INSIDE...
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Obituaries................. 2A Mom’s Favorites........ 3A Opinion..................... 4A Congratulate Your Graduate! ......... 6A Sports ...................... 7A KIDSCOOP ................ 8A
Serving Belmont, Mount Holly, Stanley, Cramerton, and McAdenville | Volume 79 • Issue 19 • Wednesday, May 7, 2014
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The road to motherhood For Lyerly it was a journey of 7,000 miles By Alan Hodge alan.bannernews@gmail.com
Contributed Photo
Melia Lyerly is seen at the 2012 South Point High graduation with her daughter Laura. Lyerly and her husband Richard Fox adopted Laura in 1994 from an orphanage in a remote Chinese village. Laura will be 20 years old on May 10, the day before Mother's Day.
There are many paths to motherhood and for Melia Lyerly of Cramerton, hers led 7,000 miles to a remote village in China. The story of how Melia and her husband Richard Fox became the proud parents of an orphaned Chinese girl goes back over two decades, and has evolved into the modern-day scenario where the child, Laura, who will celebrate her 20th birthday on May 10, is currently a student at UNC-Charlotte studying biology. One event that led Melia and Richard to adopt Laura was a previous sojourn to China. “We had been on a month long trip there in 1988 and really liked the people,” Melia said. See ROAD TO MOTHERHOOD, 5A
Belmont Abbey makes cuts, embraces new finance model By Dave Blanton Belmont Abbey College is changing the way it uses the money it has, earmarks the money it takes in and is looking down the road with an eye on becoming more self-sustaining. The small, private Catholic college announced in April that it had eliminated 16 non-instructional positions. The cuts are part of an effort to decrease administrative costs by $1 million a year. Also, within three years, the college plans to operate solely on tuition money. The idea is to use Belmont Abbey’s nearly $10 million endowment solely for special projects and not “operational, or day-to-day costs,” according to Rolanda Rivas, the school’s director of marketing and communications. For the Abbey, cutting administrative staff means consolidating staff and faculty responsibilities. A part of that plan will see the college reconfiguring the student commons building over
the summer. Students will then go there with questions about bills, adding or dropping classes and financial aid, as opposed to being sent from one office to another, Rivas said. “We’re trying to stream-
line things,” she said. “We want students to feel like they are the center of our universe.” The endowment, which has grown by almost $3 million since 2012, will, along See BELMONT ABBEY, 5A
Archie the frog shares a smaller version of himself with Lilly Hawkins at the Mount Holly Springfest on Saturday. Photo by Bill Ward
Pendleton, Suddreth named man, woman of the year By Alan Hodge alan.bannernews@gmail,.com
The 64th annual Mount Holly Community Awards banquet took place last Thursday in the Grand Hall of the Municipal Center and as usual it was a roaring success. The event was a collaboration between the Mount Holly Chamber, The Mount Holly Community Development Foundation, the City of Mount Holly, and the Mount Holly Man and Woman of the Year Committee. Addi-
tional sponsors included CaroMont Health, Duke Energy, and the Gaston Gazette. The evening saw the annual Man and Woman of the Year Award given out. This year's recipients were Rev. Max Pendleton and Marlene Suddreth. The Community Service Organization Award went to the Mount Holly Book Club. Man of the Year recipient Rev. Max Pendleton, now retired, was pastor at Catawba Heights Baptist Church for 33 years. How-
ever, he continues to serve the Mount Holly area community with bereavement ministering as well as civic groups in need of pastoral care. He also formed Trumpet Evangelism, and holds services and revivals as well as teaching study courses. “I go where ever God leads me,” he is fond of saying. Pendleton is a native of Shelby and felt the call to preach at the tender age of eight years old. He worked in textiles for a while, then See MH HONORS, 5A
New times with old friends By Bridget Summerville Special to the Banner News
The year 1916 saw a momentous time in Belmont with the opening of the Climax Mill. The mill is located at East Woodrow Ave. in Belmont and is now Parkdale Mills. Like all mill villages in Belmont, there were houses surrounding the mill that were rented by mill workers with schools and churches nearby. Everyone could walk to work since the mill was right around the corner. Fast forward to June 2005 and a meeting between two friends. What Carrol Trull and Jack Cannon envisioned as a way for the ‘Climax Friends’ to have a reunion has
grown tremendously. A committee of eighteen folks was formed and plans were made for dinners to be held every other month on Mondays. The Catfish Cove fish camp is closed on Mondays so the entire restaurant is used for the reunion. The first meeting had over 80 people in attendance. Jack recently stated that when he and Carrol would get together for lunch, the conversation usually turned into ‘whatever happened to so and so?’ And they decided that they would bring the community together to see old friends and talk about the good old days. A typical night starts with the Pledge of Allegiance and patriotic songs. Belmont See GOOD OLD DAYS, 9A
What ever happened to Robert Clark? By Jack Page Special to the BannerNews
After drastically cutting tuition last year, the Catholic school announced in April that its long-term goal is to operate almost entirely on its endowment. It also announced it had cut a handful of non-teaching positions.
Robert Clark, son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles C. Clark, is eighty-six years old. He grew up on the Climax Mill Village in Belmont, North Carolina. His father, Charles Clark, played the tuba in the Belmont Community Band in the 1920’s. Charles’ sons, Robert and David, followed in his footsteps as tuba players. Their father encouraged their playing as they both played in the then recently formed Belmont High School Band under the direction of Mr. Jack Howren. As a seventh grader in East Belmont, Robert was a beginning band student. He was promoted for the second semester to the Belmont High School Band. He played tuba with the band when they went to the See BELMONT MUSICIAN 9A
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