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MAGAZINE
VOLUME 15, NO. 7
“I have a fancy that every city has a voice.” www.ohenrymag.com
PUBLISHER
David Woronoff david@thepilot.com
Andie Rose, Creative Director andiesouthernpines@gmail.com
Cassie Bustamante, Editor cassie@ohenrymag.com
Jim Dodson, Editor at Large jwdauthor@gmail.com
Keith Borshak, Senior Designer
CONTRIBUTING
EDITORS
Cynthia Adams, David Claude Bailey, Maria Johnson
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Betsy Blake, Lynn Donovan, Amy Freeman, John Gessner, Tibor Nemeth, Becky VanderVeen, Bert VanderVeen, Mark Wagoner
CONTRIBUTORS
Harry Blair, Anne Blythe, Susan Campbell, Jasmine Comer, Ross Howell Jr., Billy Ingram, Tom Maxwell, Gerry O’Neill, Liza Roberts, Stephen E. Smith, Zora Stellanova, Ashley Walshe, Amberly Glitz Weber
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OWNERS
Jack Andrews, Frank Daniels III, David Woronoff In memoriam Frank Daniels Jr.
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A good-to-the-last-melted-drop tour of area ice cream shops
BY CASSIE BUSTAMANTE
If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? It’s one of those questions that pops up as an ice breaker in awkward social settings. My answer is always at the ready: ice cream! And in a recent and not-quite-scientific study, 80% of participants (four out of five people in my nuclear family) agreed, sharing my unmelting devotion. Sawyer, my 19-year-old outlier, would take a baked good over a chilled sweet treat any day (and every day). But my youngest, Wilder? Well, the scoop doesn’t fall far from the cone.
At the very beginning of last summer as I looked ahead to hectic weeks of juggling Wilder’s camp schedule with my own work schedule, I felt overwhelmed — and a tad bit guilty that he’d be shuff ling from camp to camp. I decided to give us something to look forward to every Friday afternoon, ending the week on a sweet note.
“What if we spend the summer taking an ice cream tour of Greensboro?” I ask 6-year-old Wilder one June afternoon. “Every Friday, we could chill at a new spot in town?”
“Yes!” he emphatically answers. “I love ice cream!” Not that I thought I’d have to twist his arm.
While I am a Leo who lives in typical creative chaos, my rising
sign is a Virgo — meaning, I love a good spreadsheet. I get to work right away making a Google Sheet listing all of the local ice cream shops I can think of; plus, I hit up friends for recommendations and, of course, ask the all-knowing internet.
We begin our journey with a brand-new shop we’ve never been to on Battleground called Ice Cream Factory. Wilder orders a scoop of superman — a swirl of bright red, yellow and blue. If I told him it was entirely fruit flavored, including strawberry and banana, he’d never eat it. But, marketed as a comic book hero, he’s all in. Meanwhile, I pair key lime with raspberry roadrunner — a heavenly combination that tingles my palate. A shelf in the back is piled high with all sorts of games and puzzles. Long after our spoons have scraped the last of our treats from our cups, we spend an hour-and-a-half playing Trouble, Connect Four and cards.
In the car on the ride home, I ask, “What did you think of that place?”
It’s not technically a factory, he informs me in a tone of total authority, “but I guess they liked the name Ice Cream Factory. If it was a factory they would have machines that made the ice cream there and they would have robot arms that gave you the ice cream.” I stifle a giggle.
“OK, so, on a scale of one to five stars, how many stars would you give it?”
He pauses in serious contemplation. “Five stars.” Turns out, there’s no point deduction for the lack of robots.
At Yum Yum, a Greensboro staple since 1906, Wilder orders birthday-cake-flavored ice cream. After he’s finished every last melted
drop, he announces, “I like superman better.” We’d committed to trying new-to-us flavors at each spot and it isn’t lost on Wilder that Yum Yum has its own superman flavor on the menu, which, clearly, he wishes he’d been able to order. Yum Yum, in Wilder’s highly calculated opinion also earns a fivestar rating “because the place is pretty cool and it has a good name.”
At Maple View in Gibsonville, lured by its vibrant rainbow colors, Wilder orders a sherbet. It’s too sour for his tongue, he tells me. Funny, that doesn’t stop him from eating it all and awarding the shop five stars. Why? “It’s a really great place,” he says, “but not good ice cream.” I think he was also a big fan of the huge chocolate ice cream cone in the window.
Our summer Fridays continue on like this, visiting Ozzie’s, Homeland Creamery and everywhere in between, Wilder doling out five stars to almost every institution. Well, except for Cook-Out, where he ordered a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup shake and discovered he didn’t like big chunks of anything — even milk chocolate and sugarladen peanut butter — interfering with the uninterrupted delivery of ice cream through the straw into his mouth. “Three stars,” he pronounces gravely. I explain that CookOut shakes are meant to be eaten with a spoon sometimes, but he’s not having it. Meanwhile, my 18-year-old, Emmy, and I gleefully gorge ourselves on our mint Oreo shakes, while my husband, Chris, gulps down his Butterfinger.
Turns out, if you do your research, there are enough five-star ice cream shops in the area to fill an entire summer’s worth of Fridays — and then some.
While we aren’t repeating the tour this summer, two new shops have since opened, plus we’re always up to sprinkling in repeat stops. And the cherry on top is that, this time, I don’t give a lick what he orders and how many stars he doles out. Because, as it turns out, it’s not about the ice cream at all. It never was. It’s about freezing a moment in time between a mom and her son. OH
And may there be more questions and answers on the road ahead
BY JIM DODSON
My wife, Wendy, and I are a true marriage of opposites. She’s your classic girl of summer, born on a balmy mid-July day, a gal who loves nothing more than a day at the beach, a cool glass of wine and long summer twilights.
I’m a son of winter, born on Groundhog Day in a snowy Nor’easter, who digs cold nights, a roaring fire and a knuckle of good bourbon.
With age, however, I’ve come to appreciate our statistically hottest month in ways that remind me of my happy childhood.
Growing up in the deep South during an era before widespread air conditioning, I have fine memories of enjoying the slow and steamy days of midsummer.
Like most American homes in the late ’50s and early ’60s, the houses where we lived during my dad’s newspaper odyssey across the deep South were cooled only by window fans and evening breezes. The first time I encountered air conditioning was in a small town on the edge of South Carolina’s Lowcountry, where only my father’s newspaper office and the Piggly Wiggly supermarket were air-conditioned.
Trips to the grocery store or his office were nice, but I had my own ways to beat the heat. I’d pedal my first bike around the neighborhood or crawl beneath our large wooden porch, where I’d conduct the Punic wars with my toy Roman soldiers in the cool, dark dirt.
On hot summer afternoons, I’d sit in a wobbly wicker chair on the screened porch, reading my first chapter books beneath a slowturning ceiling fan, keeping a hopeful eye out for a passing thunderstorm, probably the reason I dig ferocious afternoon thunderstorms to this day.
July also brings the Fourth of July, our national Independence Day, which I unexpectedly gained a new appreciation for during my long journey down the Great Wagon Road over the past six years. The Colonial backcountry highway brought my Scottish, German and English ancestors (and probably yours) to the Southern frontier
in the mid-18th century.
My fondest memory of celebrating the Fourth was sitting on a grassy fairway at the Florence Country Club, watching my first fireworks display. My mother brought along cupcakes decorated with red, white and blue icing.
That same week, Mr. Simmons, a cranky old fellow on our street, told my best friend, Debbie, and me that “only Yankees celebrate the Fourth of July because they won the War Between the States.”
My dad, a serious history buff, told me this was complete hogwash and began taking my older brother and me to hike the Revolutionary War battlefields of South Carolina at Camden, Kings Mountain and Cowpens, drawing us into the story of America’s fight for independence from Great Britain. When we moved to Greensboro in 1960, one of our first stops was the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, where the pivotal battle of the Revolutionary War was fought.
My favorite Fourth of July celebration took place at Greensboro’s Bur-Mil Club in the mid-1960s. It was a lovely affair that featured races in the swimming pool and a par-3, 9-hole golf tournament for kids, followed by a huge company picnic in the dusk before a fireworks display.
That summer, I joined the club’s swim team and even briefly set a city record for 10-and-under in the backstroke, developing a daily routine that made beating midsummer heat a breeze. Every morning after swim practice, I played at least 27 holes under the blazing sun (bleaching my fair hair snow-white by summer’s end), grabbed a hot dog and Coke in the club snack bar for lunch, then headed back to the pool to cool off before my dad picked me up on his way home from work. Looking back, it was hard to beat that summertime routine.
Fast forward several decades, I was thinking about these pleasant faraway summers on the first day of my journey down the Great Wagon Road, beginning in Philadelphia. The city was still draped in the tricolors of Independence Day amid a record-breaking heat wave. After a morning hike around the historic district, I walked into the shady courtyard of the historic Christ Church, hoping to find some relief, but found, instead, Benjamin Franklin sitting on a bench.
I couldn’t believe my good luck. Rick Bravo was a dead ringer for Philly’s most famous citizen and said to be the most beloved of Philly’s Ben Franklin actor-interpreters.
He invited me to share the bench with him while he waited for
his wife, Eleanor, to pick him up for a doctor’s appointment.
Over the next hour, Ben Franklin Bravo (as I nicknamed him) regaled me with several intimate insights about my favorite Founding Father, including how “America’s Original Man” shaped its democratic character and even had a hand in designing the nation’s first flag, sewn by Betsy Ross.
I thanked him for his stories and wondered if I might ask one final question.
He gave me a wry smile and a wink.
“God willing, not your last question nor my last answer,” he replied with perfect Franklin timing, casually mentioning that he was scheduled to undergo heart surgery within days.
I asked him what it was like channeling Benjamin Franklin.
Rick Bravo glanced off into the shadowed courtyard, where a mom and three small kids were cooling off with ice cream cones, chattering like magpies. My eyes followed his.
He grew visibly emotional.
“Let me tell you, it’s simply . . . wonderful. Next to my wife and children, being Ben Franklin is the most meaningful thing in my life.”
He told me how he met Eleanor many decades ago in the first of their many musical performances together, a major production of Oliver!
“Like America itself, we’ve weathered the ups-and-downs of life with lots of grace from the Almighty and a good sense of humor. As
Ben Franklin himself observed, both are essential qualities for guiding a marriage or shaping a new country.”
Looking back, my hour with the man who was Ben Franklin proved the most memorable conversation of more than 100 interviews I conducted along the Great Wagon Road.
He even suggested that I drop by Betsy Ross’s shop over on Arch Street to buy a replica of the young nation’s first flag as a symbol of the birth of America.
Over the next five years, I carried this beautiful Ross flag, with its red-and-white stripes and circle of 13 stars, the only purchase I made during my entire 800-mile journey, down the road of my ancestors.
To celebrate publication of my Wagon Road adventure this month, my Betsy Ross flag will proudly hang in front of my house for the first time, a gesture of gratitude to the dozens of inspiring fellow Americans I met on my long journey of awakening.
It will also hang in memory of my dear friend, Ben Franklin Bravo, my first interview on the Great Wagon Road, who died in January 2022.
I understand that Eleanor sang “Where is Love?” to him from their first musical together as he passed away.
Jim Dodson is the founding editor of Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim Travels the Great Wagon Road, is available July 1 wherever books are sold.
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Nothing makes us prouder to be American than watching people stuff their faces with as many hot dogs as possible in 10 minutes. No, we’re not talking about mealtime around your cousin’s table. We’re talking about the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest, held annually on the Fourth of July. We don’t recommend you try it at home, unless you’re up for more explosions than the celebratory fireworks that night. But how ’bout a trip across America (courtesy of hotdog.org) to discover which toppings reign supreme in each region. And don’t forget to try ’em on a veggie dog. We’re not saying it will help the flavor, but it might just mask it enough.
In our home state, chili, slaw and onions are the name of the game. Because nothing pairs better with meat than more meat. And nothing follows it better than breath mints.
Boston’s Fenway Frank is both boiled and grilled, then served with mustard and relish, sometimes topped with baked beans. It’s basically a Beantown protein bar when you think about it.
The New Jersey boasts strong Italian vibes, served up on thick pizza bread and topped with onions, peppers and deepfried potatoes. Fun fact: For just $3,500 a night, you can stay at the actual Jersey Shore house, but this hot dog will whisk you there for about $5 a pop.
Chicago-style dogs are more loaded than the bases at Wrigley when the visiting team is at bat. May we recommend going all the way with yellow mustard, dark-green relish, chopped raw onion, pickle spear, sport peppers, tomato slices and a dash of celery salt, which might just be enough explosive flavor to make that vegan dog palatable?
Greensboro’s love for downtown’s Zesto soft-serve ice cream shop, frozen in time in this early-1950s image, must have melted quickly because, according to records, the establishment lasted only a little longer than a soft-serve cone on a hot July day. Too bad — a 15-cent sweet treat would hit the spot right now.
The intense stare of a 15-year-old Pablo Picasso reaches across one-and-a-third centuries vis-a-vis an India-ink-andwatercolor-pencil sketch by Greensboro artist Roy Nydorf. The retired Guilford College professor has works in the Hirshhorn, the Smithsonian, the Honolulu Academy, Weatherspoon — and now in the theater wings of the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts. Curated by GreenHill Center for NC Art and on display until December, the exhibit features portraiture by a rich and varied cross-section of artists who have strong connections to the Triad area, including Sachi Dely, Aimée García, Zoe Grace Kamiya, Travis Lee Hicks, Jalen T. Jackson, Isabel Lu, Zaire Miles-Moultrie, William Paul Thomas and Joyce Williams. Nydorf once said, “If the simple image contains a vast complexity while retaining its purity and grace, then I have achieved my purpose.” We think Picasso would have agreed. Info: greenhillnc.org/portraits-from-the-triad.
Happy 249 years of flowering Democracy, America!
And what better way to celebrate your birthday than to reflect on what the Founding Fathers would think of cultivars such as Stars-and-Stripes Petunia, the Freedom Flame Tulip and the Presidential Peony?
These are just some of the star-spangled blooms that sprang from my hiking buddy’s iPhone when he asked it for a list of patriotic flowers.
Randall’s a big fan of artificial intelligence, while I have my serious doubts.
“American Beauty Rose,” Chat GPT chirped, “is a classic red rose symbolizing love and patriotism, and Liberty Bell Iris is a bearded iris named after the famous American symbol.” Not bad for a brain made up of ones and zeros, I conceded.
Next he turned to Microsoft Copilot. American Gold Rush Coneflowers led the list, “reflecting the historic pursuit of American dreams.” What? “Wasn’t the gold rush inspired more by greed than dreams,” I asked. Picky, picky, picky.
Copilot also came up with Union Jack Phlox! Isn’t the Union Jack the national flag of Britain, whom we fought to become the United States? Copilot also recommended Edelweiss, puzzlingly, with the following explanation: “While not exclusively American, its white, star-like shape can symbolize the stars in the American flag, and it also symbolizes bravery.” Really? We both decided if we were students desperately using AI to write a term paper for American History the night before it was due, we might want another copilot. Then Randall turned to his favorite artificial brain, DeepSeek, the Chinese latecomer that’s shaking up the whole AI industry by delivering high performance at a fraction of the development cost. Although it may not be particularly patriotic to point out, DeepSeek was, in our opinion, smarter, much more conversational and able to produce 20 decent candidates, compared to Chat GPT’s 12 and Copilot’s 13. And it sussed out some salute-the-flag names the other artificial brainiacs missed: the Betsy Ross Rose, for instance, “named after the historic flag maker, this white rose with a red blush honors early American history.” Sorta poetic, eh? Also, the Yankee Doodle Coreopsis, “a cultivar with red-and-yellow blooms, referencing the patriotic song.” And, finally, the “Old Glory Rose, named
after the iconic U.S. flag’s nickname, often featuring red, white or blue hues.” These were well-penned, we decided, and certainly not sounding as if they had been made in China.
Which got us thinking about how the Founding Fathers themselves would have reacted to the emergence of artificial intelligence. The answer came in seconds using Meta AI, a division of the company that owns and operates Facebook and Instagram.
Thomas Jefferson would have been fascinated by it, we’re told. Benjamin Franklin would likely see it as a natural extension of human ingenuity. George Washington and John Adams would have been wary of it, worrying about job displacement, privacy concerns and its implications on social structures, morality and the human condition.
How about Alexander Hamilton? “Hamilton’s creative and imaginative nature might have inspired him to explore AI’s potential in science fiction or speculative writings, envisioning a future where humans and machines coexist.”
At that point, we decided to put our phones away and be thankful for the fireworks display of wildflowers all along the trail. — David Claude Bailey
We will accept submission to our 2025 writing contest only until the end of the month. What are you waiting for? This one is a bit unique in that we’re asking you to write your own obituary — a faux-obituary, that is. Get to your keyboard and let it RIP. Is this an exercise in imagining how you want to live the rest of your days or is it all about what you want to be remembered for? Whether dead serious or playful and fun, let it be something to make O.Henry readers remember you forever.
Don’t forget the rules.
• Submit no more than 250 words in a digital format – Word or Pages document, a PDF. Paste it into an email, or carve into stone. More than 250 words? You’re dead to us.
• One submission per person: Email entries to cassie@ohenrymag.com
• Deadline to enter is July 31, 2025.
• Winners will be contacted via email and their submissions will be printed in a forthcoming issue.
• Lastly, life is short. Have fun with this assignment!
( June 21 - July 22)
It’s your party and you’ll cry if you want to. We know, we know. We’ve all heard the song. That said, with Venus in Taurus until July 22, get ready for more emotional stability than you know what to do with. On the other hand, with Mercury going retrograde on July 17, a hiccup in communication could lead to a bit of a misadventure. The good news: Your intuition will guide you from here. The better news: There’s no going back.
Leo (July 23 – August 22)
Replace the filter.
Virgo (August 23 – September 22)
Dare you to dance in the rain.
Libra (September 23 – October 22)
Butter the toast.
Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)
Stop and smell the sweet pea.
Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)
Hint: Take five.
Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)
The “Hot Light” is on.
Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)
Start labeling the leftovers.
Pisces (February 19 – March 20)
Bring a book along.
Aries (March 21 – April 19)
Three words: Lose the ’tude.
Taurus (April 20 – May 20)
Put your phone down.
Gemini (May 21 – June 20)
Let your actions speak for themselves. OH
Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla.
We will have door prizes and each store will have their own Prize basket.
GREENSBORO, NC 27403
336-272-2032
1614-C WEST FRIENDLY AVENUE
stitchpoint@att.net
MONDAY - SATURDAY: 10:00-5:00 SUNDAY: 12:00-4:00
BY M ARIA JOHNSON
Dogs and humans find their joy, one lick at a time.
Last year, the spotted pup — he’s probably a mixture of Catahoula leopard dog and pit bull — was adopted from the SPCA of the Triad and taken home to Sanford to live with his new owner, Alicia Ferreira, and her parents.
In a nod to his origin, 16-monthold Cash and his family have returned to Greensboro, appropriately enough on Mother’s Day, to support an SPCA adoption event at State Street’s Bull City Ciderworks.
The scene includes a truck that serves frozen confections made specifically for dogs. Alicia steps up to the window and orders a scoop for Cash, who waits patiently, even though he appears to be hungry. He sniff s then picks up a piece of gravel in the parking lot. Someone fishes it out of his mouth.
“He loves a rock,” Alicia says with a sigh.
A minute later, she offers him something more enticing: a taste of maple-bacon-flavored ice cream. With eyes riveted on the cardboard cup, Cash waits for Alicia to spoon feed him. He licks with gusto. And manners.
“He’s very respectful when it comes to treats,” Alicia says.
She offers him the garnish, a twig of a chicken crisp, and it disappears in one chomp.
“He’s very into it,” says Alicia, who’s wearing laser-cut dog earrings.
She’s smiling.
Her dad is smiling.
Her mom is smiling.
And the truck’s owner, Shelli Craig, is smiling. This is the response that she and her family have been getting ever since last summer, when they rolled out North Carolina’s only franchise of Salty Paws, a Delaware-based business founded on the notion that there are plenty of dog owners who want their charges to know the joys of lapping ice cream until they get brain freeze.
Yip-yip-yip. A little waggish humor, there. No one has reported seeing a pup pause mid-lick, shudder, howl and bury its head in its paws until the throb passes. Although, just for the record, Google AI says it’s possible for dogs to get ice cream headaches.
The point is, when Shelli, a professional photographer and longtime dog lover (“Puppy breath is my drug of choice”) heard about Salty Paws from her friend, Kathie Lukens, the owner of Doggos Dog Park & Pub in Greensboro, she thought a franchise would be the perfect business for her family.
With eight children in her family — some biological, some adopted, several with disabilities — perhaps it seems like a wild notion. But then, when her youngest, who lives with cerebral palsy and migraine headaches, graduated from high school, she had a question: “What am I going to do for a job?”
Shelli’s answer: We’ll create jobs by starting a business that everyone in the family enjoys. Her husband, Daniel, part-owner of another family enterprise, R.H. Barringer Distributing Co., a wholesale beer business, enthusiastically endorsed the plan.
Shelli was unleashed. She bought a slightly used cargo van in Florida and had it transported to Virginia, where it was wrapped in franchise decals featuring a puppy with an ice cream-dappled nose, licking a frosty scoop of Salty Paws’ finest.
She ordered the powders used to make the canine ice cream — basically dried lactose-free milk with a little sugar and some flavorings.
She and the kids mixed the powders with water, poured them into cartons and froze them at home. Because the product is not intended for human consumption, no health department inspections were required. The process was pretty easy.
On fair-weather weekends, the family rolled out in the van, which is technically considered a feed truck, not a food truck.
Usually, Daniel drove.
To dog parks.
And pet adoption fairs.
And fundraisers for animal rescues.
And to dog-friendly events, like some outdoor car shows. Rovers mingling with Land Rovers? Who knew?
Dog-friendly bars such as Doggos were a staple.
The brightly painted truck drew a lot of attention with its drool-inducing flavors, including pumpkin, vanilla, peanut butter, maple bacon, straight-up bacon, birthday cake, carob and
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prime rib, which appealed to all sorts of meat lovers.
Once, a man came to the window and explained that he wanted to try a scoop of prime rib in the same way one might want to try a Harry Potter earthworm-flavored jelly bean.
Shelli explained that Salty Paws products were not intended for humans, but also, if he bought a scoop and a spoon, she could not control what happened next.
The human verdict after licking? OK.
Another time, a woman and her two children came to the window and bought a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of peanut butter.
As they walked away, Shelli wondered if the woman had mistakenly bought the ice cream for her girls.
A few minutes later, a man came to the window asking if they sold smoothies, too. Shelli explained that they sold ice cream for dogs.
“Dogs?! Oh, crap,” the man said before muttering about whether his kids would start barking soon.
Shelli and Daniel, who was known for his dad jokes, shared more than a few laughs over the stories that spun out of Salty Paws. Underlying their bond, Shelli says, was a shared commitment to beings in need.
“He had a very, very tender heart,” Shelli says of Daniel. Tears well in her clear, blue eyes.
In April, Daniel died unexpectedly, of a heart attack, at age 59.
Shelli parked the Salty Paws truck for about a month as she grappled with Daniel’s absence.
“We built a big life with a lot of moving parts,” she says. One of the moving parts was Salty Paws.
It took a lot of resolve for Shelli to set aside her grief, load the truck on Mother’s Day, of all days, today, drive it to the cidery with two of her sons and start scooping ice cream.
“I’ve had to compartmentalize somewhat. Children and animals can bring me out of it,” she says. No surprise coming from a woman who wears a T-shirt emblazoned with “Tell Your Dog I Said Hi.”
She looks around. An SPCA volunteer walks by, cradling a weeks-old puppy. Nearby, an older, adoptable dog gnaws happily on a bully stick, a freebie from Shelli and family.
Cash savors his maple-bacon treat, totally absorbed.
His owner, Alicia, captions the moment aloud: “Best. Day. Ever.”
Quick as a lick, Shelli laughs, suspended for a moment in another place. OH
Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry magazine. Email her at ohenrymaria@gmail.com.
By STepHen e. SmITH
Most Americans — and a generous portion of the literate world — probably consider themselves experts on Mark Twain, even if they have never read a word he wrote. After all, the white-suited former riverboat pilot was his own best PR man. The cottony hair, drooping mustache, bushy eyebrows and cutting one-liners were all a product of his unrelenting quest for fame and fortune, and his physical and intellectual attributes remain ingrained in our national character. His knack for producing quotable and acerbic squibs has left us with the impression that he was an urbane 19th-century Yogi Berra. Which is reason enough to read Ron Chernow’s latest biography, Mark Twain. In 1,000 pages of beautifully crafted prose, Chernow explores in excruciating detail the life and times of America’s premier writer and consummate self-promoter, setting the record straight, for the time being.
Nothing about Twain is simplistic or straightforward. He was endearing, irascible, temperamental, plainspoken, mean-spirited, sentimental, generous, loving, neglectful, conscientious, lazy, etc. And he lived a triumphant and calamitous existence as a typesetter, riverboat pilot, journalist, failed businessman, stand-up comedian, world-renowned author, inventor, book publisher, political wit, and staunch campaigner for racial equality and against jingoism and imperialism. To his immense credit, he was the bane of every benighted politician, from presidents to school board members. He was also guilt-ridden, holding himself responsible for the fatal scalding of his younger brother in a boiler explosion and the death of his 19-month-old son, Langdon, whom he had taken out in inclement weather. He buried his wife and two daughters, and during his later years, his behavior was often problematic. Chernow manages to include every significant detail of
Twain’s life, and he supports his occasional judgments with meticulous research, including 180 pages of endnotes and citations. He also energizes the most mundane elements of Twain’s existence with his talent for narrative pacing and a prose style that reads effortlessly. It makes little difference if the reader is a longtime Twain aficionado or a superficial fan who learned of Twain’s achievements from Cliff Notes; Chernow’s narrative is so enthralling that his copious text seems vaguely insufficient.
More than half the book details Twain’s Horatio Alger years, his ascent from Hannibal to Hartford. The halcyon days of his literary success and blissful family life make for pleasurable reading, but the latter years of Twain’s existence — his descent from Olympus — will likely be a challenge for the casual reader.
The last quarter of the biography, which covers the three periods of Twain’s life that are the least fascinating and most disquieting, is not an easy read. His obsession with his “angelfish,” girls ages 10 to 16, with whom he surrounded himself, requires a lengthy and convoluted explanation that is likely to strike contemporary readers as, well, a trifle creepy.
After the death of his wife, Olivia, Twain sought out the company of young girls. These visits were frequent, occurring almost daily. In his 40s, Twain wrote, “Young girls innocent & natural — I love ’em same as others love infants.” Twenty years later, he said, “Nothing else in the world is ever so beautiful as a beautiful schoolgirl.” Twain didn’t find these liaisons embarrassing or shameful: “I have the college-girl habit,” he confessed, and when he visited Vassar to speak at a benefit, he surrounded himself with 500 college girls and noted that almost all were “young and lovely, untouched by care, unfaded by age.”
A few biographers have claimed that Twain was a latent pedophile, but Chernow maintains that Twain “had an insatiable need for unconditional love and got it from the angelfish, not from his daughters.” His daughters regarded the angelfish camaraderie with a mild degree of jealousy, but Twain had, over the course of his later years, intentionally disengaged from his grown children. Susy was dead at 24 of bacterial meningitis, Jean suffered from epilepsy, and Clara avoided her overbearing father by pursuing a singing career.
There is never a hint of sexual involvement with any of the
angelfish. Chernow notes: “If Twain thrashed himself with guilt about many things, he never had regrets about the angelfish. Far from being ashamed, he was positively proud of this development and posed with the girls for the press.”
Twain’s writing and lecturing made him rich, but he was an incompetent investor. He poured money into the Paige typesetting machine, a device so complex that it never functioned correctly. He also lost money investing in a publishing company. Having made a small fortune by issuing the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, he frittered away the money on foolish projects. Eventually, the publishing company failed, and Twain went bankrupt and had to embark on a world lecture tour to repay his creditors. Chernow manages to untangle Twain’s complicated finances while holding the reader’s undivided attention.
Later in his life, a disconcerting soap opera entanglement developed within Twain’s household. After his wife, Olivia, died, he and his surviving daughters relied on Isabel Lyon as a stenographer, confidant and household assistant, and an ambiguity arose regarding Lyon’s position in the household. Was she an employee or a family member? Had she assumed the position of Twain’s late wife? As Lyon gradually took over Twain’s affairs, her attachment to Jean and Clara grew strained. She eventually contrived to have Jean hospitalized, and her relationship with Clara collapsed. Twain fired Lyon for misappropriating household funds and became embroiled in a series of scandalous and exasperating lawsuits.
In setting the record straight, Chernow tarnishes Twain’s carefully crafted image, revealing a human being who could be greedy and vindictive, but also a writer whose words are as fresh and clear today as when he first wrote them. OH
Stephen E. Smith’s most recent book, The Year We Danced: A Memoir, is the recipient of a 2025 Feathered Quill Book Award.
By Tom m axwell
There are music festivals across the length and breadth of North Carolina this year — more than you will have either the time or gas money to attend. July alone features four worthy of mention, existing on the widest possible spectrum of musical and geographic diversity. We’ve got fiddles in the highlands, jazz on the beach, classical quartets in the Nantahala National Forest and a regular smorgasbord of sounds in the Piedmont.
The 46th annual Festival for the Eno kicks off in Durham on Friday, July 4. The two-day event features over 60 artists performing on four different stages, including former Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Dom Flemons, local poet and musician Shirlette Ammons and the Empire Strikes Brass.
There will be some novel attractions as well. “Since the festival’s inception, our Grove stage has focused primarily on traditional music through the lens of Americana,” festival director Bryan Iler says. “This year, there is still going be all that bluegrass and country and clogging, but there’s also going be a wider representation of traditional cultural music that I think is a little more representative of the Triangle community. We’re going to feature a full mariachi band, a traditional West African Senegalese pop band and Congolese percussionists. Oh, and Rabbi Solomon [Hoffman] from Chapel Hill has put together a klezmer group.”
And there’s more than just music. Attendees can learn fly-fishing, poster-making or browse handmade arts and crafts from 80 different vendors. “It’s really a salad bar of ways to have a good time and plug into at a deeper level with our community,” says Iler.
July 4 is also opening day for the Ocean City Jazz Festival on Topsail Island. “It's a three-day event with three artists per night,” says Carla Torrey, who has organized the festival with her husband, Craig, for the past 12 of its 15 years. “We are trying to promote the history of the community and support its legacy.”
The Ocean City Beach Community is a neighborhood 3 miles north of Surf City that stretches from beach to sound. It was founded in the late 1940s as an interracial corporation where African Americans could own beach property in the days of segregation. A 700-foot lighted pier constructed in 1958 — at the time the only pier in the South Atlantic open to people of color — and many of its 100 or so Black-owned homes were destroyed by Hurricane Fran in 1996. Though those structures were not rebuilt, the community remains, and the festival is committed to preserving and expanding on its legacy.
This year’s Ocean City Jazz Festival features artists like Jackiem Joyner, Jazz Funk Soul, Nathan Mitchell, The Double Bass Experience and the John Brown Little Big Band, featuring Camille Thurman. Related events include an exhibition of paintings by artist Rik Freeman called “Black Beaches During Segregation” (on display starting June 28), day parties featuring line dancing instructors, food vendors and a boozy “Uncle Nearest Experience” with executive bourbon steward David Neeley. (Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey honors the memory of Nathan “Nearest” Green, the formerly enslaved man who taught Jack Daniel the art of distilling.)
“We’re truly a jazz festival,” Torrey says. “All the music is going to be jazz, and we do a mix of smooth and straight ahead so that everybody gets to appreciate it as a genre.” Music plus an ocean breeze and sand between your toes? Sounds like a plan.
The 44th annual Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival kicks off July 5 in the southwestern counties of Jackson and Macon, roughly 400 miles from Topsail Island. You don’t have to be in a rush to get there, though; this festival lasts until August
10, featuring four concerts every weekend.
“It is a six-week festival of predominantly classical music,” Executive Director Nancy Gould-Aaron says, “but we do bring in other things to mix it up a little bit. We have jazz versus classical this year. In the past we’ve brought in Mark and Maggie O’Connor, so we’ve had a little bit of bluegrass, too. We probably have three or four quartets a season. Not too many duos, but we have a lot of soloists and put them together. For our gala event, we’ll have enough musicians to make up an orchestra.”
This year’s Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival features the North Carolina debut of Paul Colletti’s Viola Quintet featuring The Viano Quartet, poet laureate Rita Dove, the Whitehead Family Young Pianist Concert with Zitong Wang, the Pacifica Quartet featuring Sharon Isbin on classical guitar; and, a final gala “Cellobration” — a concert with eight cellos led by the Grammywinning cellist Zuill Bailey.
The two-day 54th annual Old Time Fiddlers Convention, held in Ashe County Park in the state’s northwest corner, begins July 25. It takes place rain or shine, so bring your camping gear and get ready to hear a slew of banjo, fiddle, guitar and mandolin by the likes of Sassafras and the New Ballards Branch Bogtrotters. As usual, there will be open jam sessions galore, as well as competitions for young and old musicians alike, featuring several thousand dollars in prizes. Proceeds from the festival go to support JAM, the Junior Appalachian Musicians program, an organization that instructs third- to fifthgraders in fiddle, banjo and guitar.
This quartet of festivals barely scratches the surface of North Carolina’s musical itch. What an opportunity to explore the state and expand your musical horizons. OH
Tom Maxwell is an author and musician. A member of Squirrel Nut Zippers in the late 1990s, he wrote their Top 20 hit “Hell.” His most recent book, A Really Strange and Wonderful Time: The Chapel Hill Music Scene 1989-1999, was published in 2024.
By lIZa RoBeRTS
On a sprawling industrial site on the banks of the Catawba River, beyond a cabinet maker, a boat rental and a rum distillery, past hundreds and hundreds of pallets of overstocked, shrink-wrapped, big-box merchandise, lies a repository of an entirely different sort.
Here, in an open, 5,000-square-foot space, stand sculptures and paintings, drawings, prints and multimedia creations that address, mostly through abstraction, many of the issues of our time: race and memory, history and geography, stereotype and expectation, imagination and potential. This is the studio of the artist Juan Logan, the place where he creates and stores the work from a career spanning more than 50 years. He is one of our state’s most accomplished contemporary artists, and one of its most prolific.
In May, a major exhibition of his work, “Without Stopping: Juan Logan,” opened at the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama, where it will run until Feb. 14, 2026. Featuring 48 works from Logan’s decade-long Elegies series, including many never before seen in public, the exhibit will feature a massive new piece commissioned by the museum to commemorate the residents of Africatown, an area of Mobile founded by the descendants of enslaved people brought in 1860 to Mobile Bay aboard a wooden ship called the Clotilda. At 6 1/2-feet tall and 16-feet wide, Logan’s commissioned piece, Elegy CLXXXVI, Without Stopping, is by far the largest of this seminal series.
“I think of it as a series on memory, but not just mine,” he says. “Collective memories.”
Though the word “elegy” often refers to a poem for the dead, “it can also mean a serious reflection,” Logan says. With abstract shapes and symbols, Logan reflects on the fragmented, imperfect and haunting nature of memory, including cultural memories shared in various and ever-changing ways. He mentions the Japanese notion of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in imperfection and impermanence. “There are no perfect memories. And I don’t have any trouble portraying them that way.” Forgotten memories, too: “The absence of memory, how it depletes us . . . how it kills us. It leaves us very alive, but missing so much. We are so sure we hold on to things, even happy memories, but they fade away as well.”
A repeated image throughout his work over decades, beginning in the late 1970s and regularly appearing in his Elegies series, is the silhouette of a black head. The subtle shape shows up in painting, drawing, collage and sculpture (including Beacon outside Charlotte’s Harvey Gantt Center) as a symbol of memory, loneliness, identity and of the Black experience.
Lately, the head shape on its side may represent a boat, Logan says, a boat transporting memories, knowledge, thoughts, hopes and ideas: “Sometimes it’s completely filled, sometimes it’s empty. Such is the nature of humanity. We hold on to things, we lose things.” But always, he says, the head represents humanity: “All of our imaginings, and everything we ever were or will be takes place there first. It is who we are.” The featureless cameo offers a blank-slate Rorschachian challenge to the viewer: What do you fill in here?
Other symbols that make regular appearances in Logan’s colorful, abstract work include starry skies, clouds, maps and
boats. Like a poet, Logan uses these allegorical images in individual works and as leitmotifs to represent many things: the collective unconscious; the workings of the world and the role of the individual in creating it; reserves of knowledge; the power of imagination and perception. Most important, Logan says, is not what he says these things mean, or what his own point of view might be, but what they provoke or challenge in the viewer.
Logan has been challenging viewers over the decades of a celebrated career that has seen his work shown across the country and around the world in solo and group shows. He has pieces in the permanent collections of some of the nation’s foremost museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Baltimore Museum of Art and Charlotte’s Mint Museum.
Wearing the uniform of black T-shirt and jeans that he has made his own for at least 40 years, the former University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor of studio art is a voluble host in his Belmont studio, eager to unpack the meaning and message of his work, which surrounds him in a vibrant, living archive. He does it through story.
There’s the story of a treacherous treadmill used to try to break the spirit of enslaved people in Jamaica in 1837 that inspired The Sugar House, a 16-foot canvas of paint, glitter, lottery tickets and thousands of glued-on puzzle pieces.
There’s the story about the high school shop teacher who encouraged him to make his first work of art, an eagle carved of white birch. This is a man Logan is so determined to credit with launching his life’s trajectory that he spells his name: “Harold McLean, That’s M, C, capital L, E, A, N.” McLean told Logan that what he made didn’t have to be like anyone else’s. “It can just be yours,” the teacher said. The words unleashed something in Logan: “It changed everything.”
There’s the tragic story of his father dying of a heart attack after a doctor didn’t believe his chest pains were real. It’s an example, Logan says, of racial bias, and one of
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his many inspirations for work that address injustice, oppression and alienation.
And then there are the many stories of home. The shape of a canted roofline in one of his works has him describing his own 114-year-old house, which was built by his great-grandfather and grandfather. It’s a 10-minute drive from his studio in a neighborhood Logan illustrates with a quickly jotted map: “Here’s my house right here. Here’s my mom’s house over here. Here’s my aunt’s house, here. There’s another aunt here. Here’s my sister’s house, here. Here’s my uncle’s house down here. And then my grandfather’s road, that’s named after him . . .” The foundation of another house his great-grandfather built out of handmade bricks and lived in after slavery still stands in the woods nearby. “These things serve to anchor you in a particular way,” Logan says. “I think more than perhaps other places, the South does that for so many people.”
“For many years now,” Logan says, “I’ve tried to simply ask better questions. I think that’s the only thing that allows us to deepen our investigations about what we’re doing, regardless of discipline. If we can ask better questions, we’ll learn more, be able to do more.”
Doing more is clearly not a problem for Logan. At any given time, he’s got a dozen new projects in various stages underway. After the Mobile show opens, his work will be featured in an exhibit in Chattanooga in July and one on American and German abstractionists in Berlin in October.
“We want so much out of this,” he says. “And we are here for such a brief period of time. So we try to do as much as we can for as long as we can, with the hope that someone will take the time to preserve it and pass it on and share it with others.” OH
This is an excerpt from Art of the State: Celebrating the Art of North Carolina, published by UNC Press.
By CynTHIa a DamS
The pontoon boat, bearing coolers of food and drink plus sweaty bathing-suit clad adults and children munching on chips, slid across the brown-gray waters of Lake Lookout. The boat slipped into a shoal, a barely-there sandbar where the children jumped off into the waisthigh water as adults waded over to unload the coolers for a communal Fourth of July cookout.
Oppressively hot when still, the boat, thankfully, moved back into the lake and resumed a meandering tour.
Life on a major holiday on Lake Lookout, about halfway between Hickory and Statesville, was comatose by comparison to the buzz-sawing jet skis and power boats thrashing the waters of nearby Lake Norman. There were no water skiers, and little noise broke the quiet. Lookout also lacked Norman’s NASCAR mansions, replete with elevators.
A woman aboard pointed, murmuring approval of a new A-frame, clad in stained cedar, that could have been a mountain chalet. “That’s nice,” she affirmed. It reminded her of the understated family places on lakes she and her family knew in upstate New York.
Others nodded.
Such places, where working people could get a toe — or a fishing line, or a pontoon boat — in the water — are the holy grail of vacationers.
Her neighbor, a retired community college instructor, had spent several years fi xing up his Lookout cottage. “He’s at it all the time,” she said. “Works hard. It’s his kid’s inheritance.” She had bought her own place, a rustic fisherman’s cabin, before things “got so crazy.”
Little by little, she was working to make it a home. Adapting to a one-bedroom, one-bath place. “The water is why I’m here.”
The boat owner had bought-in a decade before the market pushed it out of reach. He’d since invested as much as it cost, but his children loved it. They talked about how much they liked the simplicity and quiet, and bemoaned certain sections, where the aff luent were building bigger, fancier homes.
“I don’t want it to change,” the woman said quietly.
As the pontoon continued, the boat owner suddenly slowed to a stop. In one of the busiest channels and the most developed section of the lake, another pontoon boat passed and, nearby, a
few fishermen cast lines from a Jon boat. He pointed to the very top of a power line.
The New York woman lowered her voice. “The eagles.”
And there they were. One suddenly swooped down into a nest.
Nobody spoke; nobody needed to mention the symbolism: Fourth of July. Bald eagles in the wild.
Opposite their nest, someone had stacked three pallets of fireworks, enough for a commercial fireworks show. More fireworks than anyone on board had ever seen.
“Here?” the woman suddenly said. “So many. That’ll make an awful racket.”
Her face fell. “I worry about my dogs. They are petrified of fireworks.”
Somebody ventured, “You could commit the perfect crime during a racket like that.”
All eyes returned to the eagles’ nest.
Eagles soon to be subjected to a violent blast of fireworks.
The woman exhaled. The soaring of wings, the exhilarating sensation of only moments earlier, seemed ruined.
“I hope they come back next year,” someone muttered.
The boat bobbed over a gentle wake as the boat owner navigated back to drop us before returning to the sand bar. The eagles grew smaller and smaller until invisible.
Silence swallowed the boat. Sweat trickled down faces. Collectively, we struggled to shake off a disquieting mood.
Nearing the woman’s dock, only the sound of waves gently slapping the pier beneath the silent, sheltering pines. “I have cold drinks,” she said, as an old, shaggy dog lumbered down to greet us, his tongue hanging, panting.
“Fireworks got real bad last year,” she added, staring sadly as she disembarked before opening her arms to give him a hug. “I’ll stay with him.”
Sharp reverberations would pierce the night across this and other lakes, across parklands and the most remote of places. Refracting off the rooftops of the hamlets, towns and cities of a fitful nation.
As contrails of explosives still lit the sky, a gibbous waning moon rose at midnight.
It is said that those born under such a moon are attuned to the natural world, yet feel as if they never quite belong. OH
Cynthia Adam is a contributing editor to O.Henry magazine.
By SuSan CampBell
You may not be paying attention, but it’s there. The slurring “pee-a-wee” of the eastern woodpewee is echoing all over central North Carolina at this time of year. On the hottest of afternoons this bird continues to call even though its brethren are now quiet. The spring cacophony of breeding birds may have been replaced by the buzzing of cicadas and chirping crickets, but the pewee continues making his trademark vocalization. The species has long been considered a hallmark of Eastern forests. Although not as plentiful as it was before humans began altering the landscape, it can still be found widely throughout the region.
Eastern wood-pewees are flycatchers: carnivorous birds that have the talent for snapping insects out of midair. They are acrobatic fliers that use a perch to scan for large, winged insect prey such as dragonflies, butterflies, moths and beetles. As a result of this foraging strategy, pewees spend much of their time in the open during the warmer months. However, if it were not for their loud calls, these little birds would be easily overlooked. Both males and females are a drab gray-brown above, dusky below, and have buff barring on their wings.
Flycatchers found in the Eastern United States are, as a whole, not a colorful bunch. They tend to be brownish with subtle differences in bill shape, tail length or the color of the small feathers on the wing or around the eye. Habitat may lend a clue, since they have preferences for different types of vegetation. When they vocalize, however, it is a different story. In fact, the eastern wood-pewee has virtually indistinguishable plumage from the western wood-pewee, which is found closer to the West Coast.
The western wood-pewee makes a nasal “bree-urr” call that has a much rougher quality in tone. These birds may give a thin, whistled “peeaa” as well. Generally, the quality of the vocalizations is very different from that of our Eastern birds.
Given their diet, the eastern wood-pewee is not likely to appear at a feeder. However, this species may frequent birdbaths or water features within their territory. Also, individuals tend to use the same perches for foraging and can be found predictably in an area. They prefer forest edges so they’re easier to spot than their forestdwelling cousins, such as the Acadian or willow flycatcher. Pewees also hover for very short periods to catch prey, and will actively move through the vegetation in search of caterpillars and slower moving insects in the canopy. They tend to utilize the midstory in locations where there are deciduous trees. As a result, it is believed that their occurrence in some areas of the Northeast has been affected by the over-grazing of white-tailed deer. The loss of smaller trees and shrubs has eliminated not only pewee perches but the necessary vegetation for their prey species.
Female eastern wood-pewees build a shallow cup nest of woven grasses lined with plant fibers, animal fur and/or moss. It’s well camouflaged on the outside with lichens and blends in with the horizontal limb that it is built on. Pewees have a limited ability to defend their eggs and young, so invisibility is the name of the game.
These little birds are migratory, spending the winter months in South America, where prey is abundant. Eastern woodpewees can be found through Peru down into Brazil during the non-breeding season. They become active, solitary hunters that pursue prey in a variety of habitats that time of the year.
Before they begin to head south in August, see if you can spot one of these vocal, talented fliers. You may have to look closely to find this familiar summer friend motionless on a favorite perch.
OH
Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photos. Her email is susan@ncaves.com.
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By BIlly InGRam
“In the
future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.”
— Andy Warhol
Life’s stopwatch began ticking off my 15-minute strut across its proscenium in 2002, upon the release of my first book, TVparty! Television’s Untold Tales, a look at classic TV shows produced during that medium’s messy adolescence. In January of 2003, my publisher had positioned me at The Hollywood Show, a twice-yearly weekend event in North Hollywood, where former 1960s child actors such as Butch Patrick (Eddie Munster) and Jody Whittaker (Family Affair) as well as assorted soap opera and ’80s sitcom luminaries gathered to meet fans and sign autographs.
There was only one celebrity in attendance I was interested in meeting, so I made a beeline to Noel Neill. One of TV’s first single, working “gals,” thanks to afternoon reruns of The Adventures of Superman throughout the ’60s, Noel Neill’s portrayal of that “pesky reporter from the Daily Planet,” Lois Lane, became enshrined in Boomer minds, legendary like Lucy and Ethel. I presented her with my book, opened to the sordid story surrounding the death of George Reeves, who portrayed her Superman in the television series. Illustrated with a screen capture of her star-crossed co-star, Neill gazed at the photo wistfully for a moment then sighed softy, “Oh, George . . .”
Months later, I was confronted with a possible answer to one of Tinsel Town’s most enduring mysteries: Was George Reeves’ death a suicide or murder?
Almost every aspect and detail of the following story is contradicted by someone or other so buckle up: At 1:15 a.m. on June 16, 1959, Reeves, his fiancé, Lenore (Leonore) Lemmon, and two guests were drinking heavily at the actor's home before he went upstairs to sleep. Moments later, the partiers told police a shot
rang out and Reeves was dead, sprawled on his bed naked with a bullet hole through his right temple. Faster than a speeding bullet, Reeves’ death was ruled a suicide.
rang out and Reeves was dead, sprawled on his bed naked with a bullet hole through his right temple. Faster than a speeding bullet, Reeves’ death was ruled a suicide.
why police weren’t called until around 45 minutes after the incident. Following an autopsy, LAPD Chief Parker stated he "was
to New York, never to return.
Lemmon offered no explanation as to why police weren’t called until around 45 minutes after the incident. Following an autopsy, LAPD Chief Parker stated he "was satisfied with the verdict" of suicide. So, why were two detectives still rummaging around in Reeves' bedroom looking for yet more bullet holes? The two they found embedded in the wall were explained away by Lemmon as earlier recklessness on her and Reeves’ part. And Lemmon had fled to New York, never to return.
Exactly how many stray slugs were dislodged from that room is anyone’s guess, but Noel Neill once revealed, “I had a friend whose husband was later hired to repair the drywall in George’s bedroom. He said the place was riddled with bullet holes.”
Lemmon’s account (one of them, anyway) proved perplexing: After a night of drinking with Reeves and others, she was alone downstairs when, around 1 a.m., two tipsy guests arrived. Their revelry prompted Reeves to awaken and storm angrily downstairs. After everyone apologized, Reeves returned to his bedroom. That’s when Lemmon maintains that she quipped, “He’s going upstairs to shoot himself . . . he’s opening the drawer to get the gun.” When the shot was heard, Lemmon remarked casually, “See there, I told you; he’s shot himself.” Subsequently, she told police she was “only kidding” and, years later, claimed none of that happened.
No secret, Reeves was depressed about being typecast in 1959, but, in recent weeks, he’d signed on for a movie in Spain. Plus, Kellogg’s had secured him, with a hefty raise, for another season of The Adventures of Superman in 1960, even agreeing to let him direct several episodes.
If not suicide, who would want George Reeves dead? He’d recently ended a seven-year aff air with Toni Mannix, the wife of Eddie Mannix, a very powerful MGM executive known as
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“The Fixer,” whose mob and political ties could disappear any problem. Toni had purchased Reeves’ house, car and clothes for him, and was left devastated when their relationship came to a halt in 1958. Lemmon claimed the jilted lover was ringing up Reeves repeatedly, day and night, for months before his death. Had Eddie Mannix ordered a hit to avenge his wife? He certainly could have and was considered the most likely suspect, excluding suicide.
Reportedly, one of those guests that night confessed to a close friend that, after the shooting, Lemmon ran from upstairs saying, “Tell them I was down here, tell them I was down here!” A neighbor approaching Reeves’ front door that fateful hour hesitated when, observing through a window, he saw the couple engaging in a heated argument moments before hearing a single gunshot.
I discovered this just a few weeks ago. In 2021, Lee Saylor published, Wild Woman: Lenore Lemmon, extrapolating from two 1989 phone interviews he conducted with Lemmon mere months before her death. Through impressive research, the portrait he paints of the socialite after Reeves’ death was of a woman who returned to nightclubbing before becoming a reclusive alcoholic.
This portrayal was significant because it corroborated a backstory told to me in 2003, again in Los Angeles when I was promoting TVparty!, this time at Bookstar in Studio City. Regaling an audience with stories from the anthology, I noticed, from the corner of my eye, a woman feigning interest in whatever publications she was picking over but clearly intently listening after I began speaking about Reeves’ demise.
The bookworms dispersed and an attractive woman in her 30s, with a “black sheep of the family but still in somewhat good graces” vibe, emerged from the stacks. “I knew Lenore Lemmon in New York,” she told me. “I used to stay up late nights drinking in her penthouse, listening to her talk.” As I recall, she told me that her family lived in the same building as
Ms. Lemmon and, over time, the young woman gained Lemmon’s confidence and ultimately became a drinking buddy.
She related to me that Lemmon had become a recluse, burying disappointments beneath bottles of bourbon and cartons of cigarettes. During one or more of their midnight meanderings, Lemmon confessed to being responsible for George Reeves’ death, but never elaborated. This person only approached me because she happened to be in the shop and heard me talking about her one-time acquaintance.
Very convincing, but could I believe her? It wasn’t common knowledge in 2003 that Lemmon had spent a decade or so in an alcoholic haze prior to passing. Saylor’s book depicts the Lemmon described to me in that bookstore encounter.
Mystery solved? Hardly. Without knowing the identity of the woman I met at Bookstar, there’s no way to verify her (or my) tale of Lemmon’s late-night, late-in-life confession. I’m convinced the unidentified woman would have gone public if she was attempting to insert herself into this narrative. Nor am I; a more opportune time to reveal a story like this would have been in 2003 when I began writing and appearing on shows for VH1.
Great Caesar’s ghost! Yet another ultimately unsatisfying layer of intrigue surrounding one of Hollywood’s most enduring mysteries. On the other hand, applying Occam’s Razor, naturally Lenore Lemmon would be the most likely culprit, considering that, in the comics, Clark/Supes was plagued in myriad ways by individuals with double “L” initials: Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris, Lex Luthor. Lady Luck, it seems, was not on his side. OH
They say never meet your heroes, but Noel Neill was just as gracious and nice as you would expect her to be.
I was once content with walking railroad tracks to school, stone walls to church, touching my toes to the sidewalk for balance, stepping over cracks that needed mending.
I balanced on city curbs, my arms extended like wings that would fly me to a nearby tree, a wild turkey perching safely on the lowest limb.
In school we balanced skinny legs on beams six inches off the floor to please Miss Brown, especially proud to do it backwards,
and I heard the story of Dayton’s Great Flood of 1913, how victims inched their escape across telephone wires from the railway station to Apple Street and safety.
Now I walk one tight rope after another, and wonder about people who tread on pavement with no cracks, no broken mothers’ backs, in sensible shoes, arms to their sides, with no inclination to fly.
— Marsha Warren
Marsha Warren is a former director of the North Carolina Writers Network and the Paul Green Foundation.
For Shafna Shamsuddin, cardamom is the spice of life
By CAssiE BUsTAmAnTE
PHoToGRAPHs By BERT
VAnDERVEEn
essert is just a way to tell the stories,” says Shafna Shamsuddin, creator of her own cardamom-infused and globally-inspired ice cream company, Elaka Treats. Even though she’s inspired by the Indian traditions of her childhood, she’ll tell you with a laugh that her own story doesn’t begin there.
“My story started at Williams-Sonoma,” Shamsuddin admits with an easy smile. Born and raised in United Arab Emirates by Indian immigrant parents, Shamsuddin, as well as her siblings, came to America for college. She began her studies at Purdue University in Indiana, studying psychology and Earth science. From the time she was a child, she had her sights set on becoming a psychologist. However, she was matched with her husband during her undergrad years and relocated with him to Gastonia. In the end, she earned her bachelor’s degree from UNC-Charlotte. From there, her plan was to enroll in a clinical psychology graduate program at Duke University. “But due to personal reasons . . .” she trails off, preferring to look forward instead of into the past.
After a moment, she picks back up. Pressure from her community was overwhelming and first loneliness and then restlessness followed.
“Everyone advised that I should focus on my marriage,” she says. “I am not Indian enough for Indians because I am not born and raised there,” she says. “And I am not American either, so, it’s like, where do I belong?” So she put her goals on the back burner, “hoping that one day I could pick it up and go back.” But, little by little, she began throwing herself into all sorts of projects: “plumbing, electrical, carpentry — I’ve done all kinds of stuff.” She found herself often wandering through the glimmering displays of kitchen-and-entertaining merchandise at Williams-Sonoma. “The kitchen tools and gadgets really fascinate me,” she says.
But there was one small appliance in particular that she kept coming back to. “I used to see the Cuisinart ice cream maker and that always caught my eye.” However, she says, the price tag was too much for her wallet. After years of gazing at the machine in wonder, she says, “finally, one day, I was like I am going to make the splurge.”
That small and mighty Cuisinart has long since been retired, but it got Shamsuddin’s wheels churning. Her first endeavor with it was kulfi ice cream, a traditional frozen Indian treat flavored with pistachio, cardamom and saffron. While kulfi is generally a no-churn dessert, Shamsuddin
gave it a whirl in her ice cream maker.
But all of that tinkering didn’t ease her homesickness. She started dreaming of the anything-but-frozen unnakai, a sweet treat from back home, “especially where my parents are from in India, from their home state of Kerala.” The labor-intensive dessert, according to Shamsuddin, is made of a mashed plantain that’s been stuffed with coconut, cardamom and cashew nuts, then deepfried. And while the flavors indeed melt in your mouth, it was the ritual around it, tea time, that she was missing.
“I was really craving having that experience of not just having the treat, but the experience of getting together with people and family and relatives, and just sitting and chatting over tea and tea-time snacks,” she says wistfully. But, she adds, “I felt that it was really sad for me to go through that process and eat it alone.”
Shamsuddin wondered how she could take the unnakai flavors and create a frozen dessert that she could enjoy. An idea hit her: Use plantains as the base. “I knew I had something here,” she says.
She began testing out her confections on friends when she’d host dinner parties. The result? “Everyone loved it.” Shamsuddin found gratification in serving others. And watching people savor her creations filled her cup. “It’s something that gives me a lot of pleasure.”
Plus, she says, the Indian tradition she learned from her own mother is that, when you entertain, you make everything from scratch as a way to celebrate your guests’ presence at your table. As her dinnerparty pals spooned in bite after bite, they confirmed what she’d suspected — she was indeed onto something.
In Greensboro, Shamsuddin began to find her way. She joined a training group at Club Fitness, but she got much more than she expected out of those gym sessions. Her workout comrades and trainer also became her support system, her social circle and her laboratory, allowing her to test samples on them. “My gym buddies, they were really my everything,” Shamsuddin says.
As luck would have it, her trainer coached another client, Lindsay Bisbee, who had launched the homemade pickle brand Kyōōkz. He connected the two women, and Bisbee, in turn, introduced Shamsuddin to the Piedmont Food Processing Center, aka PFAP. The 10,000-square-foot building in Hillsborough offers commercial kitchen space as well as support for food entrepreneurs.
By the early-2010s, Shamsuddin and her husband had settled in Greensboro and later that decade welcomed their only son, Zahin. But that desire to make her confections into something bigger kept nagging at her. The only problem was she had no idea how to start a business. And she knew that she’d be on her own in this endeavor.
But the biggest thing Shamsuddin picked up at the gym wasn’t the heavy weights, nor was it the connections. It was confidence. Shamsuddin, who describes herself on LinkedIn as a “Rule Breaker,” learned, she says, “I am physically strong and mentally strong, so what is holding me back? Nothing, I can depend on myself.”
With a new-found belief in herself, Shamsuddin began her production in 2019 at PFAP, where executive director L. Eric Hallman provided her with the guidance she’d desperately needed. “It was Eric who kind of gave me that first big missing piece of the puzzle,” she says, laughing about how basic those missing pieces were — business registration, insurance, scheduling inspections.
Registration meant Shamsuddin needed a business name, which was something she hadn’t even considered. Elaka is what people in the Indian state of Kerala call cardamom. Every confection Shamsuddin offers features the exotic flavor — a warm, aromatic spice known for its peppery and piney palate. So, she decided, why not call her business Elaka Treats? Officially in business at PFAP, Shamsuddin learned how to navigate a commercial kitchen, essential in the ice cream business. After months of back and forth between Greensboro and Hillsborough, often hauling Z with her
and hiring a babysitter there, she scheduled her Department of Agriculture inspection for March, and, a week later, was due to officially launch at the 2020 RiverRun International Film Festival, held in Winston-Salem each year. “And then COVID hit, cancels the RiverRun International Film Festival, cancels my inspection,” she says, “and I panicked.” In tears, she called her brother, feeling as if she’d brought the pandemic upon herself. “You think the whole world is going through a pandemic because you decided to run a business?” he asked her. She laughs now at the memory, but, at the time, she answered him with a resounding, “Yes.” After her momentary meltdown, Shamsuddin picked herself up off the floor and trudged onward. “I wasn’t ready to give up. I’d barely started.” While inspections were on pause, Shamsuddin says, “I found out that if I can convince the Department of Agriculture that I am going to do everything per code and my product is safe to consume, then they will give me a letter that says . . . it is OK for us to be in business.” She was able to obtain the approval letter and, like many businesses in 2020, made a new plan.
“I started thinking, How did Coke create a market?” Salesmen originally went door-to-door, coming face-to-face with potential customers, she says. And now? “There isn’t a soul on this planet that if you tell them ‘Coke,’ they don’t know what it is.”
Shamsuddin, donning a mask, began peddling her pints at farmers markets, everywhere from Raleigh to Charlotte, and at The People’s Market in Greensboro. She ran pop-up shops, even setting up where it all began — at Friendly Center’s Williams-Sonoma.
Farmers markets opened doors, allowing Shamsuddin to take steps toward her goal of eventually adopting a business-to-business (B2B) model. At the Chapel Hill Farmers’ Market, Vimala Rajendran, owner of Visalia’s Curryblossom Café, introduced herself — and, soon after, Shamsuddin had her first wholesale account.
Since then, she’s grown to having a dozen wholesale accounts. “It’s been a slow build,” she admits. But that pace has given her room to expand her small but mighty part-time teams. She’s also relocated her operations to the much more conveniently located Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship, where she rents an office and a warehouse-style storage space, and utilizes the shared-use kitchen, which is managed by Out of the Garden Project, for production.
Her menu has grown, too, including a half-dozen collaborations with local brands. She’s added a variety of cream-based flavors as well as vegan options and says that every flavor has its own story. Z’s lemonade, a flavor her son requested on his fifth birthday, is popular among the kiddos.
Zucchini orange blossom resulted from the purchase of a giant zucchini. “It was really big, more than my whole family needs,” she says, and it was the last remaining piece of produce a young girl had under her People’s Market tent. With no idea of what to do with it — she just wanted that young vendor to have the satisfaction of a sold-out day — she bought it. Zucchini, which she says “doesn’t have much of a flavor,” is popular in Middle Eastern cuisine, as
is orange blossom, which tickles the tongue with hints of honey and citrus. Shamsuddin blended a cream base with the two, plus, naturally, her signature cardamom.
And then there’s the time that she added dates to ice cream. Working on a batch of plantain ice cream, Shamsuddin knocked the last of her plantains onto the floor. In an attempt to save the rest of her ingredients, she grabbed some dates to use in their place. “Sometimes it’s accidental!” she quips.
One day, Shamsuddin would like to see Elaka Treats stocked in national grocers’ freezers. In fact, her desserts are under review at Whole Foods currently and she feels hopeful. “It’s a global brand, that’s what the dream is.” And the cherry on top? That would be to see Elaka pods, self-serving freezers, in every cultural space.
“Initially, Elaka was about me. It was about telling my story,” says Shamsuddin. Over the past six years, it’s grown into something else. It’s about community, belonging “and how, through food, you can see how we’re all connected.” OH
cott Bankhead, a former Major League Baseball pitcher and founder of the North Carolina Baseball Academy, threw his first pitch for his Little League baseball team in Mount Olive when he was 7 years old.
“I enjoyed everything about the game,” Bankhead says. “I loved throwing the ball. I loved hitting the ball.”
Back then, there weren’t many professional games broadcast on TV during the summer. And there were hardly any special coaching camps.
But Bankhead was encouraged along by his older cousins, who played for a regional American Legion Baseball amateur team.
Bankhead went on to throw a lot more pitches — first, for his elementary school coaches in Reidsville, where his family moved when he was 9, then for the Reidsville Senior High School
baseball team, then as a collegiate player at UNC-Chapel Hill, and finally, pitching for the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Mariners, Cincinnati Reds, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees during a 10-year professional career.
After his retirement, Bankhead felt a real passion to pass along his knowledge and affection for the game and dedicated his postprofessional baseball life to mentoring young players, both on and off the field.
Bankhead saw a need for better instruction at all levels of the game. He wanted to provide a resource for players of all ages and ability levels, a place where he could have a positive influence on them as athletes and as individuals.
The result?
NCBA, established by Bankhead in 1998.
Located near the Piedmont Triad International Airport, the academy’s facilities are impressive. The campus comprises 12 acres and provides students with indoor- and outdoor-training areas for both baseball and softball, an instructional center, a weight room, indoor pitching mounds with retractable batting cages, performance stations, an artificial turf running track, and a pro shop for equipment.
Students even have their hitting and pitching stills analyzed by Rapsodo and Blast Motion, the same technology used by all 30 MLB teams and 1,200 colleges.
“The philosophy here is to teach the fundamentals of the game,” Bankhead says. “That’s what we do day-to-day at the facility.” And then adds, “Our goal, first and foremost, is to enable players to do well in school, so they will be able to get into college.”
While state-of-the-art facilities and technology are important, the character, quality and experience of the academy’s instructors are essential.
And NCBA coaches have strong Greensboro ties.
Jeff Guerrie, assistant director of NCBA, moved from Florida to Greensboro during his senior year and played baseball at West Forsyth High School before playing for Greensboro College. He coached at Page High School before joining the academy and combines traditional coaching with his expert use of modern baseball training technology.
A graduate of High Point Central High School, Colin Smith played college baseball at North Carolina Central University, Southeastern Community College and Guilford College. He served as head coach of the Lexington Flying Pigs in the Old
North State League and teaches NCBA students at all skill levels.
Shane Schumaker played baseball at UNCG and professionally in independent leagues. He returned to coach at UNCG, and later coached both baseball and softball in California. He was an associate scout for the Atlanta Braves before joining NCBA, where he teaches baseball and softball skills — including softball pitching.
A former baseball player at Grimsley High School, WinstonSalem State University and Guilford College, where he completed his degree, Saunders Joplin works with players of all ages, specializing in hitting, catching, pitching and basic skills.
Devin Ponton also played his college baseball at Guilford College. He is currently the head junior varsity baseball coach at Southwest Guilford High School in High Point. With years of baseball experience and knowledge, he coaches players in any area of the game.
To all these instructors, Bankhead drives home the point that personal attention is key to the academy’s success.
“We treat each player as an individual,” says Bankhead. “We help them learn to enjoy the game and to understand that hard work in baseball can lead to success in other endeavors.”
Players can sign up for one-on-one lessons with a coach by ap-
pointment. These sessions are tailored to the player’s specific needs — including hitting, pitching, catching, fielding and basic skills.
Coaches also lead training camps throughout the calendar year that offer instruction, drills and practice routines mirroring professional baseball training methods. The goal is to help players gain knowledge, skills and confidence to take them to a higher level.
Finally, there are the NCBA Golden Spikes teams.
The academy’s Golden Spikes program is recognized as one of North Carolina’s premier player development and college prospect initiatives.
Teams are selected through tryouts and bring together the region’s top talent to compete against some of the strongest teams in the nation.
There is a development program for elementary and middle school age players and a college prospect program for high school age players.
“Since the inception of our team program in 2002,” Bankhead says, “we’ve placed more than 100 players at the college or professional level.”
Producing that number of elite players certainly gives Bankhead
bragging rights.
But he’ll tell you that’s not the endgame.
Recently, he was out on the golf course and ran into a former NCBA student he remembered well.
This one had gone on to play college baseball and then earned a medical degree.
“Now, he’s a vascular surgeon,” Bankhead says with a smile.
“Sure, we like to see our students reach the highest levels of professional baseball, if that’s what they want,” he adds. “But we’re also a resource for the future doctors of the world.” OH
Ross Howell Jr. is a contributing writer.
For more information on the North Carolina Baseball Academy, visit ncbaseball.com or follow them on Facebook at facebook.com/ North.Carolina.Baseball.Academy. Want to take a little batting practice? NCBA offers batting cages that are open to the public and feature machine pitching for baseball, slow-pitch softball and fast-pitch softball.
NBy Jim DoDson
ot long ago, during a breakfast talk in a retirement community about my forthcoming book on the Great Wagon Road, I was asked by a woman, “So, looking back, what would you say was the most surprising thing about your journey?”
“Everything,” I answered.
The audience laughed.
The first surprise, I explained, was that it took me more than half a century to find and follow America’s most fabled lost Colonial road that reportedly brought more than 100,000 European settlers to the Southern wilderness during the 18th century. As I point out in the book’s prologue, I first heard about the GWR from my father during a road trip with my older brother in December 1966 to shoot mistletoe out of the ancient white oaks that grew around his great-grandfather’s long-abandoned homeplace off Buckhorn Road, near the Colonial-era town of Hillsborough.
The first of many surprises was the discovery that my father’s grandmother, a natural healer along Buckhorn Road named Emma Tate Dodson, was possibly an American Indian who had been rescued and adopted as an infant by George Washington Tate, my double-great-grandfather, on one of his “Gospel” rides to establish a Methodist church in the western counties of the state.
A second surprise came during the drive home when the old man pulled over by the Haw River to show my brother and me a set of stones submerged in the shallows of the river — purportedly the remains of G.W. Tate’s historic gristmill and furniture shop.
“Boys, long ago, that was your great-great-granddaddy’s gristmill, an important stop on the Great Trading Path that connected to the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road that brought tens of thousands of European settlers to the South in the 18th century,
including your Scottish, German and English ancestors.”
This was pure catnip to my lively eighth-grade mind. Owing to a father whose passion for the outdoors was only matched by his love of American history, my brother and I were seasoned explorers of historic Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields.
“Can we go find it?” I said to him.
He smiled. “How about this, Sport. Someday I’ll give you the keys to the Roadmaster, and you can go find the Wagon Road.”
I searched for years but found only the brief occasional mention of the Great Wagon Road in several histories of the South, but nothing about where it ran and what happened along it. The road seemed truly lost to time.
Forty years later, however, the Great Wagon Road found me.
On my first day as writer-in-residence at Hollins University in Virginia in 2006, I took a spin up historic U.S. Highway 11 — the famed Lee-Jackson Highway — and was surprised to come upon a historic roadside marker describing the “Old Carolina Road” that was part of the 18th century’s “Great Philadelphia Wagon Road.”
The sweet hand of providence was clearly at work, for the next day, while browsing shelves at a used bookshop in the Roanoke City Market, I found a well-worn copy of a folksy history called The Great Wagon Road: From Philadelphia to the South, by Williamsburg historian Parke Rouse Jr. I purchased the book (originally published in 1973 and long out of print) and read it in one night, taking notes. I also attempted to track down author Parke Rouse Jr. but discovered he’d been deceased for many years.
Still, the cosmos had cracked open a door, and I began collecting and reading all or parts of every history of America’s Colonial era that I could lay hands on for the next decade, eventually building a personal library of more than 75 books. About that same time, I purchased a 1994 Buick Roadmaster Estate station wagon from an elderly man in Pinehurst, almost identical to the one owned by my late father in the mid-1960s. Pinehurst pals playfully nicknamed it “The Pearl,” which turned out to be among the last true “wagons” built by Detroit before they switched to making SUVs.
I suddenly had my very own wagon. Now all I had to do was find the most traveled road of Colonial America to travel in it.
Eight years later, thanks to the late North Carolina historian Charles Rodenbough and other history-minded folks, I discovered that I wasn’t alone in my quest — that, in fact, a small army of state archivists and local historians, genealogists, “lost road” experts, various museum curators and ordinary history nuts like me had finally cracked the code on the road’s original path from Philly to Georgia.
By the spring of 2017, I and my traveling pal, Mulligan the dog, were ready to roll when another big surprise — an exploding gallbladder and a baby carrot-sized tumor in my gut — required surgery and a four-month recovery.
Finally, on a steamy late August night, I began my journey (minus Mully, alas, owing to her age and one of the hottest summers on record) at Philadelphia’s historic City Tavern, which claims to be the birthplace of American cuisine. As I enjoyed a pint of Ben Franklin’s own
spruce beer recipe and nibbled on cinnamon and pecan biscuits from Thomas Jefferson’s own Monticello cookbook, I eavesdropped like a tavern spy from Robert Louis Stevenson on three couples having a rowdy celebration of matrimony and a game of trivia based on American history that kept going off the rails.
At one point, a young woman called out a question in clear frustration: “Where and what year were the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first constitution, adopted?”
None of her mates answered.
So, I did. “I believe it was York, Pennsylvania, in November 1777.”
Her name was Gina. She gave me a beaming smile and scooted her chair close to mine. “Correct! How did you know that?”
“Because it happened on the Great Wagon Road.”
What ensued was a delightful conversation about a frontier road that shaped the character and commerce of early America, the historic Colonial road that opened the Southern wilderness and became the nation’s first immigrant highway — the “road that made America,” as my friend Tom Sears, an Old Salem expert on Colonial architecture, described it to me.
Gina was thrilled to learn about it and apologized that she’d never heard its name.
I assured her that she wasn’t alone. Most Americans living today have never heard its name spoken, yet it’s believed that one-fourth of all Americans can trace their ancestral roots to the Great Wagon Road in one way or another.
Charmed and fascinated, Gina wondered how long it would take me to travel the road from Philly to Augusta, Georgia.
I mentioned that settlers took anywhere from two months to several years to reach their destinations depending on the weather and unknown factors like disease, getting lost or encountering hostile native peoples or wild animals.
“I plan to travel the entire road in three or four weeks,” I said. “I’ve spent years researching it.”
Silly me. God laughs, to paraphrase the ancient proverb, when men make plans.
Athird big surprise came at the end of my third week on the road. I hadn’t even gotten out of Pennsylvania.
On the plus side, I’d met and interviewed so many fascinating people who were passionate keepers of their own Wagon Road stories, I realized I’d just tapped the surface of the trail’s saga.
Instead of writing an updated history of the Great Wagon Road, as originally planned, I borrowed a strategy from my late hero Studs Terkel and decided that the real story of the Wagon Road lay in the voices of the people living along it today, keeping its stories alive — the flamekeepers, if you will, of the “road that made America.” If it took a full year to complete my travels, so be it.
Instead, subtracting 12 months for COVID, it took six years and counting.
My focus on the storytellers proved to be deeply rewarding,
introducing me to a broad array of Americans from every walk of life and political persuasion whose vivid and often untold tales about the development of a winding and once forgotten Colonial road (originally an American Indian hunting path that stretched from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas) carried our ancestors into the Golden West and shaped the America we know today, hence the book’s main title: The Road That Made America Unexpectedly, their voices and stories ultimately restored my faith in a country where democracy — and civic discourse — was supposedly in short supply.
Looking back, this was the nicest surprise of all. For what began simply as an armchair historian’s quest to find and document America’s most famous lost road ended as nothing less than a powerful, emotional pilgrimage for me.
At the journey’s end, while I was heading home through the winter moonlight on a winding highway believed to be the path Lord Cornwallis took while chasing wily Nathanael Greene to the Dan River, I had a final revelation of the road’s impact on me: . . . a true pilgrimage is said to be one in which the traveler
ultimately learns more about himself than the passing landscape. Perhaps this is true. But for the time being, it’s enough to think about some of the inspiring people and stories that gave me hope in a nation where democracy is said to be hanging by a thread: an old Ben Franklin and a young Daniel Boone, the Susquehanna Muse, real Yorkers, the candlelight of Antietam, a Gettysburg living legend, an awakening at Belle Grove Plantation, Liberty Man, the passion of Adeela Al-Khalili, good old cousin Steve, a lost Confederate found, a snowy birthday in Staunton, and final road trips with Mully.
Without question, my life and appreciation of my country have both been enriched by the people and stories of the Great Wagon Road. This was the nicest surprise of all. OH
Jim Dodson’s 17th book, The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim Travels the Great Wagon Road, was published by Avid Reader Press and is available in local bookstores and through Amazon. His columns and weekly writings can be found at jwdauthor. substrack.com.
Turned out in an elegant black morning coat, looking every bit the nineteenth-century gentleman of leisure, Wheatland tour guide Bob Thee greets us with a slight bow at the kitchen door of James Buchanan’s stately Lancaster mansion.
There are only three of us for the first tour of the day of the house and the grounds on North President Avenue it shares with LancasterHistory, the Red Rose City’s historical society. My tour companions are a cheerful apple-cheeked couple from Minneapolis in town for their oldest grandchild’s soccer tournament. Unlike me, something of a presidential geek, neither Heidi Thurman nor her husband, Ralph, are particularly keen on the homes of dead presidents and confess little desire to learn about arguably America’s most inept president.
“To tell the truth, dear, we just needed a break from teenage soccer drama and too much fast food,” Heidi confides with a cheery Minnesota whisper as Bob Thee waits solemnly by the kitchen door for any last-minute arrivals. “Also, we love antiques. My daughter, Lucy, told us that Wheatlands has loads of really nice ones. After this we’re checking out the big farmers market downtown. Ralph wants some genuine Amish bologna. How ’bout you, dear?”
I also dig genuine Amish bologna and plan to make my own stop at Lancaster’s historic Central Market, which sits just off the Wagon Road, but first on my agenda is to learn about the private life of maybe the most peculiar peacock to ever occupy the White House.
This is an excerpt from The Road That Made America.
By CAssiE BUsTAmAnTE • PHoToGRAPHs By JoHn GEssnER
About a half-mile from Hagan-Stone Park sits
“The Schoolhouse,” a rustic, tiny home with a vibrant barn quilt hanging above its front door.
A vintage roadside marquee sign that has been lettered with “Happy” greets passing cars, its arrow pointing directly to the house. Upon entering, it’s easy to imagine something straight out of Little House on the Prairie — a blackboard at the back and benches where children would sit, lunch pails tucked under the seats. “If you don’t tell people it wasn’t a schoolhouse, they’d think it was,” says Lacey Grimm, who owns the property with her husband Drew.
Keep following the gravel drive past The Schoolhouse and you’ll reach the family homestead, where Drew and Lacey are
raising and homeschooling their four children: Naomi, 20; Leviah, 16; Eliza, 14; and Abraham, 9. Drew and Lacey have been the kids’ educators from the start. In fact, when they first moved to Greensboro two decades ago, they began their first farmstead — a small, “urban farm” near Four Seasons Mall, where they had bees, chickens and a yard overtaken by garden. They called that little project “Schoolhouse Farm” because they were homeschooling, but also because Lacey had a blog called “Life Is a Schoolhouse,” where she imparted the lessons they’d learned through homesteading.
In 2012, seeking more land and farming opportunity, the family moved into their Pleasant Garden “foreclosure in the woods,” as Lacey calls it. Plus, she says, their family is Jewish and
“a lot of the Jewish tradition is agricultural,” and much of their faith’s ancient approach to husbandry is rooted in sustainability. “You can’t do it if you don’t have a farm,” she notes. So, taking the Schoolhouse Farm name with them to the new place — a 10-acre plot with a ranch that needed a total overhaul — they dug in.
“It’s not what the dream was — the old farmhouse — but now
that we have this,” says Lacey, waving her hand around The Schoolhouse, “it sort of scratches that itch.”
But don’t let the name fool you. What the Grimms have hatched is much more than a schoolhouse. And you won’t find reading, writing and arithmetic within these walls. Instead, you’ll find a place that this pair of homegrown, serial entrepreneurs cultivated with care, a hive of free enterprise built around their own fascination in modern homesteading and farming. The Schoolhouse, appropriately, has grown into a community space, where like-minded people congregate to learn about how the Grimm family is embodying the latest in the back-to-theEarth movement.
“I feel like we’ve got a dream life compared to most people,” says Drew. “A lot of days, we don’t have to leave the homestead. We have everything.”
But this little one-room building on the ’stead wasn’t theirs for the itch-scratching until 2018. When they moved into their house, the 900-square-foot home and its surrounding 5 acres wasn’t on the market and was being rented. As luck would have it, a “For Sale” sign eventually went up. The Grimms imagined what they could do with that added acreage.
“Where are we going to come up with $100,000!” Lacey recalls wondering, their primary income coming from her sales
of dōTERRA essential oils and related products. But within two days, the owner came down significantly on the price and, Lacey quips, “It turns out people will give you loans really easily on the internet.” Before they knew it, $50,000 cash was in their hands, enough to make the purchase. And, Drew notes, he’d just sold a business, so they’d be able to pay back the loan almost immediately without worrying about exorbitant interest rates.
As soon as their names were on the deed, the Grimms pushed up their sleeves and got to work. The home had seen better days. “I can’t believe anyone was living here,” says Lacey.
“We took it down to the dirt floors and rebuilt it,” says Drew, a baseball cap resting atop his long, gray-and-brown hair, his full beard a mix of the same. He sits in a wooden cricket chair that echoes the 1940s era of The Schoolhouse.
In the process of gutting the home, they learned a little about its history and ties to the land. Their next-door neighbor, an elderly gentleman well into his 80s now, regaled the couple with tales of the home’s construction. The lumber, he told them, was all sourced from trees on the property itself, and he and his father sawed, hammered and built it from the ground up. Of course, he also claims that when he was a small child, he was lowered down to dig the nearby well. “Like any good country man, I am not sure how much of it is tall tale,” Drew says, chuckling. “But it is kind of cool to have that connection to the house and to the land — and to the old guy!”
Knowing the building’s past, they set their eyes on the future, picturing a place where they could bring people together. “If we are going to have a community space, it’s got to be ‘The Schoolhouse,’” Drew recalls saying.
For Lacey, that meant getting down to the nitty-gritty details. She insisted Drew move the front door over, only about 3 feet, so it would be centered on the facade. The kitchen was rearranged so that the sink sat underneath a window, where sunlight streams in. The ceilings were torn down, exposing the original wood and beams, but a loft was added to create sleeping space.
As for the decor? “She is a thrift master,” Drew says proudly of his wife. Nearby, Lacey, her sandy brown waves cascading past her shoulders, sinks onto a mustard-yellow, vintage velvet sofa. As it turns out, she helped her mom stock a vintage store before her kids were born and has an eye for pieces with history. The kitchen island? It came out of an N.C. State lab. The retro
brown refrigerator, “Oh, it was just in our garage,” says Lacey. Although Lacey claims she was just “hodgepodging together” The Schoolhouse furnishings, the overall look is cohesive and homey. Guests often tell her they feel as if they’ve been here before. “It’s a familiar feeling,” she says.
“I get a little choked up because it’s like, you know, you have a vision and it slowly, over time, becomes more than you could have expected it to,” says Lacey wistfully. “And now we have a schoolhouse.”
What was once barely livable is now a place of gathering, community and education. Lacey points to a painting on the wall. She decoarated the canvas in a recent workshop she cohosted here with artist Rebecca Dudley, who owns Triad Mobile Art Academy. The participants painted flowering medicinal herbs while also learning about them from Lacey and noshing on local wines and cheeses. The Grimms have also hosted a tasting with a local chocolatier as well as a four-course, farm-to-table Valentine’s dining experience led by their friend and chef Steve Hollingsworth.
“For the food club group, we had a trout dinner,” adds Drew, where Ty Walker, owner of Smoke in Chimneys, a sustainable fish hatchery in Southwest Virginia, cooked trout three ways.
Food club? Lacey explains that The Schoolhouse food club, which they call ComFoo for “community food,” is “sort of like a Costco situation.” Members order goods curated by the Grimms from farmers, keeping it as local as possible, including tough-to-find-so-close goods such as Cape Hatteras salt and rice from Wilmington.
Once every other week, food club orders are ready for pickup and The Schoolhouse bustles with life. Their members, Lacey says, have all gotten to know each other. They come for the food, but stay for the conversation and connection. And, each time, the Grimms welcome one or two producers to offer samples and education about their goods.
“We’ve always been passionate about the teaching aspect,” says Drew. Drew, Lacey notes proudly, recently became certified by the Savory Institute as a regenerative agriculture educator. With this under his belt, he’s able to help others make their own pastures more productive while remaining sustainable.
Plus, Lacey notes with a laugh, others can learn by “skipping some expensive mistakes” they’ve made. Mistakes such as goats.
On their original 10 acres, excited to try their hand at live -
stock, the Grimms brought in goats. Do they still have those goats. “No!” They answer emphatically and in unison. Goats, the Houdini of livestock, often hop fences and escape. Or, notes Lacey, their goats would get stuck in the fence multiple times in one day and they’d spend their time untangling horns and hooves.
They said goodbye to goats and brought in sheep next. “And we didn’t even have a dog, so we were just human herding these sheep,” Lacey says. That, too, got to be too much for them. Step one, she notes, is getting a sheepdog, which they’ve since done. “Maybe we will get more sheep eventually,” she muses.
The Grimms finally landed on cows and own two breeds: Dexter, a small variety, which Lacey feels is safer around kids; and Swiss Linebacker, a heritage dairy breed. Comparing the bo -
vine’s disposition to their previous livestock, Lacey says, “Their vibe is just much slower and more easygoing.” Currently, the couple has five cows “and two on the way, any day now!”
With cows being the endgame livestock for them, Drew is currently in training to become a shochet, a Jewish butcher who has been specially trained and licensed to slaughter animals and birds in accordance with the laws of shechita and can certify kosher meats. His hope? “To be able to provide the Jewish community with sustainable, high-quality food.”
Still, educating others in their ways of life remains their focus. A nursery, says Lacey, “feels like a good idea to me.” Would she sell her plants? Absolutely, but they’d come with a side of education.
“She wants to talk,” adds Drew, grinning widely. “She’s a plant lady.”
“I can’t just sell you a plant,” says Lacey. “Come here and I will tell you all about this plant.”
Her light blue eyes glint as a memory crosses her mind. “Have you ever been to John C. Campbell Folk School?” she wonders aloud. “I went for basket weaving and I just fawn over the catalog every time it comes,” Lacey says. “So I would just love to have a space where that is happening all the time — like classes and workshops.”
As for if and when that will come to fruition? Lacey says that with young ones still at home, she’s in no hurry. “There is space for that down the road,” she says. And she could mean that quite literally. OH
For more information, visit theschoolhouselife.com.
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By A sHLEy
in all of Gotham City was that?
this
July is a backyard safari, dirt-caked knees, the heart-racing thrill of the hunt.
tive wonders — keep in mind that
Bug box? Check. Dip net? Check. Stealth and determination? Check and check.
Among a riot of milkweed, blazing star and feathery thistle, the siblings are crouched in the meadow, waiting for movement.
“There,” points one of the children.
“Where?” chimes the other.
“Follow me!”
As they slink through the rustling grass, playful as lion cubs, life bursts in all directions. Monarchs and swallowtails stir from their summer reverie. Dog-day cicadas go silent. A geyser of goldfinches blast into the great blue yonder.
“He’s right there!” the child whispers once again, inching toward a swaying blade of grass.
At once, the black-winged grasshopper catapults itself across the meadow, popping and snapping in a boisterous arc of flight. The children scurry after.
On and on this goes. Hour by hour. Day by day. Grasshopper by grasshopper.
Or, on too-hot days, tadpole by tadpole.
“Race you to the creek!” chime the siblings.
Eastern Hercules beetles are in flight this month. Should you spot one of these massive rhinoceros beetles — native wonders — keep in mind that their larvae grub on rotting wood, breaking down organic matter to enhance our soil and ecosystems. As their name suggests, they’re sort of like superheroes without the lion skin or tripleweave Kevlar suit.
Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day.
Shoes are cast off with reckless abandon. Bare feet squish into the cool, wet earth. Laughter crescendos.
The whir of tiny wings evokes an audible gasp.
“Hummingbird!” says the younger one, scanning the creekbank until a flash of emerald green catches their eye.
As hummingbird drinks from cardinal flower after vibrant red cardinal flower, the children, too, imbibe summer’s timeless magic.
Finally, awakened from their fluttering trance, the children bolt upright.
“Race you to the wild blackberries!” they dare one another. Such is the thrill of wild, ageless summer.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Oh, really? Who?
As burlesque icon Dita Von Teese once said, “You can be a delicious, ripe peach and there will still be people in the world that hate peaches.”
Peach season is in full swing. Dare you to drive past a local farm stand without braking for a quarter-peck or more. Kidding, of course. One should always make the pit stop.
True homegrown peach enthusiasts know that the annual N.C. Peach Festival takes place in Candor — Peach Capital of N.C. — on the third weekend of July. Get the sweet (and savory) details at ncpeachfestival.com.
Meet the Pioneering Women Redefining Our Local Business Scene
Ambrosino Law, PLLC | Blush & Grace Events
City of Greensboro/Engineering
Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro
Farless Dental Group | House of Eyes
Pebble & Pear Boutique | Ready for School, Ready for Life
The Resource | Stearns Financial Group
Sponsored Section | July 2025
Photographs by Betsy Blake Photography & Bert VanderVeen
• What Sets Stearns Financial Apart: At Stearns Financial Group, Paula McMillan leads with proficiency and empathy. As a Partner and Wealth Advisor, she delivers a “one-sizefits-one” approach because no two lives are the same. Whether guiding clients through retirement, widowhood, or business transitions, Paula and her team craft thoughtful financial strategies rooted in care and clarity.
• Proudest Career Accomplishment: Paula finds fulfillment in one-on-one moments, particularly supporting women through life transitions. “Seeing someone move from overwhelmed to confident is why I do this work,” she shares. Helping clients gain clarity, confidence, and control fuels her passion for planning.
• Advice for Young Women Starting Their Careers: Paula’s grandfather, Papaw Summers, once told her, “Education is something that can never be taken away from you.” That wisdom inspired her TEDx Talk, Financial Security and Longevity, and fuels her love of lifelong learning. She holds six financial credentials: CPA | CFP® | PFS | CEPA | CDFA® | CGMA.
• Best Part About Being a Woman in Finance: Women approach money with values, security, and legacy in mind, yet many feel underserved. Paula is passionate about changing that, helping women connect, collaborate, and build financial lives that reflect what matters most.
• On the Horizon: Paula believes financial education should be empowering and even enjoyable. That’s why Stearns Financial hosts events blending learning with connection. From intimate gatherings to community-wide forums, Paula invites you to join in.
• What Financial Confidence Means to Me: Paula believes financial security should be accessible and empowering, not intimidating. With solid planning, you can achieve clarity, control and confidence. Paula says, “While the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is today. Let’s connect and get started.”
House of Eyes was founded in 1980 with one guiding principle: to exceed customer expectations at every turn. Three generations later, Ashley Culotta embraces that guiding principle. Whether hand selecting each frame from a variety of curated designers or expertly fitting prescription lenses in-house, her favorite part of the job remains finding the perfect frame for you.
• Areas of Service: Optical boutique, prescription and non-prescription glasses and sunglasses.
• What Sets House of Eyes Apart: Huge selection of glasses from independent and luxury designer brands, ranging from classic to funk and chic — all handpicked by the trained staff at House of Eyes; an in-house finishing lab that allows for better quality control and shorter wait times.
• Expertise: N.C. Licensed Optician as well as American Board of Opticianry and National Contact Lens Examiners certified.
• On the Horizon: Exciting events at our new location on Battleground Avenue.
• Proudest Career Accomplishment: “I’m so incredibly proud of our new location. It feels like I was able to put more of myself into it. I have spent hours researching and discovering new brands, new equipment and techniques — anything that will elevate what we provide.”
• Advice for Young Women Starting Their Careers: “Be proud of all the hard work you have put in and don’t diminish it — celebrate it!”
• Best Part About Being a Woman in Business: Support from like-minded people who share similar experiences and obstacles in the workplace.
• At Home: Ashley loves cooking, reading and listening to audiobooks, kayaking, a good walk or hike, and shopping for a great deal. Her Sundays are often spent lounging on her back porch with her two dogs while listening to music.
1209 Battleground Ave., Suite 200, Greensboro, NC 336-852-7107 | www.houseofeyes.com
The Professional Advisors Committee (PAC) of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro (CFGG) are a volunteer group of expert professional advisors helping their clients realize their charitable giving goals by partnering with the foundation. The women leading the PAC are building a network of financial planners and investment advisors, tax and estate lawyers, philanthropic advisors, and insurance agents and accountants committed to improving the community while maximizing tax benefits for their clients.
• Mission: To encourage charitable giving by individuals, families and organizations to the causes most important to them and to heighten awareness of the benefits of giving through CFGG within the professional advisors community.
• Areas of Service: Financial planning and tax advice; legal counsel and investment strategies; philanthropic services.
• Expertise: PAC members work with CFGG to offer their clients a suite of charitable vehicles, philanthropic services, and social impact investments offered through the foundation.
• What Sets the PAC Apart: PAC members’ familiarity with CFGG and understanding of tax strategies related to charitable giving can help their clients decide how much
to give, which assets to give, and when to give in order to maximize their charitable impact and tax savings.
• Proudest Career Accomplishment: PAC members created the Professional Advisors Network. Launched in 2024, the combined membership of the Professional Advisors Network and Professional Advisors Committee has grown to 37 professional advisors in less than a year.
• Best Thing About Being Women in Business: The women of the PAC represent a foundation that distributed $18 million in grants and scholarships in 2024. Membership in the Professional Advisors Network is free and includes invitations to continuing education programs, foundation events, networking opportunities, special recognitions, and eligibility for CFGG’s annual Philanthropic Leadership Award.
A recent addition to the Farless Dental Group, Dr. Annie McLennon brings a patient-first philosophy to every aspect of her practice. Together with her dedicated team, she offers comprehensive general dental services, utilizing the latest advancements in tools, technology and training to deliver exceptional care and lasting results that will make you smile.
• Mission Statement: We strive to build a trusting relationship from the very start by making you feel respected and empowered, by listening to your concerns, creating custom treatment plans to achieve your goals and never pressuring you into anything you aren’t comfortable pursuing.
• What Sets Farless Dental Group Apart: An efficient, tight-knit staff that treats patients like family; the use of the latest technology, tools and training; and a passion for helping patients achieve their best smile.
• Expertise: A keen attention to detail and fine motor skills provide careful, quality dental work, and a background in teaching helps in explaining oral health and treatment options.
• Proudest Career Attribute: The ability to provide relief to those in pain and to fix smiles that are broken.
• Advice for Young Women Starting Their Careers: Be confident in the position you’ve worked so hard to earn. You belong here. Advocate for yourself and request what you need to succeed. Ask questions if you don’t understand and speak up if you disagree. Above all, be kind. You never know what someone else is going though.
• Best Thing About Being a Woman in Business: Working alongside other strong, supportive women who understand the complex and ever-changing demands of work and home life.
After working in a large firm for 14 years, Britainy Ambrosino took a leap of faith, bet on herself and opened Ambrosino Law in 2022. Handling personal injury cases, Britainy focuses on motor vehicle, trucking, wrongful death, pedestrian, motorcycle, drunk driving and hit and run.
• What Sets Ambrosino Law Apart: Because it is a fully digital practice, clients can access Britainy through various forms of communication and develop a one-on-one client-attorney relationship maintained through each step of the process.
• Areas of Expertise: Cases that require persistence and close attention to detail. “There’s nothing better than having an insurance company reverse its position after I advocate for my client. I enjoy the challenge of turning difficult cases into big wins.”
• Advice for Young Women Starting Their Careers: Believe in yourself and don’t give up. Discover what you’re passionate about and work toward it with everything you’ve got. You don’t have to be perfect; learn from mistakes, give yourself grace and keep going.
• Biggest Lesson Learned: Expect the unexpected and remain calm. Don’t panic when things don’t go as planned — pivot and be grateful for the chance to grow, learn and become better.
• Best Part About Being a Woman in Business: Breaking people’s expectations and showing what women can really do. The community is incredible too. There’s such a strong network of women who genuinely support each other. That kind of encouragement means everything.
Amy Alvino opened Pebble & Pear Boutique in 2022 as a destination shop offering distinctive fashion options that resonate with local clientele. Striving to create a space where women feel seen, understood and celebrated, Amy operates under the premise that retail is fundamentally about human connection.
• Areas of Service: Women’s apparel with an assortment of accessories and gifts, personal shopping appointments, custom select brand orders and special events with local, small businesses and charitable organizations.
• What Sets Pebble & Pear Apart: An unparalleled level of customer service and exclusive brand selection, a thoughtful balance between quality and affordability, premium merchandise at reasonable prices, extensive industry knowledge and an elevated aesthetic sensibility.
• Expertise: Retail operations that enhance the customer experience while maximizing business performance, new brands and trending styles that speak to the local market, and development of a talented, professional team.
• Proudest Career Accomplishment: The ability to successfully balance the demands of being a mother and wife with the challenges and demands of being a small-business owner.
• Advice for Young Women Starting Their Careers: “I would emphasize the importance of gaining diverse experiences before settling into your ultimate path. Building a strong professional network is essential; the relationships I’ve developed throughout my career have become invaluable resources as I build my own business.”
• Best Part About Being a Woman in Business: The essential connections developed within the community.
Teshanda Middleton is the CEO of Ready for School, Ready for Life, a local nonprofit working to create a connected, innovative system of care for Guilford County’s youngest children and their families. Its goal is to increase the number of children who are ready to start school.
• Areas of Service: Guilford County — with a focus on prenatal-to-age-8 support for children and families across High Point, Greensboro and surrounding communities.
• What Sets Ready for School, Ready for Life Apart: As a systems-building organization, Teshanda and her team align data, partnerships and community voice to create a more efficient, connected system of care.
• On the Horizon: An integrated data infrastructure, a stronger navigation network for families and a more in-depth prenatalto-age-8 strategy.
• Proudest Career Accomplishment: Leading with integrity in complex spaces — building trust where others saw gridlock; a continued commitment to the people Ready for School, Ready for Life serves.
• Biggest Lesson Learned: Leadership is more about being trusted than about being the smartest person in the room. Lead with clarity, humility and courage, even in the face of uncertainty. You can’t skip the relationship work — change is possible, but only when people feel safe enough to move forward together.
• Best Thing About Being a Woman in Business: The depth of personal connection. “As a woman leader, I have the opportunity to show up fully and be a bridge between organizations, neighborhoods and generations.”
(L to R): Samantha Guzman - Industrial Recruiter, Bethany Heath - Senior Clerical Account Manager, Kelly Transou - VP of Leadership Development, Kathy Hartung - CEO, Lisa Wright - Senior Direct Hire Recruiter, Grace McParland - Marketing Manager
Driven by a passion for people, The Resource is a career services and human capital solutions company. This femaleled and women-owned organization has been in business since 1979, striving to meet the growing need for temporary workers and custom training & development in the Piedmont Triad.
• Areas of Service: Staffing and recruiting services, full-scale hiring solutions, leadership training and development, human resources consulting, leadership and executive coaching, payroll and accounting, and CORE Assessment®.
• Expertise: A combined 500+ years of industry experience among the leadership team; deep insight into the local and national workforce; a proven track record of matching people to positions, resulting in higher performance, improved retention and greater success. Training and development as a key tenet, and CORE Assessment®, which enables teams to overcome challenges, manage conflict and communicate effectively.
• On the Horizon: The growth of the leadership development division. The Resource now offers supervisor-level training
development and coaching, the newest service added to its “next level learning.”
• Best Part About Being Women in Business: Seeing and supporting the success of other women in business, plus the shared camaraderie and uplifting attitude.
• Advice for Young Women Starting Their Careers: Seek out tools to better understand yourself, how you’re hardwired to operate, both personally and professionally. Know that weakness is just strength in the wrong environment, so stand confident in your skills and contributions and position yourself in a role that maximizes your unique skillset.
1292 S. Stratford Road, Winston-Salem 3402-H W. Wendover Ave., Greensboro 336-896-1000 • www.theresource.com
Blush & Grace Events
Tracy believes that every love story is worthy of being celebrated with beauty, intention and joy. Rooted in deep faith and a strong sense of family, she serves her clients with grace and purpose — grounded in values that inspire her to lead with integrity, compassion and heartfelt gratitude.
• Expertise: 25 years of hands-on experience in full-service wedding planning, event design, venue logistics, vendor management, timeline flow and guest service that brings each couple’s vision to life.
• On the Horizon: Villa Magnolias Event Center, a 6,410-square-foot premier event venue nestled in the serene, wooded setting of Browns Summit.
• Proudest Career Accomplishment: The mentoring and training of new event professionals.
• Advice for Young Women Starting Their Careers: Trust your instincts, stay committed to learning and never underestimate the value of hard work and professionalism.
• Biggest Lesson Learned: Success is built on relationships, not just results. While delivering beautiful events is important, it’s the trust, communication and genuine care you show your clients, vendors and team that create a lasting effect.
• Best Part About Being a Woman in Business: The opportunity to build genuine, lasting relationships and make a meaningful impact. In a small community especially, it’s about more than just business — it’s trust, connection and contributing to something larger than yourself. “Being able to lead, inspire and support others — especially other women — in a close-knit environment has been one of the greatest honors of my career.”
Villa Magnolias Event Center
6210 Technology Drive, Browns Summit, NC 336-488-3053 • blushandgraceevents.com
VillaMagnoliasEventCenter.com
(Back Row L to R): Virginia Spillman, PE – Water Resources; Jana Stewart, PE – Water Resources; Kristine Williams – Water Resources; Lydia McIntyre, EI – Greensboro Department of Transportation
(Front Row L to R): Shawna Tillery, PMP – Engineering & Inspections; Frances Kallam, PE, CDT – Engineering & Inspections; Deniece Conway, PE – Greensboro Department of Transportation
This group of dynamic women represent a segment of the 3,500 employees across the organization, who manage multi-million dollar infrastructure projects, ranging from planning to construction. They support the City’s water systems, roads, sidewalks, public facilities, and large scale construction projects. Collectively, their years of service with the organization, represent more than 100 years.
This impressive display of female representation is a testament to the City of Greensboro being a Family Forward NC Certified Employer.
Leading in municipal government requires being purposedriven and willing to collaborate by leveraging departmental resources to support the Vision and Mission outlined by the Greensboro City Council.
• Vision: Greensboro will be a community with endless economic opportunities and an exceptional quality of life.
• Mission: To shape an inclusive future for equitable economic opportunities and sustainable, safe neighborhoods through resident-focused services and programs.
• Leadership Beyond the Gate City: Many of these leading women have been recognized at the state and national level as respected leaders in their profession.
Shawna Tillery – Recipient of National Park and Recreation Gold Medal Award and NC Marvin Collins Planning Award.
Lydia McIntyre – NC Governor’s Executive Committee for Highway Safety.
Deniece Conway – Featured in National Institute of Transportation Engineers Journal. Frances Kallam – Presenter: NCDOT Locally Administered Projects Training.
Jana Stewart – Distinguished Service and Golden Manhole Awards presented by the American Water Works Association.
• Advice for Young Women Starting Their Career: Your voice, ideas, and abilities cultivates the expertise that sets you apart. Seek leadership opportunities, instead of waiting for them to surface.
Being people-centered is at the heart of our pledge to serve the residents, business owners and visitors of Greensboro.
300 Washington St., Greensboro, NC 336-373-2489 • www.greensboro-nc.gov
Supported by:
Thursday, July 10 • 5:30 p.m.
Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Ave. C, Greensboro
O.Henry magazine proudly presents our founding editor and “Simple Life” columnist, New York Times-bestselling author Jim Dodson, to celebrate the release of The Road That Made America: A Modern Pilgrim’s Journey on the Great Wagon Road.
This free event includes a book talk and signing opportunity as we honor this hometown literary legend. Need a copy? The Country Bookshop will be popping up with plenty.
Register to attend here: bit.ly/4daX5lz
Before attending any event, it’s best to check times, costs, status and location. Although we conscientiously use the most accurate and up-to-date information, the world is subject to change and errors occur!
July 1–31
MAKING CONNECTIONS. This installation of works from the Weatherspoon’s attic showcases the gallery as an academic museum with deep connections to its campus, Greensboro and broader communities. Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart. org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions.
GADISSE LEE. Explore the vibrant, saturated photography of this Ethiopian born and raised UNCG graduate, whose work celebrates the Black female figure; hear from the artist at 6 p.m., Wednesday, July 23. Free. GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org/exhibitions.
RUGLIFE. Explore the work of contemporary artists who use rugs as an inventive medium to address a range of cultural topics, from housing and the environment to technology and global politics. Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart.org/ exhibitions/current-exhibitions.
PATTERN RECOGNITION. Explore the power of pattern in this exhibit featuring works from the Weatherspoon collection. Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart. org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions.
ARTISTS AT EDGEWOOD. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Meet some of the 30 artists-inresidence at Elliott Daingerfield’s restored historic cottage in Blowing Rock. Featured artists change weekly. Free. Main Street and Ginny Stevens Lane, Blowing Rock. Info: artistsatedgewood.org.
July 1–25
JABBERBOX PUPPET THEATER
July 4
Downtown Greensboro
RETROSPECTIVE ART SHOW:
Celebrate the legacy of Jabberbox Puppet Theater’s 13-year run (2010–2013); opening reception, 5–7 p.m., June 20. Free. Artery Gallery, 1711 Spring Garden St., Greensboro. Info: facebook.com/ ArteryGalleryGreensboro.
July 1–26
THE OPIOID PROJECT. With a focus on opioid addiction, this exhibition, which highlights mixed media works by students currently participating in UNCG’s Spartan Recovery Program, will serve as a launching pad to talk about our broader community members’ experiences of the opioid/addiction crisis and its impact on their lives. Free. Weatherspoon Art Museum, 500 Tate St., Greensboro. Info: weatherspoonart. org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions.
July 2
READING THE WORLD. 7–8 p.m.
Discover and discuss contemporary authors’ works in translation. Free. Online. Info: scuppernongbooks.com/event.
July 4
FUN FOURTH. Downtown Greensboro hosts an array of events to celebrate America’s birthday in its own unique and multicultural way, including a 5K and the annual Freedom Fest. Downtown Greensboro. Info: downtowngreensboro. org/events/fun-fourth.
UNCLE SAM JAM. 4:30–10 p.m. Enjoy an evening of family-friendly activities in the park. $10 parking, $20 Family Fun Zone. Oak Hollow Festival Park, 1841 Eastchester Drive, High Point. Info: highpointnc.gov/ calendar.
CEMETERY STROLL. 9–11 a.m. Share
your grave concerns in a walking tour, “The Plants and the Planted,” led by Friends of Green Hill Cemetery. Tickets: $5, cash only; no reservations required. Green Hill Cemetery, Wharton Street, Greensboro. Info: friendsofgreenhillcemetery.org/tours.
TOWNEBANK BEACH MUSIC
FESTIVAL. 6 p.m. Sit in the stands or bring a blanket to grab a seat on the baseball field for a summer-vibes concert featuring Sleeping Booty, followed by fireworks. Tickets, $15; children 12 and under, free. First National Bank Field, 408 Bellemeade St., Greensboro. Info: downtowngreensboro.org/events.
FIRST FRIDAY STORYTIME. 10–10:30 a.m. Bring your young children outside to enjoy engaging books, playful movement and cheerful songs with a member of the Youth Librarians team from Greensboro Public Library. The first 15 families can snag a free book courtesy of Ready for School, Ready for Life and The Basics Guilford. Free. Woven Works Park, 401 Cumberland St., Greensboro. Info: downtowngreenway.org/events.
July 5–27
SUMMERS IN SEAGROVE. During Step into the Craft, Seagrove potteries host kiln openings, special events, demonstrations and hands-on experiences. Free. Seagrove. Info: discoverseagrove.com/events-all.
July 5
QUILL SKILL. 11 a.m.–4 p.m. All ages are welcome to drop in and learn the art of writing with a quill, just as the Declaration of Independence was crafted. Free. Historical Park at High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.
RHYTHM & RYE. 6:30 p.m. BC Rhythms performs while you sip, snack and enjoy. Free. Starworks Cafe & Tap Room, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: starworksnc.org/ starworks-events.
July 6 & 13
KARAOKE & LINE DANCING. 4–7 p.m. Two of your fav activities merge for one evening of fun with DJ Energizer. Free. Center City Park, 200 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: greensborodowntownparks.org/ calendar.
July 7–31
SUMMER FILM FEST. 7 p.m. Munch on movie theater popcorn while catch-
ing the season’s popular classics. Tickets: $8+, Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/ events.
July 9, 16, 23 & 30
CAROLINA KIDS CLUB. 9 a.m. After visiting the musical petting zoo and taking in a Mad Science show, keep your kiddos cool while watching family-friendly films and noshing on complimentary kids’ snack packs. Tickets: $5+. Carolina Theatre, 310 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: carolinatheatre.com/events.
ensemble deliver an interactive performance utilizing improvisational skills and integrating the tenets of commedia dell’arte, social norms and trappings of stereotypes. Tickets: $10+. Steven D. Hyers Theatre at the Greensboro Cultural Center, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greensboro-nc.gov/government/city-news/ city-calendar.
July 11 & 25
SOUND BATH. 5:30–6:30 p.m. Sol Sounds embraces your senses with calming, healing frequencies to help you relax. Free. Center City Park, 200 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: greensborodowntownparks.org/calendar.
July 19, 12 - 2 p.m.
High Point Museum
July 10
JIM DODSON. 5:30–7:30 p.m. Celebrating the July 2 release of his book, The Road That Made America, O.Henry magazine hosts our founding editor for a book talk and signing. Free, registration required. Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Ave., Greensboro. Info: ohenrymag. com/o-henry-magazine-author-series.
July 11–26
ULTIMATE COMIC CHALLENGE. Catch round three as well as the semifinals as eight remaining comics compete for the title. Tickets: $14.38. The Idiot Box, 503 N. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: idiotboxers. com.
July 11–12, 17–19
YOU TALKIN’ TO ME. 7:30–9 p.m. Through the Residency at Hyers, Julya Mirro and the Little Independent Theatre
July 11
ARTS SPLASH CONCERT. 6 p.m. Titus
Gant Quartet performs an outdoor jazz concert as part of the summer concert series. Free. Centennial Station for the Arts, 121 S. Centennial St., High Point. Info: highpointarts.org/artssplash.
EMERGING ARTISTS SERIES. 8 p.m. Country-rocker Will Hoge is joined by emerging local artist Evan Blackerby, whose sound is described as alt-bluesy Americana, folkish-rock-esque. Tickets: $28+. Flat Iron, 221 Summit Ave., Greensboro. Info: flatirongso.com/events.
July 12
FLASHBACK TO THE ’70s. 11 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Groove your way into a ’70s-style celebration where you can enter a Celebs & Sci-Fi costume contest and a ’70s BakeOff contest, while taking in vintage autos and vintage fashions. Then, get down to the tunes of the era, while enjoying food trucks, flash talks, summer camp game antics and more decade-specific fun. Free. Greensboro History Museum, 130 Summit Ave., Greensboro. Info: greensborohistory. org/events.
ROLLER DERBY. 2 p.m. Greensboro Roller Derby members battle it out on wheels during their Summer Slam. Tickets: $17.30+. Novant Health Fieldhouse at the Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.
LOCAL FOLK GSO. 7 p.m. The N.C. Folk Fest is popping up all summer long and shining a light on local talent, including Tom Troyer and SunQueen Kelcey. Free. The Back Table, 816 S. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: ncfolkfestival.com/ events.
ZACH RUSHING. 7:30 p.m. The Mississippi born-and-raised motivational comedian takes the stage for a night of R-rated laughs. Tickets: $30.69. High Point Theatre, 220 E. Commerce Ave., High Point. Info: highpointtheatre.com/events.
July 13 & 27
MUSEP. 6 p.m. Music for a Sunday Evening in the Park (MUSEP) features a lineup of free concerts, including Del Ward and Sahara as well as Kay Marion and The Neo, at a variety of city parks, where you can also find food trucks or concessions on site. Free, donations encouraged. Info: greensboro-nc.gov/departments/ creative-greensboro.
July 16
KEYSHIA COLE. 7 p.m. Celebrate 20 years of “The Way It Is” with Tink, Wale and special guest T-Pain. Tickets: $48.65+. Greensboro Coliseum, 1921 W. Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum.com/events.
July 17
OLD DOMINION. 7 p.m. When this band hits the stage, lyrical wit meets hook-heavy songwriting in a lively country music concert. Tickets: $59.50+. White Oak Amphitheatre, 1403 Berwick St.., Greensboro. Info: greensborocoliseum. com/events.
July 18
SPEED FRIENDING. 5:30–7:30 p.m. Looking to make new friends and spark great conversation? Register for your age group’s time slot and come away with new buds. Free, registration required. LoFi Park, 500 N. Eugene St., Greensboro. Info: downtowngreenway.org/events.
July 19–31
CONSTANT/CHANGE. Explore the works of eight outstanding emerging North Carolina artists in this juried exhibition. Free. GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc. org/exhibitions.
July 19
WALKING TOUR. 9 a.m.–noon.
Explore the heart of the city with a guided Downtown Greenway walking tour, covering the full 4-mile loop while discovering insights into the project itself, local history, surrounding neighborhoods, public art, environmental efforts, economic impact and more along the way. Free, registration recommended. LoFi Park, 500 N. Eugene St., Greensboro. Info: downtowngreenway. org/events.
NATIONAL ICE CREAM DAY. Noon–2 p.m. Ages 12 and under are encouraged to celebrate the day by learning how to make ice cream in a bag. Free. High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.
FROM SIT-INS TO STAND-OUTS. 6–8:30 p.m. The International Civil Rights Center & Museum honors six notable contributors to the movement at its annual gala, From Sit-Ins to Stand-Outs. Tickets: $150. Koury Convention Center, 3121 W Gate City Blvd., Greensboro. Info: sitinmovement.org/events.
POTTERY ANNIVERSARY. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. At the Eck McCanless anniversary
Supported by:
The arrival of autumn means it’s time to think about snuggling into a cozy nook with a good book. O.Henry magazine proudly welcomes two distinctly different, yet both brilliant, USA Today-bestselling authors from 2–4 p.m., Sunday, September 21, at Grandover Resort & Spa. Historical fiction your genre? Winston-Salem’s own Sarah McCoy is the New York Times-bestselling author of 8 books, including her forthcoming Hollywood-starlet-turned-nun novel, Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely? Looking to dig into a mysterious thriller as the days draw darker? Hank Phillippi Ryan is the USA Today-bestselling and multi-award-winning author of 16 psychological thrillers, including her forthcoming All This Could Be Yours; plus, she has won 37 Emmys for TV investigative reporting. Enjoy a catered spread and sips, then sit down for a conversation with both women as we discuss research, inspiration and the writing process. Double the fun!
Tickets: ticketmetriad.com
event, where this year’s featured color is mojito, enjoy demonstrations on a covered porch as the potter creates his agateware and shows off carving skills; plus, special guest Fiva McCanless will have a pop-up shop to peddle her whimsical ware. Free. Eck McCanless Pottery, 6077 Old US Highway 220, Seagrove. Info: eckmccanlesspottery.com/events.
METAL MAKERS WORKSHOP. 9 a.m.–4:30 p.m. “Fix it, Build It, Design It” in this all-levels metal workshop crafted to help participants with their own projects. Registration: $250. Starworks, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: starworksnc.org/ metal-classes.
July 23
GEOCACHING. 5:30–6:30 p.m. Learn the ins and outs of geocaching, a hobby that will get you moving outside. Free, registration recommended.. Woven Works Park, 401 Cumberland St, Greensboro. Info: downtowngreenway.org/events.
JAZZ NIGHT. 6:30 p.m. Sip brews and munch on tasty eats while tapping your feet
to Soul Noises. Free. Starworks Cafe & Tap Room, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: starworksnc.org/starworks-events.
July 25
SAL VULCANO. 7 p.m. The comedian known for Impractical Jokers and The Misery Index hits the stage with fresh material in his Everything’s Fine tour. Tickets: $36+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter.com/events.
July 26
GATE CITY HORIZONS BAND. 3 p.m.
After a three-day camp for concert and jazz band musicians from all over the states, the players come together to perform under director Benjy Springs and guest conductor James Daugherty. Free. Virginia Somerville Sutton Theatre at Well-Spring, 4100 Well Spring Drive, Greensboro. Info: gatecityhorizonsband.org.
FIDDLE FUN. 10:30–11:15 a.m.; noon–12:45 p.m. The Music Academy of North Carolina’s faculty string quartet performs and teaches kids all about the wonders of
string instruments. Free. The first session will be at the Benjamin Branch Public Library and the second at Greensboro Central Public Library. Info: musicacademync.org.
LYLE LOVETT. 8 p.m. Joined by his “Large Band,” the legendary Texas musician brings his blend of country, swing, jazz, folk, gospel and blues to life on stage. Tickets: $74.95+. Steven Tanger Center, 300 N. Elm St., Greensboro. Info: tangercenter. com/events.
LANDON BYRD. 6:30 p.m. Backed by a band of stand-up bass, washboard and mandolin players, the rising singer-songwriter with a genre-blending sound performs. Free. Starworks Cafe & Tap Room, 100 Russell Drive, Star. Info: starworksnc.org/ starworks-events.
July 28
ROMANCE BOOK CLUB. 7 p.m. Romance is not dead — it’s alive and well at Scuppernong Books’ monthly online book club. Free. Info: scuppernongbooks.com/ events/calendar.
WEDNESDAYS
LIVE MUSIC & PAINTING. 6–9 p.m. Evan Olson and Jessica Mashburn of AM rOdeO play covers and original music while artist-in-residence Chip Holton paints. Free. Lucky 32. 1421 Westover Terrace, Greensboro. Info: lucky32.com.
FAMILY NIGHT. 5–7 p.m. Enjoy an artdriven evening with family and friends in the studios. Free. ArtQuest at GreenHill Center for NC Art, 200 N. Davie St., Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org/events.
MUSIC IN THE PARK. 6–8 p.m. Sip and snack at LeBauer Park while grooving to local and regional artists. Free. Lawn Service, 208 N. Davie St, Greensboro. Info: greensborodowntownparks.org/calendar.
THURSDAYS
ART IN THE PARK. 11 a.m.–noon. GreenHill artist-instructors will lead kids ages 2–12 in creative outdoor activities. Free. Lincoln Financial Children’s Garden at LeBauer Park, 201 N. Davie St.,
Greensboro. Info: greenhillnc.org/events. JAZZ AT THE O.HENRY. 6–9 p.m. Sip vintage craft cocktails and snack on tapas while the O.Henry Trio performs with a different jazz vocalist each week. Free. O.Henry Hotel Social Lobby, 624 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. Info: ohenryhotel.com/o-henry-jazz.
THURSDAYS & SATURDAYS
KARAOKE & COCKTAILS. 8 p.m. until midnight, Thursdays; 9 p.m. until midnight, Saturdays. Courtney Chandler hosts a night of sipping and singing. Free. 19 & Timber Bar at Grandover Resort & Spa, 1000 Club Road, Greensboro. Info: grandoverresort.com.
MINDFULNESS MEDITATION. Noon–12:30 p.m. This free introductory class offers a guided meditation for reducing stress in both the mind and body. Free, registration required; adults only. Triad Pelvic Health, 5574 Garden Village Way, Greensboro. Info: triadpelvichealth.com/ classes.
FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS
LIVE MUSIC. 7–10 p.m. Enjoy drinks in the 1808 Lobby Bar while soaking up live music provided by local artists. Free. Grandover Resort & Spa, 1000 Club Road, Greensboro. Info: grandoverresort.com.
SATURDAYS
HISTORIC WALKING TOURS. 1 & 5 p.m. Take a guided walking tour through the history of downtown Greensboro at 1 p.m. or, if you’re into true crime, stroll through The Gate City’s darker side, covering 1953–1997, at 5 p.m. Tickets: $14. The Bodega, 313 S. Greene St., Greensboro. Info: trianglewalkingtours. com/book-online.
BLACKSMITH DEMONSTRATION. 10 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Watch the sparks fly and red-hot iron turn into farm implements as the past is recreated under the able hands of a costumed blacksmith. Free. Historical Park at High Point Museum, 1859 E. Lexington Ave., High Point. Info: highpointmuseum.org.
L.I.F T. is a social support program that helps surviving spouses ad just to the loss of their partner. It gives participants the opportunity to socialize with others who share similar feelings and experiences. This program is both entertaining and educational, with speakers on a wide variety of topics. For more information on the L.I.F.T. program, please contact Hanes Lineberry Funeral Services at 336-272-5157
March 15, 2025
The Impact of Education with UNC Greensboro and the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro UNCG Alumni House
April 21, 2025
Photographs by Mike Micciche
Greensboro Country Club
April 10, 2025
Photographs by Cheryl Farkas
BY CYNTHIA A DAMS
clever obituaries is a hobby of mine.
It’s a far less time-consuming undertaking, erm, endeavor, than you might think.
Interesting obits are as rare as zorses (a zebra and horse hybrid). When they happen, the social media universe is alerted and the obit boomerangs around 10 jillion times. Fun, intriguing, even weird obituaries are snapshots of the strangest of hybrids: the rare, true originals who have roamed this Earth.
Douglas Legler, who died in 2015, planned his obit for the local newspaper in Fargo, N.D. “Doug died,” he wrote. Just two words guaranteed a smile and a wish that we had known him.
Yet navigating the truth about our dearly departed is a tricky thing. I know, having attempted writing tender, true or even mildly interesting obits.
Uncle Elmer’s beer can collection or lifelong passion for farm equipment may not a fascinating individual reveal, but it beats ignoring the details that made Elmer, well, Elmer. Maybe loved ones wish to eulogize a different sort than they actually knew, say, an Elmer possessing panache. Ergo, an unrecognizable Elmer.
My father, in fact, worried that his own obit might one day portray him as suddenly God-fearing, upright and flawless.
“I know some will probably show up for my funeral just to be sure I’m dead,” he’d joke, shucking off the funeral suit we nicknamed his dollar bill suit — the tired hue of well-worn money. It didn’t even complement his twinkling green eyes, which seemed especially twinkly after a funeral or wake.
Why so upbeat? “It wasn’t me,” he sheepishly confessed after the funeral of a prickly neighbor.
Bob, an older, popular colleague of mine, had a sardonic wit, too, even as personal losses mounted. Each Friday he’d drawl, “Guess me and Becky will ride down to Forbis & Dick tonight and see who died. Then we might go to Libby Hill for dinner.”
In a similarly irreverent spirit, I offered to help my father with his funeral plans in advance, jabbing at his habitual lateness.
“You’ll be late for your own funeral,” I accused.
“We’ll request the hearse to circle town before the service so we’re all forced to wait the usual half hour.”
Dad rolled his eyes.
He died suddenly at age 61. Much later, I wished we had mentioned in his obituary how his end was almost as he’d hoped: in the arms of a beautiful woman.
True, his newest paramour had arms. They may, in fact, have been her best attribute. (My siblings never let me near his obituary.)
To our surprise, Preacher Lanier wanted to speak at Dad’s funeral. But Dad was not a churchgoer, we said delicately; the service would be at the funeral home. Then he revealed that they were old friends, breakfasting together each Wednesday.
Carefully, I asked that he not proselytize — as he was often inclined. He knew our father far too well to do that, he chuckled.
True to his word and a shock to me, the preacher revealed that our father underwrote the church’s new well.
Disappointingly, there would be no tour of town before the service either; the hearse wasn’t involved until we drove to the interment.
For once, therefore, Dad was exactly on time.
Like funerals, obits offer the chance to surprise us in a good way.
Lately, my friend Bill got me thinking about mine. Given my inglorious beginnings in Hell’s Half Acre, he knew exactly what he’d say at my end.
“I’d say I’d have you buried in a trailer, but it would cost too much to dig the hole,” he quipped, mocking my uncultured life.
I would never admit it to him, but that was pure genius; it ought to at least be mentioned in my obit. OH
Don’t forget to enter our faux-bituary writing contest. Details can be found on page 21.
