Temperatures soared into the triple digits across the eastern U.S. this week, setting all-time records in dozens of cities. Above, Dory, an explosives certi ed dog, cooled down in front of a fan outside of Bank of America Stadium before the start of a FIFA Club World Cup game on Tuesday in Charlotte.
N.C. Senate takes on transgender issues
Raleigh
The state Senate advanced two bills that deal with transgender issues as lawmakers prepare for their anticipated summer recess by this week’s end. The rst bill passed by the Senate on Monday bars parents from being cited for abuse or neglect for raising their child consistent with their sex assigned at birth. That bill now heads to Gov. Josh Stein’s desk. The second bill has several provisions, including restrictions on using state money to fund gender-a rming care for prisoners and a resolution a rming there are only two sexes. The state House must approve of the second bill.
Court issues mixed ruling on governor’s appointment powers
Raleigh State trial judges have issued a mixed ruling for Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and Republican legislative leaders in litigation over recent law changes that eroded gubernatorial powers. A three-judge panel on Tuesday unanimously struck down as unconstitutional a law that placed some limits on whom the governor could choose to ll vacancies on appellate courts. But the judges let stand provisions that take away some of Stein’s appointments to the state Utilities Commission and Building Code Council. The order can be appealed.
‘Revenue
uenced by how its calculated
Siler City’s neutral rate is arti cially low because of incentive plans
By Ryan Henkel Chatham News & Record
SILER CITY — At the Town of Siler City Board of Commissioner’s June 16 meeting, Commissioner Alec Hauser o ered
further clarity on the town’s decision to maintain its current tax rate.
Along with the vote to approve the 2025-26 budget at its June 2 meeting, the board also approved maintaining Siler City’s current tax rate of $0.54 per $100 valuation.
The county had its property appraised this year — per North Carolina law, property is required to be revalued every eight years, and Chatham County is on a four-year cycle — and from that, it was determined that the revenue neutral tax rate for Siler City, or the rate at which the town would have been able to collect the same amount of revenue as the prior scal year, would be $0.27 per $100 valuation. According to Hauser, the rea-
son for the drastic di erence comes from how the rate is calculated and doesn’t necessarily re ect how much revenue is actually currently available to the town.
“When you see a number that low, it looks really misleading,” Hauser said. “Like the municipal government is operating at
See TAX RATE, page A3
The budget comes with a tax rate nearly six cents above the revenue neutral rate
By Ryan Henkel Chatham News & Record
CHAPEL HILL — The Chapel Hill Town Council has adopted its latest budget, which will
cover the next year of operations for the town.
The council approved the 2025-26 budget ordinance at its June 18 meeting, a decision that also comes with what could be a signi cant tax increase for town residents.
The budget sets a property tax rate of $0.50 per $100 valuation, and while this rate is technically lower than the previous one ($0.092 lower), it is $0.058 higher than the revenue neutral tax rate, or the rate that would generate the same
Flooding, rock slides close part of I-40
About 2.5 to 3.5 inches of rain fell in the area over about three hours, according to the National Weather Service.
The same area was shut down following Hurricane Helene
The Associated Press HARTFORD, Tenn. — Heavy rain, ooding and a rock slide have again closed a section of the major cross-country highway Interstate 40 along its narrow corridor through the Great Smoky Mountains, with engineers expecting the road closed for at least two weeks. The slide and ood happened last Wednesday afternoon around mile marker 450 in Tennessee, just to the west of the state line with North Carolina, the Tennessee Department of Transportation said on social media.
Engineers have found signi cant damage on both the highway and nearby ramps which was more extensive than originally thought, Republican Tennessee Rep. Jeremy Faison said on social media.
“Several areas remain under water, and there are potentially compromised slopes. Geotechnical engineers are on-site today to assess the stability of those slopes,” wrote Faison, who represents the area.
Tennessee transportation o cials estimate it will take at least two weeks to drain the water, make sure the slopes are safe and repair the highway.
The damaged section is part of 12 miles of I-40 in North Carolina and Tennessee
amount of revenue as the prior year with the newly revalued properties.
Due to the property revaluations that occurred this year — Orange County is on a fouryear cycle — the county saw an approximate 50% increase in See BUDGET, page A3
We stand corrected To report an error or a suspected error, please email: corrections@nsjonline.com with “Correction request” in the subject line.
June 17
• Joshua Luke Brady, 37, of Bear Creek, was arrested for resisting a public o cer, driving without liability insurance, and driving with an expired registration.
• Orzy Latipov, 45, of Chapel Hill, was arrested for violating a domestic violence protective order.
June 19
• Christopher Lee Carroll, 61, of Siler City, was arrested for statutory sexual o ense with a child and taking indecent liberties with a child.
June 22
• Christopher Laurice Williams Jr., 36, of Siler City, was arrested for carrying a concealed rearm, using a ctitious or altered registration card, and possessing an open alcohol container.
• Kenneth Marvel Reaves Jr., 47, of Pittsboro, was arrested for misdemeanor larceny.
• Tyler Lang Martin, 31, of Pittsboro, was arrested for possessing a rearm with a defaced serial number, assault by strangulation, and assault by pointing a rearm.
SLIDE from page A1
that was washed away or heavily damaged by ooding that roared through the Pigeon River gorge during Hurricane Helene in late September. Crews repaired and shored up enough of the old highway to open one narrow lane in each direction in March. The lanes are separated by a curb several inches high that had to be removed to let vehicles stuck by the ooding and rock-
slide to turn around and go the other way. About 2.5 to 3.5 inches of rain fell in the area over about three hours, according to the National Weather Service.
The permanent x to stabilize what’s left of the road will involve driving long steel rods into bedrock below the road, lling them with grout and spraying concrete on the cli face to hold them in place. It will take years.
I-40 runs from Wilmington to Barstow, California, and
any detour around the Great Smoky Mountain section is dozens of miles. Trucks have gotten stuck on twisty narrow mountain roads and are banned on another major highway through the area U.S. 441 through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The o cial detour takes drivers heading west on I-40 up Interstate 26 at Asheville to Johnson City, Tennessee, and then south down Interstate 81 back to I-40.
TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION VIA AP Interstate 40 remains closed near the Tennessee-North Carolina state line due to ooding and a rockslide on June 18.
Here’s a quick look at what’s coming up in Chatham County:
June 27
MOSAIC’S Summer Jam Music Series: The Embers in Concert
7-9 p.m.
Philip H. Kohl MOSAIC Family Commons 457 Freedom Parkway Pittsboro
June 28
Chatham Mills Farmers Market
8 a.m. to noon
This weekly outdoor farmers market is a producers-only market, which means the wide variety of goods o ered there, from fresh produce to other groceries, including eggs, cheese and meat, along with health and wellness items and crafts, are produced or created by the vendors themselves.
Lawn of the historic Chatham Mills 480 Hillsboro St. Pittsboro
Computer Skills for Job Seekers
10 a.m. to noon
This class is for adults with intermediate computer skills and covers a broad range of topics. Those who complete the class will receive a free refurbished computer.
Praise and Worship Through Song 6:30 p.m.
Soloists and choirs are welcome.
Gum Springs Baptist Church 227 Gum Springs Church Rd. Moncure
Jazz Night at The Sycamore at Chatham Mills
6-9 p.m.
Every Wednesday night, from 6-9 p.m., The Sycamore at Chatham Mills hosts live Jazz Nights. The series features a rotating list of local musicians. The Sycamore also o ers its Lounge Menu in the dining room on Wednesday nights. Reservations are highly recommended.
480 Hillsboro St. Suite 500 Pittsboro
New regulations for watercraft on the lake were met with skepticism by some shermen
By Bob Sutton Chatham News & Record
RAMSEUR — New rules for Ramseur Lake have been good for shing, town o cials said.
Mayor Hampton Spivey said the recreational area has seen steady use since it opened for the year in March.
“The lake is rather busy,” Spivey said. “It’s pretty steady.”
Starting this year, gas-powered motors are no longer allowed on the lake. So watercraft must be powered by electric motors or man powered.
“Some of the shermen who were opposed to (the new wa-
tercraft regulations) told me it’s the best thing we ever did,” Spivey said.
The elimination of gas-powered motors was announced prior to the 2024 opening of the lake. That provided boat users a full year notice prior to the implementation of the new rules.
There were largemouth bass caught up to 10 pounds this spring. Ricky Turpin of Asheboro pulled in a 10-pound largemouth June 4 after previously making a 9-pound catch.
LeAnn Thompson, the warden at the lake, said crappie have been caught at 3 pounds.
There also have been athead cat sh, bluegill and shellcrackers caught, Thompson said.
“There’s a little bit of everything,” she said.
The man-made lake has existed since the 1970s.
“So there’s pretty big sh out there,” Spivey said.
There’s also other wildlife. Thompson said an 80-pound snapping turtle was caught this spring.
The West side of the park was closed when the park opened for the season. Both sides are now open.
Paddle boats and kayaks, along with electric-only powerboats, are available to rent.
Ramseur Lake, also known as Kermit G. Pell Water-Based Recreation Facility, is one of the two main recreation areas in Ramseur. The other is Leonard Park.
Hours for Ramseur Lake for May through August are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Hours vary in other months, while the facility is closed in December, January and February.
A preliminary crash report from the NTSB shed light on the incident
The Associated Press
MOCKSVILLE — The pilot of a small plane that crashed near a Davie County airport earlier this month had raised a wheel after landing to avoid hitting a turtle on the runway, according to a National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report.
The pilot of the Universal Stinson 108 and a passenger were killed in the June 3 crash near Sugar Valley Airport in Mocksville, o cials said. A second passenger was
seriously injured in the crash.
A communications operator looking out the airport ofce window advised the pilot that there was a turtle on the runway, according to the report released this week. The operator reported that the pilot landed about 1,400 feet down the 2,424-foot runway, then lifted the right main wheel to avoid the turtle. The operator heard the pilot advance the throttle after raising the wheel, but the airplane left her view after that.
A man cutting the grass at the end of the runway reported seeing the pilot raise the right wheel to avoid the turtle, then the wings rocked back and forth and the plane took o again, according to the report.
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The man lost sight of the plane and then heard a crash and saw smoke.
The plane crashed in a heavily forested area about 250 feet from the runway and caught re, o cials said. The plane was wedged between several trees and remained in one piece except for a few pieces of fabric found in a nearby stream. It came to rest on its left side with the left wing folded underneath the fuselage and the right wing bent toward the tail.
Preliminary reports contain facts collected on scene but don’t speculate on probable causes, according to the NTSB’s website. Those are included in nal reports, which can take one to two years to complete.
You’re invited to join community churches for an evening of praise and worship, primarily through song on Sunday, June 29 at 6:30 p.m. Soloist and choirs are welcome. The church is located at 227 Gum Springs Church Road in Moncure.
Ebenezer United Methodist Church will have a summer gospel concert on Sunday, June 29 at 5 p.m. Please join us for a worship service in song. The church is located at 724 Beaver Creek Road in Apex.
BUDGET from page A1
property values, and so residents will more than likely be seeing higher tax bills because of the drastic increase.
“At a time of economic instability, we also have a lag in sales tax, permit revenues and, as an extra bonus, we got hit with a revaluation that has shifted much of the bigger part of the cost of government onto our residents,” said Mayor Pro Tem Amy Ryan. “So even with no increase in our revenue, residents are going to be seeing an average of about 15% increase in their tax bill.”
“It is not the cost of maintaining our town operations that has caused the extreme in all of our home values,” said council member Elizabeth Sharp. “It’s actually the commodi cation of real estate in the American capitalist economy over which we have no control.”
The budget is balanced at nearly $164 million, a 4% increase over the prior year’s budget.
Budget highlights include a 5% market pay increase for employees — including the mayor and council members — $1.5 million for operating budget focus areas, $18.7 million for the police, $12.6 million for re, $1.3 million for a ordable housing and community connections, $5 million for library and nearly $9.7 million for parks and recreation.
“This budget provides resiliency to handle an unpredictable future, it covers the signi cant decline we’re seeing in sales tax revenues, it reduces the town’s reliance on fund balance as we continue to see declines in personnel and other savings each year, it addresses the increased cost to carry out services provided by the town and transit, and it maintains the town’s funding commitment to our outside agencies,” said interim town manager Mary Jane Nirdlinger.
e nal deadline for all grant applications is Sept. 15, but don’t wait to apply. Applications submitted prior to the early-bird deadline on Aug. 15 will be entered to win one of ve $100 Visa gi cards. Scan the QR code or visit NCBrightIdeas.com for more information or to apply!
While the budget is an increase overall, that mostly accounts for things such as ination, increases to the cost of doing business and higher personnel costs.
“We all worked really, really hard to identify any kinds of mismanagement or ineciencies in our town operations, hoping that there would be some way that we could retreat from the recommend-
TAX RATE from page A1
some scale which it shouldn’t be operating at. We only get a small fraction of the property taxes and that $0.27 neutral rate is based on if we took the full allotment from Wolfspeed and the CAM site, which is not happening now due to the incentive agreement that we signed back in 2023.”
Part of the agreed uponnancial incentive package for Wolfspeed included a drastically reduced property tax rate, which sees only a 10% collec-
“Residents are going to be seeing an average of about 15% increase in their tax bill.”
Mayor Pro Tem Amy Ryan
ed tax raise,” Sharp said. “Instead, we found falling sales tax revenues, we found employee pay salaries that are double-digit percentages below neighboring towns and we found a signi cant backlog of maintenance needs.”
The nal vote for approval of the budget was 5-2, with Mayor Jessice Anderson and Ryan voting against it mainly due to the impact on property owners. Council members Karen Stegman and Adam Searing were absent from the meeting.
“We need to be willing to adjust to changing circumstances to make hard choices for our government, not just our taxpayers,” Ryan said. “Things will not be easier next year or the year after or the year after. We need to recognize that reality and make sure one of the realities re ected in our budget is not pricing residents out of the town. I don’t see that in this budget.”
“It brings me no pleasure to not be able to vote for this budget because there are a lot of really important things in there, but that’s the decision I’ve come to,” Anderson said.
“I’m deeply concerned that we’re putting an extra burden on our residents at a time of great uncertainty. We can’t make up for all the cuts that we’re experiencing by raising property taxes on people.”
While most every council member expressed discontent with the burden being placed on residents, a few noted the necessity of it, especially given the current needs of the town.
“Failing to approve a budget that doesn’t address our significant backlog of maintenance needs and our severe employee pay shortfall doesn’t just delay the inevitable, it exacerbates it, and I don’t see wisdom in prolonging the painful process of rightsizing our town budget nor have we been able to nd any place that would provide signi cant relief to homeowners by doing so,” Sharp said.
tion rate for the rst four years of the project.
The collection rate will slowly increase over the 20 year period, capping out at a 50% reduction in the nal four years of the project before the full tax allotment is actually realized.
“I want to make sure the constituents really understand so there’s full transparency from your government,” Hauser said.
The Town of Siler City Board of Commissioners will next meet July 21.
Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor
Another wonderful way to measure time is with service.
ON MARCH 30, 1973, a gentleman wrote to E.B. White expressing his frustration and despair. This man was losing his faith in humanity. White, the inimitable author and editor, responded, “Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.”
I realize that few of us still wind our clocks, yet I commend the idea of doing something small with intentionality. Bring a sense of order, if only to the chaos immediately surrounding you. How can hope spring eternally if it is stuck? Weed the ower bed or sweep the front porch.
What’s more, get outside. Get outside yourself. Listen to the songbirds or the wind in the trees. Another friend says that something beautiful and true can always be found in a 10-minute walk. Down the street from my house, a gaggle of four goslings waddles down a bank and wades into the pond. I am in the habit of taking pictures of them, so I know for a fact that they have lost their grey
fuzzy feathers in favor of the plumage of their parents in only 26 days! While we no longer wind clocks, the growth of a gosling is a meaningful way to measure time.
Just remember, you don’t need to live near a pond or be a poet to understand that beauty is truth and truth is beauty. The weeds that emerge from the cracks in a sidewalk or an abandoned lot often inspire me. Life consistently nds a way. You can nd something to do for someone else: buy groceries for a food pantry, cook for those who are unsheltered, volunteer at your local library or community center, open doors for people and o er to carry their groceries to their cars. Another wonderful way to measure time is with service.
I am not denying the problems. We appear headed for yet another senseless war, which Congress neither advised nor authorized. At home, our soldiers have been deployed against our citizens, and our elected o cials have been brutally murdered. So far,
And I know I’m on the way because my hair and beard are starting to turn gray and because the youth of today say “Sir” to me or o er the senior adult discount without asking for proof.
LONG AGO and far away, when dinosaurs roamed the world and I was a wee young lad — well, at least a young lad — I was often not very fond, detested at times even, hearing much in the way of conversation, more speci cally advice, from the older generation.
The reason or reasons were many, but the most obvious was, ‘I’m young and hip, part of the new and now generation, and what could those old fogeys possibly tell me about the world and the shape of things?’
“Plenty” would be today’s answer to that question.
Let me hasten to say here that I did not ignore all counsel in those days. Actually, I took a great deal of it to heart, although some of the lessons and instructions had to be veri ed the hard way.
For instance, when my mama said not to touch her spray and steam iron, I should have heeded her. And the day one of my dad’s friends told me, while we were standing in his small engine repair shop, not to touch the spark plug of an idling lawn mower with the screwdriver I had just picked up, I should have listened.
The larger issues of life, however, weren’t necessarily wrapped up in those minor events, although I have come to learn the principles there apply to larger considerations. And
that principle is this: Experience is a good teacher, and if wisdom comes along with that experience, it’s a wise boy who pays attention to the experience and wisdom of his elders. All throughout the Book, especially in Proverbs, are jewels of wisdom, and lately I have begun to note that many of them have a home in the minds and hearts of those senior adults. Snow white hair on its own does not necessarily a wise person make, but it can be a sign that you’re in the presence of one.
As I think about that, I think of a little lady I knew almost 60 years ago. Mrs. Mary Shotts was the guidance counselor at Pittsboro High School as I was coming through, maybe the rst ever, at least o cially in title. She was a kind and gentle lady, and I became very fond of her, except when she wouldn’t let me sign up for a class in advanced PE my senior year in high school. Her reasoning was that a class period devoted to picking up rocks on the football eld or cleaning trash from under the bleachers would not be as bene cial in the long run as would a class in, say, algebratrigonometry or what we called “typing,” which later became known as ‘keyboarding.’
Of course, the fact I barely passed algebra/trig doesn’t matter anymore. At least she saved me from picking
2025 feels like the Year of Spiral. But that assumes that I know where we are headed.
Another friend pointed out that people with power talk about the future as if it were actual reality. I’m not against making plans, but no one knows what tomorrow or even the next minute will bring. What we have is this moment.
To the gentleman spiraling with his faith in humanity, White contended, “As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate.”
Be that upright, compassionate person. Measure time in love, and receive in return “a good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over” (Luke 6:38).
Andrew Taylor-Troutman’s newest book is “This Is the Day.” He serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church as well as a writer, pizza maker, co ee drinker and student of joy.
up rocks, a task I still don’t like.
Mrs. Shotts had that silver and snow-white hair, years of experience and wisdom. Nowadays, I also think not only of her but also of Dr. Chevis Horne, my professor of preaching at seminary. A wise elder statesman, he served one church his entire professional life, rst as its associate pastor. Then, after a stint as a eld chaplain in Sicily during World War II, he came back to that parish as its senior pastor and served 30 years before retiring and turning to teaching.
Since those days, it’s been my desire to emulate those folks, to become them. And I know I’m on the way because my hair and beard are starting to turn gray and because the youth of today say “Sir” to me or o er the senior adult discount without asking for proof.
That other part — the wisdom part — however, I’m not so sure of, and as I meander through my biblical “three score and ten,” I can only hope some of the other will come along.
Maybe it will ...
Here’s hoping.
Bob Wachs is a native of Chatham County and emeritus editor at Chatham News & Record. He serves as pastor of Bear Creek Baptist Church.
COLUMN CHARLOTTE RUSSELL
In shock, I decided to spend my weekend rediscovering Brian Wilson’s music. Yep, just me, my ear buds, iPhone and Amazon Unlimited music. ’Twas a cheap, but ultimately ful lling, date.
WHO KNEW I was in love with the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson? Not me.
The delightful teeny-bopping days of Beach Boys’ music just slithered right o my cli in the late ’60s. My age-related a nity for sun and surf tunes cratered, totally cratered, making way for the heartfelt rock protest anthems of the Vietnam War.
Oh, wait, I do recall listening to the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” ’round about ’67. Luscious sounding music, but geez, it was the Beach Boys, for heaven’s sake! Sun and surf versus all the lives being decimated in Vietnam? No contest.
Wilson’s mental health struggles occasionally erupted in the news. His decline morphed into a public soap opera, often used as clickbait for popular magazines. He lost his way for a period. It wasn’t pretty.
Wilson died earlier this month. The accolades came rolling in. Brian Wilson? Of surf ’n’ sun fame? Respected and emulated by Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and a holy host of other musical talents? You’ve got to be kidding! Really?!
“Often called a genius for his novel approaches to pop composition and mastery of recording techniques, Brian Wilson is widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative and signi cant songwriters of the 20th century.”
Yep. That Brian Wilson. This is your news junkie talking. Excuse me, but where the hell have I been?
Great question. In shock, I decided to spend my weekend rediscovering Wilson’s music. Yep, just me, my ear buds, iPhone and Amazon Unlimited music. ’Twas a cheap, but ultimately ful lling, date.
I scored. Dropping into Wilson’s musical smorgasbord left me with a sense of wonder.
Drunk driving is the judicial equalizer.
You go into a courtroom to wait for an arraignment, and the most middle-class person in the courtroom is some suburban drunk who got caught driving home drunk after a gender reveal party.
IF YOU’VE BEEN a reporter long enough, you learn that when people say you’re a “member of the Fourth Estate,” they mean to insult you and to let you know they read a book once.
The only exception is lawyers, who use the term the same way they use Latin, as a way to remind you that they’ve read a lot of books.
And in America, we can a ord a Fifth Estate, which is bloggers, Substack geniuses, “citizen journalists” and “independent journalists.”
A citizen journalist is someone who has nothing on his/her resume except being born in America. An independent journalist is someone who can’t get a job in news. Both of them write stories that are more than half their own opinion, and both of them desperately need an editor. Their battle cry is, “They tried to silence me.”
You read their stories, and you get the feeling that they never spent any time as a reporter, covering cheap shootings, house res in which no one was injured, tra c pileups and bone-crunchingly dull meetings of a suburban zoning board.
So it’s no surprise that they were all over the trial of Karen Read, a Massachusetts woman who was alleged to have drunkenly hit her equally drunk cop boyfriend with her SUV and then left him to die on the ground in a blizzard.
The prosecution said she hit him like you’d hit a possum on a state two-lane. The defense said she was the victim of an elaborate conspiracy dreamed up by equally drunken cops who beat the guy to death, dragged him outside to die in the snow and then framed Read.
She was found not guilty of everything
Really. I had no idea. None. The very lushness of his arrangements, poignant lyrics, particularly in “Love and Mercy.” OK, OK, I was now sold on Wilson as the real deal … but stuck, still stuck, as to how and why I’d forcibly locked him out of my musical world for so long. Years and years and years. The answer arrived via one of his newly discovered (to me, anyway) songs: “That’s Why God Made The Radio.” Just a tiny, tiny snippet of a lyric, “when I lift up my antenna.” Lifting up my own antennae allows me greater focus on the world around me. Like many of us regular ol’ humans, I have a great capacity to tune out, yep, just tune right out, anyone or anything I’ve judged negatively. I excel in that particular arena.
In the era between my teens and my (oh, so grownup) 20s, I closed the door on Wilson. Moved on. The Vietnam War brought turbulent times. Across the board, cultural change occurred, including to our music. Bye, Brian, I’m o to a protest now, leaving you to all your sur ng songs.
And I did. Left all of Wilson’s bewitching and growing musical oeuvre behind in my exploration of growing up. Retrospectively, a super, major ouch.
Today, I’m celebrating the luscious, newto-me Brian Wilson music just added to my playlists. I’m also celebrating unearthing my lifelong inclination to slam doors shut, based on my judgments, not realizing how much light I may be losing from the closed-o side. Hard to break these old habits, but “Hey, Brian,” wherever you are, I’m trying. Thanks.
Jan Hutton, a resident of Chatham County and retired hospice social worker, lives life with heart and humor.
A NORTH CAROLINA high schooler was confused and scared. Upon entering the girl’s bathroom at her local high school, she encountered a boy. She went into the stall, locked the door and waited. The boy stood outside her stall for two minutes before leaving. Later when she left the bathroom, he was waiting for her there too. Experiences like this continued throughout her junior and senior year at a public high school in Wilmington in New Hanover County.
When she told her teacher, she was told, “Unfortunately, that’s how it is.” She then sought help from the principal, but no action was taken. The student felt vulnerable in her own school over a period of two years, but the adults in charge were either unwilling or unable to help her. Interestingly, to her knowledge, the male student she encountered in the bathroom did not claim a transgender identity. But he was allowed to do what he was doing.
Sadly, this story is not unique. In recent years, many female spaces have been accessed by males due to policies in uenced by gender ideology. During my own college search, while touring the dorms at Appalachian State University, the tour guide said, “These are the dorms for those who identify as female” — meaning that at this public state university, biological men are allowed to live in female dorm rooms with female roommates.
Today’s youth — my generation — have grown up in a culture that is saturated by gender ideology. One in four Gen Z Americans now identify as LGBTQ — more than any generation before. These ideas, widely shared on social media, have come to shape how many young people think. To be transgender, activists say, is to “live your truth,” and many teens believe that gender is de ned by feelings. Young women these days simply accept the fact that young men are entering their private spaces because they believe that opposing it is hateful to the LGBTQ community.
except the drunk driving charge.
Drunk driving is the judicial equalizer. You go into a courtroom to wait for an arraignment, and the most middle-class person in the courtroom is some suburban drunk who got caught driving home drunk after a gender reveal party. Everyone else has another case hanging, is on probation or parole, or has at least done county time.
The poor do not embarrass the criminal justice system. They get arrested, they take the deal or they get convicted.
If everyone in the Read case wasn’t white and making a couple bucks, you couldn’t have gotten the story on the front page for more than a couple of days at the beginning and then another day for the verdict.
None of the independent journalists are going to be too interested in “justice” for some black woman from the projects who ran her boyfriend over with a 12-year- old Toyota while high on crack.
I’ve left that kind of trial with the verdict safe in my notebook and limped back to the newspaper o ce and had an editor remind me that the Garden Club was having its annual ower show in a week, and I needed to write 700 words about that by the end of the week.
The fewer newspapers we have in this country, the more people we have who call themselves “journalists.”
Like a lot of people, my grandmother Grace used to say that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Turns out that in the country of the blind, if you’re blind but you have a pretty good sense of smell, you can be king.
Marc Dion’s latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called “Mean Old Liberal.”
But the reality is that males and females are inherently di erent. Sex is not a matter of feelings but a biological fact. Equating sex to self-perception disregards objective reality and erases the di erences between men and women. And when these facts get confused, harm occurs. Allowing males to identify as female robs women and girls of privacy, safety and well-being. And it opens women up to sexual assault, abuse and harassment.
To address this issue, steps have been taken at both the federal and state level. Early in his presidency, President Donald Trump issued executive orders de ning sex by biology and banning biological males from participating in female sports. Eight states do not allow for sex to be changed on birth certi cates. At least eight states de ne male and female by biology. Fourteen states have passed laws to segregate at least some private spaces for women.
In North Carolina, The Women’s Safety and Protection Act — Senate Bill 516 and House Bill 791 — was led earlier this year. The legislation de nes “male” and “female” by biology rather than by identity in the law and designates private spaces by biology in K-12 public schools, public institutions of higher education, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters and correctional facilities. And it requires the sex on birth certi cates and driver’s licenses to re ect biological sex.
In a time of cultural confusion surrounding gender, it is critical to take action on legislation like the Women’s Safety and Protection Act. Women deserve to be respected, and that starts with acknowledging that to be a woman is to belong to a distinct, biological category. And we must also protect women and girls in private spaces.
Charlotte Russell is a student at the Helms School of Government at Liberty University from Charlotte.
Letters to the editor may be sent to letters@nsjonline.com or mailed to 1201 Edwards Mill Rd., Suite 300, Raleigh, NC 27607. Letters must be signed; include the writer’s phone number, city and state; and be no longer than 300 words. Letters may be edited for style, length or clarity when necessary. Ideas for op-eds should be sent to opinion@nsjonline.com.
Contact a writer or columnist: connect@northstatejournal.com
Sept. 9, 1953 –June 18, 2025
Royce Dillard Chambers, age 71, of Chapel Hill, died Wednesday, June 18, 2025, at the SECU Jim & Betsy Bryan UNC Hospice House.
Royce was born in Wake County on September 9, 1953, to the late Dillard Chambers and Rebecca Mae Snow Chambers.
Surviving relatives include
two brothers: Floyd “Bob” Calvin Chambers of Chapel Hill and Donald Wayne Chambers and ancé Nicole Suzanne Boten of Chapel Hill. Royce proudly served our country in the United States Army.
A celebration of life service will be held on Sunday, July 27, 2025, at 2:00PM at Merritt’s Chapel UMC with Rev. Benji Kelly presiding. Inurnment will immediately follow in the church cemetery. Following the inurnment the family will receive friends in the church fellowship hall.
In lieu of owers, the family asks for donations to be made in Royce’s memory to Merritt’s Chapel UMC 1090 Farrington Point Road Chapel Hill, NC 27517. Condolences may be made at www.donaldsonfunerals. com.
Donaldson Funeral Home & Crematory is honored to serve the Chambers family.
SISTER BRENDA JEAN RICHARDSON
DEC. 9, 1953 – JUNE 20, 2025
Sister Brenda Jean Richardson was born to the late Jethro Brower and Evangelist Alberta Richardson on December 9, 1953, in Moore County, North Carolina, and departed this life on Friday, June 20, 2025, at Dahila Garden Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Aberdeen, North Carolina. Brenda Jean, as she was often called, was educated in the Moore County public school system. She attended Pinecrest High School in Southern Pines, North Carolina until the school was redistricted and then attended North Moore High School in Robbins, North Carolina. And was employed with Clayson Knitting Company in Star, North Carolina for over twenty plus years. Sister Brenda accepted Christ as her Lord and Savior and was a faithful member of Zion Grove AME Zion Church in Eagle Springs, North Carolina. She preached her trial sermon on Sunday, October 27, 2002. She was loved for her strong powerful sermon that was only ten minutes long when she preached. She taught Sunday School and Bible Study and help assist her pastor with morning worship service. Brenda Jean loved to sing, her signature song was “Can’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus.” she was a member of the Zion Grove Young Adult Choir, Voices of Reunion Choir, help managed the Junior Choir, sung with the Robbins Mass Choir, Fayetteville State University Mass Choir, and the Choir of Praise of Asheboro, North Carolina
JOSEPH CECIL CALENDINE, SR. JUNE 18, 1935 – JUNE 18, 2025
Joseph Cecil Calendine, Sr., passed away on his 90th birthday, June 18, 2025, in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Born on June 18, 1935, in Canton, Ohio, Joseph lived a full and faithful life marked by service, quiet strength, and devotion to his family. He proudly served his country in the United States Air Force before building a long and respected career as a facilities engineer. Known for his steady hands and creative mind, Joe had a special love for all things mechanical. He found great joy working on and driving Volkswagens, lawn mowers and golf carts, and spending countless contented hours in his backyard shed — his happy place. He served the Lord as choir director in several local churches; he so enjoyed playing the organ and singing hymns. Joe was preceded in death by his parents, Bertha and Delmer Calendine, his brother, Daniel Calendine, and his sister, Jean Schwing. Joe was a loyal fan of Duke University basketball, and he cheered on NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt. He enjoyed classic episodes of Star Trek, delighted in helping with Operation Christmas Child, and, above all, cherished every moment spent with his wife, his children, and his grandchildren. His kindness to others was legendary; his ready smile and cheerfulness made the people in his daily walk feel as though they’d met a friend.
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who
He leveraged his Marine experience into a world-changing logistics business
The Associated Press
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Fred Smith, the FedEx Corp. founder who revolutionized the express delivery industry, has died, the company said. He was 80.
FedEx started operating in 1973, delivering small parcels and documents more quickly than the postal service. Over the next half-century, Smith, a Marine Corps veteran, oversaw the growth of a company that became something of an economic bellwether because so many other companies rely on it.
Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx became a global transportation and logistics company that averages 17 million shipments per business day. Smith stepped down as CEO in 2022 but remained executive chairman.
Smith, a 1966 graduate of Yale University, used a business theory he came up with in college to create a delivery system based on coordinated air cargo ights centered on a main hub, a “hub and spokes” system, as it became known.
The company also played a major role in the shift by American business and industry to a greater use of time-sensitive deliveries and less dependence on large inventories and warehouses.
Smith once told The Associated Press that he came up with the name Federal Express because he wanted the company to sound big and important when in fact it was a start-up operation with a future far from assured.
At the time, Smith was trying to land a major shipping contract with the Federal Reserve Bank that didn’t work out.
In the beginning, Federal Express had 14 small aircraft operating out of the Memphis International Airport ying packages to 25 U.S. cities.
Smith’s father, also named Frederick, built a small fortune in Memphis with a regional bus line and other business ventures. Following college, Smith joined the U.S. Marines and was com-
missioned a second lieutenant. He left the military as a captain in 1969 after two tours in Vietnam where he was decorated for bravery and wounds received in combat.
He told The Associated Press in a 2023 interview that everything he did running FedEx came from his experience in the Marines, not what he learned at Yale.
Getting Federal Express started was no easy task. Overnight shipments were new to American business, and the company had to have a eet of planes and a system of interconnecting air routes in place from the get-go.
Smith was a minority owner of the Washington Commanders NFL team until 2021, when owner Daniel Snyder and his family bought out the shares held by Smith, Dwight Schar and Bob Rothman. His son Arthur was a head coach with the Atlanta Falcons for three seasons and is currently the o ensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Though one of Memphis’ best-known and most prominent citizens, Smith generally avoided the public spotlight, devoting his energies to work and family.
Despite his low pro le, Smith made a cameo appearance in the 2000 movie “Castaway” starring Tom Hanks. The movie was about a FedEx employee stranded on an island.
“Memphis has lost its most im-
portant citizen, Fred Smith,” said U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, citing Smith’s support for everything from the University of Memphis to the city’s zoo. “FedEx is the engine of our economy, and Fred Smith was its visionary founder. But more than that, he was a dedicated citizen who cared deeply about our city.” Smith rarely publicized the donations he and his family made, but he agreed to speak with AP in 2023 about a gift to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation to endow a new scholarship fund for the children of Navy service members pursuing studies in STEM.
“The thing that’s interested me are the institutions and the causes not the naming or the recognition,” Smith said at the time. Asked what it means to contribute to the public good, he said, “America is the most generous country in the world. It’s amazing the charitable contributions that Americans make every year. Everything from the smallest things to these massive health care initiatives and the Gates Foundation and everything in between.
“I think if you’ve done well in this country, it’s pretty churlish for you not to at least be willing to give a pretty good portion of that back to the public interest. And all this is in the great tradition of American philanthropy.”
"Healing
Police vehicles escort FedEx trucks carrying giant pandas to the National Zoo after they arrived at Dulles International Airport from China on in October 2024.
By Ed White and Holly Ramer The Associated Press
WAYNE, Mich.
— A pastor said Monday that the “hand of God” prevented a mass shooting at his Detroit-area church when an armed man was struck by a pickup truck and fatally shot by security sta before he could enter and attack more than 100 people.
On Monday, a day after the thwarted attack, the leader of CrossPointe Community Church in Wayne praised the actions of the security team, which has been in place for more than 10 years. Pastor Bobby Kelly said he had met the gunman three times in the past.
“I can’t say for sure what was in his heart or in his mind because he’s never threatened me in any way,” Kelly told The Associated Press. “This young man was de nitely struggling mentally. He thought he was hearing from God. We had some conversations about that.”
Children from the church’s vacation Bible school were leading Sunday’s worship and were nishing a song when the congregation heard gun re outside. Kelly, who was poised to start his sermon, initially thought the noise was coming from a construction crew.
A member of the security team rushed in and told everyone to get out. A livestream video shows people carrying children or directing them to get down and move away.
Kelly said a church member arriving late had spotted Brian Browning driving recklessly and called out to the gunman as he exited his car wearing a tactical vest and carrying a rie and a handgun. The church member struck him with his pickup truck.
Browning, 31, began ring as he approached the church, striking one person in the leg. At least two sta members shot him, Wayne police Chief Ryan Strong said.
“He is a hero,” Kelly said of the pickup driver. “I think that was the Lord leading him to do that. He hit this individual with his car, drove right on the
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grass because he was shooting at the building at the time. And that certainly helped the team to be able to respond.”
Browning did not have any previous contacts with police but may have been su ering a mental health crisis, police said.
The “heroic actions of the church’s sta members” saved many lives, Strong said Sunday night.
Wayne is about 25 miles west of Detroit. Police found additional ri es, handguns and a large amount of ammunition during a search of Browning’s house nearby in Romulus.
Browning’s mother occasionally attended the church services but was not there Sunday. The pastor said he spoke to her after the shooting.
“To console her, to let her know that she shouldn’t feel guilty about his actions ... and that we still are there for her as well,” Kelly said. “She is a grieving mom right now because of this tragedy.”
Dustin Fuoco was managing the church audio equipment. When the congregation dashed for the doors — “instant panic” — he anxiously looked for his wife and son and found them safe outside in a wooded area.
“It sounded like a jackhammer,” Fuoco said of the shots. “Twenty seconds later, we ended up hearing that same round of 10 shots. And that’s when the realization sunk in that this was a shooter.”
The pastor said the church had a security team even before he arrived in 2016, introduced by the previous church leadership in response to shootings that had happened elsewhere.
“Most people would never even know if they came to our church,” Kelly said. “Some that are armed and some that are not. But they are trained.”
He had intended to preach about God’s “hand of deliverance” and His ability to protect. In drawing up the church calendar, Kelly had planned to have two outdoor services in June but months ago decided only on one.
“We weren’t outside yesterday when we would have been,” he said. “We were denitely protected by the hand of God, there is no question about it.”
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NOTICE TO CREDITORS
All persons, rms, and corporations having claims against Louise Barrett Derr, deceased, of Pittsboro, Chatham County, NC, are noti ed to present such claims to Diane Adkins, Executor/Personal Representative of the estate, at P.O. Box 2651, Taos, NM, 87571, on or before September 13, 2025. All claims not presented within this time will be forever barred.
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
All persons, rms and corporations having claims against Nellie D. Tripp, deceased, of Chatham County, North Carolina, are hereby noti ed to present them to April Tripp Parker, Executrix of the Estate of Nellie D. Tripp, Estate File Number: 25E000251-180, on or before September 29, 2025, in care of the below address, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. All persons, rms and corporations indebted to Nellie D. Tripp, please make immediate payment.
Publication dates: June 26. 2025, July 3, 2025, July 10, 2025, and July 17, 2025. This 26th day of June, 2025 April Tripp Parker, Executrix c/o Lisa K. Vira, Attorney at Law The Vira Law Firm, P.A. 205 West Main Street, Suite 207 Carrboro, NC 27510
919-918-8000 (telephone)
919-919-7887 (facsimile) info@vira-law.com
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
ALL PERSONS, rms and corporations having claims against Graham Camp Oldham, deceased, of Chatham County, N.C., are noti ed to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before September 19, 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment. This June 19, 2025. c/o Shea Maliszewski, Barringer Sasser, LLP, 111 Commonwealth Court, Suite 101, Cary, NC 27511.
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
ALL PERSONS, rms and corporations having claims against Robert D. Shinney, deceased, of Chatham County, N.C., are noti ed to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before September 12, 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment. This June 12, 2025. c/o Shea Maliszewski, Barringer Sasser, LLP, 111 Commonwealth Court, Suite 101, Cary, NC 27511.
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
25E000289-180 NORTH CAROLINA CHATHAM COUNTY
The undersigned, Lori Delbridge, having quali ed as Limited Personal Representative of the Estate of Barbara Ann Headen, deceased, late of Chatham County, this is to notify all persons having claims against said estate to present them to the undersigned on or before the day of September 10, 2025, or this notice will be plead in bar of their recovery. All persons indebted to said estate will please make immediate payment to the undersigned. This the 12th day of June, 2025.
Lori Delbridge Limited personal Representative Marie H. Hopper Attorney for the Estate Hopper Cummings, PLLC Post O ce Box 1455 Pittsboro, NC 27312
CREDITOR’S NOTICE
Having quali ed on the 23th day of May 2025, as Administrator of the Estate of Rachel Hudson, deceased, late of Chatham County, North Carolina, this is to notify all persons, rms and corporations having claims against the decedent to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before the 3rd day of September 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery. All persons, rms and corporations indebted to the estate should make immediate payment.
This is the 27th day of May 2025.
Danny Hudson, Administrator of the Estate of Rachel Hudson 292 George Hudson Road Siler City, NC 27344
Attorneys: Law O ces of Doster & Brown, P.A. 206 Hawkins Avenue Sanford, NC 27330 Publish On: June 5th, 12th, 19nd and 26th. NOTICE
NORTH CAROLINA NOTICE TO CREDITORS CHATHAM COUNTY
HAVING QUALIFIED as Executor of the Estate of Paul David Justice late of Chatham County, North Carolina, this is to notify all persons, rms and corporations having claims against the estate of said deceased to present them to the undersigned on or before the 18th day of September, 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery.
This the 12th day of June, 2025.
Vicky P. Justice, Executor of the Estate of Paul David Justice 1353 Siler City Glendon Road Siler City, North Carolina 27344 MOODY, WILLIAMS, ATWATER & LEE ATTORNEYS AT LAW BOX 629 SILER CITY, NORTH CAROLINA 27344 (919) 663-2850 4tp
NORTH CAROLINA NOTICE TO CREDITORS CHATHAM COUNTY
HAVING QUALIFIED as Executor of the Estate of Norva Marie Fisher late of Chatham County, North Carolina, this is to notify all persons, rms and corporations having claims against the estate of said deceased to present them to the undersigned on or before the 18th day of September, 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery. This the 12th day of June, 2025. Mary Lois Oldham, Executor of the Estate of Norva Marie Fisher 1450 Reno Sharpe Store Road Bear Creek, North Carolina 27207 MOODY, WILLIAMS, ATWATER & LEE
ATTORNEYS AT LAW BOX 629 SILER CITY, NORTH CAROLINA 27344 (919) 663-2850 4tp
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
The undersigned, having quali ed as Executor of the Estate of Judith J. Milikofsky aka Judith June Milikofsky, Deceased, late of Chatham County, North Carolina, does hereby notify all persons, rms and corporations having claims against the estate to exhibit them to the undersigned at the o ces of Tillman, Whichard & Cagle, PLLC, 501 Eastowne Drive, Suite 130, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, on or before the 12th day of September, 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery. All persons indebted to the estate will please make immediate payment. This 12th day of June, 2025.
DENA ROBIN SPECTOR, EXECUTOR ESTATE OF JUDITH J. MILIKOFSKY AKA JUDITH JUNE MILIKOFSKY
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
All persons having claims against Rolf Peter Lynton of Chatham County, North Carolina, are noti ed to present them to Rebecca Nandani Lynton, Executor of the Estate of Rolf Lynton, at NextGen Estate Solutions, 1340 Environ Way, Chapel Hill, NC 27517 or before September 26, 2025. Failure to present a claim in timely fashion will result in this Notice being pleaded in bar of recovery against the estate, the Executor, and the devisees of Rolf Peter Lynton. Those indebted to Rolf Lyton are asked to make prompt payment to the Estate.
This the 26th day of June, 2025. Rebecca Lynton, Executor C/O Brittany N. Porter, Attorney NextGen Estate Solutions 1340 Environ Way, Chapel Hill, NC 27517
NOTICE
25E000315-180
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
All persons, rms and corporations having claims against Loretta
Bernice Chegash, also known as Loretta B. Chegash and Loretta Chegash, late of Chatham County, North Carolina, are noti ed to exhibit them to Daniel E. Chegash Sr. as Executor of the Estate of Loretta Bernice Chegash on or before September 22, 2025, c/o Thomas J. Neagle, Attorney at Law, 605 W. Main Street, Suite 104, Carrboro, North Carolina 27510, or this notice will be pled in bar of their recovery. All persons, rms and corporations indebted to the decedent are asked to make immediate payment to the above-named Executor.
This the 19th day of June, 2025.
Daniel E. Chegash Sr., Executor c/o Thomas J. Neagle, Attorney 605 W. Main Street, Suite 104 Carrboro, North Carolina 27510
Attorney for Estate: Thomas J. Neagle Neagle Law Firm, PC 605 W. Main Street, Suite 104 Carrboro, North Carolina 27510 (919) 368-3536 For Publication: June 19, 26, July 3, 10, 2025
NOTICE
NORTH CAROLINA CHATHAM COUNTY FILE# 25E000303-180
The undersigned, CATHERINE A. HELMEKE, having quali ed on the 5th Day of JUNE, 2025 as EXECUTOR of the Estate of KERRY DEAN HELMEKE, deceased of Chatham County, North Carolina, does hereby notify all persons, rms and corporations having claims against said Estate to exhibit them to her on or before the 12th Day of SEPTEMBER 2025, or this Notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery. All persons, rms or corporations indebted to said Estate will please make immediate payment to the undersigned. This the 12th DAY OF JUNE 2025.
CATHERINE A. HELMEKE, EXECUTOR
1302 Ventnor Pl Cary, NC 27519 Run dates: June 12, 19, 26, July 3p.
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
Probate #25E000174-180_____
All persons, rm and corporations having claims against Earl S. Settlemire, late of Chatham County, North Carolina are hereby noti ed to present them to Kendall H. Page, as Executor of the decedent’s estate in care of Kendall H. Page, Attorney, 210 N Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 on or before the 19th day of September, 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery. All persons, rms and corporations indebted to the said estate will please make immediate payment to the above-named Executor.
Kendall H. Page
210 N Columbia Street Chapel Hill, NC 27514 Bar # 14261
Notice to Run: 6/19/2025,6/26/2025, 7/03/2025 & 7/10/2025
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
NORTH CAROLINA Chatham COUNTY
25E000296-180 All persons, rms, and corporations having claims against William Lambert Jernigan, deceased, late of Chatham County, NC, are noti ed to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before the 13th day of September, 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment. This the 12th day of June 2025. Rachel Lee Jernigan, Executor c/o Hemphill Gelder, PC PO Box 97035 Raleigh, NC 27624-7035
Chatham News and Record June 12, 19, 26, 2025 and July 3, 2025
NOTICE
ALL PERSONS, rms, and corporations having claims against [Donna Marie Spring Ring, deceased, of Chatham County, N.C., are noti ed to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before September 26th, 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment. This the 26th of June, 2025. Michelle Lynn Ring Romanowicz, Administrator of the Estate of [Donna Marie Spring Ring, c/o Amanda Honea, Attorney, 1033 Wade Avenue, Suite 104, Raleigh, NC 27605.
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
NORTH CAROLINA CHATHAM COUNTY
25E000250-180 ALL persons having claims against THOMAS HUGH THOMPSON, deceased, late of Chatham County, North Carolina, are noti ed to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before Sep 05 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment.
This the 5th day of June, 2025.
KARLA LACKORE THOMPSON, Executor
C/O Jones Branz & Whitaker LLP
4030 Wake Forest Rd. Ste. 300 Raleigh, NC 27609 J5, 12, 19 and 26
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
NORTH CAROLINA CHATHAM COUNTY
25E000288-180 ALL persons having claims against Benjamin Wayne Barber aka Benjamin Barber, deceased, late of Chatham County, North Carolina, are noti ed to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before Sep 05 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment.
This the 5th day of June, 2025. Cameron Barber, Administrator C/O Kerr Law, PLLC P.O. Box 10941 Greensboro, NC 27404 J5, 12, 19 and 26
NOTICE
NOTICE TO CREDITORS AND DEBTORS OF Suzanne Simmons Daily All persons, rms and corporations having claims against Suzanne Simmons Daily, late of Chatham County, North Carolina, are noti ed to exhibit them to Kathryn Daily as Executor of the decedent’s estate on or before September 13th, 2025, c/o Janet B. Witchger, Attorney at Law, 1414 Raleigh Rd., Ste. 203, Chapel Hill, NC 27517, or be barred from their recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment to the above-named Executor. This the 12th day of June, 2025. Kathryn Daily, Executor c/o Janet B. Witchger, Atty. TrustCounsel 1414 Raleigh Rd., Ste. 203 Chapel Hill, NC 27517
NOTICE
STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA NOTICE TO CREDITORS COUNTY OF CHATHAM THE UNDERSIGNED, having quali ed on the 22nd day of May 2025, as Executor of the ESTATE OF PASCAL PIGLIA, Deceased, of Chatham County, North Carolina, does hereby notify all persons, rms and corporations having claims against said Estate to exhibit them to the undersigned on or before the 20th day of September 2025 or this Notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery. All persons indebted to said Estate will please make immediate payment to the undersigned. This, the 19th day of June 2025. Lisa M. Ferrari Executor Estate of Pascal Piglia c/o Richard G. Long III, Attorney Walker Lambe, PLLC Post O ce Box 51549 Durham, North Carolina 27717
NOTE: For publication in the Chatham News on the following dates: June 19, 26, July 3, 10, 2025. Please send the Statement and Proof of Publication to Walker Lambe, PLLC, Post O ce Box 51549, Durham, North Carolina 27717-1549.
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
NORTH CAROLINA CHATHAM COUNTY FILE#25E000291-180 The undersigned, MATTHEW JOHNSON AND BELINDA C. MURRAY, having quali ed on the 2ND Day of JUNE, 2025 as CO-EXECUTORS of the Estate of RANDY LYNN JOHNSON, deceased, of Chatham County, North Carolina, does hereby notify all persons, rms and corporations having claims against said Estate to exhibit them to him on or before the 12TH Day OF SEPTEMBER 2025, or this Notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery. All persons indebted to said Estate will please make immediate payment to the undersigned. This, the 12TH DAY OF JUNE 2025. MATTHEW JOHNSON, CO-EXECUTOR 1104 BOWERS STORE RD. SILER CITY, NC 27344 BELINDA C. MURRAY, CO-EXECUTOR 95 NC HWY 22/42 BENNETT, NC 27208 Run dates: J12,19,26,Jy3p
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
NORTH CAROLINA CHATHAM COUNTY FILE#24E001582-180 The undersigned, BONNIE LYNN LEONARD, having quali ed on the 6th Day of NOVEMBER, 2024 as EXECUTOR of the Estate of OLLIE WALTER WRENN, deceased, of Chatham County, North Carolina, does hereby notify all persons, rms and corporations having claims against said Estate to exhibit them to him on or before the 26th Day OF SEPTEMBER 2025, or this Notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery. All persons indebted to said Estate will please make immediate payment to the undersigned. This, the 26th DAY OF JUNE 2025. BONNIE LYNN LEONARD, EXECUTOR 637 SILVERBERRY PITTSBORO, NC 27312 Run dates: J26, Jy3,10,17p
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
NORTH CAROLINA CHATHAM COUNTY FILE#24E001437-180 The undersigned, PAMELA KITZMAN, having quali ed on the 10th Day of SEPTEMBER, 2024 as EXECUTOR of the Estate of ELIZABETH E. JOHNSON, deceased, of Chatham County, North Carolina, does hereby notify all persons, rms and corporations having claims against said Estate to exhibit them to him on or before the 26th Day OF SEPTEMBER 2025, or this Notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery. All persons indebted to said Estate will please make immediate payment to the undersigned. This, the 26th DAY OF JUNE 2025. PAMELA KITZMAN, EXECUTOR 1096 EPPS CLARK RD. SILER CITY, NC 27344 Run dates: J26, Jy3,10,17p
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
NORTH CAROLINA CHATHAM COUNTY FILE#25E000033-180
The undersigned, CARLA PETERS, having quali ed on the 25TH Day of APRIL, 2025 as EXECUTOR of the Estate of BAILEY LOUIS PIGFORD, deceased, of Chatham County, North Carolina, does hereby notify all persons, rms and corporations having claims against said Estate to exhibit them to him on or before the 5TH Day OF SEPTEMBER 2025, or this Notice will be pleaded in bar of their recovery. All persons indebted to said Estate will please make immediate payment to the undersigned. This, the 5TH DAY OF JUNE 2025 CARLA PETERS, EXECUTOR 11801 US 421 GOLDSTON, NC 27252 Run dates: J5,12,19,26p
NOTICE
NOTICE TO CREDITORS AND DEBTORS OF William Brent Sutton All persons, rms and corporations having claims against William Brent Sutton, late of Chatham, North Carolina, are noti ed to exhibit them to Deborah Moyer or Rebecca Shelton as Administrator CTA of the decedent’s estate on or before
This the 5th day of June, 2025. Deborah Sutton Moyer, Administrator CTA Rebecca Elizabeth Sutton Shelton, Administrator CTA c/o Janet B. Witchger, Atty. TrustCounsel 1414 Raleigh Rd., Ste. 203 Chapel Hill, NC 27517
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
All persons having claims against Paul Franklin Stiller, of Chatham County, North Carolina, are noti ed to present them to Susan Morrow, Executor of the Estate of Paul Franklin Stiller, at NextGen Estate Solutions, 1340 Environ Way, Chapel Hill, NC 27517 or before September 19 , 2025. Failure to present a claim in timely fashion will result in this Notice being pleaded in bar of recovery against the estate, the Personal Representative, and the devisees of Paul Stiller. Those indebted to Paul Stiller are asked to make prompt payment to the Estate.
This the 19th day of June, 2025. Susan Morrow, Executor C/O Brittany N. Porter, Attorney NextGen Estate Solutions 1340 Environ Way, Chapel Hill, NC 27517
NOTICE TO CREDITORS NORTH CAROLINA CHATHAM COUNTY 25E000299-180
ALL persons having claims against Jacqueline O’Gorman, deceased, late of Chatham County, North Carolina, are noti ed to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before Sep 26 2025, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment.
This the 26th day of June, 2025.
PATRICIA HURLMAN, Co-Executor DENISE M NOWAK, Co-Executor C/O Brown Estate Planning and Elder Law P. O. Box 920 Graham, NC 27253
J26, 3, 10 and 17
An
By Adithi Ramakrishnan The Associated Press
Left, 678 separate images taken by the observatory in just over seven hours of observing time are combined in a way that reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Tri d nebula (top right) and the
tion and U.S. Department of Energy, it will survey the southern sky for the next 10 years.
The observatory’s rst look features the vibrant Tri d and Lagoon nebulas located thousands of light-years from Earth. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles. A gaggle of galaxies known as the Virgo Cluster were also captured, including two bright blue spirals.
The observatory hopes to image 20 billion galaxies and discover new asteroids and other celestial objects.
The e ort is named after astronomer Vera Rubin, who offered the rst tantalizing evidence that a mysterious force called dark matter might be lurking in the universe. Researchers hope the observatory’s discerning camera may yield clues about this elusive entity along with another called dark energy.
Carolina Magic brings high-level opportunity for middle school girls’ basketball players
The program has seen signi cant growth and improvement since 2023
By Asheebo Rojas Chatham News & Record
SHOOTING STARS move fast, and they also bring light.
Just like its logo, a rapidly rising travel basketball program based out of Siler City is doing the same thing. Carolina Magic, a travel basketball program for middle school-aged girls founded and run by brothers Jarred and Ryan Siler, has brought an opportuni-
ty for elite competition to Chatham County and is quickly gaining a reputation of one of the top travel teams in the state.
The Siler brothers came up with the idea of a local travel team three years ago after their daughters, Selena and Kaylee, nished their rec ball seasons.
The girls, spending a lot of time outside shooting hoops, shared a love for the game — just like their fathers who played at Jordan-Matthews — but didn’t have a nearby option to keep playing through the spring and summer.
“There’s no options out there, man,” Jarred said. “We’re just going outside, hitting the Paul
“You can actually tell that program actually cares about the girls.” Shaun Bennett
Braxton outside court, getting some shots up and stu . We got this idea, like man, they really love it like that. Ain’t no sense of waiting around until next October to sign back up for rec. Let’s invest in it.”
Jarred and Ryan started garnering interest for the pro -
ASHEEBO ROJAS / CHATHAM NEWS & RECORD
Seaforth’s Will Cuicchi raced for multiple state titles at the 2025 NCHSAA outdoor track and eld state championship meet. He competed in the 800-meter run at the New Balance Nationals on June 22.
Three Seaforth state
By Asheebo Rojas Chatham News & Record
A FEW TRACK and eld state champions competed for national titles over the weekend.
Jack Anstrom, Will Cuicchi and Sebastian Calderon, all graduating
2025 Seaforth boys’ indoor and outdoor track and eld state championship teams, participated in the New Balance Nationals outdoor meet at Franklin Field in Philadelphia from June 19 through Sunday. Cuicchi nished the highest out of the group, coming in 18th place in the championship boys’ 800-meter race with a time of
Distance Carnival on April 26. Competing against the likes of Olympic gold-medalist Quincy Wilson, Calderon nished 65th in the championship boys’ 400 race with a time of 48.47. He ran a sub-49 race for the second time since the end of the high school season, notching a personal-best of 48.33 at the Music City Track Carnival in May. Anstrom competed in thenal and fastest heat of the
gram during the next rec season, telling parents of players that played with their daughters about their plans and vision for a travel team.
“We had an open tryout to everybody that wanted to try out,” Ryan said. “We ended up keeping everybody. And that’s when Carolina Magic came in in 2023.”
The team saw its rst action in more than a dozen tournaments from March to June 2023.
“We knew where we were at starting o ,” Jarred said. “We kept it local and really focused on the fundamentals, the basics. We de nitely took our
bumps and bruises, for sure.”
The team improved over time and started winning at local tournaments. By the next season, Carolina Magic started to play year-round and set its eyes toward national competition.
In June 2024, Carolina Magic’s fth and sixth grade teams played at the National Travel Basketball Association Nationals in Myrtle Beach. Both teams made the gold bracket but were eliminated.
“It was an eye-opener,” Ryan said. “Jarred’s daughter came back from nationals. She was
page B3 See LOCALS, page B5 See NATIONALS, page B2
A look back at local pro athletes as Powell prepares to join NBA
Chatham County has produced numerous draft picks across baseball and football
By Asheebo Rojas Chatham News & Record
FORMER NORTHWOOD basketball star
Drake Powell looks to further cement his name into Chatham County athletics history this week. As he can become the rst Chatham County high school graduate to be drafted into the NBA, Powell can join a list of local athletes who made it to the pro level in other sports.
Across football, baseball and car racing, the county has been represented at the highest levels. Here’s a reminder of some Chatham natives who made the big leagues and how they got there.
Baseball
Prior to a professional baseball career that spanned over a decade, Austin Brice became a star in his four seasons at Northwood from 2007-10. He played a variety of positions, but he made his name as a pitcher, earning all-state and all-conference honors in his junior and senior seasons.
Brice, who was once clocked at throwing 97 mph in high school, earned o ers from programs such as UNC Wilmington and NC State before committing to Appalachian State. But instead of playing in college, he was drafted in the ninth round of the 2010 MLB Draft and elected to sign with the Florida Marlins.
4
Chatham Post 305’s Daniel White earns athlete of the week honors for the week of June 16.
With Chatham leading Liberty Post 81 4-0 in the bottom of the sixth inning, White hit a three-run, inside-the-park home run to extend Post 305’s lead to seven. He nished the game 2 for 5 with a team-high four RBIs despite the 10-8 loss.
White was a powerful hitter throughout his career at Seaforth. He earned rst-team all-conference honors in 2025.
NATIONALS from page B1
championship boys’ mile race, but he did not cross the nish line. He said he’d been dealing with an ankle injury throughout the season, and it was “too much” to endure during Saturday’s race.
The end of the New Balance Nationals marked the end of the outdoor season for the three standouts. The next stop is their respective colleges.
Anstrom, who’s preparing to run at NC State, continued
to etch his name in the record books after his nal high school season. In the HOKA Festival of Miles on June 5, Anstrom ran a personal-best 4:02.43 full mile with a 1,600-meter split of 4:00.99, notching the second-fastest outdoor 1,600 time in North Carolina history.
During the high school season, Anstrom broke the Apex Lions’ Relays’ 1,600 record by 1.14 seconds. That record stood for 10 years.
Anstrom also competed in
The standout pitcher threw 97 strikeouts as a senior
By Asheebo Rojas Chatham News & Record
ZACH CARTRETTE, the Chatham Charter pitcher who graduated this spring, committed to Guilford Technical Community College on June 14.
“I’d like to thank Coach Wharton for this opportunity,” Cartrette said in a post on his X account. “I’d also like to thank Joe Mullins for the mentorship and support along the way. Also, to Brandon Golden for helping me take my game to the next level. As well as Coach McNeely for helping me through my recruitment.”
Cartrette completed his four years on the mound at Chatham Charter with a 25-7 record, a 2.45 ERA, 249 strikeouts, 72 walks and 133 hits in 1741⁄3 innings pitched. He was lights out as a senior, achieving career bests in ERA (1.33) and strikeouts (97). He also pitched a no-hitter in the spring. At the plate, Cartrette recorded a .399 batting average, 112 hits, 76 runs, 88 RBIs and three home runs in his career. He logged 22 hits and 19 RBIs as a senior, including four doubles.
As one of three seniors on the Knights’ young 2025 team, Cartrette helped lead Chatham Charter to its second third-round appearance in the North Carolina High School Athletic Association playo s.
“I’d like to thank Coach Wharton for this opportunity.”
Zach Cartrette
He joins fellow senior Luke Johnson in committing to a college program. Johnson signed to Mid-Atlantic Christian University in April.
Cartrette will join a Guilford Tech program that went 12-31 in its rst season under coach TJ Wharton in 2025. The Titans, who are a Division II program in the National Junior College Athletic Association, went 11-23 in Region 10 play.
“My pitching coach that I go work with in High Point, he actually recommended it for me,” Cartrette said. “I talked to the coach. I liked him a lot. I liked the campus. It’s a good area, and it’s close to home. So it’s honestly a pretty easy decision.”
Cartrette said he plans to major in general business.
the Brooks PR Invitational after the high school season, nishing eighth in the two-mile nals.
Cuicchi also had a successful summer, smashing his outdoor 1,600 personal-best with a 4:13.93 time in the RunningLane Track Championships in May. He also competed in the Brooks PR Invitational and nished ninth in the 800 nals. Cuicchi will continue his running career at UNC Charlotte.
Calderon’s personal-best time
in the 400 at the Music City Track Carnival earned him a second-place nish. He will run at Campbell next season. The trio nished theirnal high school outdoor season with multiple individual state championships this spring.
Anstrom defended his titles in both the 1,600 (4:19.27) and the 3,200 (9:36.80), capping o his high school career with nine individual titles across cross country, indoor track and outdoor track.
Calderon won his first outdoor state title as part of Seaforth’s 4x400 relay team.
Cuicchi, the anchor leg of that 4x400 relay win, also defended his 800 title with a time of 1:55.32. In addition to taking the lead in the final 200 meters of the 4x400 relay, Cuicchi put on another heroic effort in the 4x800 finals, willing the Hawks from the fourth position to a second-place finish as the anchor leg.
Chatham won for the rst time since May 31
By Asheebo Rojas Chatham News & Record
ROBBINS — Chatham Post 305 notched four hits and scored two runs in the top of the fth inning to beat Moore County Post 12 4-3 and snap a ve-game losing streak.
Post 305’s last win was on May 31, also against Post 12. “Tonight, we came out here and did business early,” Post 305 coach Bryce Marsh said. “Stayed with it, stayed locked in, got behind our pitcher and had some good at-bats.”
Center elder Matt Murchison went for at the plate and recorded two runs. Third baseman Colin Dorney also had an e cient o ensive night, going 2 for 3 with an RBI.
Up 2-0, Murchison started the fth inning with a double to right eld, and after a line out by Landon Moser, Dorney also doubled to right eld to score Murchison.
“I knew he was down on the count, so I knew a fastball was coming,” Murchison said. “I was kind of sitting on the fastball, got a little bit out front of it, sent it down the line. I knew if I got on second, my boy Colin was going to come up and nish the job for me.”
“Tonight, we came out here and did business early.”
Post 305 coach Bryce Marsh
Shortstop Ian McMillan then knocked Dorney home with a single, giving Chatham a four-run lead.
Chatham took advantage of early Moore County mistakes, taking a 1-0 lead after Murchison scored from third on a wild pitch.
Back-to-back errors by the Post 12 defense allowed McMil-
BASKETBALL from page B1
like, ‘Man, those girls are good.’
Like I said, I watched it for myself. Selena was outside waking up at 6 in the morning just dribbling for two hours, constantly.”
Said Ryan, “I saw it with her, and then my daughter got into it, and she wanted to come aboard. Then a couple of players that we always had, Talayah and Delilah, they wanted to work more and practice more. So we just had a great group of girls that just wanted to get better.”
The girls started making a name for themselves, taking home rst-place trophies in tournaments around the state.
In April, both the sixth grade and seventh grade teams (sixth grade players also played on the seventh grade level) won their gold brackets at the LaMelo
Ball Invitational in Charlotte.
The sixth grade team won every game by more than 25 points.
At the Teammate Basketball National Championship this weekend in Rock Hill, South Carolina, the seventh grade team nished as runners-up in the gold bracket. After winning three pool games by more than 30 points, the Carolina Magic National sixth grade team lost in the second round of its gold bracket as a time con ict with a seventh grade game took some of its starters away.
But the team isn’t just for girls already ahead with their basketball skills — it’s for anyone that wants to put the work in to be successful.
The Carolina Magic Showcase sixth grade team, a developmental squad, took the sil-
lan to reach third base before scoring Chatham’s second run.
Post 305 pitcher Zach Cartrette had a solid night on the mound, pitching nearly a complete game with nine strikeouts, three walks and six hits. Completing four four-batter innings, Cartrette said it felt like “everything” was working on the mound.
“My fastball was getting away from me a little bit, but my slider really kept me in the game,” Cartrette said.
After giving up Moore County’s rst run of the night with one out in the bottom of the seventh inning, Daniel White came in as a relief.
Post 12’s Chandler King
then scored on a wild pitch, and Dylan Benedict made it a one-run game on a passed ball. With Dom Inocencio, the tying run, on second base, Austin Patterson grounded to Dorney who then tagged Inocencio out in a pickle.
“It was a slow chopper down the line, and Bryce was yelling at me to throw it to rst,” Dorney said. “I saw that he was charging to go to third, so I pump faked and threw to second. Made sure to get the lead runner.”
Andrew Moore ied out to Murchison in center eld for the nal out, ending Post 12’s late-game surge. White threw 10 strikes on 17 pitches.
Chatham moved to 3-8 on the season, and Moore County fell to 8-9.
After a double-header at home against Aberdeen Post 72 on Tuesday, Post 305 will host Randolph County on Thursday at 7 p.m.
Post 12 will play at Aberdeen on Thursday at 7 p.m.
ver bracket crown after beating DYB Elite Hoop Dreams from South Carolina 34-11. One of the players on that team, Genesis Benitez, is playing basketball for the rst time.
“It’s a fun experience, and you get included in everything,” Benitez said. “Your teammates try to make you better, and they say it’s better if we work hard on defense; o ense will lead up to it.”
Said Jarred, “We’ll meet anybody wherever they’re at and have a team for them.”
As Carolina Magic has become a close option for local players, the growing buzz around the team has attracted players from outside the area and even out of state.
Shaun Bennett, whose daughter Ava plays on the sixth grade national team and the
seventh grade team, brought his daughter to Carolina Magic from Greenville, South Carolina. They heard about the program after their daughter’s old team beat Carolina Magic in a previous tournament. Now, they, along with Ava’s talented best friend, Morgan Pierotti, make hourslong drives for team practices and games whenever they can.
“You can actually tell that program actually cares about the girls,” Bennett said. “Even though they were losing, he was still coaching. Both of them. Very knowledgeable about the game. Just talking to them, they won us over. They won my wife over. All the girls made our little girl feel like home, so for us, it was an easy transition.”
The sky’s the limit for the
Carolina Magic program as it begins to pick up steam in the travel basketball landscape. The team has even hosted tournaments in its short history, bringing not just individual players but teams to Chatham County.
Decisions have yet to be made to make it o cial, but the program has also been presented an opportunity to play in one of the highest-level travel basketball circuits in the nation just two years after its rst tournaments.
“That’s how fast things are moving for us right now, man,” Jarred said. “We’re just blessed.”
Carolina Magic will be back on the road at the AAU World Championship in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Thursday through Sunday.
Wisconsin, NIL collective sue Miami, allege tampering, NIL inducements
Madison, Wis.
The University of Wisconsin and its NIL collective have sued the University of Miami, saying it knowingly induced one of the Badgers’ football players to abandon a lucrative name, image and likeness contract to play for the Florida school this fall. The suit could have a a wider impact on future NIL deals across college athletics. The case describes facts that line up with the situation involving cornerback Xavier Lucas, who last December announced plans to leave the Badgers. Miami did not have an immediate comment.
NHL Blackhawks acquire Burakovsky from Kraken in exchange for Veleno
Chicago The Chicago Blackhawks acquired Andre Burakovsky from the Seattle Kraken in exchange for fellow forward Joe Veleno. Chicago also placed defenseman T.J. Brodie on unconditional waivers for purposes of buying out his contract. The 30-year- old Burakovsky had 10 goals and 27 assists in 79 games with Seattle last season. A Stanley Cup champion with Washington in 2018 and Colorado in 2022, he has 153 goals and 234 assists in 696 regular-season games over 11 NHL seasons. The acquisition of Burakovsky gives Chicago some additional size and scoring and creates more salary cap exibility for Seattle.
PGA Clark “deeply regrets” damaging Oakmont locker during U.S. Open Cromwell, Conn.
Wyndham Clark apologized for the damage done to the century- old locker he was using at Oakmont during the U.S. Open. It’s the second time this year Clark has caused damage out of anger during a major. He also slung his driver, which damaged a sign on the tee during the PGA Championship. Clark missed the cut by one shot at the U.S. Open. He says he deeply regrets the mistake.
Arkansas shortstop Aloy wins Golden Spikes Award as nation’s top amateur player
Cary Arkansas shortstop Wehiwa Aloy received the Golden Spikes Award as the top amateur baseball player in the nation. Aloy is the third Arkansas player to take home the prize, joining Andrew Benintendi in 2015 and Kevin Kopps in 2021, and the 12th winner from the Southeastern Conference. Aloy was the SEC player of the year and led the Razorbacks in almost every major o ensive category.
NFL Former Jets, Ravens linebacker Mosley announces retirement
C.J. Mosley, a ve-time Pro Bowl selection during an 11-year NFL career with the New York Jets and Baltimore Ravens, announced he’s retiring from playing football. Mosley was released by the Jets in March after playing four games last season because of a toe injury and later a herniated disk in his neck. Mosley made his announcement with a video post on his Instagram page that included highlights of his playing career. Mosley was the 17th overall pick by Baltimore in the 2014 draft out of Alabama.
The team is celebrating harder than after last season’s rst Cup
By Alanis Thames The Associated Press SUNRISE,
Fla. — The Florida Panthers’ Stanley Cup championship festivities have included an all-night celebration at a popular beach bar; crowd sur ng, pole climbing and impromptu karaoke at a Miami nightclub; a Brad Marchand appearance at Dairy Queen; a few team dinners and a boat ride.
That’s just so far. They insist they’ve got more in them.
“We’re not toning it down,”
defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. “We just won two Stanley Cups in a row. We deserve to have a good time.”
The Panthers also partied hard after winning the franchise’s rst title a year ago. But some players have described those days as a surreal whirlwind of rst-time experiences. This time around, the celebra-
tions are di erent, as the reality of what they accomplished set in.
“There’s a di erent feeling to it,” coach Paul Maurice said during the team’s exit interviews on Saturday. “Last year was more of a dream. ... That’s the right word. It was a dream come true. It was euphoric. This year, it was an achievement. It was hard. It was hard all year. It was hard at camp. There were just so many places that if we had broken at that point or failed we would’ve all understood — ‘OK, we did our best. We just couldn’t get it done.’ We never let that happen.”
The coaches’ celebrations, Maurice noted, have been much more subdued compared to last year: They had their rst post-championship dinner as a sta last Friday night. They joined some players on a boat ride.
“I haven’t had a hangover yet,” Maurice said, “so way ahead of where I was last year.”
Maurice heard about his players’ celebrations from his
wife, who has shown him a few viral social media posts here and there.
Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said they’re giving themselves “permission” to celebrate more freely this year because they have already been through the experience.
“And don’t get me wrong, it’s still amazing,” he added, “but now everyone knows how to sit back a little and enjoy it because last year was so hectic. Like it happened to you for the rst time ever, and you had been dreaming about it for so long.” The Panthers in fact celebrated so hard that the Stanley Cup itself got a little banged up. The silver chalice was cracked at the bottom of the bowl, though Barkov noted the team hasn’t received any harsh reprimands from the keepers of the Cup or the Hockey Hall of Fame.
“I think they’ve seen worse,” he quipped. “I think every year they have to x some part of it. But yeah, don’t be stupid. Don’t take it to the ocean, stu
Smith looks like Rule 5 hit for rebuilding Chicago White Sox
The former Wake Forest pitcher is nally getting an opportunity in MLB
By Jay Cohen The Associated Press
CHICAGO — Shane Smith pitched a total of 101⁄3 innings during his college career at Wake Forest. He had a shoulder operation as a freshman, and his sophomore year was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic. Then he had elbow surgery.
At that point, even Smith began to wonder if baseball was going to work out for him.
“My dream of playing professional baseball, to say it didn’t waver would probably be lying,” he said. “But I knew there was an avenue somehow.”
There sure was.
Smith has turned into a pleasant surprise for the last-place Chicago White Sox after he was selected by the team in the Rule 5 draft.
The Rule 5 draft provides an opportunity for players left o a big league team’s 40-man rosters after several minor league seasons. Teams pay $100,000 to select a player in the major league portion. The players must stay on the active 26man major league roster all season or else clear waivers and be o ered back to their orig-
inal organization for $50,000. Between 10 and 20 players are selected in the big league Rule 5 draft most seasons, but most don’t actually stick with their new clubs. Even fewer develop into All-Star-worthy contributors. Hall of Fame outelder Roberto Clemente and two-time Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana are two of the most famous Rule 5 success stories. So far, it looks as if Smith is going to stick with the rebuilding White Sox. Smith has a 2.37 ERA in 681⁄3 innings over 13 starts. Smith very well could repre-
sent the last-place White Sox at next month’s All-Star Game in Atlanta. Dan Uggla with the Florida Marlins in 2006 is the only player to be named an All-Star in the season after he was selected in the Rule 5 draft. Smith went right into Chicago’s rotation during spring training — an unusual spot for a Rule 5 player. Since 2016, Luis Perdomo, Brad Keller and Mitch Spence are the only pitchers who made at least 20 starts in the majors in the season after they were selected in the big league phase of the Rule 5 draft. Keller began the 2018 season in Kansas City’s bullpen be-
like that. We should know the rules by now.”
The Panthers’ championship parade was on Fort Lauderdale Beach on Sunday — one of their last opportunities to celebrate together before the players disperse for the summer and general manager Bill Zito begins an important o season. Free agency begins July 1, and while a good chunk of Florida’s core — including Barkov and stars Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart — are already under long-term contracts, a few key contributors are set for free agency in Marchand, Ekblad and playo MVP Sam Bennett.
“You’re going to have a different roster each and every year,” he said, “but hopefully the core of guys, we can continue building. With that being said, we’ve got some unbelievable players that are up for contracts that I hope they get every single cent they can because that’s what you want for your best friends. It’s time to cash in for some of those boys. Hopefully it’s here.”
fore moving into the rotation in late May. He nished his rookie year with a 9-6 record and a 3.08 ERA in 20 starts and 21 relief appearances.
“I think you de nitely pull for all the Rule 5 guys because I feel like, not to say this in a bad way, but Rule 5 guys kind of get a bad rap, right?” said Keller, a key reliever for the Chicago Cubs. “It’s like they’re like nobody’s got a chance. That’s not true. Some organizations are in di erent situations where they can’t protect guys that they want to.” Smith had been in Milwaukee’s organization since he signed with the Brewers as an undrafted free agent in 2021, just weeks after he had Tommy John surgery. He had a 3.05 ERA in 32 appearances over two minor league stops last season, nishing the year with Triple-A Nashville.
Smith has a big four-seam fastball that gets into the high 90s to go along with a good slider and curveball. But the biggest key to his success this year has been the development of a nasty changeup that really came together in the o season after years of work.
Fortunate timing for Smith and the White Sox.
“For a guy that hasn’t really pitched above Double-A, he had some innings in Triple-A, but to come here and pitch the way that he does, it just speaks to his ability and his con dence and also speaks to the group of players and sta here to support him,” general manager Chris Getz said. “Shane is doing really well and we expect him to have a really productive, healthy season for us.”
By Dan Gelston The Associated Press
LONG POND, Pa. — Chase
Briscoe returned to victory lane Sunday at Pocono Raceway, conserving fuel down the stretch to hold o Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin for his rst win with his new race team.
Briscoe raced his way into an automatic spot in NASCAR’s playo s with the win and gave the No. 19 Toyota its rst victory since 2023 when Martin Truex Jr. had the ride. Briscoe lost his job at the end of last season at Stewart-Haas Racing when the team folded and he was tabbed to replace Truex in the four-car JGR eld.
Hamlin, who holds the track record with seven wins, ap-
peared on the brink of reeling in Briscoe over the nal, thrilling laps only to have not enough in the No. 11 Toyota to snag that eighth Pocono win.
“It was just so hard to have a guy chasing you, especially the guy that’s the greatest of all time here,” Briscoe said.
Briscoe made his nal pit stop on lap 119 of the 160-lap race, while Hamlin — who returned after missing last week’s race following the birth of his son — made his nal stop on 120. Hamlin’s team radioed to him that they believed Briscoe would fall about a half-lap short on fuel — only for the rst-year JGR driver to win by 0.682 seconds.
Briscoe, who won an X nity Series race at Pocono in 2020, raced to his third career Cup victory and rst since Darlington in 2024.
Briscoe has been on bit of a hot streak, and had his fourth
“To get Coach in victory lane after them taking a chance on me, it’s so rewarding truthfully. Just a big weight o my shoulders.”
Chase Briscoe
top-10 nish over the last six races, including a seventh-place nish in last week’s ballyhooed race in Mexico City. He became the 11th driver to earn a spot in the 16-driver eld with nine races left until the eld is set and made a winner again of crew chief James Small. Small stayed on the team through Truex’s nal winless season and Briscoe’s winless start to this season.
“It’s been a tough couple of years,” Small said. “We’ve never lost belief, any of us.” Hamlin nished second. Ryan Blaney, Chris Buescher and Chase Elliott completed the top ve. Briscoe, a third-generation dirt racer from Indiana, gave JGR its 18th Cup victory at Pocono.
“I literally grew up racing my sprint car video game in a Joe Gibbs Racing Home Depot uniform,” Briscoe said. “To get Coach in Victory Lane after them taking a chance on me, it’s so rewarding truthfully. Just a big weight o my shoulders. I’ve been telling my wife the last two weeks, I have to win. To nally come here and do it, it has been a great day.”
The race was delayed 2 hours, 10 minutes by rain and the conditions were muggy by the time the green ag dropped. Briscoe
led 72 laps and won the second stage.
Briscoe wrote before the race on social media, “Anybody going from Pocono to Oklahoma City after the race Sunday?” The Pacers fan wasn’t going to make it to Game 7 of the NBA Finals. He’ll certainly settle for a ride to victory lane.
Clean race
Carson Hocevar made a clean pass of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and the two feuding drivers battled without incident on restarts as they appeared to race in peace after a pair of recent wrecks on the track threatened to spill into Pocono.
Stenhouse threatened to beat up his racing rival after last weekend’s race in Mexico City but cooler heads prevailed back in the United States. Hocevar nished 18th and Stenhouse 30th.
After spending six seasons in the minors, Brice made his MLB debut with the Marlins on Aug. 12, 2016, striking out two batters in one inning against the White Sox. He became the rst Hong Kong-born player to appear in the major leagues. Brice appeared in 14 more games that season and was traded to the Cincinnati Reds in January 2017.
Brice spent two seasons with the Reds before being claimed o waivers by the Marlins in 2019. That year, he made a career-high 36 appearances and achieved career bests in ERA (3.43) and strikeouts (46). Brice was traded to the Red Sox in 2020 and made his nal MLB appearance with the Pirates in 2022. He retired from professional baseball in 2024.
Greg Harris, a Jordan-Matthews graduate, also made some major league appearances on the mound after being drafted by the Padres in the 10th round in 1985. Harris also played for the Rockies and the Twins in his eight-year career, nishing with a 45-64 regular season record. After a solid career on the mound at UNC, Davis Palermo, a 2018 Northwood graduate, was drafted in the eighth round of the 2022 MLB Draft by the Colorado Rockies. Palermo is in his fourth minor league season, playing with the Spokane Indians in the High-A Northwest League. As of Monday, he’s achieved a 1-2 record with a 2.50 ERA.
Benji Johnson, another Tar Heel out of Northwood (class of 2004), was drafted in the 17th round of the 2007 MLB Draft by the Atlanta Braves. After helping UNC to two straight runner-up nishes in the College World Series, Johnson
played four seasons in the minors.
Woods Fines, also a former Charger, played one season at Louisburg College before being drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays in the 14th round of the 2004 MLB Draft. He played four seasons in the minors before retiring in 2010.
Casey Golden was an elite o ensive threat for the Jordan-Matthews baseball team, hitting .488 with 16 home runs in his varsity career. After earning all-state honors as a senior in 2013, Golden played four seasons at UNC Wilmington, where he became a key member of Seahawks’ program. In 2017, Golden was named the Colonial Athletic Association (now Coastal Athletic Association) Player of the Year after totaling in 21 home runs. Following that season, Golden was selected by the Colorado Rockies in the 20th round of the MLB Draft. He played four seasons in the minors and was named a Pioneer League All- Star. As a member of the
Asheville Tourists in 2018, Golden won South Atlantic League MVP honors.
Football
Eddie Mason was a star linebacker at Jordan-Matthews from 1986-90, earning multiple all-conference and all-state honors. He played for Mack Brown at UNC for ve seasons as he redshirted in his rst year, spent two years as a reserve and started on the Tar Heels’ defense as a junior and senior. Mason had a huge game in the 1994 Sun Bowl, logging eight tackles, an interception and two pass breakups in UNC’s 35-31 loss to Texas. Following that performance, the New York Jets drafted him with the 178th overall pick in the 1995 NFL Draft.
As a rookie, Mason recorded 25 tackles on kicko and punt coverage and was named the Jets’ special teams MVP. A season-ending knee injury in thenal preseason game the follow-
ing year kept him away from football until 1998 when he joined the Jacksonville Jaguars.
He played in six games with the Jaguars, including two playo games. Mason spent the last four years of his career with Washington, where he notched career highs of 32 tackles and two tackles for loss in 2000. He retired in 2003.
Tobias Palmer was an all-around athlete at Northwood, starring in football and track. On the eld, he rushed for more than 4,700 yards and scored over 80 all-purpose touchdowns before graduating in 2008. Palmer was a two-time conference o ensive player of the year, and he was rated as a three-star recruit (No. 41 cornerback in the country) by Scout.com. ESPN rated him as the No. 27 athlete in the nation. That also showed on the track as he won the 2A 100-meter dash state title as a senior.
After two productive seasons at Georgia Military College, Palmer signed with NC State. He redshirted in 2010, and in 2011, he became the second-leading receiver on the team in yards (496) with 37 receptions and ve touchdowns. The next season, Palmer hauled in a team-high 54 catches for 781 yards and six touchdowns. Against Wake Forest in 2012, he took a kick return 100 yards to the house.
Palmer signed with the Jaguars as an undrafted free agent in 2013. He landed with numerous NFL teams, including a practice squad stint with the Chargers and a two-year contract with the Bills. Palmer also spent two o seasons in the Canadian Football League and nished his professional career with the Birmingham Iron of the Alliance of American Football in 2019.
Before becoming a longtime
NFL coach, George Edwards, a Siler City native, played high school ball at Jordan-Matthews. He went on to be a standout linebacker and four-year letterman at Duke. In college, Edwards was a two-year special teams captain and an All-ACC honorable mention selection in 1989.
Edwards began his coaching career at the college level, holding assistant positions at Florida (1991), Appalachian State (1992-95), Duke (1996) and Georgia (1997). He started his NFL coaching career with the Dallas Cowboys in 1998 as a linebackers coach. Across his decades-long career, Edwards has held three defensive coordinator positions in Washington (2003), Bu alo (2010-11) and Minnesota (2014-19). He is currently the pass game coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Other notable pro-level athletes include David Gaines, a Goldston native who raced in the NASCAR Limited Sportsman Division. Gaines, a 1986 graduate of NC State, started dirt track racing while in college, picking up three wins and 11 second-place nishes on dirt tracks and short asphalt ovals. He died in 1990 at Charlotte Motor Speedway during a NASCAR Sportsman Division practice session crash.
Siler City native David Mote was a NASCAR Grand National (now the NASCAR Cup Series) driver in the 1968 season. He logged 396 laps in seven races that year.
Lowell Bailey, another Siler City native, became the rst American in history to win a biathlon world championship in 2017, taking gold in the men’s 20-kilometer individual competition in Hoch lzen, Austria. He competed in four Winter Olympics Games (2006-2018).
Last year’s recipients included the late Quincy Jones
By Lindsey Bahr The Associated Press
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS after Tom Cruise received his rst Oscar nomination, he’s nally getting a trophy. It’s not for his death-defying stunts, either. At least, not exclusively.
Cruise, choreographer Debbie Allen and “Do The Right Thing” production designer Wynn Thomas have all been selected to receive honorary Oscar statuettes at the annual Governors Awards, the lm academy said. Dolly Parton will also be recognized with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her decades-long charitable work in literacy and education.
“This year’s Governors Awards will celebrate four legendary individuals whose extraordinary careers and commitment to our lmmaking community continue to leave a lasting impact,” Academy
President Janet Yang said in a statement. Most recipients of the prize historically have not yet won a competitive Oscar themselves. Cruise, 62, has been nominated four times, twice for best actor in “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Jerry Maguire,” once for supporting actor in “Magnolia” and once for best picture with “Top Gun: Maverick.” He’s also championed theatrical moviegoing and big-scale Hollywood production through the coronavirus pandemic.
Yang spotlighted Cruise’s “incredible commitment to our lmmaking community, to the theatrical experience, and to the stunts community.” Allen, 75, has never been nominated for an Oscar. But the multihyphenate entertainer — she also acts and produces — has played an integral role in the Oscars show, having choreographed seven ceremonies over the years. Four of those were nominated for prime-time Emmy awards. A nomination had also eluded Thomas, a leading production
designer whose lms have often gone on to best picture nominations and even one win, for Ron Howard’s “A Beautiful Mind.” Thomas is most known for his long-term collaboration with lmmaker Spike Lee, from “She’s Gotta Have It” and “Malcolm X” through “Da 5 Bloods.” Parton has been nominated twice for best original song, for “9 to 5” and, in 2006, “Travelin’ Thru” from the lm “Transamerica.” But her honor celebrates her humanitarian e orts over the years, through organizations like the Dollywood Foundation and the literary program “Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.” Yang said Parton “exempli es the spirit” of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
The awards will be handed out during an untelevised ceremony on Nov. 16 at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Los Angeles.
Recipients of the prizes, which honor lifetime achievement, contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences and service to the academy are selected by the lm academy’s board of governors.
The band o cially broke up in 1991
By Ann Levin
The Associated Press
TALKING HEADS FANS, re-
joice! Hard on the heels of the rerelease of “Stop Making Sense,” the 1984 Jonathan Demme lm widely considered the best concert movie ever made, Jonathan Gould has published a comprehensive biography of the seminal band that injected an art school vibe into popular music and forever changed rock ’n’ roll.
Gould, the author of well-received books on Otis Redding and the Beatles, chronicles in meticulous detail the rise and fall of the band that got its start in New York City’s underground punk scene and ended up touring the world with a repertoire shaped by blues, funk and jazz.
He begins “Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock” with a vivid description of the drizzly June night in 1975 when the original trio — singer/songwriter David Byrne, bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz — made its debut at the seedy club CBGB in downtown Manhattan, opening for the Ramones before a handful of patrons. With
MARINER BOOKS VIA AP
“Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene that Transformed Rock” by Jonathan Gould chronicles the iconic band.
their “unremarkable haircuts” and “nondescript casual clothes,” they o ered a sharp contrast to the “baroque turn” that rock fashion had taken in the 1970s, Gould observes.
“The qualities that characterized this neophyte group in their rst public performance centered on the awkward, disquieting intensity of their singer-guitarist, David Byrne, their sketchy, skeletal arrangements,
and the quirky intelligence of their songs,” Gould writes. “Tall and thin, with a long neck and an anxious, wide-eyed stare, Byrne stood sti y at the microphone, his upper body jerking and jiggling like a shadow puppet as he scratched out chords on his guitar. … Instead of doing his best to command the stage and the room, Byrne looked trapped by his surroundings, as if he were prepared, at any moment, to make a break for the door.”
Within a couple years of their zeitgeist-changing performances, they enlisted keyboardist/ guitarist Jerry Harrison, adding a much-needed dose of professionalism to the band. Gould, a former professional musician, writes exceedingly well about music but su ers from a kind of completism, cramming in an almost mind-numbing level of detail including the name of the elementary school in Pittsburgh where a young Frantz rst took up drums to every military posting of Weymouth’s naval aviator father.
Though much of the material is fascinating, including his observations about how Byrne’s then-undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome may have in uenced his music and relationships with the other band members, it is likely to be a bit too much for all but the most diehard fans.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand shot, Globe Theatre burns, Apple’s iPhone debuts, Battle of Gettysburg begins
JUNE 26
1917: U.S. troops entered World War I as the rst troops of the American Expeditionary Force landed in Saint-Nazaire, France.
1963: President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he delivered his famous speech expressing solidarity with the city’s residents, declaring: “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”).
2015: In its 5-4 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the country.
JUNE 27
1844: Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.
1957: Hurricane Audrey slammed into coastal Louisiana and Texas as a Category 4 storm, causing as many as 600 deaths.
1991: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the rst black jurist to sit on the na-
1934: Adolf Hitler launched his “blood purge” of political and military rivals in Germany in what came to be known as the “Night of the Long Knives.”
1936: Margaret Mitchell’s novel “Gone With the Wind” was released.
JULY 1
1863: The pivotal, three-day Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, resulting in a Union victory, began in Pennsylvania.
tion’s highest court, announced his retirement.
JUNE 28
1914: In an act that sparked World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, were shot to death in Sarajevo by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip.
1919: The Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending the World War I.
JUNE 29
1613: London’s original Globe Theatre, where many of Shakespeare’s plays were performed, was destroyed by a re sparked by a cannon shot during a performance of Henry VIII.
1767: Britain approved the Townshend Revenue Act, which imposed import duties on glass, paint, oil, lead, paper and tea shipped to the American colonies.
1776: The Virginia state constitution was adopted, and Patrick Henry was made governor.
2007: The rst version of the iPhone went on sale to the public; more than 2.3 billion iPhones have been sold since.
JUNE 30
1918: Labor activist and socialist Eugene V. Debs was arrested in Cleveland, charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 for a speech he’d made two weeks earlier denouncing U.S. involvement in World War I.
Comedian Je Ross to make Broadway debut this summer in one-man
It’s far from a celebrity roast
By Mark Kennedy
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Je Ross, a comedian known for hosting brutal roasts of celebrities, is coming to Broadway this summer with a one-man autobiographical show that will o er fans a softer, more intimate side.
“The hard part for me is letting go of a bit of my armor — of my roastmaster persona — and letting the audience get to me so that I can then get them,” he said ahead of a formal announcement last Wednesday. “I think it’s healthy to change it up and surprise people.”
“Je Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride” will play the Nederlander Theatre starting Aug. 5 for an eight-week engagement through Sept. 29.
The show will explore Ross’ close relatives, especially his grandfather on his mother’s side — Ross calls him “the hero of my childhood” — who stepped up after the comedi-
1867: Canada became a self-governing dominion of Great Britain as the British North America Act took effect. The national holiday is now known as Canada Day. 1903: The rst Tour de France began.
JULY 2
1776: The Continental Congress passed a resolution saying that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”
1881: President James A. Gar eld was shot by Charles J. Guiteau.
1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the civil rights bill passed by Congress, prohibiting discrimination and segregation based on race, color, sex, religion or national origin.
an’s parents died when he was a teenager.
“It’s very autobiographical, but it’s also not really about just me. It’s about all of us. When I talk about my uncle or my mom, I want you to see your uncle and your mom in the stories. That’s
really important to me,” Ross says. The title comes from the days when Ross was living with his grandfather in New Jersey. The younger man would take his grandfather to doctor visits or visit him in the hospital during
the day and at night go into New York for open-mic nights.
“My grandfather would always give me money for the bus and a banana, and he’d say, ‘Take a banana for the ride.’ I reluctantly took it, and more often than not, I’d be stuck in traf-
c, or I’d get low blood sugar, and that banana would be a lifesaver,” says Ross.
“But it was really his way of saying, ‘Be ready for anything’ and also, ‘I can’t go with you but I’m there with you in spirit.’ So, it was an emotional thing, it was a practical thing. It’s something that I still do.”
Ross is known as “The Roastmaster General” for his incendiary takedowns of Justin Bieber, Rob Lowe, Alec Baldwin and Tom Brady, among many others.
The seeds for “Je Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride” were planted in the mid-1990s when Ross gathered jokes and stories about his grandfather for an hourlong set. But digging up the past proved too much.
“I couldn’t sustain it emotionally. It was just too much for me as a 30-year-old guy,” Ross says.
“But now, 30 years later, I can dig in and look back and add a layer of experience over it all.”
He was spurred on in large part to losing three comedic friends — Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried and Norm Macdonald — within eight months. “That motivated me to look back at the old show from decades earlier and rewrite it completely for my current brain and my current skill set.”
Ross will be the latest comedian to come to Broadway, following John Mulaney, Keegan-Michael Key, Rachel Dratch, Billy Crystal and Colin Quinn.
THESE CELEBRITIES have birthdays this week.
JUNE 26
Jazz musician-composer Dave Grusin is 91. Basketball Hall of Fame coach Tara VanDerveer is 72. Musician Mick Jones (The Clash) is 70. Musician Chris Isaak is 69. Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is 55. Baseball Hall of Famer Derek Jeter is 51.
JUNE 27
Musician Bruce Johnston (The Beach Boys) is 83. Fashion designer Vera Wang is 76. Actor Julia Du y is 74. Actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai is 63. Writer-producer-director J.J. Abrams is 59. Actor Tobey Maguire is 50.
JUNE 28
Filmmaker and comedian Mel Brooks is 99. Actor Kathy Bates is 77. Football Hall of Famer John Elway is 65. Actor John Cusack is 59. Business executive Elon Musk is 54. Country singer-TV personality Kellie Pickler is 38.
JUNE 29
Actor Gary Busey is 81. Former actor and congressman and now radio host Fred Grandy is 77. Drummer Ian Paice of Deep Purple is 77. Singer Don Dokken of Dokken is 72. Actor Maria Conchita Alonso is 70.
JUNE 30
Actor Nancy Dussault (“Too Close for Comfort”) is 89. Jazz bassist Stanley Clarke is 74. Guitarist Hal Lindes of Dire Straits is 72. Actor David Alan Grier is 69. Actor Vincent D’Onofrio is 66.
JULY 1
Actor Jamie Farr is 91. Actor Genevieve Bujold is 83. Singer Deborah Harry of Blondie is 80. Stage actor Terrence Mann is 74. Singer Fred Schneider of The B-52′s is 74. Actor Dan Aykroyd is 73. Actor Pamela Anderson is 58.
JULY 2
Actor Robert Ito (“Quincy”) is 94. Actor Polly Holliday (“Alice”) is 88. Writer-director Larry David (“Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Seinfeld”) is 78. Model-actor Jerry Hall is 69.
76th Emmy Awards in 2024. All 10 episodes of the
‘The
The “F1 The Album” includes songs from Chris Stapleton, Ed Sheeran and more
The Associated Press
THE JACK Black-led movie phenomenon “A Minecraft Movie” and Lorde’s fourth studio album, “Virgin,” are some of the new television, lms, music and games headed to a device near you.
Also, among the streaming o erings worth your time: All 10 episodes of season four of FX’s “The Bear” drop Wednesday, Nelly and Ashanti get their own reality show, and Bill Skarsgård leads an update of the 1922 silent vampire classic “Nosferatu.”
MOVIES TO STREAM
The Porky Pig and Da y Duck movie “The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” is coming to HBO Max on Friday (it will also broadcast on HBO on Saturday at 8 p.m.). Reviews were a little mixed but mostly positive for the full-length animated feature.
Mariska Hargitay’s documentary about her mother Jayne Mans eld, “My Mom Jayne,” will also be streaming on HBO Max on Friday. The Hollywood bombshell died in a car accident at 34 when Hargitay was only 3. La-la-la-lava, ch-ch-ch-chicken, Steve’s lava chicken is now streaming on HBO Max, as is the rest of “A Minecraft Movie.” A box o ce phenomenon with over $950 million in worldwide ticket sales and counting, this movie adaptation of the popular game stars Black and Jason Momoa. In his AP review, Mark Kennedy wrote that “the Jared Hess-directed action-adventure artfully straddles the line between delighting preteen gamers and keeping their parents awake. It’s an often-bananas adaptation, with bizarre digressions into turquoise blouses and tater tot pizzas. It has Jennifer Coolidge being very Jennifer Coolidge. Need we say more?” Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp and Bill Skarsgård lead
Lily-Rose Depp appears in a scene from “Nosferatu.”
the Robert Eggers-directed update of the 1922 silent vampire classic “Nosferatu,” streaming on Prime Video starting Friday. Jocelyn Noveck wrote in her AP review that “it will chill you to the bone” but that “it may not terrify you.” Everything, she adds, in Eggers “faithful, even adoring remake... looks great. But with its stylized, often stilted dialogue and overly dramatic storytelling, it feels more like everyone is living in a quaint period painting rather than a world populated by real humans (and, well, vampires) made of esh and, er, blood.”
MUSIC TO STREAM
What will the next era of Lorde look like? “What Was That,” the singer’s rst new single in four years, recalls the clever synth-pop of her 2017 album “Melodrama,” casting aside the folk detour of 2021’s “Solar Power.” The song that followed, “Man of the Year,” is stripped and spare — just Lorde and a sorrowful bass. Who knows
what will come next? Listeners will have to wait until Friday when she releases her fourth studio album, “Virgin.”
The “F1” movie, starring Brad Pitt and Damson Idris, is quickly gearing up to be a summer tentpole. Naturally, the lmmakers knew its sound had to be massive, too. That arrives via a score by the many-time Oscar winner Hans Zimmer and a huge soundtrack releasing as “F1 The Album” via Atlantic Records, the team behind the award-winning “Barbie” album — with bespoke tracks from Chris Stapleton, Ed Sheeran, Myke Towers, Blackpink’s Rosé, Tate McRae and many more. Learn all about how the soundtrack came together here.
On Friday, arty alt-rock legends Failure will receive documentary treatment in “Every Time You Lose Your Mind: A Film about Failure,” available to stream on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. The unorthodox and in uential band nally gets their due in the project, direct-
ed by frontman Ken Andrews. Some of the featured voices in the documentary certainly will be Paramore’s Hayley Williams, actor Jason Schwartzman, comedian Margaret Cho, legendary producers Steve Albini and Butch Vig and many more participate.
All 10 episodes of season four of FX’s “The Bear” are ready to watch on Hulu. Viewers will nd out if Michelin-starred chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) can successfully run an acclaimed and pro table ne dining restaurant in Chicago. Jensen Ackles (“Supernatural,” “Tracker”) stars in a new crime thriller series for Prime Video called “Countdown.” Ackles plays a LAPD detective assigned to a task force investigating the murder of a government o cial. Eric Dane of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Euphoria” also stars. It is streaming now. Ben A eck and Jennifer Lo -
pez’s second shot at love didn’t work out, but there’s another celebrity couple who has rekindled a past ame. Recording artists Nelly and Ashanti were an item for more than 10 years before their breakup in 2013. They got back together in 2023 and are now married with a son. The pair are the subject of their own reality show called “Nelly & Ashanti: We Belong Together.” It debuts Thursday on Peacock.
Taron Egerton and Jurnee Smollett star in the new thriller “Smoke” for Apple TV+ as investigators working together to catch two serial arsonists. It’s created by Dennis Lehane and based on a true story where an arson investigator turned out to be a serial arsonist. “Smoke” reunites Egerton and Lehane who worked on the Apple limited series “Blackbird.” John Leguizamo and Greg Kinnear also appear in “Smoke,” out Friday.
“Nautilus,” a reimagining of Jules Verne’s novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas” comes to AMC+ on Friday. It’s an origin story of the character known as Captain Nemo and portrayed by Shazad Latif. Nemo is an Indian prince whose birthright was stolen from him and he’s on a mission for revenge.
In 2019’s Death Stranding, a courier named Sam worked to reconnect survivors in a postapocalyptic America beset by “beached things,” gooey monsters trapped between the worlds of the living and the dead. Sam is back in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, but now he faces a question we’ve all asked in the internet age: Was connecting everyone really such a good idea? The series is the brainchild of legendary “Metal Gear Solid” mastermind Hideo Kojima, and fans know they can expect a complex story, amboyant graphics and some o -the-wall gameplay ideas. Norman Reedus of “The Walking Dead” returns as Sam, and yes, he’s still carrying a baby who has psychic powers. Embrace the weirdness Thursday on PlayStation 5.