (or paddle) off the beaten path, you can immerse yourself in the diverse and breathtaking scenery that can only be found in this little corner of the world.
LOVE IN THE AIR: Spring weddings are just around the corner. Our Weddings by SouthPark section, featured in these pages last February and September, was so popular, we’re launching a standalone issue this spring. Inside, we’ll share inspiration for the big day from Charlotte brides and grooms, as well as smart ideas from the city’s top vendors. Follow along on Instagram @weddings_by_southpark for updates, and look for copies this spring.
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March BLVD. 26 | cuisine Passion for patisserie: French café Chez Marie comes to SouthPark
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28 | travel Spring packing essentials from a Queen City travel planner
30 | arts Charlotte Youth Ballet celebrates 40 years
36 | arts Painter Andrew Leventis offers a modern take on a traditional genre
40 | interiors Ashley DeLapp designs a primary bathroom that pops
44 | givers Charlotte Soccer Foundation reaches more youth through a new partnership
46 | sports Newly minted: Five things to know about Charlotte FC
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48 | around town What’s new and now in the Queen City
52 | happenings March calendar of events
DEPARTMENTS 56 | creators of N.C. Jonas Pate and his runaway hit, Outer Banks
61 | simple life The baker’s assistant: How sweet it is
65 | bookshelf Notable new releases
67 | well+wise What is rest? Recognizing value in stillness
97 | swirl Parties and events around Charlotte
104 | gallery Kirk Fanelly’s cut paper botanicals
ABOUT THE COVER Inside a renovated 1957 home in The Cloisters, designed by Jennifer Felts of Habitude Interiors. Photograph by Erin Comerford Miller.
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70 | True original
by Cathy Martin | photographs by Erin Comerford Miller Jennifer Felts helps a couple restore a 1957 home in The Cloisters to its midcentury glory.
78 | If you can call it a game by Ed Southern Remembering the wondrous era of ACC basketball
82 | River rush by Jennings Cool Nantahala Outdoor Center celebrates 50 years of outdoor adventure.
92 | Legal Elite Top Charlotte lawyers in selected specialties
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SUGAR RUSH Who can resist an occasional indulgence when exquisite pastries like these can be found in the heart of SouthPark? Chez Marie, a French café and patisserie, will bring a Parisian flair to Sharon Corners when it opens later this month. In addition to eclairs, tarts, madeleines and macarons, the new locally owned spot will have an espresso bar plus a small menu of salads and sandwiches ideal for a light lunch. Come for the croissants, stay for the Emily in Paris vibes as you sip espresso (or champagne) and linger at a sidewalk table. Turn the page to learn more. SP
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blvd. | cuisine
Passion for patisserie CHEZ MARIE WILL BRING FRENCH PASTRIES, DESSERTS, AN ESPRESSO BAR AND MORE TO SOUTHPARK. by Cathy Martin
classes locally at PreGel. The international dessert-ingredients manufacturer offers culinary training for aspiring dessert and pastry chefs at its Concord facility. “It was like my inner calling,” says Siragusa, who co-owns midtown’s Pizzeria Omaggio with her husband, Daniel. It helped that she had studied French language for 10 years while growing up, which made learning easier. When it opens later this month in the former Gigi’s Cupcakes location, Chez Marie will offer desserts (eclairs, profiteroles, tarts, madeleines) and breads (baguettes and sourdough) with an assortment of flavored butters, along with puff-pastry specialties including croissants and more. The space, previously designed for carryout, has been reconfigured to make room for more seating, and outdoor seating will also be available. In addition to pastries, guests can order from a small menu of salads, sandwiches and crepes, along with espresso, tea, wine and champagne. The café will have a catering menu for weddings and other events, along with custom desserts such as St. Honore cakes and Croquembouche, the French dessert of profiteroles and caramelized sugar. SP Chez Marie will be open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a week. 4732 Sharon Rd., chezmarieclt.com
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aria Siragusa is a firm believer in trying new things. “Maybe you have an amazing talent,” that might otherwise go undiscovered, says the owner of Chez Marie, a French café and patisserie opening this month at Sharon Corners. Siragusa worked in design for seven years before she discovered her own passion for baking. Siragusa studied design in Milan, then spent three years working in interior design in her native Ukraine and Switzerland. After moving to Miami in 2012, she switched to graphic design for three years, then continued as a freelancer after moving to Charlotte. She became interested in baking after making desserts for her daughter’s first birthday. “I stayed up until 4 a.m. baking and decorating that night, and since then never lost passion for it — just a desire to learn more techniques and develop new recipes,” says the mother of two. After three years running Eclairesse, an online dessert business focused mainly on eclairs, Siragusa is looking to share her passion for baking — specifically, French pastries — with a bigger audience. “[French pastry chefs] are the best, they are the innovators,” says Siragusa, who studied her craft in France and Ukraine after taking
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blvd. | travel
Pack your bags
Sunnier days are ahead — before hitting the road (or the runway), you’ll want to make sure you have the right gear and accessories for the trip. To help, we asked Ashley Theis, travel adviser at The Constant Wayfarer (on Instagram @theconstantwayfarer), to share a few of her favorite spring travel essentials.
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1. Future’s so bright
Stylish sunnies are always a travel essential. These Captain sunglasses from Johnny Fly are an updated take on the classic aviator and are great for men or women. Johnny Fly Captain sunglasses, $135, johnnyfly.com
2. Don a duster
Worn over jeans and a T-shirt, a bathing suit or a dress, the Lina duster is a perfect versatile piece to throw on whether walking through the airport or lying by the pool. Z Supply Lina button-up duster, $94, Boem, shopboem.com
3. Just in case
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To keep your personal care items organized and in one spot, a durable, sturdy-but-stylish toiletry bag is a must. A water-resistant bag like this leather one from Paper Twist is great for occasional spills and is easy to take in and out of your bag while going through security. Leather toiletry case gray geometric, $122, Paper Twist, papertwist.com
4. Stylish stash
A great travel wallet is essential. You need something big enough to hold your foreign currency, credit cards, passport and any Covid travel documents, and keep everything safe and secure. Long thin wallets like this durable leather one can easily be carried like a clutch or placed in the pocket of a carry-on. ABLE Debre wallet, $68, Moxie Mercantile, moxiemercantile.com
5. Feet first
Vejas leather sneakers are my all-time favorite travel shoes. I’ve had my Vejas for years, and they are the most comfortable shoes to wear when exploring a new city. They mold to your feet and provide support while looking stylish. These unisex sneakers are great for long airport walks to your gate — and they come in kids’ sizes as well. Vejas Recife ChromeFree sneaker, $150, Poole Shop, pooleshopcharlotte.com
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7 6. Stuff it in style
Taking a weekend road trip? A duffle is easy to pack and throw in your trunk before hitting the road. Look for durable fabrics like canvas with leather detailing for longevity. A duffle is also great to bring as your personal item on planes (as long as you can fit it under the seat in front of you) — bonus if it has a compartment for your laptop or iPad. Portland Baggage Co. duffle, $149.99, available at Sharon Luggage, Mori Luggage & Gifts and at bergmanluggage.com
7. Hip to be square
When my clients ask for packing tips, this is always my No. 1 suggestion. These cubes are the perfect way to organize and compress your clothes, allowing you to bring more options — perfect for the over-packers in all of us. I use separate cubes for undergarments, lounge and sleepwear, tops and bottoms. Bonus tip for big families: Buy a set in different colors and assign each member a color. If you are sharing suitcases (or have lots of little ones), everyone will be able to find their stuff. Sage travel packing cubes, $39.95, Paper Source, papersource.com
8. Light layers
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Light layers are your friend when traveling, especially when you are unsure what kind of weather to expect. A great lightweight jacket is perfect for easy layering — I try to pack in neutral colors that I can mix and match. Officine Generale Leo jacket in organic cotton twill, $345, Tabor, taborclt.com
9. Chic carry-on
I am a firm believer in packing light, and I bring only a carry-on as often as I can. Stylish and sustainable Paravel luggage offers carbon-neutral suitcases, canvas bags and nylon totes (made from upcycled water bottles, vegan leather and recycled zippers). Their luggage is also beautifully designed to stand out from the sea of black suitcases at baggage claim. Paravel Aviator carry-on, $275, paravel.com
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blvd. | arts
Daring to dance NOW IN ITS 40TH SEASON, CHARLOTTE YOUTH BALLET PROVIDES ASPIRING DANCERS A CHANCE TO SHARE THE STAGE WITH THE PROS. by Vanessa Infanzon
The Nutcracker 2021
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sional dancers from Mauro Ballet in Puerto Rico.
FAMILY AFFAIR Gay Porter founded Charlotte Youth Ballet in 1981 with the vision of building a premier youth ballet. The nonprofit’s first production, The Nutcracker, included 50 youth dancers and guest artists from Boston Ballet, New Orleans Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. Porter’s daughter played Clara, one of her sons was the nutcracker and another son, the stage manager. Today, Bridget Porter Young, the daughter who played Clara, is CYB’s artistic director. Porter wanted to provide dancers with something she never had growing up as a dancer in England: the chance to perform with professional dancers. “It gives them a wonderful opportunity to dance in these productions with these principals,” Porter says. “They can see what they one day could be: ‘Oh, I could be that, if I work hard.’” Remy Young, Porter’s 24-year-old granddaughter, credits her experience with CYB for preparing her for the American Ballet Theatre in New York City. She’s been in the company’s corps de
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBIN YAGGI
K
atherine Nobles never imagined she’d be on stage dancing with her daughter and father. But that’s exactly what happened in December when all three were cast in Charlotte Youth Ballet’s annual performance of The Nutcracker. Katherine’s daughter, Lila Grace Nobles, 9, played a party girl, and her father, Stephen Smith, 71, played a dad in the party scene. Katherine portrayed Clara’s mother and danced as a snowflake during “Waltz of the Snowflakes.” The performance was a return to CYB for Katherine. She had performed in Nutcracker from 1999 to 2004 when she was a teenager. “It’s such a joy getting to share it together,” says Katherine, 36. “We can talk about it and get to dance together. She’ll (Lila Grace) watch me do certain things and I’ll watch her; we’ll give each other notes.” This month, Charlotte Youth Ballet continues its 40th season with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Performances are March 11-13 at Dale F. Halton Theater on Central Piedmont’s Central Campus. Dancers from several local dance studios, UNC Charlotte and UNC School of the Arts will perform with profes-
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ballet since 2016. “It’s vital for a young child to develop confidence on stage so that when they become a professional dancer, you feel a sense of being at home on stage,” she says. “I got experience in the theater element, not only the ballet element. It supplied me with the foundation to become a more versatile dancer.”
CREATING COMMUNITY Gracie Durham has been dancing since she was 3 years old at Young’s studio, Belmont School of Dance. Since second grade, Durham, now a junior at Highland School of Technology in Gastonia, has performed in CYB’s annual Nutcracker. In fifth grade, she added spring productions such as Coppelia to her repertoire. Although she won’t pursue a career as a professional dancer, she hopes to teach at a studio one day. “Ms. Porter has been teaching and involved in dancing her entire life,” she says. “I think it’s amazing to see that it can still bring you joy even if you’re not on the stage. My teachers have always been supportive, and I’d love to be that for other younger dancers.” In this month’s production of Snow White, Francie Laufer will play Doc, one of the seven dwarfs. She’s finishing high school through George Washington University’s online program. Laufer started ballet at 16 years old, after nearly 10 years of studying Highland dance. “Ms. Bridget and Ms. Porter have been really great at helping me transfer the Highland skills to ballet so I can be a part of their shows,” Laufer says. “Everyone wants everyone else to succeed. People want them to be their best version of themselves.”
ALL ACCESS Each year, CYB’s board of directors works with the artistic team to choose a story ballet such as Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty for the spring production. The board is composed of parents from various local dance studios and community members interested in promoting arts in Charlotte. 32
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“Spring productions are typically a storybook performance, which is very engaging to the younger community members, like schoolchildren,” says Donna Gruber, chair-elect of the CYB board. “[It’s also] very dramatic ballet, and brings the art of ballet in a relatable form.” It’s been CYB’s goal to reach as many community members as possible with its performances. A morning show is offered free to Title I schools and students, and senior citizens receive reduced ticket prices. Auditions for CYB’s performances are open to anyone in the community. Dancers from studios such as Jami Masters School of Dance, Miller Street Dance Academy and Open Door Studios try out for The Nutcracker and the rotating spring production. Dancers may not always get the part they expected, but everyone gets to be in the show. Rehearsals for Snow White began in late January and will continue every Friday, Saturday and Sunday until the performance. “The magic of Mrs. Porter and Bridget has been that they will adapt parts and choreography according to the dancers that they have,” Gruber explains. “No one is ever rejected.” SP The Charlotte Youth Ballet will perform Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs March 11-13 at Dale F. Halton Theater at Central Piedmont, 1206 Elizabeth Ave. charlotteyouthballet.org
Cinderella
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A NOVEL PLACE
Chapter 2
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Decanter with Aperol, Oil on Linen, 2020, 30x48"
Vanity of vanities! ANDREW LEVENTIS’ STILL-LIFE PAINTINGS ARE A MODERN TAKE ON A TRADITIONAL GENRE.
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by Grace Cote
n art history, a vanitas painting is a still life whose symbols remind you of the transience of life. The paintings depict items like a vase of flowers past their peak, a toppled glass, a snuffed candle and, oftentimes, a skull. They also contain symbols of “vain” earthly pleasures: musical instruments, wine and sweets, manuscripts, coins and silver. “They’re about holding on to the things that matter to you in the world,” says Andrew Leventis, oil painter and longtime student of the genre. The term originally comes from a passage in the Bible from the book of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” The popularity of vanitas paintings soared in northern Europe during outbreaks of the Black Death in the 17th century. Stuck at home during a different pandemic, Leventis began his own vanitas series, looking no further than his own kitchen, with its fully stocked, bursting-at-the-seams refrigerator. Through investigating our pandemic-induced panic buying, he sought to “reimagine these vanitas paintings in a modern context.” “I think of every painting I make as both a still life and a portrait,” Leventis says. Through his paintings, he asks: What do these things say about a person? And in the refrigerator paintings, he gets 36
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more specific: What do those food labels, that organization, that drawer, say about the people who own that fridge? The result was the diptych Home Refrigerator (Vanitas), two paintings stacked to portray his freezer box and the refrigerator below it. The work is artificially bright and full of familiar brands like Thomas’ English muffins, Wonder bread, and Tyson chicken. These crisp, tantalizing labels are juxtaposed with mundane elements like a well-worn plastic tub with a peeling label and shelves bowing under the pressure of their contents. He captures the feeling of opening the refrigerator late at night, maybe out of hunger, maybe out of boredom, and being blasted by our nation’s best marketing efforts. If this experience sounds relatable to you, you’re not alone. The work has appealed to many, given its exhibition record in the United Kingdom, Los Angeles, South Korea and Venice over the last 18 months. After these first paintings, Leventis sought refrigerator images from friends, but ultimately it didn’t work. “It’s difficult to paint from images that aren’t a bit posed with directional lighting and enough visual information to go by,” Leventis says. So, he started working with Chicago-based photographer Sarah Derer, who styled and
Home Refrigerator (Vanitas), Oil on Linen, 2021, 62x48"
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blvd. | arts took photographs of commercial refrigerators. His vanitas series now contains both “pandemic” fridges and the beautifully styled variety. Looking at his whole body of work, it’s easy to understand the appeal in collaborating with a food stylist. The well-lit, staged vignette is a bold thread running through all his paintings. His Film Stills paintings are re-creations of paused movies and television shows. Each scene looks familiar but not quite placeable. He is careful not to reveal specific connections but hinted at the Italian supernatural film Suspiria (1977) and the thriller Don’t Look Now (1973) as well as documentary series. Another body of work also depicts scenes where staging and lighting are key: preserved house museums. Several are from the Dennis Severs’ House in London, whose owner painstakingly re-created what the home would look like if owned by a fictitious family of Huguenot silk weavers. Highly specific, this unusual jewel-box home project begun in the 1970s was perfectly suited to Leventis’ oil paintings. Leventis, a Charlotte native, credits The Mint Museum with showing him a window into what painting could be. During a spring 2000 show titled The Defining Moment: Victorian Narrative Paintings from the Forbes Magazine Collection, he was awed by the highly detailed oil works on view. “This show caused me to fall in love with painting,” he says. Seeing this work drove his decision to go to art school. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the American Academy of Art in Chicago and a Master of Fine Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London. He now works as an assistant professor of painting at UNC Charlotte. Leventis has come full circle, with a current exhibition at Mint Museum Uptown through its Constellation CLT series. The series fills the museum’s corridors and walkways with artwork made in and around Charlotte. His paintings will be on view through May 8. He also has upcoming exhibitions with Hidell Brooks Gallery in Charlotte and The Whitaker Museum in the U.K. This fall, he will help bring the exhibition Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition to the Rowe Galleries
Prosperity Fridge (Vanitas), Oil on Linen, 2022, 72x48"
at UNC Charlotte. The traveling group exhibition originated in Europe, and Leventis will incorporate local artists’ works into the show. In the meantime, Leventis plans to continue his refrigerator series, painting both “pandemic overstocked types” and the well-styled. SP
“I think of every painting I make as both a still life and a portrait,” Leventis says. Through his paintings, he asks: What do these things say about a person? Vanity Dresser, Oil on Linen, 2019, 22x32" 38
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blvd. | interiors
Splish splash INTERIOR DESIGNER ASHLEY DELAPP TURNS A SMALL, OUTDATED BATHROOM INTO A BOLD YET ELEGANT RETREAT. by Cathy Martin • photographs by Jim Schmidt
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idcentury design has gone mainstream — though one feature common in pre-1970s architecture isn’t likely to return: tiny bathrooms. That was the challenge facing Ashley DeLapp when redesigning the primary bedroom and bathroom in this south Charlotte home. “It was a midcentury-modern ranch, so it had this tiny little bathroom with a little sink, and then outside the bathroom in the bedroom was a vanity,” says DeLapp, an architect-turned-interior designer. “Where the tub sits was a tiny walkin closet.” 40
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blvd. | interiors
DeLapp drew up nearly a dozen floor plans to expand the bedroom, add a walkin closet, and open up space for the new bathroom before landing on the right one. For the design, she started with a paint color, Sherwin Williams’ Courtyard, and everything else stemmed from that. For the floor and shower walls, the designer used 24-by-48 porcelain tiles that look like marble. The painting over the soaking tub is by local artist Jennifer Levine. The trickiest part of the project, DeLapp says, was installing the zero-entry shower while staying on budget. And because the subflooring had to be modified to create a curbless entry, planning ahead was key, DeLapp says. When it came time to choose the wallpaper, the Schumacher “Chiang Mai Dragon” in Jade was a clear winner. “It makes me so happy to look at it,” the designer says. SP
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blvd. | givers
Community goals THROUGH A NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH CHARLOTTE FC, CHARLOTTE SOCCER FOUNDATION SUPPORTS YOUTH BOTH ON AND OFF THE FIELD. by Michelle Boudin
B
y now, you’ve probably heard: Charlotte is home to a major league soccer team. And even before its first match, the team is making its mark helping hundreds of local kids through its work with a nonprofit that grew out of one of the area’s most popular children’s soccer programs, Soccer Shots. Founded in 2017, Soccer Foundation of Charlotte offers after-school soccer programs at low-income schools. “The nonprofit arm of Soccer Shots was founded after the local owners had a vision of using soccer to invest in every child in Charlotte,” says Soccer FC Executive Director Katie Phillips. “Because soccer is an expensive sport, that left a lot of kids out, so we wanted to make it accessible.” When Charlotte’s professional team was announced, the nonprofit saw an opportunity to reach even more kids. “Charlotte got a major league soccer team, and we became one of their main community partners — so we branched off of Soccer Shots so we could partner with every club in Charlotte,” explains Phillips, who has been involved with the foundation since its inception. Soccer FC provides 24 weeks of soccer programming at 18 Charlotte schools. Twice a week, the kids play for an hour before or after school, so transportation isn’t a barrier. Coaching and soccer equipment aren’t the only things Soccer FC provides. “Serving in these communities, we could see the love for the game of soccer, but we were also seeing the need for literacy education,” Phillips says. Now, in addition to the jersey and the ball, each student gets 24 books “The coaches do a read-aloud at the end of each practice. We
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thought it would be important for the coach to have a book in their hand, [for the children] to see someone they admire and respect reading to them, Phillips says. “I love that they’ve incorporated books into the program,” says Brooke Eastburn, school counselor at Winterfield Elementary in east Charlotte. Each week, 25 kids hit the field as part of Soccer FC’s program there. “A lot of kids compartmentalize their interests, but Soccer FC combines them. By adding literacy into the soccer program, Soccer FC shows kids that attributes like positive attitude, teamwork and tenacity are transferable skills. And to see their faces when they get their new books is the best.” For several of the kids, soccer is the only organized after-school activity in which they participate, she says. “It’s more than soccer — they are helping our kids feel a broadened sense of community at Winterfield, and it’s ideal for our new students,” Eastburn says. “We have students joining us all the time, frequently from other countries, often refugees. Soccer FC helps welcome newcomers into our new school and neighborhood.” This year, Soccer FC will serve 450 kids — more than double its reach before teaming with Charlotte FC — and give away 10,000 books. Phillips expects the partnership to expand once the season is in full swing, with appearances by the professional players, events and more. “Our partnership with Charlotte FC has blown up our program and allowed us to serve double and triple what we we’re serving before,” Phillips says. “It’s really exciting.” SP
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blvd. | sports
C
Making the pitch FIVE THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT CLT FC by Sharon Smith
harlotte Football Club enters its inaugural MLS season with team president Nick Kelly feeling bullish about hosting a playoff match and drawing 30,000-plus crowds. In the two years since David Tepper bought the expansion team, 10 official supporters’ groups have sprouted up to help rally fans during the matches. At press time, more than 65,000 tickets had been sold to Charlotte FC’s home opener on March 5. Here are a few fun facts about the team.*
1 Around the world
Charlotte Football Club’s roster stands at 24 players from 15 countries: U.S.A. (9), Ecuador (2), Poland (2), Mexico (1), England (1), Brazil (1), Spain (1), Peru (1), Costa Rica (1), Venezuela (1), Croatia (1), Austria (1), Uruguay (1), Ghana (1), Argentina (1)
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2
Tar Heel ties
Four players are originally from North Carolina: Jaylin Lindsey is from Charlotte, Adam Armour and George Marks are from Raleigh, and Brandt Bronico is from High Point.
blvd. | sports
3
Average age
Sporting Director Zoran Krneta has a young squad, with many players below the age of 25. Christian Fuchs and Harrison Afful are the oldest players at 35, while Vinicius Silveira de Mello and Adam Armour are the youngest at 19.
4
The crest
The crest has a coin motif to honor Charlotte’s history as one of the first U.S. Mint branches. The four crown points celebrate the Queen City’s original four wards. The commemorative MINTED 2022 marking is a nod to the inaugural year.
5
Squad connections
Head coach Miguel Ángel Ramirez worked with several players previously. He coached young forward Vinicius Mello at Internacional (Brazil). Alan Franco and Cristian “Titi” Ortiz were teammates during his time as coach for Independiente del Valle (Ecuador). SP *Based on team information available at the time of publication.
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blvd. | around town
Tapas time
with Executive Chef Alex Verica leading the kitchen. The menu of small, shareable plates ranges from the familiar (Shrimp Cocktail with spicy horseradish cocktail sauce and lemon) to the unexpected (Milk Bread PB&J with peanut butter, foie gras and berry jam) and highlights local farms. If Verica’s name sounds familiar, you might recognize him as the former sous chef at The Stanley (and as the son of Stanley chef/owner Paul Verica). He previously worked at Dot Dot Dot and Heritage in Waxhaw. Short for the French word imparable, which translates as “unstoppable,” the menu at PARA offers plenty of seafood selections like the Tuna Crudo with jalapeno, citrus, avocado, hot pepper and radish, and the Lobster Toast with milk bread, chive aioli and ORO caviar, along with Asian-inspired plates such as the Tempura (oyster mushrooms, radish, broccoli slaw and togarashi aioli) and the Crab Rangoon (fried steam bun, miso ginger sauce and pickled vegetables). PARA is open Tues.-Thurs. 5-11 p.m. and Fri.Sat. 5 p.m.-2 a.m. 235 W. Tremont Ave. paraclt.com
At PARA, Alex Verica’s menu of small plates is complemented by creative cocktails developed by Yahira “Yoshi” Mejia, including The Berry Nice (Grey Goose strawberry and lemongrass essence, lemon, lemongrass, Topo Chico, and strawberry St. Germain foam), left, and the Mez Me With That (Illegal mezcal, orange, lime, cilantro oil, and togarashi).
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Tower power
Independence Boulevard’s lone skyscraper is getting a new look: The long-vacant seven-story Ervin Building, recently known as the Varnadore Building, will once again house offices and, after a monthslong renovation by Choate Construction Co., a rooftop restaurant. The project started in January and is expected to be complete by late 2022. The building was constructed in 1964 by Charlotte developer Charles Ervin as the first high-rise tower on Independence. Midcentury features such as original terrazzo floors, exterior marble and vintage bathroom tiles will be preserved during the renovation. While the interior will undergo an extensive refresh, the building’s exterior will be preserved and a new 200-foot mural will go up on the site.
PARA PHOTOS BY PETER TAYLOR; ERVIN BUILDING PHOTOS COURTESY CHOATE CONSTRUCTION
PARA , a new 55-seat restaurant and bar, is open in South End,
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blvd. | around town
food + drink
Soul sister
u Milkbread, the new all-day café from Joe and Katy Kindred, debuted in Davidson, serving doughnuts, bowls and salads, and chicken sandwiches. 624 Jetton St., #110, Davidson, milkbread.com u Resident Culture opened a second location in South End. 332 W. Bland St., Suite C, residentculturebrewing.com uWine bar Cicchetti reopened at Bank of America Corporate Center in uptown, featuring Italian small plates, an extensive wine list and a low-ABV cocktail menu. Open Tues.-Sat. 100 N. Tryon St. cicchetticlt.com u Link & Pin will soon open its third location at The Arboretum, in the former Mickey & Mooch spot. u Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit has closed in South End.
Fans of Soul Gastrolounge no longer have to wait all day to enjoy menu favorites like the Asian glazed pork belly tacos, fried Brussels sprouts or lamb lollipops with rosemary and pecorino. Sister, an all-day café with a rooftop terrace, opened in the former Kiki Bistro spot in Plaza Midwood. It’s the newest concept from Soul owners Andy and Lesa Kastanas. “Since Soul is more of a dinner-only adult establishment, we are offering those items at Sister,” Andy Kastanas said in a news release. “It’ll be more like a daytime, all-inclusive version of Soul.” The morning menu features coffee and matcha and a small selection of breakfast bowls and pastries, including baklava, phyllo hand pies, croissants and muffins. At lunch, expect salads, small plates and Greek favorites such as moussaka, spanakopita and pastichio, along with a few Soul bestsellers. The dinner menu is heavy on small plates, from the anchovy fries to shrimp saganaki (kataifi-wrapped shrimp with broiled feta and an ouzo-tomato sauce). Brunch service will be added in the spring. Sister is open Tues.-Thurs. 9 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 9 a.m.-10 p.m. and Sun. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. 1500-A Central Ave.
retail
New in South End: u Allbirds opened a retail store at 100 W. Worthington Ave. u Parachute, which sells bedding and bath essentials, opened its first North Carolina store at 1930 Camden Rd., Ste. 270 u Interior Define Studio, which sells customized home furnishings, is open at the Design Center. 1930 Camden Rd., Suite 265
This summer, Bayhaven Restaurant Group, the team behind Leah & Louise, will open four new chef-driven concepts at Camp North End. B.A.D. (Beyond Amazing Donuts) will feature pastry chef Jasmine Macon’s doughnuts, fritters and cinnamon rolls. Bird is the Word will serve chicken sandwiches, smoked chicken family meals and Southern sides. Passage Seafood will be a modern fish camp serving Atlantic seafood, oysters, raw fish and more. Leah & Louise mixologist Justin Hazelton will lead The Abyss, a 40-seat speakeasy serving craft cocktails and late-night eats.
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER TAYLOR
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blvd. | calendar
March HAPPENINGS Museums + galleries Robert Motherwell Through April 9 This solo exhibition features works from the abstract expressionist artist’s Hollow Men series, Open series and an Elegy series painting, along with collages, etchings and lithographs. 625 S. Sharon Amity Rd. jeraldmelberg.com “Mental Health: Mind Matters” at Discovery Place Science Through April 10 Explore the science behind our feelings and how we experience the world around us through this interactive exhibit that fosters open discussion surrounding mental illness. The exhibit is included in museum admission; admission prices vary. 301 N. Tryon St.; discoveryplace.org
Monica Kim Garza: Sliver of Salt at SOCO Gallery March 2-April 20 This solo exhibition includes new mixed media works by the Mexican-Korean artist. 412 Providence Rd. socogallery.com Coined in the South: 2022 at Mint Museum Uptown March 25-July 3 The second installment of this juried exhibition highlights artists from across the Southeast. 500 S. Tryon St.; mintmuseum.org
Events + activities Heart Rail Trail: Lights March 4-20 Take an evening stroll along
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Now on view at Mint Museum Uptown: Craft in the Laboratory: The Science of Making Things explores how craft artists use science and math in their works. The exhibit includes 100 works from the museum’s collection, plus videos, touchable materials and detailed labels to explain and illustrate the artists’ processes. mintmuseum.org. Pictured: Naoko Serino (Japanese, 1962–). Jute Square, 2006, jute, 10" x 10" x 10". Gift of Lorne Lassiter and Gary Ferraro. 2017.5.18. Photo: Keara Reburn South End’s Rail Trail to experience five interactive light exhibits by Carolinas artists. The installation footprint extends from Carson Boulevard to Atherton Mill. charlotterailtrail.org/lights Charlotte FC’s Inaugural Home Match at Bank of America Stadium March 5 Charlotte FC hosts the LA Galaxy at the long-awaited home debut of the city’s newest professional sports team — a milestone in Charlotte sports history. Ticket prices vary. charlottefootballclub.com
The Falling and the Rising by Opera Carolina at Sandra Levine Theatre at Queens University March 11-12 The captivating storyline in this one-act opera features a female protagonist known as “Soldier” who was severely wounded by a roadside bomb. The poignant narrative is based on interviews with returning soldiers. Tickets start at $22. operacarolina.org
Color Me Green 5K Trail Run at U.S. National Whitewater Center March 12 Channel your inner leprechaun and leap through the trails to the finish line. If you’re feeling lucky, stay for the Green River Revival, where the whitewater channel turns green to kick off St. Patrick’s Day. Registration cost varies by signup option. whitewater.org Patti LaBelle at Belk Theater March 13 Enjoy an evening with the award-winning artist and entertainer whose name has become synonymous with grace, elegance and class. Tickets start at $24.50; blumenthalarts.org Jazz Room Presents Women In Jazz at Stage Door Theater March 17-19 Celebrate Women’s History Month with a performance by allstar female jazz musicians from across the region and around the globe. Tickets start at $20. blumenthalarts.org
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blvd. | calendar Jesus Christ Superstar March 22-27 In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the iconic musical comes to Belk Theater. The production won the 2017 Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival. Tickets start at $25. blumenthalarts.org Love, Loss, and What I Wore March 24-April 10 Theatre Charlotte presents this collection of stories by Nora and Delia Ephron at four separate venues across the city, from Camp North End to Mint Museum Randolph. Five performers explore the lives of 28 women through monologues and ensemble performances. Tickets start at $14. ctcharlotte.org Charlotte Region Arts, Fibers and Textiles (CRAFT) Festival at Sleepy Poet Antique Mall March 26-27 Support local vendors, learn new techniques and enjoy food truck provisions at this two-day festival celebrating makers in the community. wecraftclt.org
Bob Dylan March 30 The singer-songwriter brings his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour to Ovens Auditorium. Ticket prices vary. ticketmaster.com SP — compiled by Amanda Lea
Scan the QR code on your mobile device to view our online events calendar — updated weekly — at southparkmagazine.com
Noteworthy exhibits within driving distance More than 60 paintings, drawings and illustrations by three generations of the Wyeth family are on view at Asheville Art Museum. The Wyeths: Three Generations | Works from the Bank of America Collection comprises works by famed illustrator N.C. Wyeth; his son, Andrew; his daughter Henriette; and Andrew’s son, Jamie. “Bringing together these three generations of Wyeth painters allows visitors to get a sense of the artistic heritage of this famous American arts dynasty,” says Whitney Richardson, associate curator at Asheville Art Museum. Through May 30. ashevilleart.org
Eight Bells, N. C. Wyeth, 1937
Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite at Reynolda House Museum in Winston-Salem is the first major exhibition of works by the critically acclaimed photographer born in Brooklyn and raised in the Bronx. Brathwaite, a photographer and concert promoter, and his brother, Elombe, launched a modeling agency, Grandassa Models, in 1962. More than 40 fashion photos of Black models, wearing their natural, unprocessed hair and Afrocentric fashions are on view, along with some of the garments worn by the models. The images challenged white beauty standards and reflect how Brathwaite used art to effect social change in the late 1950s and 1960s. Through May 8. reynolda.org Self-portrait, Kwame Brathwaite, African Jazz-Art Society & Studios (AJASS), Harlem, 1964
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Grandassa Models at the Merton Simpson Gallery, Kwame Brathwaite, 1967
PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY THE ARTIST AND PHILIP MARTIN GALLERY, LOS ANGELES; COURTESY BANK OF AMERICA COLLECTION
Around the state
Chris Botti March 27 The Grammy Award-winning trumpeter performs at Knight Theater. Tickets start at $39.50. blumenthalarts.org
to Sounds & Scenes
www.ExploreElkin.com southparkmagazine.com | 55
|creators of n.c.
The lost treasure of home JONAS PATE AND HIS RUNAWAY HIT OUTER BANKS by Wiley Cash photograph by Mallory Cash
W
hile there is plenty of mystery in the breakout Netflix smash hit Outer Banks — everything from a father lost at sea to a legendary treasure — the mystery that director and co-creator Jonas Pate seems most intent on exploring is the age-old mystery of what divides people along class lines. It worked for Shakespeare with his Montagues and Capulets, and 370 or so years later it worked again for Bernstein’s and Sondheim’s Jets and Sharks. Pate’s rival groups are similarly aged, sun-kissed teenagers living and partying along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where a group of working class kids known as the “Pogues” continually find themselves marginalized and dismissed by the “Kooks,” who are the children of wealthy residents and seasonal tourists. Fists and hearts certainly fly, but despite the show’s use of cliffhangers and action-packed sequences, at its core Outer Banks investigates the emotional and experiential threads that pull some of us together across class lines while invisible barriers push others of us apart. According to Pate, the divide between the haves and the have nots is “the oldest story in the world. It cuts across everything,” which he believes explains the show’s broad appeal. Broad indeed. In the late spring of 2020, just as the people of the world were settling into the pandemic and the realization that they did not want to see or hear another word about Tiger King and Joe Exotic, Outer Banks debuted in mid-April and quickly became 56
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one of Netflix’s most-watched shows of the year. The following summer, the show’s second season hit No. 1 on the Nielsen report. The success seemed immediate, and the show’s slick production quality made it all appear as easy and relaxed as a day on the water, but Jonas Pate and his twin brother, Josh, with whom he created Outer Banks along with Shannon Burke, had spent their whole lives preparing for this moment. The Pate brothers grew up in Raeford, North Carolina, where their father served as a judge and their grandfather owned a local pharmacy. “It was amazing,” Jonas says. “It was like Mayberry. I’d ride my bike to the pharmacy and get a Cherry Coke and a slaw dog, and then I’d visit my dad at the courthouse. My stepmom was head of parks and recreation, so I’d go over there and help ref T-ball games.” We are sitting on the second-story porch of the home he
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF NETFLIX; CURTIS BAKER
shares with his wife, Jennifer, and their two teenage children in Wilmington, just across the water from Wrightsville Beach. The January morning is unseasonably warm and sunny, and Jonas is dressed as if he just stepped off the set of Outer Banks, not as its director but as one of its stars. (How handsome is Jonas Pate? A few days later, our 5-year-old daughter will walk past Mallory’s computer while she is editing photos of Jonas. She will stop in her tracks and ask, “Who is that?”) Jonas’ surfer appeal is not surprising considering that while he primarily grew up in Raeford and attended high school there, he spent summers with his mother along the barrier islands near Charleston. “Outer Banks is an amalgam of different high school environments and things that we went through,” he says. “It helped create the mythical environment of Outer Banks, where we kind of knew what it was like to live feral in a small town with haves and have-nots. Kiawah and James Island were like that. It was poor kids and rich kids, and they would get into fights. And Raeford is still very rural.” Rural, yes, but Jonas and Josh still found plenty to keep them busy. If they were not exploring the marshes and waterways off the coast of Charleston, then they were shooting homemade movies back in Raeford, where they made films of Robin Hood and Hercules and edited them by using two VHS machines. He laughs at the memory of it. “The cuts were terrible and fuzzy,” he says, “and all the special effects and sound were awful.” But he admits that something felt and still feels magical about it. He had always loved film, especially those by Steven Spielberg and Frank Capra, saying that he has “always been drawn to filmmakers who are a little sweeter and have a little more heart.” After college, the brothers found that they still had the desire to make films, but they did not know how to break into the industry. “We didn’t know anyone in the film business,” he says. “We didn’t know anything.” The brothers moved to New York and worked to immerse themselves in the city’s film culture. While interning at the Angelika Film Center, Josh met Peter Glatzer, who was a fundraiser for the Independent Feature Project. They talked about screenwriting, and
the Pate brothers soon had a script that Glatzer was interested in producing. Their first film, The Grave, was shot in eastern North Carolina, and while it did not receive a theatrical release and went straight to video after premiering on HBO, the Pate brothers had their collective foot in the door. In 1997, they made another North Carolina-shot film with Glatzer, The Deceiver, that starred Tim Roth and Renée Zellweger, and it found a larger audience after debuting at the Venice Film Festival and being distributed by MGM. The brothers headed for Los Angeles. Once there, Jonas found himself “taking jobs just to pay the bills” and “getting further and further away from what I actually wanted to do.” One bright spot of his time in LA was meeting his wife, Jennifer, who also worked in the industry as a casting agent. Not long after they met, Jennifer started her own agency, and Jonas went to her for assistance in casting his first television show, Good vs. Evil, in 1999. From there he went on to direct and produce a number of television shows, including the NBC shows Deception and Prime Suspect and ABC’s Blood and Oil. In 2005, the Pate brothers partnered again and returned to North Carolina, where they filmed a single season of the television show Surface, which they co-created. After having kids, Jonas and Jennifer decided to move back to North Carolina in time for their son and daughter to attend high school. Jonas suddenly found himself on the other side of the country from the industry he had devoted his life to for the past 20 years. But then something magical happened. Jonas understood two things: First, he needed to create something that could be shot on the coast so he could stay close to home. Second, he would draw
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from his own experiences to make it real. “When I pulled from my own life instead of the movies I’d seen, it all came together,” he says. “You get to the universal by being super specific.” One big challenge that Jonas and his team encountered was casting the show’s young stars. “We auditioned maybe 500 or 600 kids, and we really had to try to find kids who’d been outside and lived in the outdoors.” Not surprisingly, given the Pate brothers’ personal ties to the show’s geography, nearly every star they cast was from the South, except for one who hailed from Alaska. “Growing up outside, being around boats,” Jonas says, “it’s hard to fake that stuff, and it’s hard to make it look real if it’s not.” I turn off the recorder and Mallory packs up her photography gear, and we say our goodbyes to Jonas. He is leaving soon for another production set. We share a number of mutual friends in Wilmington with him and Jennifer, and we talk about getting together for dinner once he returns. Mallory and I are alone in the driveway when I realize that I have locked the keys in our car. To say that I was embarrassed — and, let’s be honest, panicked — would be an understatement. Mallory pulled out her phone and began searching for a locksmith. I have a flip phone, so I just stood there, weighing the two most logical options: breaking the window with one of Jonas’ landscaping rocks or just leaving the car and walking home, denying it was ever ours. I cannot help thinking that if I were John B., the star of Outer Banks and leader of the Pogues, played by Chase Stokes, I would sneak into a neighbor’s garage and hotwire their car, drive home, procure a backup set of keys, and return for Mallory while passing under the investigating deputy’s nose. Or, if I were Topper, the leader of the Kooks, played by Austin North, I would bang on Jonas’ door and use his phone to call my father’s car service. But I am neither of these characters. I’m just me, so I apologize again to Mallory, and we wait for the locksmith together. SP Wiley Cash is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at UNC Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, is available wherever books are sold.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MALLORY CASH
w r ig ht svi l l e
|creators of n.c.
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Warm up to Spring!
Escape to the
SANDHILLS
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SOUTHPARK Magazine Jan - March 2022 Half Pg Ad.indd 1
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|simple life
The baker’s assistant HOW SWEET IT IS by Jim Dodson
ILLUSTRATION BY GERRY O'NEILL
N
ot long ago, my wife, Wendy, joined 47-million-foot soldiers of the Great Resignation by retiring early from her job as the longtime director of human resources for one of the state’s leading community colleges. She loved her job at the college. It was fun and fulfilling in almost every way. But something more was missing — and revealed — when Covid invaded all our lives. Simply put, it was time to follow her heart and do something she’d envisioned doing even before I met her 25 years ago: to start her own gourmet, custom-baking company called Dessert du Jour. News late last year that an innovative shared community kitchen for food entrepreneurs (called The City Kitch, based in Charlotte) was opening branches in Greensboro and Raleigh propelled her into action. She signed up for the first private kitchen studio and got to work preparing for her debut at a popular outdoor weekend market just before Christmas, selling out everything she baked in a couple of hours. It was a promising start. I should pause here and explain that Wendy is no novice or newcomer to the luxury baking world. Even while masterfully holding down a demanding career over the past two decades, she made stunning custom wedding cakes, luscious pies, artistic cookies and other baked delicacies for friends and neighbors.
As I say, she was already wowing customers in Syracuse, N.Y., when we met during one of my book tours in 1998, and she agreed to go on a formal first date that turned out to be, as I fondly think of it, baptism by baby wedding cakes. To briefly review, on a brisk autumn evening after a seven-hour drive between my house in Maine and her home in Syracuse, I arrived just in time to find Wendy cheerfully boxing up 75 miniature, exquisitely decorated wedding cakes for the daughter of a Syracuse corporate raider. “Oh, good,” she beamed, flushing adorably with a dollop of icing on her button nose, as I appeared. “Want to help me box these up and take them around the neighborhood for me?” How could I refuse? Her neighbors, it seemed, had offered space in their refrigerators and freezers until the cakes could be delivered to the wedding hall in the morning. Truthfully, I don’t recall much about being pressed into service as an impromptu delivery man. I just have this vague memory of carefully boxing up dozens of the beautiful little cakes and bearing them all gussied up with elegant ribbons and bows to her pals around the cul-du-sac. “Oh,” one actually cooed as she looked me over. “You must be the new boyfriend from Maine. Careful you don’t put on 50 pounds. Wendy’s cakes are awesome.” southparkmagazine.com | 61
|simple life I gave her my best Joe Friday impersonation. “Never tasted ’em, ma’am. Just here to help out the baker lady.” Happy to report, the baby wedding cakes made it safely to the wedding hall the next day without incident. The grateful baker lady even thoughtfully saved one of the gorgeous little cakes for the trip home to Maine. I’m embarrassed to say I never sampled it. Cake wasn’t my thing, probably because I grew up with a mama who annually made me a birthday cake from a Betty Crocker box mix and store-bought frosting that tasted like chocolate-flavored sawdust with icing. I gave Wendy’s baby wedding cake to my children, who absolutely loved it. Another issue emerged on my next visit to Syracuse, our critical second date. When I breezed into her kitchen with a bottle of her favorite wine before we went out to dinner, I found her putting the finishing touches on another masterpiece of the baker’s art.
Sitting nearby on her kitchen counter, however, was a beautiful wicker basket full of popcorn, my all-time favorite snack food. As she opened the wine, I grabbed a big handful of what I thought was popcorn. Her lovely face fell. It turned out to be a groom’s cake that only looked like a wicker basket full of popcorn. Profusely apologizing, as I licked the evidence of the crime off my greedy fingers, figuring this might be our last date, I had something of a dessert awakening. “Hey, this is really good. I don’t even like cake. What’s in this?” To my relief, she laughed. “Only the finest Swiss white-chocolate, sour-cream cake with salted buttercream. But no worries. I can make another one pretty quickly. Let’s just get Chinese take-out for dinner while I work.” I’d never seen such composure under fire. Right then and there I decided to propose to this remarkable woman and even confessed my sad history with Betty
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Crocker, wondering if she would do the honor of becoming my wife and someday making me a birthday cake. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll even make you a Betty Crocker box cake if you want it.” Talk about a selfless act of love! This was like inviting a Wine Spectator judge to enjoy a lovely bottle of Boone’s Farm’s Strawberry Hill or LeRoy Neiman to do a doodle of a racehorse! She actually made me a box-mix cake, which I took one taste of and dumped in the garbage. Fortunately, by the time our wedding rolled around two years later, Dame Wendy had schooled me up like a pastry chef’s apprentice, a culinary awakening sealed by my first taste of her incredible old-fashioned caramel cake — which she now makes me every year for my birthday (along with a sour cherry pie). Not surprisingly, the spectacular cake she made for our outdoor wedding beneath a gilded September moon disappeared without a trace before I could even get a taste. Our greedy guests left nary a morsel and even took home extra pieces stuffed in their pockets. Since that time, a long and steady stream of fabulous specialty cakes, cookies, pies, scones, muffins and the best cinnamon rolls ever made have flowed from her ovens to the tables of friends, family and customers from Maine to Carolina. Which is why the creation of Dessert du Jour is such a milestone for the love of my life. She’s never been happier, launching her little dream company at a time we’d all like to see in the rearview mirror as soon as possible. In the meantime, she shares her happiness with others, one gorgeous theme cookie or slice of roasted pecan-studded carrot cake at a time. And for the moment at least, I have the honor and pleasure of still being her sole employee, the one who puts up the tent and tables at the street market and delivers the goods wherever I’m sent around town, a baker’s assistant happily paid in cake tops and leftover cinnamon rolls. I ask you, does life get any sweeter than that? SP Jim Dodson is a writer in Greensboro.
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|bookshelf
March books NOTABLE NEW RELEASES compiled by Sally Brewster
Dilettante: True Tales of Excess, Triumph, and Disaster, by Dana Brown Dana Brown was a 21-year-old college dropout playing in punk bands and partying his way through downtown New York’s early ’90s milieu when he first encountered Graydon Carter, the legendary editor of Vanity Fair. After a handful of brief interactions (mostly with Brown in the role of waiter at Carter’s famous cultural salons he hosted at his home), Carter saw what he believed to be Brown’s untapped potential, and on a whim, hired him as his assistant. Brown instantly became a trusted confidante and witness to all the biggest parties, blowups and takedowns. From inside the famed Vanity Fair Oscar parties to the emerging world of the tech elite, Brown›s job offered him access to some of the most exclusive gatherings and powerful people in the world, and the chance to learn in real time what exactly a magazine editor does — all while trying to stay sober enough from the required party scene attendance to get the job done. Groundskeeping, by Lee Cole In the run-up to the 2016 election, Owen Callahan, an aspiring writer, moves back to Kentucky to live with his politically conservative uncle and grandfather. Eager to clean up his act after wasting time and potential in his early twenties, he takes a job as a groundskeeper at a small local college. In exchange, he is permitted to take a writing course. Here he meets Alma Hazdic, a writer in residence who seems to have everything that Owen lacks — a prestigious position, an Ivy League education, success as a writer. They begin a secret relationship, and as they grow closer, Alma — who comes from a liberal family of Bosnian immigrants — struggles to understand Owen’s fraught relationship with family. With brilliant descriptions of the rural South, Cole’s slow burn of a debut novel achingly explores the definition of home, fate and our shared humanity. Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II, by Alex Kershaw As the Allies raced to defeat Hitler, four men, all in the same
unit, earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism. Maurice “Footsie” Britt, a former professional football player, became the very first American to receive every award for valor in a single war. Michael Daly was a West Point dropout who risked his neck over and over to keep his men alive. Keith Ware would one day become the first and only draftee in history to attain the rank of general before serving in Vietnam. In WWII, Ware owed his life to the finest soldier he ever commanded, a baby-faced Texan named Audie Murphy. In the campaign to liberate Europe, each would gain the ultimate accolade, the Congressional Medal of Honor. Tapping into personal interviews and a wealth of primary-source material, Alex Kershaw has delivered his most gripping account yet of American courage, spanning more than 600 days of increasingly merciless combat, from the deserts of North Africa to the dark heart of Nazi Germany. One Italian Summer, by Rebecca Serle When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and, now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Now, Katy is faced with embarking on the adventure alone, but as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life. Then Carol appears — healthy, sun-tanned, and 30 years old. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue. SP Sally Brewster is the proprietor of Park Road Books. 4139 Park Rd., parkroadbooks.com southparkmagazine.com | 65
PRESENTS
A YEAR OF GLASS CELEBRATION SATURDAY, APRIL 2ND • 10 AM TO 4 PM
We invite you to visit our gallery and celebrate the United Nations’ International Year of Glass 2022 with us! In honor of the celebration, we will be hosting live demonstrations, lectures, and guided tours throughout the event.
Come Gather your imagination! • FREE TO THE PUBLIC • FAMILY FRIENDLY • REFRESHMENTS (WHILE SUPPLIES LAST)
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|well + wise
What is rest? RECOGNIZING YOUR VALUE IN STILLNESS by Juliet Lam Kuehnle
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e have been conditioned to believe that resting means wasting time. Though both may feel passive, there is a crucial difference between restful activities and those that might qualify as wasting time. One way to discern between the two is to consider your energy — is the activity draining or replenishing? We can be more intentional about restoring energy and choosing where and how to invest our time. The thoughtfulness of planning rest can help it feel more like true self-care, rather than something selfish or squandered. We often feel guilty about spending time for ourselves rather than knowing we are worthy of (and need!) rest. Humans are not wired to be on-the-go or productive all the time, yet we wear busy-ness as a badge of honor in a society focused on output. Some people who are used to being on the grind might even feel intimidated by stillness. Slowing down means we experience thoughts or emotions, and this can be threatening if we feel ill-equipped to handle this. It can also be helpful to take an honest assessment of whether you consider your worth to be tied to your achievement. Some people have a hard time considering their identity without productivity and need to learn to believe they have inherent value regardless. One of the best forms of energy restoration is great sleep, according to local sleep expert and licensed psychologist Kristin Daley. “It is important to make sure that you establish a pattern to your day and night that allocates adequate time for sleep,” Daley says. “Sleep is an intensely vulnerable state, so it is essential that the place you sleep is one that affirms your sense of safety.” Daley notes there are three key senses that create sleep onset associations: scent, touch and sound. “Having a bed that is inviting (and made) helps set the stage for good rest, and you need to barricade your sleep environment from sources of unnecessary stress or disruption, such as TV, kids, pets and cellphones. Sleep is regulated through exposure to light during the day and dark at night, which means that your sleep environment should be absolutely dark, and you need to be mindful of light exposures during the one to two hours prior to sleep. Keeping the same wake time each day, regardless of when you fall asleep, will help perpetuate a pattern of sleep and wakefulness that reinforces healthy sleep.” Just like the airlines implore: We have to put on our own oxygen masks before we can help others with theirs. Resting is a similar concept in that we must nourish ourselves in order to show up well. I invite you to give yourself permission to rest and to know your value in this stillness. SP Juliet Kuehnle is the owner and a therapist at Sun Counseling and Wellness. The full interview of Kuehnle’s “Who You Callin’ Crazy?!” interview featuring Michelle Boudin can be found on Instagram @yepigototherapy or wherever you stream podcasts.
Juliet spoke with Michelle Boudin, reporter, freelance writer and SouthPark contributor. Below are excerpts from their interview, lightly edited. Media journalism has looked incredibly different these last few years. And you can’t step away from it all — you are the news. What has your mental health journey during it been like? There’s a lot. Everything I did for self-care was out the window. It’s hard because as reporters, we’re objective and not supposed to let emotions get to us. But, you have to be a human being. I’m really good at compartmentalizing, but at the end of the day, if I’m still not feeling it, it’s time to get out of the business. We’ve had a front row seat to everything going on. For the most part I’m even keel, which helps me do my job, but this has been unprecedented. There has been so much need and so many stories to tell to get to that need, so it’s also been rewarding. Do you think the attitude around wellness in your industry is changing? In media, we typically keep it to ourselves, but this couple of years has definitely been different and more to process. I have a rule with my colleagues/friends that we vent, let it out and move on. My response throughout the pandemic has been “I’m hanging in.” I’m going to be OK, but it’s real and I’m more comfortable saying that now. What else has changed for you? Three days a week, I’m on TV or on camera. I still have to ‘look a certain way,’ but I have let some things go. I was an avid reader before the pandemic. I needed total escapism, but I’ve not been able to focus since the pandemic. I also have had to give myself permission to slow down and rest. I used to be triple-booked and I was always hustling. I have to tell myself it’s OK if I didn’t do anything productive.
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ON VIEW NOW | MINT MUSEUM UPTOWN A celebration of the reinstallation of the Mint’s Craft + Design permanent collection, Craft in the Laboratory: The Science of Making Things is the first installation in the Southeast to explore how craft artists meld science, technology, engineering, and math into their designs. Discover the technical ingenuity behind the beauty of more than 100 objects made of glass, wood, ceramics, metal, polymers, and other materials.
mintmuseum.org CRAFT IN THE LABORATORY: THE SCIENCE OF MAKING THINGS IS GENEROUSLY PRESENTED BY MÜLLER CORPORATION AND THE CRAFT & TRADE ACADEMY. GENEROUS INDIVIDUAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY BETH AND DREW QUARTAPELLA, MARY ANNE (M.A.) ROGERS, ANN AND MICHAEL TARWATER, AND ROCKY AND CURTIS TRENKELBACH. CRAFT IN THE LABORATORY IS ALSO SUPPORTED BY THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS. THE EXHIBITION CATALOGUE IS SUPPORTED BY THE JOHN AND ROBYN HORN FOUNDATION. SPECIAL THANKS TO STARWORKS CERAMICS FOR HAND CRAFTING MATERIALS TO HELP ENHANCE THIS MINT MUSEUM-ORGANIZED EXHIBITION. IMAGE: PATRICK NORGUET (FRENCH, 1969– ), CAPPELLINI (ITALY, 1946– ). RAINBOW CHAIR, 2000, ACRYLIC, 31.5” X 15.125” X 19.5”. GIFT OF LARRY BRADY. 2019.92.3. PHOTO: BRANDON SCOTT
True
original JENNIFER FELTS HELPS A COUPLE RESTORE A 1957 RANCH IN THE CLOISTERS TO ITS MIDCENTURY GLORY. by Cathy Martin photographs by Erin Comerford Miller
Lighting can be a challenge in older homes with 8-foot ceilings, designer Jennifer Felts says. “You don’t have the ceiling height for a lot of large chandeliers.” The lowhanging pendant light in the living room adds a touch of authenticity and sparks conversation.
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The homeowners worked with Lauren Harkey from Hodges Taylor Gallery to connect with Greensboro-based artist Brittany Søndberg, who created the metal sculpture in front of the house.
F
inding an authentic midcentury home in Charlotte that can be adapted for modern living can be a lot like finding a proverbial needle in a haystack. That was the experience Sean and Jackie Jones had when they began searching for a new home several years ago. The couple had lived in a two-story traditional house in Dilworth for 21 years. With their children grown, the empty nesters were looking to downsize. After developing an interest in midcentury architecture and design, they set their sights on finding a historic home from that era that could be renovated without significant modifications to the layout. The problem is, in Charlotte, such homes aren’t easy to find. southparkmagazine.com | 71
“Over the course of about 18 months, we maybe looked at five houses,” Jackie says. One of those homes was in The Cloisters neighborhood off Providence Road. The home was larger and more modern than they wanted, but the couple knew right away they’d found the right location. “We picked the neighborhood before we picked the house,” Jackie says. Soon after, their real-estate agent contacted the owners of another home in the neighborhood — a corporate rental property — and it turned out they were willing to sell. The couple loved the layout and the size of the home, but a series of renovations over the years had created a mishmash of architectural styles. “The house was not in great shape,” Sean says. “We could see the potential in the house, but there was very little left that was original to the 1957 design.” Working with Alter Architect’s Studio and Spoke & Hammer Construction Co., they realized the home would need to be gutted and decided also to enlist a designer to help with the project. A friend of Jackie’s suggested Jennifer Felts, owner of Habitude Interiors. “They wanted to live somewhere different and honor the style of the house,” says Felts, who had previously renovated and sold her own midcentury home. “The home had been a rental for a long time,” she adds. “The house — it was just kind of confused. … What we did was just strip everything back to what was originally there.” After peeling back the layers, in order to modernize the home for 21st-century living, the owners needed to make a few structural changes. They installed large windows
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Custom kitchen cabinets are topped with terrazzo countertops for an authentic SOUTHPARK midcentury look.
“Over many years, we have enjoyed supporting Penland School of Craft, and we very much wanted our renovated home to reflect our commitment to regional artists,” Jackie Jones says. For the dining room, Asheville-based artist Thomas Campbell created a new steel base for the 6-foot round tabletop, replacing traditional Queen Anne-style legs. The couple commissioned glass artist Nate Cotterman to design the light fixture over the table. Designer Jennifer Felts had the vintage midcentury chairs imported from Morentz, a Netherlands-based studio that specializes in midcentury design.
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across the back of the home to let in more light and sliding doors to better access the pool area. A wall was removed to improve the flow between the kitchen and dining room, while another wall was added to separate the den from the laundry room. Still, the homeowners managed to preserve the existing footprint of the 2,700-square-foot home. When it came to the design, the homeowners sought to incorporate authentic period finishes and styles. “At the same time, they also had some family pieces they wanted to bring, and their house in Dilworth was definitely more traditional,” Felts says. “It’s a balance, because we didn’t want it to look like a time capsule, but we also wanted to be true to the period,” Jackie adds, noting that the furnishings are a blend of vintage pieces and reproductions. Felts also knew the design would need to blend harmoniously with the many meaningful works of art the homeowners have collected over time. “Because they had a lot of colorful artwork, we knew we weren’t going to go overboard with color in the furniture because you don’t want it to compete,” the designer says. Though the couple are originally from Tennessee, they’ve lived in their adopted state since 1993 and are passionate about supporting North Carolina artists. “We have been going to Penland [School of Craft] for a number of years and have gotten to know a lot of artists there,” Jackie says. In the dining room, Asheville-based artist Thomas Campbell created a new steel base for the 6-foot round tabletop, replacing traditional Queen Anne-
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“With everybody working from home these days, [the homeowners] needed a good dedicated space for that,” says designer Jennifer Felts. “They also didn’t want a TV in the main part of the house, so the den is their media room as well as their work-from-home space.” Homeowners Sean and Jackie Jones worked closely with carpenter Doug Kalna of Sole Furnishings to design the built-in desk (opposite page). “We wanted to be true to the midcentury design, and it just kind of fits,” Sean says. “It almost feels like it’s been here the entire time.” southparkmagazine.com | 75
style legs. Glass artist Nate Cotterman, a former Penland artist in residence, designed the light fixture over the table. Mixing old and new furnishings and incorporating a diverse collection of art could have been daunting, but in this case, the homeowners and designer were in sync. “[Jenn] was so good and so organized — she listened and she got us,” Sean says. “It was really just a fabulous experience working with her.” According to Felts, having so many original works of art augmenting the design only made her job easier. “It’s great when your clients have great taste.” SP
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Louvers in the pergola can be controlled via remote control for a rainproof cover. Right: A door was added to provide easy access from the guest bathroom to existing pool area and outdoor shower.
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PHOTO COURTESY OF NC STATE STUDENT MEDIA / UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES PHOTOGRAPHS
If you can call it a game REMEMBERING THE WONDROUS DAYS OF ACC BASKETBALL by Ed Southern
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f you can call it a game, my buddies and I have begun to play: no points or score, no goals or winners, no final horn, no written rules. Our field of play is a text thread. Our game time is whenever the spirit moves one of us, trusting each other not to be the guy who texts in the middle of the night. How do we play? Simple: Name an Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball player who played between 1982 and 1998. Why do we play? That might be simple, too.
Malcolm Mackey. John Crotty. Elden Campbell. Tom Sheehey. The player can’t be too obscure — no checking the internet for walk-ons and benchwarmers — but they can’t be too well-known, either. There’s no fun in naming the first players everyone thinks of when they think of that era of ACC basketball: Michael Jordan, Ralph Sampson, Len Bias, Christian Laettner, Tim Duncan, Vince Carter. Those guys entered the consciousness enough to stick around long after their last March Madness. Their highlights still show up on TV, whenever the ACC or their school or some other advertiser wants to weaponize nostalgia and the idea of tradition. Remember them? Remember that dunk, that shot, that One Shining Moment? Remember how long and how much you have enjoyed this sport, this product? Our game’s goal is to trigger memories, too. Our point is to call up a name that spent three to four years at or near the forefront of our minds, and then left. To play our game, we name a player whose name and face and number and motion we once thought about a lot, and since haven’t thought of once.
Walt Williams. Kelsey Weems. Pete Chilcutt. Bruce Dalrymple. Why 1982 to 1998? Those aren’t strict limits, but for us they mark an era. In 1982, UNC won the national title, its first since 1957 and the ACC’s first since N.C. State’s in 1974, when some of us were toddlers and some of us weren’t yet born. By 1982, we were old enough to remember not just the championship game — Patrick Ewing’s
goaltending, Michael Jordan’s jumper, poor Fred Brown’s errant pass to James Worthy — and where we were when we watched it, but that season. We were old enough to be aware of basketball as more than bright, fast colors; the carnival sounds of cheering fans and pep bands; and “Sail with the Pilot,” the ubiquitous jingle of the Jefferson Pilot Corp., lead sponsor of regional ACC telecasts. We were old enough to know something about how to play basketball. We were old enough to be aware of ACC basketball as a thing unto itself, to begin to absorb something of its weight and meaning in the suburbanizing Sun-Belt North Carolina where we all were born and were growing up. I was old enough to have had a friend come home with me from school on Quarterfinal Friday of the ACC Tournament, when the teachers fought over the big TV carts from the A/V room so they and we could watch the games in class. As we waited in our kitchen for his mom to pick him up, he mentioned that his dad was at the Tournament and had invited him to come, too, but he’d said he’d rather come hang out with me. “You did!?” my mother, my father, and I all exclaimed, shocked, even a little appalled.
Jeremy Hyatt. Timo Makkonen. Olden Polynice. Anthony Teachey. In 1998, the youngest among us graduated from college, from Wake Forest, from the ACC. UNC made the Final Four; Duke, the Elite Eight. By 1998, their rivalry had established its hegemony over the conference, in results but moreso in media coverage. A new or casual fan could watch an entire season on ESPN and be forgiven for failing to realize that Tobacco Road was far longer than the 10 miles of Highway 15/501 between Chapel Hill and Durham. In 1998 Antawn Jamison, who years before had been a Charlotte summer league teammate of my brother’s, won the Naismith, Wooden and practically every other Player of the Year award. Between Wake’s 1996 ACC title, and Florida State’s in 2012, either UNC or Duke won the Tournament every single year but one. Between 1982 and 2019, ACC teams won 13 national titles, but only 3 of those were won by a team other than the Tar Heels or the Blue Devils. Those famous southparkmagazine.com | 79
miles between the Dean Dome and Cameron Indoor sucked all the oxygen out of ACC basketball. In 1998, Wake Forest’s back-to-back Tournament titles were fresh in our minds, and the Heels/Devils dominance didn’t seem so assured. The ACC hadn’t expanded beyond nine teams, in a fairly cohesive regional spread between College Park and Tallahassee, so every team still played every other team twice, home and away, each regular season. The Tournament was still only four days, Quarterfinal Friday still intact. Maryland hadn’t left for the Big Ten’s football-driven TV money. Our corner of college basketball still felt like a community, the season like a ritual, a reminder, an assurance through the winters, which still were cold.
Sam Ivy. Keith Gatlin. Mark West. Cal Boyd. The goal is that spark of recognition, yes, and the quick trip down Memory Lane (which in this case is a spur off Tobacco Road). This little game of ours, though, also serves to strengthen bonds, sustain connections, and — sure — show off a bit. We started playing the week before the 2020-21 college basketball season began, nine months after the pandemic had shut down the ACC Tournament and canceled March Madness. We’d seen each other some, at a distance and outdoors, but for the first time in more than a decade none of us had tailgated together, sat in the stands together, watched any games together. We didn’t expect to do so again anytime soon, certainly not that basketball season, a season that might not play out to the end, a season they might should not play at all. We’re a homogenous group of seven, with two pairs of brothers who all went to Wake Forest, plus three Tar Heels. We all are North Carolinians, with roots going back generations. Four have known each other since their teens, when they were counselors together at a Baptist summer camp. Two of those roomed together during graduate school at Duke and were looking for a third. One of them had a younger brother who knew my younger brother at Wake, and knew he was going to Duke for graduate school and connected them. I’d hang out when I came to the Triangle for work, and crash on a sofa they still can’t believe I was brave or foolish enough to sleep on. Four of us now live in Winston-Salem, one in Raleigh, one in Tryon, one outside Goldsboro. All of us are sports fans. We have other interests, even passions, and often have long and deep conversations
about books, music, movies, whatever: Part of what I value about these friends is their taste, their intellect, their ability to talk about Walker Percy, Ron Rash, Rhiannon Giddens, Superchunk, Terrence Malick and Mike Krzyzewski, over multiple beers in a single gathering, or over the miles of a day hike. Most of us, in fact, hardly follow ACC basketball anymore. The four Deacons have suffered through a decade of dreadfulness, Wake fielding teams who played with so little balance or spacing that they looked like pickup players who’d ended up together at random, not even knowing one another’s names. Conference expansion has made college basketball feel reduced, ditched the home-and-away ritual of the season, made Tobacco Road feel like a cul-de-sac. The one-anddone rule has stolen any sense of connection to the biggest stars: I sometimes forget that Zion Williamson and Kyrie Irving spent a season at Duke. The other five, in fact, follow European football, particularly the English Premier League, as avidly as any sport now, and spend the winter watching more NBA than ACC. (Four of us grew up playing soccer; one went to a Division II school on a soccer scholarship.) Still and always, though, ACC basketball conjures up our childhoods, calls back to where we came from. We all still live in North Carolina, each an easy drive from the place where we grew up. Where we grew up, though, is as gone from us as if we had come from overseas.
Craig Neal. Alaa Abdelnaby. Delaney Rudd. You probably think I’m thinking of where we cheered on The Dukes of Hazzard, tearing around the backroads in a souped-up Dodge they called the “General Lee,” the Confederate battle flag painted on the roof, the opening bars of “Dixie” blaring when they blew the horn. You might think I’m thinking of where Dad went to work while Mom stayed home and had dinner ready by 6. But I, speaking only for myself, am thinking of the place where we cheered on The Dukes of Hazzard, each of them “just a good ol’ boy . . . fightin’ the system like a true modern-day Robin Hood.” I’m thinking of the woods and fields and creeks that friend and I played in after school, in between games on Quarterfinal Friday, and how they’re long since cleared and leveled and culverted for McMansions. I don’t blame you. Lots of people have confused the one for the other, the loss of the one for the loss of the other. Most of the North Carolina we grew up in should be gone — but it’s not. Some of that North Carolina we should have kept — but it’s gone.
Our corner of college basketball still felt like a community, the season like a ritual, a reminder, an assurance through the winters, which still were cold.
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Robert Brickey. Billy King. Cozell McQueen. Tony Massenburg.
If we wanted to remember the highlights, the indelible moments, we’d text each other those: Lorenzo’s put-back, Laettner’s turnaround, Randolph’s crossover 3. If we wanted to remember the highlights, we’d text each other YouTube links. We already remember the highlights — the thrills, the shocks — and will until our memories fail, which is why they’re highlights in the first place. We want to remember more. We want to remember the shag carpet we sat on in front of the console TVs. We want to remember the urgent squeak of those lumbering A/V carts when our teachers wheeled them into the room at a trot, triumphant and eager and a little worried someone might hijack the TV in the hall. We want to remember our whole families gathered around, hanging on every bounce. We want to remember when ACC basketball seemed wondrous, and vital, and ours, belonging to our own backyards. Scholars and artists recognize and revere this capacity for transportation in other means, food and music and visual representation and rituals of culture and religion. We accept and respect that some media can take us beyond nostalgia and into deep memory, where our animating narratives reside and sometimes rearrange. Sports, too, perform this function, serve as a vessel for memory, a comfort for the present, a hope for the future. If W. H. Auden was right that “Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance,” then what else does a game-winning free throw do? If art is the beautiful expression of human creativity, with the power to stir deep feelings and thoughts, then how can a 360 dunk, a step-back 3, a no-look assist in traffic not be art? Art demands creativity but also discipline, inspiration and dogged practice, perseverance and courage. So do sports: the courage of a 6-foot-tall guard driving the lane against a 7-foot center, of a player setting his feet to take a charge, of a young person who steps to the line with the game on the line and the eyes of millions upon them. Maya Angelou once wrote, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” Angelou also lived the last 32 years of her life in Winston-Salem, teaching at Wake Forest, and in a 2012 letter described herself as “a Tar Heel (but not a Tar Heel).” Take that, Carolina. You got trash-talked by Maya Angelou.
these threads I’ve unwound, make my closing argument that this is more than a flimsy anecdote I’ve overloaded, and our texts are more than a silly game of nostalgia, if we can call them a game at all. I’m supposed to, but I don’t know that I can. Or, rather, I could, but I don’t know that I want to. Maybe we started playing this game — if you can call it a game — not just to keep present what we missed and were missing in that year of pandemic, but to remember and even celebrate the courage, the perseverance, the grind of those players who wouldn’t go on to NBA stardom, to shoe deals and sponsorships. Maybe we’re reflecting our privilege. Maybe we just want the smiles of warm nostalgia, like the mid-life men we are. Maybe we want a break from the here, now, and its demands. Maybe we just need the distraction.
If art is the beautiful expression of human creativity, with the power to stir deep feelings and thoughts, then how can a 360 dunk, a stepback 3, a no-look assist in traffic not be art?
Tom Hammonds. Joe Smith. Buck Williams. Marc Blucas. Here, now, I’m supposed to tell you What It Means, tie up all
Brian Oliver. Bryant Stith. Robert Siler. Chucky Brown. I don’t know how long we’ll keep it going, this silly game of ours, if you can call it a game. Our lineup, so to speak, is large but not limitless. At some point, our memories or the team rosters will run out, nothing left but the all-timers and the internet. We might stop when the pandemic does, when we can expect to go to games again or gather together to watch. We might stop when my buddies read this, and give me a hard time for taking something fun and overthinking it. “Dammit, Ed,” the text will read, “if we wanted to think, we’d send each other the names of professors.”
Steve Hale. Serge Zwikker. Todd Fuller. Junior Burrough. Or we might keep going for as long as we can. We’re as close now to retirement age as we are to college age, which seems both yesterday and lifetimes ago. Before we know it, then, we might be old men, with canes and Depends, fumbling with our now-unimaginable communications devices, using the names of other men to keep alive our friendships and our memories. I hope those other men will be old, then, too. I hope that we’ll all have the chance to be old. SP
Ed Southern is the author of Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South. It’s available wherever books are sold. southparkmagazine.com | 81
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River rush
NESTLED DEEP IN A GORGE JUST OUTSIDE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK, THE NANTAHALA OUTDOOR CENTER HAS GROWN FROM A SMALL ROADSIDE RAFTING CENTER TO A MAJOR ATTRACTION HOSTING 1 MILLION VISITORS A YEAR. by Jennings Cool
E
arly bypassers saw the Tote ’n Tarry as a simple roadside motel and gas station saddling a stretch of the Nantahala River in Swain County, surely one of the prettiest spots in North Carolina. The late Horace Holden Sr. saw the location as an opportunity to create what has become an iconic tourism venue set amid a national forest and a short drive from the eastern entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Holden grew up in Atlanta and became a lifelong canoeing enthusiast who started a popular summer camp along the Chattahoochee River near the Georgia capital city. With a vision to entertain visitors with safe, exhilarating outdoor adventure, he purchased the property in 1971 and asked his longtime friends John Payson and Aurelia Turpin Kennedy to help start an outdoor retreat that would enable visitors to paddle through the river’s rapids. After spending one summer in Bryson City, the Kennedys were hooked on the area and made the decision to move from their home in Georgia. In 1972, they opened Nantahala Outdoor Center, which has since expanded to seven river outpost locations in four states and today hosts about 1 million visitors annually. It’s a marked change from the early days, when employees would prepare meals for guests, run a guided trip on the river and clean a hotel room, all in the same day. Visitors could paddle the Nantahala and Chattooga rivers, shop around the convenience store or grab a bite at River’s End Restaurant along the banks of the Nantahala. Employees wore all the hats. One of them was the Kennedys’ daughter, Catherine, who started working at NOC at age 16.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF NANTAHALA OUTDOOR CENTER southparkmagazine.com | 83
Previously a small hotel and gas station called the Tote ’n Tarry, Nantahala Outdoor Center, shown top left circa-1980, was founded by Horace Holden Sr. and Payson and Aurelia Kennedy, bottom left, in 1972.
Paddling whitewater rapids is a Kennedy family tradition — something they did nearly every weekend. “I love most activities that are outside and in the woods,” says Kennedy, who at 65 still works at NOC as a river guide. Her love affair with water started at age 8 when she took her first canoe trip with her father’s Boy Scout troop. Both her parents were introduced to water at a young age. Her dad was a canoeing counselor as a teenager at a YMCA camp, and Aurelia was known as the first woman to run a canoe down Nantahala Falls. They both grew up in Atlanta and met at a church camp in their early teens. NOC’s 500-acre main campus in Swain County has served as the playground for three generations of Kennedy bloodline, and Catherine has watched her family grow up on its soil. She lives in the middle of the Bryson City campus, which is traversed by the Appalachian Trail. “My commute to work is five minutes if I walk slowly,” Kennedy says. Her love for paddling didn’t stop after her first canoe float years earlier with her father. Before moving to North Carolina, paddling 84
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was second nature. “I loved it. Whitewater was what I was most excited about in the world.” Her passion for the water continues today, as she takes groups down the Nantahala River to battle whitewater rapids. She also supervises NOC’s vehicle fleet of more than 60 buses, drives the buses at the main campus when needed and oversees river permitting for NOC. NOC’s guests range from the one-trip visitor who comes and goes after a rafting exploration to people who lodge for a week and take advantage of the area’s many hiking and biking trails. Its main campus offers rafting, zip lining, mountain biking, dining at two restaurants, shopping, several lodging opportunities and more. The busy season is during June, July and August, but Kennedy says some of the most fun times are the shoulder seasons in the spring and the fall when there are fewer crowds. The NOC has also served as a key training site for paddlers, including more than 20 Olympians. The most famous are gold medalists Joe Jacobi and Scott Strausbaugh, along with Evy Leibfarth, who at 17 became the youngest female to compete in the Olympics’
canoe single slalom competition at Tokyo in 2021. She grew up in Bryson City and trained at the NOC. “Without Horace’s visionary attitudes the NOC would never have come into existence, and my life along with so many others would certainly look completely different,” Kennedy says. Though last summer marked the center’s 50th season in operation, the celebration continues this year with events, festivals and adventures all year long. While Kennedy says she isn’t quite sure what her job title is today, she carries 50 years of background information on how NOC operates. She guided NOC’s first trip of its golden season last year, which was also her 65th birthday. “It was a special trip.” To make its adventures more accessible, NOC expanded beyond its original campus, adding locations along the Nantahala, Chattahoochee, Ocoee, French Broad, Chattooga and Pigeon rivers. “We do rivers really well,” says Leigh Boike, executive vice president of NOC. Its river outpost locations are spread across
the Carolinas, Georgia and Tennessee, with outfitter stores in Gatlinburg, Asheville’s Omni Grove Park Inn and at the main campus in Bryson City. About 7 million guests have taken a whitewater rafting trip since NOC’s opening. “NOC is one of the largest outfitters probably in the United States, definitely in the Southeast,” Boike says. She has been visiting the Bryson City area since she was 8 years old and has worked for the outfitter since 1998. NOC hires about 700 staff members each year, with roughly 150 full-time and the rest seasonal. The Bryson City campus, about 200 miles west of Charlotte, employs about 450 people in-season. The Queen City is one of NOC’s top markets. Much has changed since the Kennedys started NOC. But even after 50 years of working in the business, Kennedy — who is one of about 30 owners, mostly current or former employees — still loves taking people out on North Carolina freshwater. She still paddles — for work and for play — several times a week, depending on the time of year. SP southparkmagazine.com | 85
Celebrating NOC’s 50th
Nantahala Outdoor Center will kick off the season on the Nantahala River on March 14 with its first rafting trips of the season. On April 23-24, the annual Spring Fling celebration will be marked by the Upper Cascades release — a controlled water release that ensures an adequate water level for boating. The family-friendly event will include live entertainment, gear and apparel sales, demos and more. International adventures
NOC has a long history with international trips, dating back to the late 1970s with a trip on the Usumacinta River in Guatemala and Mexico. The outfitter offered a variety of international trips through the 1990s. In September, NOC announced plans to relaunch similar adventure tours in honor of its 50th anniversary. While there are concerns with traveling internationally due to Covid-19, NOC is taking precautions and evaluating each day. This year, NOC plans to offer 12 all-inclusive adventure trips with various itineraries. Destinations include British Columbia, Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Iceland and Zimbabwe.
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Each year, SouthPark Magazine’s sister publication, Business North Carolina, publishes a list of the state’s Legal Elite, attorneys chosen by their peers as being top in their field. To identify the 21st Legal Elite class, Business North Carolina contracted DataJoe Research, a Boulder, Colo.-based software and research company specializing in data collection and verification. DataJoe facilitated an online peer-voting process of all active members of the N.C. Bar. Attorneys without an active license or who had disciplinary infractions were excluded from the list. Lawyers can’t vote for themselves or for members of the Legal Elite Hall of Fame (previous top vote-getters in a particular specialty). Votes for attorneys from another firm are weighted more heavily than votes for colleagues at the same firm. For research/methodology questions, contact the research team at surveys@datajoe.com. This year, about 870 lawyers were selected as Legal Elite. In this section, we highlight Legal Elite winners practicing in selected specialties in the Charlotte region. To view the full list, visit businessnc.com/legal-elite.
CRIMINAL Kathleen Cunningham Clary Rawls Scheer Clary Mingo PLLC, Charlotte Christopher A. Connelly Christopher A. Connelly, Charlotte David C. Driscoll RTS Law Group, Charlotte John Anderson Fagg Jr. Moore & Van Allen PLLC, Charlotte Christopher C. Fialko Fialko Law PLLC, Charlotte Gael Gilles Gilles Law PLLC, Charlotte William Robinson Heroy Goodman, Carr, Laughrun, Levine & Greene PLLC, Charlotte George V. Laughrun III Goodman, Carr, Laughrun, Levine & Greene PLLC, Charlotte Thomas Courtenay Leitner Jr. Leitner Bragg & Griffin PLLC, Monroe Carole Melissa Owen Tin Fulton Walker & Owen PLLC, Charlotte Gregory J. Plumides Plumides Romano & Johnson PC, Charlotte Bill Powers Powers Law Firm PA, Charlotte 92
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Matthew Gridley Pruden Tin Fulton Walker & Owen PLLC, Charlotte Jeremy Barrett Smith Pinnacle Law, Charlotte Noell P. Tin Tin Fulton Walker & Owen PLLC, Charlotte
HALL OF FAME James F. Wyatt III Wyatt & Blake LLP, Charlotte (2005) James P. Cooney III Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC, Charlotte (2008) T. Patrick Matus II Essex Richards PA, Charlotte (2010) David S. Rudolf Rudolf, Widenhouse & Fialko, Charlotte (2011) Peter C. Anderson Beveridge & Diamond PC, Charlotte (2013) Michael J. Greene Goodman, Carr, Laughrun, Levine & Greene PLLC, Charlotte (2014) Robert K. Corbett III The Law Offices of Harold Cogdell Jr. PC, Charlotte (2015)
Ryan T. Smith RTS Law Group, Charlotte (2016) George V. Laughrun II Goodman, Carr, Laughrun, Levine & Greene PLLC, Charlotte (2017)
FAMILY Stephen K. Allinger Jr. David Self Law PLLC, Cornelius Sarah Bennett Sodoma Law PC, Charlotte Anna N. Blood Blood Law PLLC, Waxhaw Laura B. Burt Wofford Burt PLLC, Charlotte Suzanne Kramer Canali Legal Directories Publishing Co. Inc., Charlotte Amanda M. Cubit Dozier Miller Law Group, Charlotte Nicholas Lee Cushing Miller Bowles Cushing PLLC, Charlotte Lindsey Sink Dasher Dasher Law PLLC, Matthews Lindsey Ann Easterling Easterling Law PLLC, Matthews Candace Strickland Faircloth Collins Family Law Group, Monroe Jonathan Daniel Feit James McElroy Diehl PA, Charlotte
LEGAL ELITE 2022 Ashley Church Foley Cordes Law PLLC, Charlotte Maren Tallent Funk Godley Glazer & Funk PLLC, Mooresville Seth Andrew Glazer Godley Glazer & Funk PLLC, Mooresville Jordan Marie Griffin Leitner Bragg & Griffin PLLC, Monroe James Gregory Hatcher Hatcher Law Group PC, Charlotte Penelope Lazarou Hefner Sodoma Law PC, Charlotte Paul Doughton Horton Sodoma Law PC, Charlotte Elizabeth Johnstone James Offit Kurman Attorneys At Law, Charlotte Irene Patrice King King Collaborative Family Law, Charlotte Julia Anne Kirby Marcellino & Tyson PLLC, Charlotte Carolyn Lovejoy Krueger-Andes Hamilton Stephens Steele + Martin PLLC, Charlotte Dara Duncan Larson Duncan Larson Law PLLC, Charlotte
Kyle Wesley LeBlanc Hamilton Stephens Steele + Martin PLLC, Charlotte Alyssa Michelle Levine Alyssa Levine Law, Charlotte Lauren Vaughn Lewis Essex Richards PA, Charlotte David Michael McCleary Dozier Miller Law Group, Charlotte Christopher D. Miller Miller Bowles Cushing PLLC, Charlotte Caroline Trapeni Mitchell James McElroy Diehl PA, Charlotte Lynna Palmer Moen Moen Legal Counsel, Charlotte Jennifer Paternostro Moore Marcellino & Tyson PLLC, Charlotte Gena G. Morris James McElroy Diehl PA, Charlotte Katherine Adkins Rech Rech Law PC, Charlotte Mark D. Riopel Hamilton Stephens Steele + Martin PLLC, Charlotte
Courtney Hamer Smith Tin Fulton Walker & Owen PLLC, Charlotte Tonya Graser Smith GraserSmith PLLC, Charlotte Ketan P. Soni Soni Brendle PLLC, Charlotte Isla N. Tabrizi Collins Family Law Group, Monroe John Paul Tsahakis James McElroy Diehl PA, Charlotte Meghan A. Van Vynckt Cordes Law PLLC, Charlotte Theresa Eileen Viera Modern Legal, Charlotte Tamela T. Wallace Tamela Wallace PA, Charlotte Anna N. Westmoreland Westmoreland Legal, Charlotte Megan Somers White Modern Legal, Charlotte Mallory Ann Willink Conrad Trosch & Kemmy, Charlotte James H. Wofford Wofford Burt PLLC, Charlotte
CONGRATULATIONS TO TONYA GRASER SMITH FOR LEGAL ELITE 2022! DIVORCE IS NOT SIMPLE. YO U N E E D A S P EC I A L I ST. Tonya Graser Smith is a North Carolina Board Certified Specialist in Family Law and has helped families move through divorce her entire legal career. Tonya stands by your side throughout the preparations, during the negotiations, and – if necessary- in court. Tonya’s professional knowledge and expertise minimizes the stress and strain on your family by helping you resolve delicate and complex legal matters. GraserSmith, PLLC is your Charlotte
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LEGAL ELITE 2022 Rebecca Bartholomew Wofford Wofford Burt PLLC, Charlotte
HALL OF FAME Richard D. Stephens Dozier, Miller, Pollard & Murphy LLP, Charlotte (2009) Stan Brown Hamilton Stephens Steele + Martin PLLC, Charlotte (2013) Rob Blair Essex Richards PA, Charlotte (2016)
REAL ESTATE Benjamin Edward Dean Culp Elliott & Carpenter PLLC, Charlotte Hunter Sutton Edwards Womble Bond Dickinson (US) LLP, Charlotte Randall Wayne Faircloth Regent Law, Charlotte Jeffrey W. Glenney Moore &Van Allen PLLC, Charlotte Jonathan Peter Goldberg Alexander Ricks PLLC, Charlotte Jonathan Robert Hankin Hankin Law PLLC, Charlotte
Michael Philip Hebert Moore & Van Allen PLLC, Charlotte Solomon Ibekwe Hejirika Jr. Knipp Law Office PLLC, Charlotte Janeen Miller Hogue The Miller-Hogue Law Firm PC, Charlotte Susan K. Irvin Irvin Law Group, Cornelius Kent D. Jones Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, Charlotte Joshua Townsend Knipp Knipp Law Office PLLC, Cornelius Richard G. Long Jr. Perry, Bundy, Plyler & Long LLP, Monroe Sarah Robinson Lucente Kunkleman Lucente PLLC, Charlotte Moses Luski Shumaker Loop & Kendrick LLP, Charlotte John T. Maheras Essex Richards PA, Charlotte Gary Thomas McDermott McDermott Law PLLC, Waxhaw Catherine Bell Mitchell Fox Rothschild LLP, Charlotte
Peter F. Morgan Peter F. Morgan PLLC, Charlotte John F. Renger III Renger Reynolds PLLC, Charlotte Lawrence Joseph Shaheen Jr. The McIntosh Law Firm, Davidson Caroline Wannamaker Sink Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson PA, Charlotte Gary W. Swindell Swindell & Visalli PLLC, Charlotte Daniel A. Terry The Terry Law Firm PLLC, Charlotte R. Susanne Todd Johnston Allison & Hord PA, Charlotte William T. Wallace McMillan, Psaroudis & Markey, PA, Charlotte
HALL OF FAME Brent A. Torstrick Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson PA, Charlotte (2006) Timothy G. Sellers Sellers, Hinshaw, Ayers, Dortch & Lyons PA, Charlotte (2010) George W. Sistrunk III Hamilton Stephens Steele + Martin PLLC, Charlotte (2012) Diana R. Palecek Fox Rothschild LLP, Charlotte (2021)
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H. Chalk Broughton Jr. Poyner Spruill LLP, Charlotte Lynn F. Chandler Shumaker Loop & Kendrick LLP, Charlotte Christian P. Cherry Crisp Cherry McCraw PLLC, Charlotte Andrea Christina Chomakos McGuireWoods LLP, Charlotte Charles M. Crisp Crisp Cherry McCraw PLLC, Charlotte Stephanie Camp Daniel Shumaker Loop & Kendrick LLP, Charlotte Brooks Jaffa* Cranford, Buckley, Schultze, Tomchin, Allen & Buie PA, Charlotte Kelly Rains Jesson Jesson & Rains PLLC, Charlotte Warren P. Kean Shumaker Loop & Kendrick LLP, Charlotte David T. Lewis Johnston Allison & Hord PA, Charlotte *2022 category winner
LEGAL ELITE 2022 Jeffery James Morris Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP, Charlotte Andrew Lamberson Nesbitt Nesbitt Law PLLC, Charlotte Holly B. Norvell Johnston Allison & Hord PA, Charlotte Richard Anthony Orsbon Orsbon & Fenninger LLP, Charlotte Erin Bray Patterson Erin Patterson Law PLLC, Charlotte Heidi Elizabeth Royal Heidi E. Royal Law PLLC, Charlotte Maria Magdalena Satterfield Satterfield Legal, Charlotte Carolyn G. Shaw Kirk Palmer & Thigpen PA, Charlotte N. Lucille “Lucy” Siler Johnston Allison & Hord PA, Charlotte Holly Simpson Simpson Law Firm, Fort Mill Bradley T. Van Hoy Moore & Van Allen PLLC, Charlotte
HALL OF FAME W. Curtis Elliott Jr. Culp Elliott & Carpenter PLLC, Charlotte (2004) Ray S. Farris Johnston Allison & Hord PA, Charlotte (2005) Christy Eve Reid (died May 2014) Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson PA, Charlotte (2009) Graham D. Holding Jr. Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson PA, Charlotte (2012) Debra L. Foster Foster Royal PA, Charlotte (2017) Jessica Mering Hardin Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson PA, Charlotte (2021)
Travis Styres Hinman Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson PA, Charlotte Anna Gray LeBlanc Offit Kurman Attorneys At Law, Charlotte Benjamin Leighton Alexander Ricks PLLC, Charlotte Carmela Mastrianni Hamilton Stephens Steele + Martin PLLC, Charlotte Jovanna Nicole Mastro Marcellino & Tyson PLLC, Charlotte Kelsey Nicole Hendry Mayo Poyner Spruill LLP, Charlotte Lauren Trask Millovitsch Creamer Millovitsch PLLC, Davidson Mary Fletcher King Mullikin Johnston Allison & Hord PA, Charlotte Sarah Hayward Negus Moore & Van Allen PLLC, Charlotte Nader Saeed Raja Moore & Van Allen PLLC, Charlotte C. Cowden W. Rayburn Moore & Van Allen PLLC, Charlotte Joseph Robert Shealy Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, Charlotte
HALL OF FAME J. Christian Stevenson Kirk Palmer & Thigpen PA, Charlotte (2012) Aaron Lay Hamilton Stephens Steele + Martin PLLC, Charlotte (2016) Matthew T. Marcellino Marcellino & Tyson PLLC, Charlotte (2018) Nancy S. Litwak Rosenwood, Rose & Litwak PLLC, Charlotte (2019) Holden B. Clark Holden B. Clark, Attorney at Law PLLC, Gastonia (2021)
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YOUNG GUNS (UNDER 40) Timaura Evadney Barfield Shumaker Loop & Kendrick LLP, Charlotte Carl Jeffress Burchette* Rosenwood, Rose & Litwak PLLC, Charlotte Kathleen “Katie” D.B. Burchette Johnston Allison & Hord PA, Charlotte Kyle Andrew Frost Offit Kurman Attorneys At Law, Charlotte Tara Austin Harrawood Marcellino & Tyson PLLC, Charlotte
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Top 5% Rated Sports & Entertainment Attorney
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Pediatrics Symphony Park
swirl A monthly guide to Charlotte’s parties and galas
Bev and John Lassiter
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIEL COSTON
Don Gately, Chris Walker and Chet Walker
Marcus Jones, Larken Egleston and Kerr Putney
Chuck Stauffer and Jim Tennille
Good Fellows Club Annual Luncheon NASCAR Hall Of Fame Dec. 8, 2021
The Good Fellows Club returned to the Crown Ballroom for its 104th annual meeting. Along with greeting old friends and raising money for local charities, the event served as a heartfelt farewell to its longest-serving member, William Barnhardt, (pictured center) who passed away three days later at the age of 93 and was a beacon in Charlotte’s civic community.
Carol Lovin and Kendall Ally
William and Harriet Barnhardt
Margaret and Smoky Bissell
Stick Williams, Frank Dowd IV and Mark Reed
Hilee Taylor and Mike Rucker
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RAIN World AIDS Day Luncheon
A monthly guide to Charlotte’s parties and galas
Charlotte Marriott Center City Dec. 2, 2021
Chris Gabriel and Jay Biles
April Jones and Kim Kinnear
Christine James, T.Q. Rice, Tish Broomfield, Kaila Crews and Maurice Smith
Lee Robertson and Julie Spahn
Phil Guenther, Monica Glick and Abbi Baranski
Your Dreams Are Our Business
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Barry and Nancy Metzger and Bob Bishop
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RAIN welcomed back patrons to the Marriott for its annual luncheon that commemorates World Aids Day. RAIN empowers persons living with HIV and those at risk to be healthy and stigma-free.
swirl
A monthly guide to Charlotte’s parties and galas
Good Friends Gather and Give Luncheon NASCAR Hall of Fame Dec. 9, 2021
A day after Good Fellows returned to the Crown Ballroom, Good Friends did the same with a gathering of charitable women. Good Friends supports individuals and families with financial resources to help them attain stability, including food security and shelter.
Anne McPhail
Kandi Deitemeyer, Bev Lassiter and Stick Williams
PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRANDON SCOTT
Marinn Bengel
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Charity League of Charlotte Centennial Luncheon
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Quail Hollow Club Dec. 9, 2021
The Charity League of Charlotte celebrated its 100th anniversary with a festive luncheon at Quail Hollow Club. Guests included Rhyne Cannon, great-grandson of the Charity League’s founder, and grandson of the League’s second president. CLC provides support for underserved children in the Charlotte area.
Nikki Wilson and Holly LeTourneau
Brian and Elizabeth Phillips
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Charity League of Charlotte’s board
Olivia Fortson and Pat Higgins
Lauran Starnes Godwin and Lauri Starnes
Rhyne Cannon and Marcy McKenney
Gloria Vaughan and Sharon Hall
Kim Young and Kim Wilcox
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIEL COSTON
Susanne Sweeney, Prissie Griffin and Martha Lee Burleson
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A monthly guide to Charlotte’s parties and galas
Gray Holiday Party
Benefiting the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture Dec.11, 2021
After two years of virtual events, Herb and Felicia Gray brought their holiday party back to the Gantt Center for a night of live music and entertainment. Patrons filled the Gantt to catch up with friends, pose for photos and celebrate the holiday season.
Amber McBride and Dr. Justin Sanders
Dr. Monique May and Rob Hillman
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Brandon and Nakisha Davis
Shelton and Bernitra Starks
Herb and Felicia Gray
Renee and Malcolm Sanders
Nelvia and Todd Bullock
Ruth and Bryan Foston
Marie Cloud and Jasmine Samarco
Teresa Hopson and James Terry
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DANIEL COSTON
Cassondra Thurmond, Yolanda Hemphill, Khabiyrol Gainey and LaMonica Evans
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| gallery
Pandemic Still Life, 2020-21, inlaid cut paper on panel. 60” x 55”
PAPER CUTS
A
by Sharon Smith
rtist Kirk Fanelly’s inlaid cut paper work titled “Pandemic Still Life” could be a metaphor for our ability to grow and even blossom in difficult seasons. It depicts a menagerie of brightly-colored orchids blooming inside their protective greenhouse at Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. If Fanelly could save only one work from disaster, this would be it. Not just because of the work itself and the months of detail-oriented labor it represents, but also because it’s a reminder of the time in his life and of new friendships he cultivated at DSBG as he sought inspiration. Fanelly’s botanical series comes as both “a challenge and needed respite from narrative painting.” The collection features a range of botanicals, like dahlias and anemones, that are eye-catching from afar and equally interesting a few inches away. “Specifically, it’s the spatial and surface tension between colors and shapes created by the
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sharp edges of the inlaid cut paper. The overall image is still most important to me,” Fanelly says, but he also likes how the mosaic quality engages the viewer up close. “It’s even interesting when I have a pile of cut paper on the floor.” Fanelly, who is from Charlotte, says he’s learned to embrace his obsession with detail through art. “Every job requires degrees of patience and tedium, the difference is you get to see the physical result of my efforts. We could print out a lawyer’s writings — those are tedious too but might not be as interesting to look at on your wall.” Fanelly’s works are scheduled to be on view at Hidell Brooks Gallery in October. Browse his botanical series at kirkfanelly.art. Learn more about Fanelly’s intricate inlaid paper process at southparkmagazine. com/paper-cuts SP
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