O.Henry Seasons Style & Design

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2 Seasons •

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& Design

336.765.5919

www.LastersFineArt.com

Spring/Summer 2016

Tyler Redhead & McAlister Real Estate is proud to Celebrate our 5th Anniversary!

Spring has sprung and these homes are ripe for the picking!

Call Katie Redhead or one of our TRM agents now to schedule a viewing of one of these amazing homes.

Katie L. Redhead GRI, CRS

Broker / Owner / REALTORÂŽ

336.430.0219 mobile 336.274.1717 office Katie.Redhead@trm.info www.trmhomes.com

Home …

is about special moments.

Our team specializes in helping make those moments happen.

North State Bank Mortgage now serves the Triad region and

Lake Norman with a team of experienced lenders who call this area home. They make special moments happen – especially the one where you’re holding the keys for the first time.

Front l to r: Kim Teeters (NMLS# 81797 Greensboro) and Betty Crocker (NMLS# 203396 Lake Norman). Back l to r: LuAnn Davis (NMLS# 113055 Kernersville), David Apperson (NMLS#657504 Winston-Salem), Beth Eller (NMLS#91886 Winston-Salem), Sherry Craven (NMLS# 199529 Greensboro), Mindy Engstrom (NMLS#92360 Winston-Salem), and Angela Dixon (NMLS#93969 Winston-Salem).

In Greensboro:

Sherry Craven • 336.301.2771 SCraven@NorthStateBankMortgage.com Kim Teeters • 336.314.3268 KTeeters@NorthStateBankMortgage.com For additional contacts and other information, visit:

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52

11 From the Editor

By Jim Dodson

12 Thirteen Things

So mark your calendar

STYLEBOOK 15 Three Must-sees in May

By Annie Ferguson

19 Letter From the Market

By Annie Ferguson

20 The Hot List

By Jason Oliver Nixon & John Loecke

23 New In Town

By Nancy Oakley

25 The House Hunter

44

By Noah Salt

27 Proper Details

By Robin Sutton Anders

28 Hunt and Gather

By Jim Dodson

31 The Gardener’s Friend

By Noah Salt

33 Season to Taste

By Diane Compton

37 Uncorked

By Robyn James

39 The Serial Eater

60

64

44 The Forever House

60 The Garden Lovers

By Jim Dodson

How Greensboro’s Jimmy and Honor Jones passed the torch — and their dream house — to the next generation

By Ross Howell Jr.

The passion and destiny of Jon and Adrienne Roethling

52 Wooded Bliss

64 The Reimagined Ranch

71 Master Class

By Maria Johnson

75 The Architect’s Son

FEATURES

LIFE&HOME

By Nancy Oakley

For tireless Janie and J.D. Wilson, home is the Unofficial Welcome Center of Winston-Salem

By Cynthia Adams

High Point designer Christi Barbour’s resplendent renovation

By Peter Freeman

77 Silver Belles

By Nancy Oakley

79 The Language of Home

By Jim Dodson

80 HomeWords

By Ashley Wahl

Cover Art by Meridith Martens 6 Seasons •

Style

& Design

Spring/Summer 2016

No more achy legs, no more unsightly veins!

Vol. 1 No. 1 336.617.0090 1848 Banking Street, Greensboro, NC 27408 www.ohenrymag.com Jim Dodson, Editor • jim@thepilot.com Andie Rose, Art Director • andie@thepilot.com Nancy Oakley, Senior Editor • nancy@ohenrymag.com Alyssa Rocherolle, Graphic Designer Contributing Editors Cynthia Adams, Harry Blair, Maria Johnson Contributing Photographers Lynn Donovan, Amy Freeman, Sam Froelich, John Gessner, Elise Manahan Contributors Cynthia Adams, Robin Sutton Anders, David Claude Bailey, Serena Brown, Diane Compton, Annie Ferguson, Peter Freeman, Ross Howell Jr., Robyn James, Maria Johnson, Sara King, John Loecke, Meridith Martens, Jason Oliver Nixon, Mary Novitsky, Noah Salt, Ashley Wahl

h David Woronoff, Publisher

Mark W. Featherston, MD

Brent G. Greenberg, MD

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Restless legs? Varicose or spider veins?

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So, don’t let painful legs or visible veins rule your life.

Two Convenient Locations: 1130 New Garden Rd. Greensboro, NC 27410 1598 Westbrook Plaza Dr. Winston-Salem, NC 27103

8 Seasons •

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& Design

Call today for a consultation (336) 517-0888

Advertising Sales Marty Hefner, Sales Director 336.707.6893, marty@ohenrymag.com Lisa Bobbitt, Sales Assistant 336.617.0090, ohenryadvertising@thepilot.com Brad Beard, Graphic Design Hattie Aderholdt, 336.601.1188 • hattie@ohenrymag.com Lisa Allen, 336.210.6921 • lisa@ohenrymag.com Amy Grove, 336.456.0827 • amy@ohenrymag.com Circulation Darlene Stark, Circulation Director 910.693.2488 Subscriptions 336.617.0090 ©Copyright 2016. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

Seasons Magazine is published by The Pilot LLC

mycarolinalegs.com

Spring/Summer 2016

A House to Reflect Your Dreams, An Agent to Make Them Come True.

As Luxury Collection specialists, Tom Chitty & Associates are highly trained experts who can turn your vision into reality with this stunning home at 7 Lochside Court in Greensboro. Call or visit tomchitty.com for the details surrounding this spectacular home.

Start reflecting on the home you want today.

Visit www.tomchitty.com

Tom Chitty & Associates Direct Line: 336-420-2836 Email: tomchitty@tomchitty.com Website: www.tomchitty.com

Š2015 An independently operated subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, and a franchisee of BHH Affiliates, LLC. Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices symbol are registered service marks of HomeServices of America, Inc.Ž Equal Housing Opportunity.

The Art of Coming Home

By Jim Dodson

Illustraion by Harry Blair

T

he simple act of coming home is one of life’s most enduring pleasures.

Whether from a day at work or a day’s shopping expedition, a weekend or half a lifetime away, the feeling of coming home to a place that expresses your tastes and holds your family memories — or simply feels as if it’s been waiting for your return — is a gift that never ceases.

Five years ago this August we introduced O.Henry Magazine with the objective of telling the remarkable human stories of Greensboro and Guilford County through the eyes and voices of people who call this place home and know it best — exceptional artists, historians, writers, photographers, designers and artisans of every stripe.

Almost from day one, however, we heard from friends and neighbors in surrounding cities and towns and villages comprising the greater Piedmont Triad that we were missing a golden opportunity: Why not expand our vision of discerning storytelling to their hometowns and adopted communities in North Carolina’s most culturally vibrant, historically enriched region, all of which are indisputably undergoing a grassroots renaissance in terms of arts and culture, science and technology, diversity, education and simple quality of life?

In a word, we heard.

Not surprisingly we noticed that the most popular issues of our magazine, both with its dedicated readers and the indispensable advertisers who make O.Henry possible, were our twice-ayear Home and Garden issues in each May and October.

If the old chestnut is true that home is where the heart beats strongest, it was clear to us that these issues devoted to the task and pleasure of making one’s home and garden more appealing places — or simply seeing how others accomplished this feat — really struck a powerful chord with our readers and neighbors.

Half a century ago, reflecting on the future civic and economic fortunes of the Triad, many urban thinkers predicted the day would eventually dawn when High Point, Winston-Salem and Greensboro would be simply part of one greater metropolitan area, an exurbia whose regional differences were blurred by their close proximity and shared mutual interests.

Anyone who understands the rich histories and cultural legacies of these unique, proud anchoring cities, however, knows that day probably won’t materialize anytime soon. Their historic identities are too established, their ancestral roots too deep.

And yet, even in the aftermath of the decades-long loss of key business and manufacturing icons of tobacco, textiles and furniture, Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point — not to mention our close Triad relations in Lexington, Thomasville, Spring/Summer 2016

Burlington and Asheboro — share a heritage of self-determination that’s as solid as a Moravian work ethic and unwavering as a Quaker cabinetmaker’s faith, fueling a remarkable comeback based on the can-do passion and creativity of their own citizenry, a marvelous rebirth visible in everything from the revival of traditional crafts to the art of eating, touching every life in the region.

Whatever else is true, life, sayeth the Book of Ecclesiastes, is about passing with grace and optimism from one Season to another — a time to plant and a time to reap the rewards for enduring the long hard winter.

It’s in this spirit of springtime renewal and a shared passion for home and garden life that we’re launching O.Henry Seasons, Style & Design magazine, a unique regional publication with a dedicated focus on revealing and celebrating the qualities that make our homes and gardens — and every kind of project contained therein — so special.

Supported by our generous advertisers and made available for free wherever people who care about the art of making home and garden a richer experience might be, each issue will take readers inside many of the Triad’s most extraordinary public and private homes and gardens, getting to know the people who love and nurture these spaces on a friendly first-name basis, as well as the builders and craftsmen who helped bring their visions to life.

Equally important, we’ll be a magazine that informs as well as inspires — a functional resource providing insight on local builders, designers, craftspeople, architects and with a special related Triad-wide events calendar that can help inspire your own home and garden transformation.

Along the way, we promise to provide some nice surprises — hidden gems, places well worth the drive, lost arts, seasonal garden guides, an industry report from High Point’s revitalized Furniture Market, tips from red-hot interior designers, local architectural treasures, great food and voices that fluently speak the language of home with wit and humor and well-seasoned wisdom.

For all of us here at O.Henry, it feels a little like coming home, a feeling I hope you’ll soon share as each new Seasons dawns. h

From the Editor

Seasons • Style & Design 11

Thirteen Things You Must Do This Spring/Summer

April Ansel Adams: Eloquent Light

“Rekindle an appreciation of the marvelous” in WinstonSalem this spring, where you’ll find forty breathtaking photographs by American master Ansel Adams.

Reynolda House is the only venue that will host this oneof-a-kind curation of forty of his photographs never before exhibited together. Reynolda House Museum of American Art, 2250 Reynolda Road, Winston-Salem, March 11—July 17. Tickets: (336) 758-5150 or reynoldahouse.org.

Historic Homes and Gardens of Winston-Salem

Our State magazine will present an insiders’ tour of historic homes and gardens in Winston-Salem, based at the 1930s historic Graylyn Estate. The weekend includes two nights’ accommodations; a behind-the-scenes butler’s tour of Graylyn; a walk through the Medicine Garden at Bethabara, the oldest Moravian settlement in the state, with a Master Gardener; the story behind Moravian pattern gardening at Old Salem; and a tour of Reynolda House and Gardens. Graylyn Estate, 1900 Reynolda Road, Winston-Salem. April 29–May 1. Tickets: (800) 472-9596; Info: ourstate.events.

All-A-Flutter Butterfly Farm Opens

Beyond the Garden Gate Gala and Tour

The secrets of some of Winston-Salem’s finest gardeners will doubtless be revealed in this private April viewing of nine gardens at their most glorious. After the tour, sit down to an English Afternoon Tea, where you can drink in the home, garden and hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. John Walker (1040 Arbor Road).

Enjoy a gala the night before at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Gary Poehling (200 Stratford Road Northwest). Tea time will give way to a festive evening, including heavy hors d’oeuvres, buffet dinner, full bar and music.

April 29–30. Tickets: gardenclubcouncil.org.

12 Seasons •

Style

& Design

May Kids First Saturdays at the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market

On the first Saturday of the month, the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market will host programs for kids at 10 a.m. Activities include yoga for kids, beekeeping, seed planting, learning about fruits, vegetables and roots, and physical activities. Kids in attendance who are on the Guilford County free or reduced lunch program get $5 in Kids Coins to spend at the market. Starts May 7; ends December 3. 501 Yanceyville Street, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2402 or gsofarmersmarket.org.

Spring Plant Sale

Plants for sun and shade, selected trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials, heirloom vegetables and more are on sale for one day only at Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden, which opened in 2011 and will be bursting with thousands of blooms.

Admission is free and the garden is open daily from dawn to dusk. 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 14. 215 South Main Street, Kernersville. Info: (336) 996-7888 or cienerbotanicalgarden.org.

Spring/Summer 2016

Photograph by Ansel Adams ©2015 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Let your inner entomologist out at High Point’s butterfly farm, where kids from the audience dress up and present a skit on the stages of the butterfly’s development.

Then, see the actual eggs, caterpillars and chrysalises, as well as feed butterflies. Bring a picnic; enjoy the country setting and open; let the kids run free. All-AFlutter Farms opens for spring April 11. 7850 Clinard Farms Road Lot B. Admission $6. Info: (336) 4545651 or all-a-flutter.com.

Design Southern Style

Moderated by Tom Savage of the highly esteemed Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, this design seminar will zero in on what’s chic in Southern design. Others sharing their rich expertise include Patrick Baty, a British historian of the paints and colors used in 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century buildings, and architect Norman Askins of Atlanta. May 7.

Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), 924 South Main Street, Winston-Salem. Tickets: (336) 721-7369 or mesda.org.

The 20th-Century City

The Gate City grew from a county seat and college town to the second largest city in the state during the 20th century, and its downtown has some of the best examples of architecture of the period to show for it. On this walking tour, you’ll see early skyscrapers, mid-century modern landmarks, and what some view as a Brutalist governmental campus. Architects represented include Raleigh James Hughes, Charles Hartmann and Eduardo Catalano. Led by Preservation Greensboro’s Urban Guide Ryan Gray. Rain or shine. June 29. 7 p.m. The Green Bean, 341 South Elm Street, Greensboro. Info: preservationgreensboro.org.

July Chihuly Venetians

Yadkin Valley Wine Festival

Enjoy the best wines the Yadkin Valley has to offer without having to drive all over the place. Plus, great food, music, crafts and more will make this a wine festival the whole family can attend. Vineyards and wineries in attendance include Adagio, Chatham Hill, Lazy Elm, Weathervane, Grassy Creek, Chestnut Trail, and many more. May 21. 11 a.m.– 5 p.m. Elkin Municipal Park, 399 West Spring Street, Elkin. Tickets: (336) 526-1111 or yvwf.com.

The Alamance Arts Council presents the only showing on the Eastern Seaboard of the George R. Stroemple Collection of renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly. A stunning exhibition of forty-seven vessels, twelve drawings and a monumental chandelier reflects Chihuly’s fascination with Venice, Italy. July 1–October 1, Alamance Arts Council, 213 South Main Street, Graham. Info: (336) 226-4495 or alamancearts.org.

September

June

John Coltrane International Jazz and Blues Festival Parisian Promenade

Ooh la la! Greensboro Beautiful recreates the sights, scenes, sounds and smells of a spring afternoon in Paris in Bicentennial Garden.

Sidewalk artists and cafes, live music, children’s activities and family games constitute la vie en rose — all within the colorful backdrop of the garden in full bloom. Admission is free. June 5, noon–5 p.m. Tanger Family Bicentennial Garden. 1105 Hobbs Road, Greensboro. Info: (336) 373-2199 or greensborobeautiful.org.

Spend the last holiday of the summer at the sixth annual John Coltrane International Jazz and Blues Festival, a two-day affair of great jazz, blues, food and fun. An homage to High Point’s adopted son, the festival has included, in the past, Grammy Award-winning headliners Al Jarreau, George Benson, Boney James and David Sanborn — not to mention local budding talent. Look for more of the same as festival organizers tweak this year’s lineup. Oak Hollow Festival Park, 1841 Eastchester Drive, High Point. September 3–4. Tickets: (336) 8195299 or coltranejazzfest.com.

Twelth Annual Summertime Brews Festival

Beer lovers will be spoiled for choice at this event. Hundreds of craft beers from all over the nation and world will be the focal point. Live and loud music, plus bar food and pretzels galore, round out the menu. Summertime Brews Festival is sponsored by Bestway Grocery Company, aka, the Wall of Beer. Ticket price includes souvenir/ etched sampling glass, unlimited beer samples and entertainment.

Cheers! June 25. Greensboro Coliseum Complex, 1921 West Gate City Boulevard, Greensboro. Tickets: summertimebrews.com or at Bestway Grocery, 2113 Walker Avenue, Greensboro.

Spring/Summer 2016

Seasons • Style & Design 13

F VE Celebrating 5 years of serving the greater Greensboro area.

Thanks for making us so successful.

Call us for all your real estate needs.

336.274.1717 or visit trmhomes.com

StyleBook Three Must-sees in May

A Trio of Celebrations Not to be Missed

By Annie Ferguson

High Point of the Old North State

Revel in North Carolina art, architecture, music, history, food, gardens and more at Celebrate the Old North State! May 9–15 in High Point’s Uptowne and downtown showroom districts. This comprehensive Triad festival has something for every lover of our state and, as a bonus, includes access to sites normally closed to the public such as industry-only showrooms at the High Point Market (free with registration).

Why is it in High Point? For one thing, the city has lived up to its name over the years. Originally, named for being the “high point” along the North Carolina Railroad between Goldsboro and Charlotte, the city’s prosperity and heritage as The Home Furnishings Capital of the World have spawned a wealth of handsome vernacular architecture and some of North Carolina’s most stately homes. “Our Alexander Martin Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution [DAR] is turning 100 this year, and this event evolved over the past year from conversations about how to celebrate this exciting milestone,” explains Pat Plaxico, DAR member for ten years and the chapter’s second vice regent in charge of programs.

To make it even more fitting, May is National Historic Preservation Month.

The Alexander Martin Chapter is holding the event in partnership with thirty-five other organizations at the local and state levels.

The celebration, which centers around a number of free events, culminates in a street festival featuring a variety of food trucks and music by local musicians and a concert on 18th-century instruments by Puddingstone Musical Group along with St. Mary’s Music Academy.

Highlights include Sip & See the Latest Market Trends, a reception at the North Carolina Museum of History Associates, dining at the private String & Splinter Club, a performance from the Army Ground Forces Concert Band and the opening night gala at JH Adams Inn and its Hampton’s Restaurant.

Join symposiums at local museums, a presentation on Moravian decorative arts, garden and architecture activities such as a stained glass walking tour, a look at the work of North Carolina architect Louis Voorhees, and a dinner theater production about two famed musicians: trumpeter Miles Davis and saxophonist John Coltrane, who spent his formative years in High Point. For more events and ticketing information, visit theoldnorthstatehp.com. It’ll be the high point of your spring!

Spring/Summer 2016

Seasons • Style & Design 15

StyleBook A Revolutionary Good Time in Old Salem

See this rare private co l l e c t i o n i n

2016! all works are from the george r. stroemple collection s & s collaboration

c h i h u l y venetians july 1—october 15, 2016 Alamance County, NC is the only place on the Eastern Seaboard in 2016 to see this work of the internationally famous blown-glass artist Dale Chihuly. Art critic Donald Kuspit called the Venetians a “toast to life”! The exhibit will be in the galleries of the historic Captain James and Emma Holt White House in Graham, NC.

213 S. MAIN STREET, GRAHAM, NC 27253   WWW.ALAMANCEARTS.ORG 336.226.4495

16 Seasons •

Style

  A R T S@ A LA MA N C E A R T S. O R G

& Design

One of the Triad’s most prominent historical locations, the Moravian settlement of Old Salem, is celebrating its semiquincentennial (250 years) with a full year of special events. The Spring Festival on May 21 commemorates the 225th anniversary of George Washington’s visit to the town in 1791.

On his tour of the Southern states, Washington spent two nights in Salem (May 31 and June 1) and in a diary entry noted his visit, describing the town’s inhabitants as “pleasant and hard working.” He deemed the community neat and well-governed. His arrival was greeted by a traditional Moravian band.

Washington was so impressed that he asked that music also accompany his dinner that night. The next day he toured the town’s workshops and choir houses. That afternoon the leaders of the community made a formal address to the president, and Governor Alexander Martin arrived late afternoon. Martin and Washington later were treated to a “singstunde,” an evening of singing and instrumental music. The presidential party left Salem at 4 a.m. June 2.

There will be a variety of hands-on activities and historic demonstrations, including the chance to meet and interact virtually with our nation’s first president. Also, check out historic fire drills, hearth cooking, make-andtaste events just for starters.

Another great event taking place during the festival is the sixth Annual Pottery Fair on the Square, where approximately thirty North Carolina potters will be selling their handmade earthenware, stoneware and folk art from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Also on May 21 is the Cobblestone Farmers Market, held Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon behind the T. Bagge Merchant Store. Dozens of local vendors who use healthy, humane and sustainable practices sell items such as seasonal produce, herbs, honey, mushrooms, goat cheese, pasture-raised meats, grass-fed beef, eggs, breads, pastries, jams and gluten-free products, plus wine, wool and soap.

This is a must-see event for anyone who’s serious about his or her North Carolina heritage. Be sure to make a day of it with All-in-One Tickets. For more information, visit oldsalem.org/events.

Old Irving Park Opens Up

Old Irving Park has a great story to tell, and you’ll have a chance to hear and see it at Preservation Greensboro’s annual Tour of Historic Homes and Gardens May 21–22. One of the first “golf club suburbs” in the state (only Pinehurst is older), Old Irving Park offers a significant slice of Greensboro and North Carolina history.

Every year Preservation Greensboro celebrates a different neighborhood.

This year’s tour includes homes unique to Old Irving Park. One was designed

by Philadelphia-based architect Charles Barton Keen (designer of Reynolda House in Winston-Salem) and another is by Greensboro-based architect Charles Hartmann (designer of the Jefferson Standard building downtown).

Spring/Summer 2016

StyleBook When the area was first developed, it was in the country. Because of that, the third house on the tour has incomplete records, but could date as far back as 1895. This house is “quintessentially Southern” says Benjamin Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro. “It has a unique floorplan, gracious large rooms, wraparound porch, spacious dining room with a beamed ceiling, wide hallways and big kitchen.”

The Tour of Historic Homes and Gardens has quickly become a hot ticket.

People come from Charlotte and Raleigh as well as Virginia and other states.

However, tour goers are primarily local residents who are curious to peek at the interiors of houses that aren’t open to the public, learn about history, get design ideas and really enjoy celebrating the Gate City’s history and architecture.

The Irving Park homes are clustered together so the tour is easily walkable.

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taurants and shops as well as a shuttle to take you to and from the home tour.

This popular annual event serves Preservation Greensboro’s broader mission to save our community’s historical and architectural treasures. Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary the organization has much to be proud of. Its first project was the Blandwood Mansion, which today is home to the organization, second oldest of its kind in the state; only Wilmington’s is a few months older.

Inspired to take action after the destruction of the city’s antebellum homes in the 1950s and 60s, the founding members raised funds to save Blandwood.

It took ten years to restore and create the mansion into a museum, opening in our nation’s bicentennial year, 1976.

“Greensboro is fortunate to have a well-established preservation organization that can be a voice for city history and architecture,” says Briggs. “We bring value through reinvestment and tourism with our projects and events like the Tour of Historic Homes.”

In more recent years, the organization has been known for saving Dudley High School and the winding path and shady benches that comprise Lindley Park. This year’s projects will likely include a church on Martin Luther King Drive and a Queen Anne home in College Hill. “It’s so gratifying to know that historic preservation is still thriving in Greensboro,” says Briggs.

Additional opportunities to see Greensboro’s classic neighborhoods include walking tours of Fisher Park (May 4), Sunset Hills (May 11), Old Greensborough (May 18), Lindley Park (May 25) and Westerwood (June 1). For more information, visit preservationgreensboro.org. h Annie Ferguson has lived in the Triad area since early childhood. She enjoys experiencing all the area has to offer and can be found in off moments daydreaming while Internet searching her next home in one Greensboro’s beautiful neighborhoods.

Spring/Summer 2016

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StyleBook

Letter from The Market

Furniture’s Big Fashion Week

By Annie Ferguson

W

hen you grow up in the backyard of the furniture industry’s epicenter, it’s easy to take this economic boon to our community for granted. Of course, there are two times a year — April and October — when it’s at the forefront of most everyone’s mind: High Point Market, the furniture equivalent of New York’s Fashion Week.

Growing up with a dad who was in the industry, those two weeks were always a big deal. After all, it is the world’s largest trade show. There was a sense of excitement and expectation, but it was always a little mysterious to me, too. Now that I’m older and know market insiders, I thought I would try to demystify things for those of you who, like myself, wonder what’s going on in High Point, starting with this spring’s Market.

Held April 16–20, the Market turns 107 this year. Fast Company’s “maverick” Polly LaBarre kicks off the week as the keynote speaker at High Point Theatre on April 15. At this event, the best-selling author and TV correspondent will focus on business culture, “maverick” leaders and how innovation will define future success for an industry valued in 2014 at $97 billion in retail sales.

At the same event, the giant Boston online retailer Wayfair will be showcasing and hosting demos of a new virtual reality tool that will allow customers to visualize how a piece of furniture will look in a given space before they commit to buying it.

After all, the market isn’t all about buying and selling (or wining and dining); it’s also an educational center, where designers come to shop, get inspired, attend a seminar like this one to maintain their interior designer certifications and earn CEUs (continuing education units).

What’s hot this Market? Joanna Gaines of HGTV’s Fixer Upper is unveiling her new rug line after introducing furniture this past fall. And Kate Spade brings her distinctive clean lines and colorful pop to a new furniture line, too.

Spring/Summer 2016

In recent years, the Market has added a variety of interactive features. One is the Style Spotters program, for which attendees can apply to be one of nine trendsetters who curate their favorite looks at the Market on special Pinterest boards. There’s a Design Bloggers Tour, and even a Market Fit Challenge. Started last fall, the challenge is a logical extension of the Market experience, as everyone puts in thousands of steps at the event’s 12 million square feet of showroom space. You’ll probably spot a number of people sporting athletic shoes as they cruise the Market.

All that walking is sure to work up an appetite — and luckily 1618 Wine Lounge will open up in the café space. Also look for their food truck with its first-rate fish tacos, along with trucks from The Dog House, Taqueria El Azteca and others. First United Methodist Church High Point has set up Parson’s Table at every market since 1978, serving home-cooked sandwiches, salads, soups and desserts. Proceeds from these sales go to missions such as Child Enrichment, the Open Door Shelter, Appalachia Service Project and ARC of High Point.

Giving back is always on trend. And so is kicking back.

With so many editors of shelter pubs lodging at Greensboro’s Proximity Hotel, expect booked tables at Print Works Bistro and a lively bar scene. It’s the hip place to see and be seen throughout the Market.

You want to see all of this for yourself, right? Alas, the High Point Market is closed to the public, but you can see select showrooms for free at a new High Point event being held this May. h Also, for a chance to win an exclusive behind-the-scenes escorted tour of the 2016 Fall High Point Market, send us your name and best contact number to ohenrymagcalendar@gmail.com.

Annie Ferguson has worked as a writer and editor in Greensboro for fifteen years. She first covered the High Point Market in 2001 as a features intern for the News & Record.

Seasons • Style & Design 19

StyleBook The Hot List

Floral Fever

Fresh plucked finds for Spring + summer 2016

By Jason Oliver Nixon and John Loecke

B

anish the beige, and say bye-bye to the banal and boring. Pattern and color are making a muchdeserved resurgence this season, and how! Even chintz is having a renaissance, but this isn’t the polished cotton that you might remember from Granny’s home circa 1985. Instead, think fresh, modern, kicky, and fun. Inspired by a recent jaunt to England (and a tour of several legendary country houses), the Madcap Cottage gents have returned to North Carolina brimming over with bouquet-minded brilliance.

From the fashion runway (hello, Gucci!) to the hall table, flower power is here to stay.

Tangerine Dream

Across the Pond, there’s an understanding and passion for color that hasn’t quite crossed over here yet. Take something mundane, and yet a curb-appeal essential, such as the front door, and give it a splash of hue. The Madcaps spotted these sublime, floral-hued yellow-and-persimmon numbers in London. We think that this trend should head Stateside. Pronto. Hence, we are painting our High Point front door a lacquered eau de Nil. Do try this at home with the Aura Grand Entrance from Benjamin Moore ($43.99) to get the lacquer look chez vous. Available through Huffman Paints, 762 North Main Street, High Point, (336) 882-8147.

Midnight Shade

Take a cozy corner of a living room or den that lacks aplomb and give it some springtime splendor. A favorite floral-inspired light is the Minuet Table Lamp from Currey & Company ($640) with its chinoiserie overtones and creamy porcelain lines, paired with a rich silk shade wrapped in gold lining. Available through Grassy Knoll, 1212 North Main Street, High Point. (336) 8871000 or alanfergusonassoc.com.

Life on the Wedge

Florals have made a big impact in the haute couture world of late: Bring an accessible take on the look into your own wardrobe. The Batik Floral Wedge from J.Crew in Navy/ Multi ($168) is absolutely the tops, literally. Made in Italy, this frisky footwear is a true statement maker. J.Crew, 3334 West Friendly Avenue, Greensboro. (336) 294-9892 or jcrew.com.

20 Seasons •

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& Design

Spring/Summer 2016

China Syndrome

Transform your table from nice to knockout with a five-piece place setting from the Kate Spade Birch Way Collection ($139). Good looks, and fabulous function, too. Available through Belk, 3320 Silas Creek Parkway, Winston-Salem or 604 Green Valley Road, Greensboro. (336) 768-9200, (336) 292-0960 or belk.com.

Blossoms, Dearie

Take a lackluster room, and make it leafy and lush courtesy of CR Laine’s Hadley Chair in Brody Coral, a 100-percent linen floral, paired with Belgian linen ($2,750). Available through Aubrey Home, 3500 Old Battleground Road, Greensboro. (336) 617-4275 or aubreyhomedesign.com.

Scents & Sensibility

Garden of Earthly Delights

Bring some fabulous floral-themed books home to add some instant panache to a tired coffee table. We are especially partial to the bumper crop of hothouse reads from Abrams Books, including Kaffe Fassett’s Bold Blooms: Quilts and Other Works Celebrating Flowers ($35) and Outstanding American Gardens: A Celebration ($50), as well as Vive Le Color!

Flowers Coloring Book ($9.95) that highlights the hottest book trend of the season (coloring books, who would have thought?). Available through Scuppernong Books, 304 South Elm Street, Greensboro. (336) 763-1919 or scuppernongbooks.com.

Nothing enlivens a room more than a fabulous fragrance. Our pick for the season ahead is Sweet Berry, a blend of sweet berries, pear, grapefruit and tangy rhubarb from Randy McManus ($29).

Plus, the beautiful cream box with its pistachio-green border and celery-hued ribbon make for the perfect hostess gift for that next spring fling. Randy McManus Designs, 1616 Battleground Avenue, Greensboro. (336) 691-0051 or randymcmanusdesigns.com.

Down the Garden Path

OK, so the Madcap Cottage gents are celebrating our debut fabric collection for Robert Allen @ Home “avec tambours et trompettes,” and if our shameless self-promotion raises eyebrows, too bad. Should you launch a killer, affordable, uberchic line of neutrals, florals, stripes and novelties, just give us a call. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Into the Garden line channels our far-flung travels and offers everything from polished cottons to wovens. It’s time to recover a chair and do up some window treatments! Madcap Cottage, 128 Church Avenue, High Point. (917) 513-9143 or madcapcottage.com.

Spring/Summer 2016

Paper Chase

A room in your home that lacks aplomb could use a splash of wallpaper.

Or a tired ceiling, for that matter! Might we suggest the oomph-packed Nemour wallpaper from Thibaut Design, in either gray or coral? Available through Madcap Cottage, 128 Church Avenue, High Point. (917) 513-9143 or madcapcottage.com.

Seasons • Style & Design 21

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StyleBook

A Cardinal Takes Flight Winston’s signature Reynolds Building returns as a gorgeous boutique hotel

By Nancy Oakley

“H

ome of the Original Empire State Building, WS-NC.” So reads a local T-shirt slogan, emblazoned over a silhouette of Winston-Salem’s most treasured architectural icon, the Reynolds Building. The focal point of downtown and former headquarters of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the Art Deco skyscraper with its graduated rooftop, elegant brass doors and stone architectural details was, in fact, the 1929 prototype for its more famous (and much larger) doppelganger in New York City. Now, having sat empty for six years on its perch at the corner of Fourth and Main Streets, the National Historic Landmark is making its debut as the Kimpton Cardinal Hotel.

Known largely in the western and southwestern United States and in major metropolitan markets, San Francisco-based Kimpton pioneered the concept of the boutique hotel as an antidote to over-the-top, luxury lodgings popular in the 1990s. Typically occupying historic structures — or, in the case of the Reynolds Building, the first six floors — rooms tend to be smaller, with playful amenities (at some Kimpton properties, for example, travelers lonely for companionship can request “Guppy Love,” a goldfish in a bowl, during their stay). Bold palettes and whimsy define the chain’s design signature, which tends to bridge the hip

Spring/Summer 2016

and the here-and-now with the past. In the Cardinal’s 174 guest rooms, which include fifteen suites, you can kick back among minimalist lines and metallic fabrics blended with tartan accents, print pillows and touches that include familiar N.C. symbols, magnolias and, as you might expect, cardinals. But the interior’s original marble, brass and gold leaf details remain intact as reminders of the building’s and city’s industrial past.

Whether you’re staying at the Cardinal for business or pleasure, you won’t lack for anything, with a fully appointed rec room, and meeting rooms and ballrooms upstairs that look out at the Twin City and mountains beyond — just as R.J. Reynolds himself was said to have done.

And did we mention the Katharine Brasserie & Bar? Named for R.J.R.’s wife, the eatery serves up traditional French fare with a Southern twist and craft cocktails. To which we say, oui, y’all! h 401 North Main Street, Winston-Salem. (886) 216-3446 or thecardinalhotel.com.

Seasons • Style & Design 23

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24 Seasons •

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Spring/Summer 2016

StyleBook

The House Hunter

To The Manor Born

O

By Noah Salt

ne of our favorite guilty pleasures is to mosey about the Triad looking at fantastic houses, picturing ourselves as the lord of anything from the quaintest cottage to the grandest home. Thus, when we heard that stately Hillbrook Mansion in High Point was up for sale, we figured we at least ought to have a close look on the theory that one’s home could actually be a castle — at least in the inaugural issue of O.Henry Seasons.

Set on six-and-a-half blissfully secluded and forested acres that could put one in mind of England’s rural Surrey — but is, in fact, right in the heart of the city’s historic Emerywood district and designed by Luther Lashmit of the distinguished Winston-Salem-based firm of O’Brien and Northrup (the same firm that did Graylyn for R.J. Reynolds exec Bowman Gray and his wife, Nathalie) — the immaculately restored Norman-Tudor Revival jewel was built in 1930 for local textile baron Comer Covington and his wife, Elizabeth.

Lashmit reportedly even referred to his masterpiece, built from original quarried blue shale ubiquitous on Duke’s campus and accented with Indiana limestone stone, as his “Jewel Box” for good reason. The style is an artful blend of medieval and romantic Tudor motifs common to ambitious residential designs after World War I, with notable elements that feature a cylindrical four-story stone turret, a roof made from Ludowici clay tiles, leaded casement windows and

doors, and hand-forged, wrought-iron railings used to frame outdoor terraces and the garden, as well as the turret’s extraordinary interior stairway.

A multiyear restoration by Spruce Builders has renewed and handsomely preserved this echo of Graylyn, both inside and out, for its next century of life. If an extraordinary level of detail is your thing, inside you will find half a dozen exquisite marble-faced fireplaces, six unique bedrooms, seven baths and over 11,000 square feet of space highlighted by a Rose Ballroom, men’s library, Hunt Room, fully modernized kitchens and baths, not to mention an entrance hallway of herringbone parquet floors with stunning quarter-sawn oak paneling that features a secret hidden room. (We’ll let you find it.)

Original custom pieces and light fixtures that are works of art abound, along with hand-painted murals and appliqués of pastoral scenes, faithfully restored cabinetry and millwork craftsmanship from a vastly slower age. Only the amazing spa and exercise room on the top floor with its state-of-the-art steam room, sauna, whirlpool and showers reminds you this is, in fact, a thoroughly modern 21stcentury castle. In the basement awaits a wine cellar worthy of visiting royalty.

The House Hunter, who has wandered far and wide, has seen many great houses like this in England — Gravetye Manor with its Gertrude Jekyll vines comes to mind — but most of them are now luxury hotels just waiting for Donald Trump to snap them up.

Happily, Hillbrook remains a love affair in private hands, which are reluctantly willing to part with it after many years. Our parting walk around the grounds with its formal gardens, reflecting pool and shady pathways, the work of Philadelphia landscape architect Thomas Sears, sure made the kid in us wish we had the $3.7 million to claim it as our own — or at least secretly wish we could take a quick ride on its magnificent dumbwaiter. h For additional information: Tyler Redhead & McAlister Real Estate, Greensboro, (336) 274-1717 or trmrealestate.com

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StyleBook

Proper Details

Pressing Matters

The art and science of Alan Henderson’s letterpress

By Robin Sutton Anders Photographs by Amy Freeman

A

lan Henderson folds buttery yellows into bold, emerald greens, mashing and stirring the thick pigments by hand until they blend into the fresh green of a spring day. “It’s a little bit of feeling, a little bit of science,” says the Winston-Salem letterpress artisan as he adds the new color into his 1960s original Heidelberg letterpress.

Science and feeling meld into each delicate card spilling from Henderson’s two 2,500-ton machines in his Burke Street Studio. The mechanical precision of the letterpress, affixed with fonts and images, stamps craters onto the paper. Into those, Henderson flows his hand-mixed hues or copper foils. The end result requires a combination of human senses: touch and sight.

“People respond to the simplicity of a letterpress invitation,” Henderson says. “It goes back to the maker movement. So many people want real food, organic cotton, things they can feel that will last.” From brides-to-be to event planners, hosts and hostesses across the Triad call on Henderson to craft invitations that reflect their individual identity. In addition to customized invitations, some organizations order letterpressed paper goods, such as notebooks or coasters that carry the invitation’s theme throughout the event.

Henderson prints each invitation on 100 percent cotton or hemp paper. Many clients choose gold, silver, copper or mirrorfinish foil stamping to guild their designs. He sometimes adds depth and textures by backing cards with wood or fabric.

Henderson explains that lining an invitation with walnut, birch, cherry or cedar wood — or a soft cotton fabric with a Spring/Summer 2016

delicate print — can better reflect the spirit of the event, whether it’s a formal wedding or a lively soiree. “Adding fabric to the back of an invitation accentuates its tactile quality and brings a soft balance,” Henderson says. “It makes it all the more special.”

As a child, Henderson pored through album art on his parents’ collection of vinyl records, and collected stamps and labels — all of which informed his aesthetic. “I’ve always saved printed things,” he says. “I love that period in the ’50s and ’60s when designers worked with pen and ink. It was simpler; everything was stripped down to the core of line work and color.”

He achieves a similar minimalist effect in his letterpress cards and invitations, which usually feature just one or two colors. You can have as many as you want, Henderson explains, but every color adds to the set-up time, which can be up to three hours per color. That’s one reason he finds these vintage pieces so striking.

“It’s a super stripped-down print process,” he says, one that has taught him how to use only as many colors as necessary for a given design.

In the transformation from sketch to invitation where pencil strokes give way to gentle imprints, mixing the perfect color is just the first step. Henderson may spend hours manually registering and straightening plates, manipulating ink coverage, making the perfect impression. “Sending someone an invitation that is handmade means something,” he says. “They want to keep it because it is a piece of art.” h Robin Sutton Anders is a Greensboro-based freelancer with a passion for all things home and garden.

Seasons • Style & Design 27

StyleBook

Hunt and Gather

Love in the Ruins

By Jim Dodson Photographs by John Gessner

. . . hip restaurateurs, movie prop managers and builders specializing in period restorations were among — and remain — his most devoted customers.

28 Seasons •

Style

“I

tell people who find their way here, ‘This place is a pure act of love, lost in a time warp off the beaten path and well-hidden in the little town of King. But if you somehow find your way here, well, you may not find exactly what you’re looking for, but you may find something even better!’”

So sayeth Rick Landreth, owner of One-Way Antiques & Architectural Salvage and de facto professor of lost American art as he leads me on a magical mystery walking tour of his extraordinary 5-acre domain in tiny King, fifteen minutes north of Winston-Salem.

Having heard for donkey years about One-Way from Landreth’s loyal customers who found incredible mantelpieces, period windows and one-of-a-kind pieces of yard art, it was high time to go to One-Way and see what all the excitement was about.

And what better time to drop in than just as the first warm weather hit and cheerful clumps of daffodils, ostrich ferns and day lilies began springing up along the mossy brick pathways that lace the garden beneath a century-old pecan tree by the 1894 farmhouse Landreth shares with his former wife, Carolyn, a respected jewelry maker.

By the start of One-Way’s popular annual Art Show and Sale on Mother’s Day weekend this year, May 7-8, featuring the work of more than a dozen regional artists, live music and the “best chicken and ribs in America,” the garden should be exploding

& Design

with thousands of tulips and spring wildflowers, a veritable lost world of heirloom plants and salvaged “fragmentary art,” as Landreth calls his finds.

Landreth bought the house back in 1974 for $18,500 and made it both home and the architectural centerpiece for a salvage business that once carried him all over the East Coast and Midwest in search of unique iron gates and fencing, posts and columns, fireplace mantelpieces, vintage wrought iron, chimney tops, shutters, windows and doors, and garden art of every sort — basically anything that sparked his interest and spoke to his inner collector of Americana and artifacts. He also became a master of repurposing old doors and cabinets into “vintage” styled tables and other furniture.

Not surprisingly, hip restaurateurs, movie prop managers and builders specializing in period restorations were among — and remain — his most devoted customers.

“In those days, there was still a lot of great stuff to be found in old houses and buildings, places that were being torn down by people who had no idea what kinds of architectural treasures they were destroying. It’s still around,” he allows with a shake of his gray head, a muscular 68-year-old sporting a moustache worthy of its own barbershop quartet, “but it’s just harder to find. Sadly, we’re destroying our cultural heritage piece by piece and don’t even realize it.”

Fortunately, forgotten yet beautiful relics have a way of findSpring/Summer 2016

ing him, like a vintage door-knocker he found languishing at a country flea market some years back, a striking rendering of the Greek god Poseidon riding twin seahorses that turned out to be from an 18th-century house with 14-inch doors. He eventually sent it to Christie’s auction house in New York, hoping to make $8,000 off its sale. Instead, it sold to a collector for $22,000. “That collector knew what he was looking at,” says professor One-Way. It’s these kinds of stories that brought a crew from Martha Stewart to film a segment on Landreth’s Lost King-dom for her show. Among other things, he’s also known for the small “garden houses” that grace the property, a barn packed full of vintage doors and windows from every American time period and style, and a 19th-century log tobacco curing shed he found on Prison Camp Road in Walnut Cove, disassembled log by log and set up as a holding museum for an incredible array of American Western artifacts, including one seriously boss mounted buffalo head.

“If romance and spirit define your life, the things will somehow find you,” he told me as I paused to examine a beautiful wrought-iron doorway arch with painted flowers that found its way to King from South America, probably Argentina. He added, “If you have the right kind of heart and an eye for the truly valuable, old things will whisper your name.”

Nearby stood a remarkable statue of a young lad with a classical horn that turned out to be a mailbox made of Portland cement and salvaged from a mansion torn down in Stanly County. Not far away stood fancy Victorian iron fencing from Wilmington, a magnificent alley gate from Rhode Island. In the barn he showed me dozens of vintage doors, including an amazing hardwood pair salvaged in the nick of time from an old bank in Deadwood, South Dakota, that spoke to the boyhood gun-slinging would-be bank robber in me.

No price tags are visible anywhere. “I know what it cost me to get it and what I’ll let it go for,” says Landreth. “I can read people pretty well after forty-seven years of doing this. If you’ve got a great attitude and really love and appreciate what you’re looking at, hell, I’ll find a way to send you home with that object.”

Thus is was for this slightly agog Hunter-and-Gatherer after both Rick and Carolyn gave me a wonderful tour of the main house, a cross between Portobello Road and the National Museum of Natural History, filled to the rafters with everything from original wood cuts and native American art to a curvilinear staircase that must be climbed to be believed.

If you display the right spirit, the Landreths may even give you a tour of your own — and tell you about their pilgrimage to Hudson Bay to watch the polar bear migration. “We don’t have a million dollars, but it’s been a life rich in people and the things we’ve collected,” observed Carolyn. Rick smiled and added: “You don’t really own anything in this world for long.

We find beautiful things and pass them along to others. We just live like we own a million bucks.”

It probably comes as no surprise that I left the Landreth property poorer in dollar but richer in possession — temporarily at least — with a beautiful Argentinian door arch, and vowing to return for those Deadwood bank doors.

Something about them just, well, whispered to me. h If you plan to go: Hours are Monday through Friday by appointment, Saturday 9 to 4 p.m. Closed Sundays. All are welcome at the annual One-Way Show and Sale May 7-8. Contact Rick Landreth (336) 978-5277 or Carolyn Landreth (336) 692-5262 for appointment or further details.

Directions are simple: Exit 123 exit for King off Highway 52, fifteen miles north of Winston-Salem. Turn right and drive through downtown, turning left on West King Road after crossing the railroad tracks. Turn immediately right on Bob Rierson Street and you’ll find One-Way Antiques at the end of the lane, directly behind the town police station.

Spring/Summer 2016

Seasons • Style & Design 29

㈀ ㄀㘀 䴀愀猀攀爀愀琀椀 䜀栀椀戀氀椀 匀儀㐀 䄀圀䐀 䰀攀愀猀攀 昀漀爀

␀㜀㤀㤀

⼀洀漀

瀀氀甀猀 琀愀砀Ⰰ 昀漀爀 ㌀㘀 洀漀渀琀栀猀Ⰰ 眀椀琀栀 ␀㘀Ⰰ 搀漀眀渀 ㄀ Ⰰ 洀椀氀攀猀 瀀攀爀 礀攀愀爀⸀ 匀琀漀挀欀 ⌀ 䜀䈀㜀㠀㜀㌀㈀ 伀渀 愀瀀瀀爀漀瘀攀搀 挀爀攀搀椀琀⸀

倀氀攀愀猀攀 挀漀渀琀愀挀琀 甀猀 琀漀 愀爀爀愀渀最攀 愀 琀攀猀琀 搀爀椀瘀攀

䘀漀爀攀椀最渀 䌀愀爀猀 䤀琀愀氀椀愀 㔀㘀 ㌀ 刀漀愀渀渀攀 圀愀礀 ∠ 䜀爀攀攀渀猀戀漀爀漀Ⰰ 一䌀 ㈀㜀㐀 㤀 ㌀㌀㘀⸀㈀㤀㐀⸀ ㈀ ∠ 眀眀眀⸀昀漀爀攀椀最渀挀愀爀猀椀琀愀氀椀愀⸀挀漀洀

䰀攀愀猀攀 倀愀礀洀攀渀琀 椀猀 戀愀猀攀搀 漀渀 䄀瀀瀀爀漀瘀攀搀 䌀爀攀搀椀琀 眀椀琀栀 䄀氀氀礀 䘀椀渀愀渀挀椀愀氀Ⰰ ㌀㘀 䴀漀渀琀栀猀 挀氀漀猀攀搀ⴀ攀渀搀 氀攀愀猀攀 戀愀猀攀搀 䴀匀刀倀 漀昀 ␀㠀㈀Ⰰ㈀ Ⰰ 吀漀琀愀氀 挀愀猀栀 搀甀攀 愀琀 猀椀最渀椀渀最 椀猀 ␀㘀 Ⰰ 眀栀椀挀栀 椀渀挀氀甀搀攀猀 愀 挀愀猀栀 搀漀眀渀 瀀愀礀洀攀渀琀 漀昀 ␀㈀㠀㌀㐀Ⰰ ㄀猀琀 瀀愀礀洀攀渀琀 漀昀 ␀㜀㤀㤀Ⰰ 瀀氀甀猀 琀愀砀Ⰰ 䄀挀焀甀椀猀椀琀椀漀渀 昀攀攀 漀昀 ␀㜀㤀㔀Ⰰ 刀攀昀甀渀搀愀戀氀攀 匀攀挀甀爀椀琀礀 䐀攀瀀漀猀椀琀 漀昀 ␀㠀㈀㔀Ⰰ 愀渀搀 ␀㘀㤀㤀 搀攀愀氀攀爀 愀搀洀椀渀椀猀琀爀愀琀椀漀渀 昀攀攀⸀ 吀漀琀愀氀 漀昀 倀愀礀洀攀渀琀猀 ␀㈀㠀Ⰰ㠀 㔀⸀ 倀甀爀挀栀愀猀攀 漀瀀琀椀漀渀 愀琀 氀攀愀猀攀 攀渀搀 昀漀爀 ␀㐀㌀Ⰰ㔀㘀㘀Ⰰ 瀀氀甀猀 琀愀砀攀猀⸀ 䰀攀猀猀攀攀 椀猀 爀攀猀瀀漀渀猀椀戀氀攀 昀漀爀 䤀渀猀甀爀愀渀挀攀Ⰰ 䴀愀椀渀琀攀渀愀渀挀攀Ⰰ 刀攀瀀愀椀爀猀Ⰰ 愀渀搀 ␀⸀㘀 瀀攀爀 洀椀氀攀 漀瘀攀爀 ㄀ Ⰰ 洀椀氀攀猀 瀀攀爀 礀攀愀爀⸀ 一漀琀 愀氀氀 眀椀氀氀 焀甀愀氀椀昀礀⸀

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The Gardener’s Friend Seasonal insights from Triad nurserymen

By Noah Salt

W

ith spring upon us and the first days of summer not far behind, we dropped into the New Garden Center Gazebo on Lawndale Drive in Greensboro for a chat with planting manager Jeremy Warren about our seasonal To-Do List, basic tips and his favorite warm-weather plants.

A few key takeaways: Frost Over, Game On

“Once we hit mid-April, it’s game on in the garden,” Warren says. “Last frost in the Triad generally happens around the third week of April. Cold season veggies like spinach, collards and lettuce will be peaking, but it’s now safe to plant your warm-season plants like corn and early tomato plants, petunias, geraniums, sweet potato vine and container plants of all kinds,” he adds.

A Good Test to Take

“If you haven’t done so before, have your soil tested.

For many people,” says Warren, “this seems like a big inconvenience — especially in the spring when there’s so much else to do in the garden. But a soil test takes the guesswork out of your garden. It reveals what kind of amendments will make your soil far more productive, and it only costs a few dollars and can make a huge difference in the quality of your vegetables and flowers,” he explains. Garden centers sell DIY soil tests but, as Warren notes, your county extension agency can send off your soil sample to the state for an even more thorough analysis. During the active growing season it may take a bit longer to get back results — one reason he suggests that you submit a sample in the fall, once the garden has gone dormant.

Prune and Bloom

Once azaleas have finished their bloom in April, they need to be pruned and fertilized. Hydrangeas — which are popular in the Triad — will be coming in about this time and will benefit from a warm-weather fertilizer, as well. Recent winters have hit them hard, greatly reducing blooms. But the warm winter and early spring should produce a bounty of flowers this summer.

Lettuce Praise Heirloom Plants

“Throughout April and May, I love using garlic chives and heirloom lettuce to fill gaps in my annual borders and containers,” Warren says. Why? “They’ll fade as your annuals grow, giving your great color and texture — and even food — into the summer. I plant garlic chives around apple trees and roses.

Because they are an onion, they will concentrate sulphur in the soil that discourages disease and draws helpful birds and insects to the garden, which helps with pollination.” Warren’s favorite heirloom lettuce is a variety called “Flashing Trout’s Back.” He reports that it is “heaven to eat.”

Bring on the Hummingbirds “I’m a huge perennial fan,” Warren notes.“Two flowers that do exceptionally well in the Triad and shine in my garden spring through summer are Virginia sweetspire and Lobelia cardinalis. Virginia sweetspire is a small shrub that produces small white flowers in late spring and robust red color in the fall. Lobelia cardinalis is a native perennial that blooms in early June and is great for damp spots in the garden, with striking red flowers. It is also is a preferred food source for ruby-throated hummingbirds.”

Water on the Brain

These days, water is increasingly on the minds of everyone from civic authorities to garden clubs. “We have had some serious dry periods here in the Triad in recent years but generally speaking we have excellent water,” Warren says. “My personal feeling is that lawns are a large waste of water resources.

The good news is that low maintenance grasses like Bermuda and Zoysia have become far more commonplace, saving water while allowing yards to be green all summer.” Warren says he’s a fan of “diverse yards that feature blended groundcovers like yarrow, rosemary and red clover, which was always included in lawn mixtures until a couple decades ago.” These plants, he continues, “are drought-resistant, easy to care for and offer beautiful color and dimension to yards and walkways. At my house, we use collection barrels to gather water for our container plants.” h Noah Salt is a mad gardener, or maybe just plain mad.

Spring/Summer 2016

Seasons • Style & Design 31

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Season to Taste

Life and Lamb De-mystifying “the other red meat”

By Diane Compton

“W

hat do you mean he eat no meat?

Oh, that’s OK, we make lamb.”

This is one of the most memorable lines from the 2002 hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, delivered by the character Aunt Voula, who has just met her niece’s non-Greek fiancé, a committed vegetarian. It never fails to elicit belly laughs from my entire family, maybe because Aunt Voula reminds us of Mrs. Herbert, a neighbor in the newly built Dallas suburb of my childhood. In those days it was actually quite unusual to meet any native Texans in the neighborhood.

We were all transplants, some from exotic far-flung places, like Mrs. Herbert, who hailed from New York. She was of FrenchLebanese heritage and hands-down the best cook on the block.

My family? We were strictly pot-roast-and-potatoes people. So when Mrs. Herbert invited us to a cookout? You betcha! On the menu that day? Shish kebab.

It was our introduction to lamb. And it was delicious. Always generous, Mrs. Hebert gave us the recipe for marinated leg of lamb. I’ve been making her shish kebab ever since and often wait until my guests start raving about it to inform them that they have just eaten lamb.

As the weather warms, grocery stores are filled with great Spring/Summer 2016

deals on “the other red meat.” After a winter of casseroles and comfort food it’s time to lighten up with lamb, roasted leg or an elegant rack. As we roll into summer, bring on the shish kebabs.

Whether you choose to roast it or grill it, lamb is easy to prepare and season with readily available ingredients.

So why don’t more people enjoy lamb? Maybe you’ve tried it once and experienced that weird “woolly” aroma that is a singular feature of overcooked lamb or burned lamb fat. Let’s fix that.

First of all, forget the beginner’s recommendation to start with ground lamb or lamb shoulder. Try rack of lamb. Though expensive, it is the easiest cut for first-timers to prepare successfully. An added bonus: It looks great on a plate!

Stores offer American, Australian or New Zealand lamb.

American racks are larger and milder in flavor than the imports, but both can be used interchangeably in recipes. Most racks are sold “frenched,” meaning the chine bone has been removed so it is easy to carve into separate chops. Choose racks with the thinnest possible “fat caps” on the meat. Once you get home, be aggressive about trimming off the remaining fat cap. You’ll be glad later.

Compatible seasonings for lamb can include rosemary, thyme, mint, tarragon, ground cloves (a little) and garlic (lots).

Some online research will yield many variations that call for a Seasons • Style & Design 33

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StyleBook seasoning paste of olive oil, Dijon mustard, garlic and some combination of chopped herbs. Rub the rack and give it 4–12 hours in the refrigerator.

While many recipes call for prior pan searing, it can be easier to just use a hot 450° oven — plus that’s one less skillet to clean. Roast the lamb on a wire rack in a pan that just fits the meat, which will minimize burning of any drippings. Using seasoned breadcrumb or panko is another way to cut down on burned drippings. The crunchy exterior is a nice contrast to the tender lamb.

Time for the hard truth: Rack of lamb is best served rare to medium rare.

Like beef tenderloin, overcooking can ruin the flavor and texture that makes this such a treat, so roast your rack about 25–30 minutes to an internal temperature of 125° for medium rare. Let it have a good rest for 10–15 minutes before carving into individual chops.

Feeding the hordes? Try roast leg of lamb instead. While not as tender as the rack, it is just as delicious and easy to prepare. Leg of lamb can be purchased either bone-in or boneless. Carve a bone-in leg once, and you’ll wish you’d taken that anatomy class instead of medieval poetry, but bone-in is more flavorful and mighty impressive on the platter. Challenge your know-it-all foodie friends to carve it for you. Ply guests with wine as needed.

Prepare the leg much as you would the rack, trimming away as much visible fat as possible. For a boneless roast, remove the netting, trim and re-tie the leg with cotton twine, then season as directed in your recipe. Start in a hot 425°

oven for about 30 minutes; reduce heat to 350° for another 30–40 minutes until the internal temperature reaches 125–130° for medium rare.

The traditional accompaniment for roast lamb is mint jelly, but if that bright green glow-in-the dark stuff seems off-putting, try a compound butter of fresh tarragon and mint. (Also nice are reductions of beef stock flavored with red wine or port, both of which can made ahead of time.) Reheat just before serving and whisk in few tablespoons of butter to make them richer.

So now that you love lamb, try it on the grill. That famous shish kebab recipe is an easy marinade of 1/2 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, the zest and juice of a lemon, a teaspoon of dried mustard, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 3 tablespoons each of fresh chopped mint and tarragon, a generous pinch of cloves, salt and pepper to taste. I modified it a bit by adding garlic. Cut a leg of lamb into 1- to 2-inch pieces and marinate overnight. Thread them on skewers with onion, peppers and tomatoes.

Grill over hot coals and invite the neighbors over for their own conversion experience.

Hey, it’s not meat; it’s lamb. h Diane Compton is a kitchen and home specialist at Williams-Sonoma at the Shops at Friendly in Greensboro. A former Texan, she is grateful to live in North Carolina, where summers are enjoyed rather than endured.

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Spring/Summer 2016

Seasons • Style & Design 35

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Uncorked

Six Fresh Wines for Spring

By Robyn James

W

hen the warm weather approaches I change wines as easily — and eagerly — as most folks change from woolies and Uggs to shorts and flip-flops. Menus are shifting, too, to salads, cold dishes and hot-off-the-Weber meats, so it’s time to abandon heavy, oaky whites for the crisp and the dry — and replace bone-dry acidic reds with fruity, jammy ones. Here are my favorite new spring wines for this season.

Le Charmel Muscadet, Loire Valley, France, approximately $12

Take it from Wine Enthusiast: “The wine is fine, fresh and crisp. It has balanced acidity and lively pink grapefruit fruit flavors that give the wine a good, clean, clear character. There is a juicy, bright, refreshing aftertaste. Drink now.” And rated at 85 points; buy a bottle now.

Joel Gott Pinot Gris, Oregon, approximately $13

The 2014 Joel Gott pinot gris has white-peach aromas with floral notes. At first sip, this wine is oh-so-balanced, opening with bright acidity and refreshing Meyer lemon citrus flavors, followed by a juicy mid-palate, and a long finish. Gott-a have it!

Domaine Lafage Miraflors Dry Rosé, South of France, approximately $17 The 2015 Côtes du Roussillon Miraflors Rosé is mostly made from mourvèdre, with a smaller part grenache. Coming from terraced plots along the coast and aged all in concrete, it is decidedly Provençal in style with juicy, pure strawberry, citrus, orange peel and ample minerality, as well as a medium-bodied, racy profile on the palate. Hard to resist, with fabulous purity.

Enjoy it over the rest of the year.

Spring/Summer 2016

Gérard Bertrand Grenache-Syrah-Carignan Tautavel, South of France, approximately $20

With a 91-point rating, this beauty from the Languedoc region garnered raves from Wine Spectator: “This has a polished texture, with concentrated flavors of cherry tart, ganache and blackberry preserves. Fresh acidity keeps this focused, with a lingering floral, graphite and licorice-infused finish.”

Vinum Cellars Pinot Noir, Monterey, approximately $14

Burgundian aromas from sweet cherry to spice such as clove and sandalwood define this sprite of spring. On the palate, this wine is very supple and generous with ripe cherries and cherry pie notes, and with subtle vanilla and toasted oak texturing and flavors. It finishes complete with balanced acidity and extracted fruit notes highlighting cherries.

Evodia Grenache, Spain, approximately $10

Robert Parker of The Wine Advocate gave Evodia a generous 90 points and sings its praises better than I possibly could: “This is a blend of 90 percent grenache and 10 percent syrah.

This is really an amazing wine for the price. It is a fruit bomb, so those not wanting flavor, or in search of wimpy wines need to consider a light beer. Deep ruby/plum purple, with loads of blueberry and black currant fruit, underlying crushed rock notes and some floral scents are all present in this remarkable wine that sells at a full retail markup of $10, which is simply incredible! These are the kind of wines I wish had existed when I was in college.” Amen! h Robyn James, a longtime resident of the Triad, learned the wine trade in Greensboro..

Seasons • Style & Design 37

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Spring/Summer 2016

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The Serial Eater

Three Great Meals

Nothing makes us happier than finding a meal worth shouting about – unless it’s discovering three, which may well be why God invented breakfast, lunch and dinner here in the Triad.

Photographs by Sam Froelich

Scrambled Breakfast / Greensboro

The Serial Eater heard groans of pleasure coming from Greensboro’s newish Scrambled! Southern Diner well before finding his way to Spring Garden Street’s evolving dining district.

Owing to wildly popular Hops Burger Bar justnext door, the late and much loved Josephine’s opted to shut its doors and re-open as a café specializing in gourmet breakfasts and lunches. Frankly, breakfast fool that he is, the SE couldn’t be happier about the magical transformation, especially after biting into a fried green tomato starter paired with smoked Gouda, homemade pimento cheese, balsamic onion jam, locally sourced smoked sausage crumbles and chopped chives.

In a word, we were transported — scarcely leaving room for

Spring/Summer 2016

an aptly named OMG omelet that was loaded with rosemary, ham, fresh spinach, piquillo peppers, mushrooms and Fontina cheese. Half of that went home in a carry box for later.

Portions are large and a wonderfully imaginative menu boasts the basics, plus a host of creative iron-skillet dishes and a “Benedict Row” that features everything from bacon-wrapped meatloaf to crab cakes under sherry fondue. Pancakes and biscuits are as big as hubcaps.

We can’t wait to mosey back (and get in line early) for lunch, especially since those amazing fried green tomatoes are always on the menu.

Scrambled Southern Diner, 2417 Spring Garden Street, Greensboro. Monday-Friday 7am to 3 pm; Saturday-Sunday 8am to 3 pm. (336) 285-6590 or scrambledgreensboro.com.

Seasons • Style & Design 39

StyleBook Lunch on a Roll / High Point

Spring has officially sprung, which reminds us of one of the SE’s favorite lunch items — spring rolls. We can’t ever decide whether we prefer uncooked traditional soft spring rolls or those delicately fried numbers that crunch and melt in your mouth with exotic flavors.

Either way, we know a place that dishes up both kinds of spring rolls along with a menu sure to delight the most devoted fan of Asian cuisine.

When owner Tu Sen and husband Todd debuted High Point’s elegant 98 Asian Bistro two years ago on the first day of the autumn High Point Market, the opening amounted to coming full circle for Laos-born Tu and her family, who arrived as refugees from Southeast Asia in 1986 and began cooking their way into their customers’ hearts.

Tucked into the city’s former — handsomely refurbished — Lyle Chevrolet dealership, highlighted by sensuous curtains and dramatic pieces of Asian art collected by Tu in her own odyssey through Asian kitchens, her comprehensive, imaginative, Far Easter fusion menu has made Bistro 98 one of the most popular restaurants in town. We personally recommend Pranang curry with tofu, preceded by spicy Tom Kha coconut soup made with cilantro and green onion, though we have it on good authority that 98’s traditional Pad Thai and Tiger Steak are not to be missed. A newly expanded lounge is guaranteed to be hopping like a Thai holiday come Market time.

98 Asian Bistro, 1800 North Main Street, Suite 106, High Point.

Monday–Friday for lunch, 11 a.m.–2 p.m.; for dinner, 5–9:30 p.m.; for Saturday dinner, 5—10 p.m. (336) 887-3388 or aisianbistro.com.

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Spring/Summer 2016

StyleBook West End for Dinner / Winston Salem

A long day — or long week and SE has worked up an appetite, so we’re going to fill our belly by bellying up to the bar at an old standby since 1980, the West End Café. There’s always a Friday-night crowd even on Monday and Tuesday nights, and on Fridays? Well, Katie bar the door! No worries, if Jay’s manning the taps and bottles, he’ll have already poured our favorite — a glass of the Rodney Strong sauvignon blanc or, on tough days, a dirty vodka martini with Absolut. Either one’s perfect for enjoying warm temps on a bench by the gurgling koi pond out front. By the time the early-bird crowd disperses, a perch should open up among the mélange of characters, whether banker or lawyer, artist or student, young or old or in-between. Somebody’s always ready with a chat or a good story to tell.

In terms of supper, can’t miss with a bacon cheeseburger or a bowl of chili (maybe the best in town) or the pretzel-encrusted salmon salad. The ravioli looks good, too, but SE’s feeling especially indulgent tonight. The Black Bean Burrito is calling: a veritable pillow plumped up with a generous helping of frijoles negros, cheese, rice, and onion, all of it swimming in queso with a garnish of Cotija crumbles, diced tomatoes and a twist of lime — with a pretty star-shaped tortilla chip on top. Ixnay to the side salad (although the Vidalia onion dressing is tempting). Gotta save room for one of the day’s desserts. Chalkboard says, “Coconut Red Velvet Cake.” We say, “Buffet pants, here we come!” h West End Cafe, 926 West Fourth Street, Winston-Salem. Monday-Friday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday Noon to 10 p.m. Closed Sundays. (336) 7234774 or westendcafe.com.

Spring/Summer 2016

Seasons • Style & Design 41

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42 Seasons •

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Spring/Summer 2016

Spring Summer 2016

“May and June. Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year: cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights. The discussion of philosophy is over; it’s time for work to begin.” — Peter Loewer

Photograph

by Amy Freeman

Seasons • Style & Design 43

The Forever House

Jimmy and Honor Jones threw a centennial birthday party for their dream house of 40 years — just in time to pass the torch to a new family that fell in love with the place

By Jim Dodson • Photographs by Chris Groch

Top, as 1606 Granville Rd appears today. Below left, the house circa 1930; right, as it appeared in 1977

44 Seasons •

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Spring/Summer 2016

“I

sn’t it funny,” said Jimmy Jones with a private little smile, “how quickly time passes? I guess that’s what happens when you’re having so much fun.”

On the face of things, this was simply one man’s acknowledgment of time’s fleeting nature for Jones and his wife, Honor, who stood together at the door of their handsome Colonial revival — style house at 1606 Granville Road in Greensboro one balmy Sunday afternoon not long ago, warmly welcoming guests for a most unusual kind of afternoon party.

In another way, it was a poignant reflection on the art of living well and knowing when the timing was right to pass the torch — or in this case the house keys — to the next generation.

As the banner strung over the front door pointed out, the Jones’ grand old house was officially turning 100 years old that Sunday, which explained why more than a hundred family members, friends and neighbors dropped by to sip sparkling prosecco wine, nibble birthday cake and celebrate the life of a remarkable dwelling that dates back to the earliest days of Irving Park, one of the Gate City’s premier neighborhoods.

Whatever else is true, the gathering was also a welcoming party for Elizabeth and Jonathan Hall, the young couple who fell in love with the house

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and purchased it even before local real estate maven Katie Redhead had a chance to get it officially listed on the market — a backstory that seems to be a common thread in the saga of 1606 Granville Road.

As the handsome scrapbook history Jimmy and Honor began compiling over a decade ago illustrates, the house has only had five owners since a man named Charles Banks purchased a choice lot on the undeveloped eastern flank of Greensboro Country Club in 1916 and began building his dream house.

The spot, adjacent to the club’s 5-year-old Donald Ross golf course — one of the fabled course designer’s earliest designs in the state — was still so rural in character that a photograph taken from a distance just two years later reveals a flock of sheep grazing on the slopes in front of the new Banks house. At that time, Irving Park had only a handful of houses and no others are even visible in the photograph.

“Little is known about Charles A. Banks except that he was very successful in real estate and clearly believed this was the direction Greensboro was headed,” Jimmy Jones explained to a group leafing through the scrapbook.

“Surprisingly, he lived in this house for only a year and a half before he sold it and moved back to Fisher Park, reportedly telling friends he thought Irving Park was too far out into the country.”

Records show the next owner, one Jenny Bonkemeyer, lived in the house for Seasons • Style & Design 45

The living room fireplace as it appears today. Below left, early renovation circa 1977; below right, as it originally looked

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a mere two years, followed by Carl J. Balliett who stayed thirteen. A businessman named Bryan purchased the house out of foreclosure in August of 1933 — the depths of the Great Depression — and called it home for the next forty-five years until a handsome young couple named Jimmy and Honor Jones came knocking on the door one afternoon in late 1977. They’d heard through the grapevine that the proud old house, which had seen better days, might be up for sale.

Ironically — or maybe not — 1606 was a house Jimmy Jones had known and admired since he was a teenager growing up in the middle-class Rankin community north of the city. His daddy, also Jimmy, was a salesman for North State Chevrolet and would eventually own the dealership. But Jimmy Jones was a kid on a bike — and a mission.

“I used to ride my bike past this house and others like it in Irving Park and Spring/Summer 2016

wonder what it would be like to actually live there. It may sound silly, but I used to think if I could only go inside and look around for a bit, holy cow, that would be a dream come true.”

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unny thing about dreams — and the roundabout way they sometimes come to be.

First Jimmy Jones found stardom on the gridiron at Grimsley, or, in his day, Greensboro Senior High, becoming one of two prep stars in the state to earn All-American honors as a hard tackling linebacker who once made fifteen solo tackles in a single game. Sixty-three colleges and universities offered him a full scholarship and West Point offered an appointment but he narrowed his choices to Carolina and Duke. “My father liked Carolina,” he notes. “So that’s where I ended up.”

Following a stellar academic and playing career topped off by earning first Seasons • Style & Design 47

team All-ACC Honors his senior year and an appearance in the annual North and South Shrine Bowl of 1957, Jones chose a management trainee program for Cone Mills over a chance to play professional ball and moved to New York City, where he briefly dated a pretty young woman named Peggy Crowther from Frederick, Maryland. “We had a lot of fun but Peggy was really more interested in a guy named Roger she’d been dating down at Washington and Lee. They soon got married and moved to Baltimore.”

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s fate would have it, Cone tapped Jimmy Jones to run its Baltimore office. “One night at the Toddle House I bumped into Roger and Peggy and resumed our friendship. Among other things, I told Peggy she needed to get me a blind date with her little sister, Honor. This was late summer and Honor was about to go back to Hollins College for her senior year.”

The first date went well. “It felt like we’d known each other forever,” reports Jimmy. “Also, she was so gorgeous.”

“He was a pretty smooth talker,” Honor confirms. “But we did hit it off.”

They saw each other three of the next six nights before Honor returned to school in Roanoke. Jimmy invited her to attend a Carolina football game in Chapel Hill the very next weekend.

“I drove over to Roanoke to pick her up and we drove down to the game together. We’d known each other exactly nine days,” he says. “I don’t even remember who won the game. That’s how taken I was with her.”

On the drive back to Hollins, he proposed and she accepted.

Following her graduation the next summer, they married in her hometown

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on July 1, 1961, then drove to Sea Island, Georgia, for a honeymoon Jimmy believed was already paid for by a powerful friend. “I didn’t make a lot of money in those days but I knew Mr. Heywood Duke [owner of Greensboro King Cotton Hotel and the Sedgefield Inn] who graciously offered to set us up at The Cloister Hotel. I foolishly thought that meant the whole thing would be comped as a favor to Mr. Duke. But it wasn’t. We ran up a terrifying bill.”

“Fortunately,” adds Honor with a laugh, “we managed to win $250 at bingo and didn’t have to take jobs working it off on the hotel staff.”

Their first home was a historic “trunk” house on the Shoemaker estate in the horse country west of Baltimore. Honor remembers: “It was a beautiful little house, probably the reason we both fell in love with old houses. That’s where our first child, Mike, was born.”

An opportunity to run the southeastern sales force for a textile firm called Graniteville soon sent the couple to Atlanta, where they purchased a beautiful house in the northern suburbs, birthed two more children, Kelly and Honor, and lived for the next fifteen years.

In 1977, Graniteville transferred Jimmy Jones home to Greensboro to be closer to his top customers in the blue jean manufacturing business. “Naturally, we looked for an older house in Irving Park but there weren’t any available — and we probably couldn’t have afforded one anyway, so we decided to build our own house in New Irving Park,” Jimmy picks up the tale.

The couple designed their ideal family home. “It had everything we wanted,” says Honor. “We assumed we could live in it forever.”

But sometimes Forever is shaped by older dreams.

A few months in, someone told Honor that the old house at 1606 Granville Spring/Summer 2016

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Road might soon be up for sale, the one Jimmy Jones admired as a boy on a bike. The elderly woman who resided there was reportedly in poor health and the house needed serious TLC. “We decided it couldn’t hurt to at least look,” says Honor.

Among other things, the yard at 1606 was so overgrown that the closest neighbor, textile icon Spencer Love — founder and chairman of Burlington Industries — was said to be interested in buying the house and tearing it down.

They called Yost & Little Realty and arranged a visit.

“A maid came to the door who had white powder all over her face,” Jimmy recalls. “It was very strange. Even stranger was the interior of the house. It was in shambles.”

Rooms reeked of animal waste and mothballs that were meant to deter the colonies of silverfish the Joneses noticed gathered on the ceiling.

“Jimmy went upstairs to see the master bedroom and meet the owner,” Honor remembers, “while I looked around downstairs holding my nose, startled by the condition of the house. It obviously had once been quite a beautiful place once upon a time. But now it was in very sad shape. I didn’t see how we could live in it.”

Jimmy smiles at his bride. “Good thing you never went upstairs. The upstairs was even worse.”

So much for boyhood curiosity. A few days later, Honor and their three kids headed off to spend a week at the beach in South Carolina.

A day after that, Jimmy phoned Yost & Little and bought 1606 for $125,000.

“Then I phoned Honor and told her what I’d done. To her credit, she didn’t say she was filing for divorce. We hadn’t talked about it at all. It was a pure act

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of faith. That was pretty unnerving — especially since we hadn’t sold the new house. But the closer I looked at the old house, I realized it still had very good bones and a real soul. I told myself — and Honor — if we could find a way to bring it back to life, we could live there forever.”

“Oh, well. We’re young,” Honor remembers thinking. “I did love the house and I trusted Jimmy’s judgment. I told myself there was time to bring it back.”

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n the end, the Joneses would need nearly three full decades to accomplish that task. Jimmy affectionately calls it “our 35-year restoration project” which began with a serious deconstruction of the floors and walls, a real family affair.

Jimmy and teenage sons, Mike and Kelly, worked till 3 in the morning one day just pulling up damaged floors, knocking down walls, even taking out a fireplace and a chimney. Jones hired his secretary’s brother-in-law, a talented draftsman named Bobby Vincent who worked for one of Greensboro’s leading architects, to redesign spaces and do the reconstruction work. Among other changes, they created new interior entryways and added arches, a new bathroom for the boys, and an expanded and reconfigured kitchen. In time, a sleeping porch upstairs was transformed into a master bathroom.

“Basically we touched every surface of the house — rebuilt and resurfaced, stripped, scrubbed, painted everything before we could move in,” he notes.

The original garage out back particularly fascinated Jimmy. It was huge, built for carriages. In it Jimmy found a 1946 Hudson automobile. Once that was gone he decided to take off the garage’s wide front doors as well. He discovered a side storage and workroom finished with vintage bead board — a space unfortunately crammed to the ceiling with kindling wood. Behind this was another storage Spring/Summer 2016

Photograph by Amy Freeman

The Joneses, left, Jimmy, Honor (and Missy the dog) with Jonathan and Elizabeth Hall and their three children, Cam (9), Clara (8 months) and James (7)

room with ceiling hooks where cured country hams had been hung to age. “It still smelled of ham,” Jimmy remembers. Nearby, a small “maid’s house,” they figured, might someday be turned into a lovely guest house.

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fter three months of steady work and managing to sell their new Irving Park home with only a minor loss, the Family Jones was finally able to move in.

In the evenings, Jimmy sometimes walked far out on the golf course just to sit and look back at his Forever House in the evening light: “I couldn’t believe it was mine. It faced directly to the west and had the most beautiful sunsets I’d ever seen. I must have taken a million pictures of our endless sunsets after that.”

In 1980, they added a new rear entry and patio out back, a beautiful rock walk out front, and an enclosed front side porch that eventually became Jimmy’s home office. Eight years later, they added a spectacular new den addition and rear entry and upstairs bedroom for daughter, Honor.

Jimmy Jones retired in 1996, suddenly able to duck hunt and play more golf with his best pal, Decatur Cunningham, and a regular Wednesday group from Greensboro Country Club. On May 25, 2000, a violent storm knocked over hundreds of trees in Irving Park including a massive century-old oak that flattened Jimmy’s dog kennel (no occupants injured) but somehow missed the garages of the Joneses and a close neighbor’s. The tree’s root ball measured 14 feet.

Another felled tree nearly took out daughter Honor’s bedroom.

Later that year, Jimmy finally got to work on his basement. “It hadn’t been touched in eighty-eight years,” he explained, noting how he cleaned out and handpainted every surface (ceiling black, walls white, floor maroon) and installed his own wine cellar in the house’s former coal bin.

“I was very proud of my work I did all by myself down there. It took me almost three months. I filled it up with good wine too,” he points out. “Then one day a guest who is a serious wine buff took a look at it and had to laugh. He pointed out that all the wine was white wine — which you don’t need to store and age. ‘Oh, well,’ I told him, ‘I love white wine. Maybe I’ll keep my beer down there, too.’”

These lovely family tales and many others filled the beautiful sunlit rooms of the Forever House the Sunday afternoon a hundred friends and family came to say goodbye to the Joneses and celebrate the house’s centennial. All three Jones Spring/Summer 2016

siblings and several grandchildren came from as far away as Texas to share memories. Charles Banks’ grandsons Mason and Bob were also in attendance.

“In some ways,” mused daughter Honor, now 49, “I hate to think we’re leaving this house. It’s the only home we’ve ever known. But it’s wonderful to think it will go on being home to a new young family.”

Elizabeth Hall was listening to this with a smile on her face. When the Joneses decided late last year to put the house up for sale and downsize to a custom-designed garden cottage at Wellspring, news traveled just a few blocks to where the Halls and their three young children have resided for eight years.

“We love our house a few blocks away,” confirmed Elizabeth. “We honestly had no desire to leave it. But when Jon and I heard Jimmy and Honor’s house might be going on the market soon, well, we just had to at least come see it.”

With a tender pause, glancing around, she added: “I wasn’t in this house five minutes when I knew we had to buy it — that we could live here forever.”

Houses, of course, don’t last forever — though memories and family stories often do.

It didn’t escape notice to many at the party that the Halls with their two young sons and one daughter presented an identical family profile when they finally took possession of the house this spring, the ideal symmetry for passing the torch.

Jon and Elizabeth Hall even purchased several pieces of furniture that simply seemed too perfect to move. In the necessary downsizing from 4,000 to 1,200 square feet, meanwhile, son Kelly agreed to take three sofas and two whole bedrooms; Mike and wife, Lia, wanted a vintage linen press and artwork. Daughter Honor — in the process of sending two kids off to college and moving household from Dallas to Richmond where husband John Garrett was recently appointed offensive coordinator for the Richmond Spiders football team — simply wanted her favorite pieces of art.

“The good news is, we’ll have all our grandchildren close by — I just don’t know how we’ll fit everyone into the new house,” quipped Honor.

“We’ll figure out a way,” Jimmy assured her, pointing out how it’s never easy to walk off into the sunset — especially the ones he took hundreds of photographs of every season for almost forty years from the porch of the Forever House. h Jim Dodson is the editor of O.Henry Seasons.

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Wooded Bliss For tireless Janie and J.D. Wilson, home is the Unofficial Welcome Center of Winston-Salem

By Nancy Oakley Photographs by Amy Freeman

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“I

’m not a trespasser or a window-gawker,” says Janie Wilson, “And so I’m thinking, ‘OK, the police are going to come any minute now and arrest us.’”

But a friend had assured her that the house she was peering into on a clear night fourteen years ago was vacant. “I can remember looking in and going, ‘This is amazing. I wonder what this looks like in the daytime,’” Janie says.

Her husband, J.D., felt similarly. “Immediately we could tell, ‘Wow! We want to know more about this place.’”

The place is an elongated structure lined with floor-to-ceiling windows that sits in a woodsy enclave of Winston-Salem. A contemporary home built in the mid-1980s for a Sara Lee executive and his wife, it defies categorization. The original owners, transplanted Oklahomans, hired an architect from the Sooner State to design the house, which has a Southwestern flavor, but it isn’t exactly what one thinks of as “Southwestern style.” What it does have, coincidentally — or perhaps not — are features the Wilsons had dreamed of when, years prior, they were toying with the idea of moving and had made a wish list of things they wanted in a new dwelling — “silly stuff,” Janie recalls: a place for a Moravian star; a greenhouse; kitchen cabinets with glass doors just like the ones in her grandmother’s kitchen; a place for her mother’s piano. Back then, though, they were comfortable where they were, says J.D. “We were not looking.”

That is, until that night, wandering around the periphery of the house with its circular drive and porte-cochere — a perfect place to hang the Moravian star year round — the Wilsons peered into those long windows and saw a continuous interior space and their future: a doorway that opens into a spacious foyer doubling as a dining area that flows into the kitchen (with glass cabinets!) and a family room on the left. Directly opposite, a study, and, a couple of steps down to the right, a long living room with a freestanding, white-brick fireplace and bar on one end, and built-in shelves on the other. Between the foyer and study are a hallway and a small flight of stairs leading to the bedrooms. But the biggest draw were the windows comprising most of the exterior walls. “I thought: ‘This is cool! I don’t have to do curtains!’” Janie recalls. Through those windows, the outside comes in, and inside, there is always a view to the outside.

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It is a metaphor for how the Wilsons live, as a framed, hand-painted note hanging in their hallway reveals: Dear Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Janie and J.D. Thank you for the magical weekend in Winston-Salem at University of North Carolina School of the Arts! I am agog with awe at the talent of the students and with the entire school! Thank you for asking me to join you on this Great Adventure! And: thank you for including me in the welcoming and delicious dinner in your home!

All best wishes and love, William XOX The note’s author is William Ivey Long, the Tony-award-winning costume designer whose work has appeared in Broadway revivals of Cabaret, Hairspray, The Producers, and North Carolina’s longest-running drama, The Lost Colony.

He and so many others have at one point or another found a warm reception in the Wilsons’ wooded retreat. Students from UNC School of the Arts have belted out Broadway tunes at cocktail parties and at Janie’s book club meetings.

Houseguests have noodled at the piano or taken dips in the pool. Business and civic leaders have gathered in the living room, hatching plans to preserve and advance the economic life of the city.

One of them deemed the Wilsons’ home the “unofficial welcome center for

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Winston-Salem,” a notion that Allison Perkins, executive director of Reynolda House Museum of American Art, affirms. “I’ve been to countless dinners, countless receptions in their home,” she says of the Wilsons’ hospitality. “They open it up to newcomers to Winston-Salem: ‘Come celebrate new energy!’

They do it selflessly, graciously and with big hearts.” Nick Bragg, the couple’s longtime friend, an artist and Reynolda’s first executive director concurs. “It’s a wonderful house, and J.D. and Janie use it to great advantage,” he says. A study for one of his murals hangs in their hallway; there are prints that their daughter, Mary Craig Tennille, made while she was an art student at Wake Forest, pottery from Piedmont Craftsmen and Penland. “Our art is not expensive, but it’s 98 percent local,” J.D. says. “We value living in an arts-rich community, and if you want it to be that way, you’ve got to support the artists who are making it,” he adds, explaining that he and Janie started collecting, one piece at a time, since they were newlyweds.

They met at a Christmas party hosted by the Young Democrats over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973. J.D. was building his new direct marketing business, Excalibur, which he had formed with two partners the year before.

“I was working seven days a week, days, nights,” he recalls, with time for little else. Janie had finished her final two years of college at UNC-Chapel Hill and was back in Winston-Salem, exploring her own interest in art at the Hanes Community Center, where she took painting classes — under the tutelage of renowned watercolorist Dixie Burrus Browning and Martha Dunigan, a longtime faculty member of School of the Arts. “I look back and can really apSpring/Summer 2016

preciate them, because I know of them more than I did then,” Janie says now.

She had done some babysitting for her best friend, and in lieu of compensation, said, “Just find me a man.” Her friend suspected that a tall, fresh-faced entrepreneur might be at the Young Democrats holiday soiree; would Janie like to attend? “He walked into the room, and I’m like, ‘Hmmm.’” she recalls, with a sly smile. Though J.D. wasn’t looking for a relationship at the time, he found himself in conversation with the petite local gal for the rest of the evening. As the party was breaking up, she removed her adhesive nametag, wrote her phone number on it, and slapped it on J.D.’s necktie. “Call me,” she said, and left.

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all he did, every night for the next three months that Janie was in New York training at the Paralegal Institute. Once, he took a writing assignment to pay for a plane ticket to visit her. In August of ’74, not a full year after meeting, they married — in a little stone church in the mountains. A small painting of it sits on the shelves of their study or “blue room,” as they call it, a comfortable space with a rattan rug, books, sculptures, clay pots, photographs of Mary Craig as a child, and a large pastel by one of WinstonSalem’s beloved, now deceased, artists, Elsie Dinsmore Popkin. It is a panoramic landscape of Pilot Mountain, a cherished icon for J.D. “All these years that I went back and forth to Kentucky, I saw it as I left town, I saw it as I came back,” he reflects.

He grew up an only child in Mt. Sterling, a burg of about 5,000 in the bluegrass region of the Commonwealth. “I rode my bicycle all over town, went to visit friends. People didn’t lock their doors; you’d go in, make yourself a sandwich. It was just a real people town,” he recalls. For Janie, a Winston-Salem native, formative years were similarly idyllic. The eldest of three, she remembers walking to Whitaker Elementary with friends, “and my dog following me,” she says, smiling, or carpooling with the same pals to Wiley Junior High. Her mother was a native of Scotland and as was typical of the postwar period, a stay-at-home mom. Her father, the late Hugh Chatham Butler, opened one of the first stores in Thruway Shopping Center, Hugh Butler Inc., a hardware store, which he later merged with the fashionable sporting goods store, Bocock-Stroud. (“From that, I learned I didn’t want to

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be in retailing,” Janie says wryly.) Mom headed up the church bazaar at St. Paul’s Episcopal; Dad was active in the United Way. J.D. arrived in Winston in 1964 as a freshman at Wake Forest, having been taken with the welcoming “sense of place” described in the college’s catalog. It exceeded his expectations. As he pursued a degree in English, J.D. threw himself into campus organizations — the Old Gold and Black student newspaper, where he was associate editor, the College Union (now the Student Union) and its various arts committees that brought concerts, lectures and a film series to campus. He took part in one of the first artbuying trip to New York in 1969 to start the Student Union Collection of Contemporary Art that WFU seniors have expanded ever since. He showed a knack for fundraising when he galvanized his classmates to launch a cancer research fund for Wake’s School of Medicine. In its first year, 1969, the Laura Scales Memorial Fund, named for the daughter of President James Ralph Scales’ daughter who died an untimely death from leukemia, amassed $30,000 and continues to thrive.

Janie, meanwhile, attended Salem Academy, known for its academic rigor.

Because it’s small, almost every student, by senior year, assumes a leadership position. “I was the ad manager for the annual,” Janie says, recalling how the experience, among others, nourished her self-confidence. She went on to Stratford College in Danville, Virginia, for two years, and that school also left an indelible impression, but for a different reason. In the years after her tenure there, perhaps because of mishandled funds or a decline in enrollment, the school’s endowment dwindled significantly. The college closed and was subsumed by the Danville Memorial Hospital, which converted the campus into an assisted living facility. “That taught me the endowment piece of life, and how important it is to have savings,” Janie says. “If you’ve got something in there, that’s great. But don’t touch it.” The lesson would have positive, far-reaching repercussions for women in her hometown years later. “’Ja-a-a-ckson-n-n-n, what are you going to do when you gra-a-a-duate?’” says J.D., mimicking the drawl of Wake Forest’s President Scales, the only person to call the young man by his first name. With so many campus commitments, he was a fixture in the administration offices. And like so many college seniors, he didn’t have any post-graduation plans. Scales offered him a job raising money for the school’s Development Office and J.D. accepted

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without hesitating. As director of the College Fund and associate director of Alumni Affairs, he “finally figured out, the longer the title the less the money,” J.D. says with a laugh. But the job charted the course of his life’s work. “What I learned was, OK, you’ve got a yearlong goal, what are you going to do? How much money are you going to raise? How many people are you going to try to recruit as donors? How are you going to talk to current donors? And to do that, you need a yearlong plan, a theme. You need an image, content, as we now call it.”

One of his distinctions was to help organize the highly successful Arnie’s Army, an entry-level giving society named after Wake’s most famous alum at the time, Arnold Palmer. Soon after, the U.S. Army came calling with a draft notice.

As luck would have it, J.D.’s post was Berlin, where he worked as a photojournalist, penning stories for the English-language newspaper The Berlin Observer, as well as Stars and Stripes, and learning how to snap pictures with a Pentax single-lens, reflex, 35mm camera (he would use it to take the first photograph of the changing of the guard inside Spandau Prison) — all skills that would come into play in his career. He returned Stateside, somewhat at loose ends, finding his high school friends from Kentucky dispersed. He traveled a bit in Hawaii, crossing paths with another young traveler named Nancy Doll, who would go on to become director of Greensboro’s Weatherspoon Art Museum and who would reconnect with J.D. to engage Excalibur’s direct-marketing expertise for the museum.

The company’s name came out of conversations between J.D. and his partners when they were launching their budding enterprise in the early ’70s.

(He still has the paper napkin where they sketched out a logo.) It was an era, he

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recalls, when “there was a lot stuff going on about Camelot, magical visionary opportunities.” For him, the Arthurian legend of how a boy became king by pulling a sword, named Excalibur, from a stone, had less to do with becoming king — and everything to do with removing obstacles to success. If you don’t try to remove the sword from the stone, you might never know your capabilities.

“That’s how I’ve tried to live, whether in my business or personal life. Whether I’m working for a nonprofit or on a board. There’s a danger that I can be too optimistic sometimes!” J.D. laughs.

Wake Forest’s Development Office was an early client, outsourcing its equipment to the young company that was now responsible for the university’s direct-mail campaign. “It was soup-to-nuts,” says J.D. “Take an idea, create it, design, print, mail, keep track of donations, keep track of a data base.” In effect, he was doing his old job, but as a contractor.

Not long after he and Janie married, J.D. had the opportunity to buy out one of his partners. “He couldn’t answer the phone and do everything else at the same time,” Janie remembers. By then she had become disillusioned with paralegal work, so it seemed the perfect fit for her to join the business, especially if they were to start a family. With a head for numbers and, as she would discover later, a natural aptitude for computers, Janie handled the billing. Today, as corporate vice-president and secretary, Janie oversees the billing, the accounting and human resources and serves as liaison with the U.S. Postal Service for the company’s mailings and has been an active presence on the Better Business Bureau of Northwest North Carolina and the Governor’s Small Business Advisory Board in North Carolina, among other organizations. “I love the dayto-day work,” she says, but it was a challenge in those early days, when Mary Spring/Summer 2016

Craig came along in 1979. J.D. is still in awe at how his wife balanced work and family. “I would do things like take the production jobs of the work that had been completed in the company, take those home with me at night and give them to her. And later that night or the next day when our daughter’s taking naps or whatever, she is doing the billing. We were that small at that time.

My God, typing up invoices!” For about ten years, Janie arranged her work schedule around school hours, asking sitters to fill in here and there, as needed.

“It was stressful,” she remembers, particularly as summers approached and she had to find activities for her little girl. Day camps at SciWorks, Reynolda House and Old Salem proved helpful.

“I’m not sure I truly knew how busy they were,” says Mary Craig, also a wife and working mother. (She is married to photographer Andy Tennille and works full-time in the development office at Summit School.) If anything, Mary Craig wondered about her friends whose mothers didn’t work. “I remember always feeling proud of my mom,” she says. “I found it really inspiring that she was a successful business woman with a family.” She has happy memories of family vacations to the beach or to the mountains with grandparents, of those day camps, which sparked her own interest in pursuing a degree in studio art at Wake. For about five years Mary Craig worked alongside Mom and Dad at Excalibur and saw first-hand their drive and passion for their business.

“Especially my dad,” she says, “he works tirelessly to ensure his employees and customers are well taken care of.” A trait that she has also seen in her family’s community work.

As young marrieds, J.D. and Janie were lending their business know-how to various charitable causes, such as the Mental Health Association, which was operating at a deficit. There, J.D. learned early how to be an effective board member and became a go-to guy to help organizations that were in similar financial straits — Piedmont Craftsman, Crisis Control, Winston-Salem Symphony. Janie’s business acumen was equally useful. They were such an effective team raising money for Salem College that School of the Arts came

knocking in the 1990s, asking their help with the local prong of a capital campaign. It was a pivotal moment.

At a donors’ event, J.D. approached the podium to make prepared remarks, aware of the table immediately in front of him. There sat one of the school’s biggest donors, R. Philip “Phil” Hanes, scion of the Hanes textile family, patron of the arts who started Winston-Salem’s and the nation’s first Arts Council. After extoling the accomplishments of the school and the need for the campaign, J.D. stayed on script. “‘And the goal is $25 million,’” he remembers saying. At which Hanes jumped out of his chair, visibly agitated, and shouted, “No, no! no! Goddammit! No! It’s not enough!” — in front of the entire room. “That’s my introduction to who would later become my mentor,” J.D. says, with a faint smile.

Hanes believed that the way to get something done was to get somebody else to do it, and he began calling on J.D. to “do something, call somebody,” J.D. remembers. The two would take hikes in the woods, where J.D. saw his friend’s expertise at identifying mushrooms in the wild. “He had one of the greatest minds I’ve ever known. Brilliant. He knew both the common and Latin names,” says J.D. He would also accompany Hanes on business dinners, on trips around the country, where Hanes would promote School of the Arts and Winston-Salem, and saw what a master at networking the elder man was.

“The people of Winston-Salem have no idea how much he loved this place and how much he bragged about it. He was a salesman, selling Winston-Salem to the world, and School of the Arts. What I learned, is what a connector he was. It was not selfish networking, it was bringing people together who could help each other.” The act of connecting was fueled by another belief of Hanes’ that J.D. has taken to heart: “All things are for a purpose. It may not be maybe today. It may not be for a month or for a year. But at some point, we will either help each other, or teach each other or learn from each other. And it’s not happenstance. It’s a synchronicity.”

Rather like the way he and Janie came to the house on the wooded lot fourteen years ago. For, in addition to the glass kitchen cabinet doors and a place for a Moravian star over the porte-cochere, there was a spot for her mother’s piano, directly in front of the built-in shelves in the living room, and a sunny space by the south-facing wall of windows next to the bar behind the fireplace chimney — a greenhouse of sorts for her plants.

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side from some landscaping — placing rock around the base of the house to give a drip line since there are few gutters, adding a rose garden to the south — the Wilsons did very little to their new home. As they were packing to move, Janie recalls J.D. saying, “Let’s not clutter this other place.” So they relegated most of the contents of their lives to boxes in the garage and have decorated selectively. Most of their traditional furnishings from previous dwellings have given way to a more contemporary look, with a simple dining room table and chairs in the hall, and in the living room, a couch and white leather-and-chrome chair, evocative of mid-century aesthetic. A friend of Janie’s once described the style as “minimalist.” Minimalist, perhaps, but not austere. “What keeps it being severe is that we like color,” Janie notes. Offsetting the expansive white walls and ceiling are the splashy strokes of an abstract painting by a UNCG student, Kendra Lichtenwahler, a coral loveseat and colorful print armchairs, and the blues and golds of the pottery pieces enhanced by recessed, studio lighting.

There are nods to the past — a glass coffee table encasing a collection of shells from Oak Island and Sanibel, a plate that belonged to J.D.’s grandmother, a childhood portrait of Mary Craig.

What better place to, well, connect?

The Wilsons’ home has been a showcase for artists, a setting for political fundraisers and business ventures. Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Gayle Anderson recalls Sunday afternoon huddles with J.D. and sometimes others, whom she had recruited to form a task force to work on keeping banking jobs in the city after Wells Fargo announced its

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merger with Wachovia in 2008. “J.D. was by far the most active and creative member of the group,” she says. They had already extensively researched all of Wells Fargo’s board members in advance of a reception for them in Charlotte.

“What I remember most was J.D.’s creativity of marrying up the arts and innovation with Wells Fargo’s business objectives and us and others sending notes to their leaders; sending interesting pieces of art; and even having CDI [Center for Design Innovation] create a replica of the Wells Fargo stagecoach which we presented to them,” Anderson continues. So well-versed was the group at the cocktail reception in Charlotte in early 2009 that Wells CEO John Stumpf commented at the board meeting, “Wow, those Winston-Salem people were all over everything last night.” Says Anderson, “It enabled us to make the business case for job retention and expansion in Winston-Salem.”

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ike his old mentor Hanes, J.D. “loves Winston-Salem like it’s his hometown,” Perkins observes. In 2006 while serving on Reynolda’s board and search committee for a new director, he took Perkins, then a candidate for the job, and her husband on a private tour of the city. “He showed me historical places and what the future could look like,” she remembers, including a then-vacant warehouse district downtown that is, today, Wake Forest Innovation Quarter. In 2010 J.D. and Janie chaired the $27 million Comprehensive Campaign for the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, an endeavor that Mary Craig, then working for the arts organization, witnessed first-hand. “For the first time I gained so much development-related information from their intimate knowledge of philanthropy in our community,” she says today. She also noticed how her dad approaches any nonprofit effort: “He gives it 100 percent, as if it’s his full-time job.”

He has, in the years since, continued to champion the city, whether lending a hand to a network for creative startups, the Center for Creative Economy, hosting the likes of Washington Post food critic Joe Yonan while he was on a book tour or helping bring the East coast premiere of the interactive

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show Apollo XIII: Mission Control to the Hanesbrands Theatre. So many of J.D.’s efforts advance the cause of UNCSA. His latest passion is raising money for Paris Through the Window, a musical penned by the school’s alums Charles Osborne and Leo Hurley that is being honed for the Broadway stage. “My elevator speech for School of the Arts is it is the single most underleveraged asset in Winston-Salem, probably in the Triad, probably in North Carolina,” J.D. quips. “And to the extent that we, as communities get behind it and lift it up, it will lift all of us up.” The arts, he maintains, “are what make our lives interesting. How could they not be important?” J.D. travels to major metropolises — Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, L.A. — trying to connect UNCSA to the cities’ arts and culture scenes, much as Hanes did. Before his death in 2011, Hanes gave J.D. a sculpture that had stood in the circular drive to his home. “He said ‘You have a circular drive,’” J.D. remembers. “‘Take it.

May the circle be unbroken.’”

J.D. has more time to devote to such endeavors, having stepped down as president of Excalibur last fall — a few years after celebrating the company’s fortieth anniversary. In honor of the milestone, it awarded $40,000 worth of pro bono direct marketing services to nine nonprofits in northwest North Carolina. Janie continues in her day-to-day role as corporate vice-president and secretary of the company, while devoting energies to her own passion, the Women’s Fund of Winston-Salem.

In 2005, after her term on the committee of the Winston-Salem Foundation ended, Janie recognized the need for supporting programs that addressed the needs of women and young girls, “particularly, for women who need education about finance, women who need shelter, women who need help with children, girls who need self-esteem classes,” she says. She researched giving circles and women’s funds in larger cities, many of which had splintered off community foundations, and, with the help of four compatriots and the Foundation, launched the Women’s Fund. But, says Janie, “It is a broad reach. It is not a tea party, white gloves and a hat, go-to-lunch group. We want to help fund the projects that can help get things done and Spring/Summer 2016

have measureable results.” Shrewdly, she realized the success of the Fund lay in its inclusiveness. Open to women of all ages, races and economic backgrounds, memberships cost $1,200, but a “membership” can consist of a single individual contributing the entire amount or up to twelve people, each kicking in $100.

Together they review grant applications and vote on a single cause that will receive support. In other words, the members, not a board, decide which organizations will be awarded grants. Just as important, a portion of the cost of each membership goes to the Fund’s endowment. Remembering the demise of her alma mater, Stratford College, Janie insisted the Fund’s endowment remain untouched until it grew to $1 million.

Since its inception, Women’s Fund membership has swelled from 200 to nearly 800 and has funded over $1 million in grants to organizations such as Big Sisters of Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Cancer Services, Smart Start, Family Services. It has also published briefs on issues, such as teen pregnancy and sex trafficking. And it has produced an unintended benefit: The women whose proposed programs that are up for a vote but do not receive one are striking out on their own outside of the Fund to champion their pet projects. As a newcomer to Winston-Salem, Perkins joined the organization in 2006 shortly after she assumed her position at Reynolda House and was able to meet like-minded women. Janie and the organization’s founders, she observes, “have formed these intimate circles of women all over the city.”

And the endowment? It did, in fact, reach the $1 million mark. “What I’d like us to do,” Janie says, “is maybe have a 1 percent grant, a $10,000 grant annually that’s called the Endowment Grant, that’s tied to the endowment so it can be used to teach fiscal responsibility.” And in time, she hopes, grants for the arts, as well.

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With such a staggering number of philanthropic commitments that would exhaust most people, how do the Wilsons do it? And more important, why? “We don’t play golf,” Janie deadpans. J.D. adds that community service has become a sort of “hobby” for them. Having such close-knit roots of their own, “we want to help everyone have good experiences as well,” Janie explains. The two “make a great team,” observes Bragg, who served alongside J.D. on UNCSA’s Board of Visitors. Were it not for the indefatigable Wilsons, he says, “We’d be in pretty bad shape. They are passing the torch to the younger generation in their 30s.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that Mary Craig is following in her parents’ footsteps: Having cycled off a term on the Association of Fundraising Professionals of the Triad and the Women’s Fund, she is now serving on Reynolda’s board, as her dad did. “She is a dynamic leader and just as passionate about Reynolda House,” says Perkins. “They both give with the best of intention. They give with their whole selves.” As for Mary Craig, she’s teaching her parents’ life-lessons to her own children, Olivia and Cy (with the help of two doting grandparents): “Work hard. Help others.

Keep an open mind. Take care of your family and friends because life is short,” she says.

Yes, the circle is unbroken and will be for a long time to come, thanks to the two generous hearts whose steady beat fills a house in the woods . . . the one set aglow from the light of a Moravian star. h With Greensboro roots and a home in Winston-Salem, Nancy Oakley has written extensively about the Triad for local and national publications. She is senior editor of O.Henry and O.Henry Seasons.

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The Garden Lovers The passion and destiny of Jon and Adrienne Roethling

By Ross Howell Jr. Photographs by Lynn Donovan

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assion and destiny. Not since high school Shakespeare class, or maybe after the last time we saw a good movie, have we thought about those words very often. But secretly, don’t we long for them to be part of our daily lives?

Good reason to celebrate local gardeners Jon and Adrienne Roethling, who found each other pursuing the thing they love.

“My Dad always said do the thing you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” says Jon Roethling. “But what are the chances of the two of us being able to do what we’re so passionate about, living in the area we both love?”

A self-described “plant geek,” Jon was born in New Rochelle, New York. His father worked as an engineer for AT&T, and moved the family to Greensboro when Jon was just thirteen months old.

“I remember Dad always kept a vegetable plot,” Jon says. “And he had azaleas, shrubs, that kind of thing. For some reason, I was the one kid in the family Dad trusted in his garden. He’d wanted to go into horticulture at Cornell University, but working one summer as an intern he got poison ivy so bad he figured it would be better to change careers.”

A practical man, Roethling told his son he expected him to have a job by age 15.

“So I applied at New Garden Nursery,” Jon says. “It was really a career-opener for me. I started as a loader, but in two weeks’ time, I was working retail. I found I liked talking about plants with customers, and I was good at it. I was really interested in gardens.”

Practical as his father, Jon went off to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, enrolling in pre-med courses. But his heart just wasn’t in that course of study.

He left UNC. After working for a while, he transferred to N.C. State.

“In a plant identification course, the instructor noticed my passion for the subject. He suggested I go to Plant Delights to see if I could find work there. So I did.”

That proved to be another life-opening decision, in more ways than Jon knew at the time.

Plant Delights Nursery was created in 1988, the same year Raleigh native and legendary plant man Tony Avent established the Juniper Level Botanic Garden on the same property. Starting with a 2-acre tobacco field in southern Wake County, about a 20-minute drive south of Raleigh, Tony and his wife started a garden based on the philosophy of “drifts of one” planting, so that the greatest diversity of ornamental plants could be established in a relatively small space.

Over the years Juniper Level Botanic Garden has grown to more than 20 acres, with waterfall and pond features, and a woodland walk. Now a nonprofit, the garden attracts year-round interest, with a peak season from late April through mid-October.

To help support the garden, Avent also established Plant Delights Nursery, which has grown to become one of the top online mail order plant nurseries in the country. The nursery also provides programs, tours, materials, and presentations to educate beginning and avid gardeners on the best techniques for growing and using perennials in the garden.

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It was at Plant Delights Nursery that young Adrienne Zazzara started work in 2000. A native of Rochester, New York, she remembers being fascinated as a girl by a border of forget-me-nots and bleeding hearts along her grandmother’s driveway.

“I always loved being outdoors, and two of my aunts, who ran a nursery in Rochester, really influenced my interest in gardens through their own love for horticulture,” Adrienne says. “I loved watching plants grow, learning their names. The botanical names, the Latin, were just magical to me, and I found I was good at remembering them. I’m a real plant nerd.”

She pursued her interest by taking professional courses at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. With more than 9,000 species and varieties of plants, Longwood Garden covers more than 1,000 acres and includes gardens, woodlands, and meadows. In 1906 Pierre S. du Pont purchased an arboretum that was in danger of being logged. So began the development of what would become one of the premier horticultural gardens in the United States.

“When I moved from Longwood Gardens to Raleigh to work with Tony Avent as curator, I felt like my education was continuing,” Adrienne says. “Tony’s garden is a true collector’s garden, one of just a handful in the U.S. The garden and nursery feature plants from all over the world,” she observes, adding, “Tony is a person who would put his life in danger in order to get a plant.”

One day Tony took Adrienne out into the garden to meet her new assistant. He explained the young man was still a student at N.C. State.

“There was a guy weeding a bed with his back to me,” Adrienne says. “When he stood and turned to greet me, I knew he was going to be my husband.”

Jon grins when he hears the story.

“Yes, that’s the way she remembers it,” he says. “It wasn’t that sudden for me. To tell the truth, I’d decided to give up looking for girls at that point. But there she was.”

“So he started as my assistant,” Adrienne says, “and he still is.”

“We got married to make it official,” Jon says. “That I’m her assistant. But I couldn’t be more proud of her. Proud of what she’s achieved. Proud of her passion for gardening.”

“Our friendship grew while we worked for Tony. We fed off each other’s knowledge,” Adrienne says. “Off our passion for learning.”

“Yeah, we had this great working relationship,” Jon says.

“Then, some nights after work, we’d go to Rich’s Bar in Raleigh.

We’d talk till 2 in the morning. About plants. About anything.

We just clicked.”

Jon proposed to Adrienne Zazzara on one knee at his family’s home in New York — his sister has the photo to prove it — and the two were wed in 2003.

Changes came for the Roethlings, of course. After Jon graduated from N.C. State, he worked as a horticulturist at the J. C. Raulston Arboretum, then for an online company based in California that imported plants from all over the world.

“It was great,” says Jon. “Adrienne and I got to travel to Europe, Japan, New Zealand. But in 2008 the economy tanked and so did the job. So I took work at the plant house at UNCG.”

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But passion and destiny weren’t finished with the couple.

Through a friend and former faculty member at N.C. State, Todd Lasseigne— now president and CEO of the Tulsa Botanic Garden — Adrienne learned that the Curator’s position at the Paul J. Ciener Botanical Garden in Kernersville was available.

Opened in 2011, the garden was the idea of avid backyard gardener and successful businessman Paul Ciener, who at age 58 was diagnosed with cancer.

Nearly as an afterthought before his death, Ciener told his family he wanted to establish a public garden, and his family joined enthusiastically in his cause. A Welcome and Visitors Center and installations for 3 of 7 acres have been completed.

When fully developed, the botanical garden will feature an amphitheater, woodland, more than twenty-five individually styled gardens, wetlands, event spaces, and a greenhouse. One of the garden’s most dazzling events, a bulb display of tulips and daffodils, takes place each April.

“Mr. Ciener’s widow still lives on the property, and Jon and I have a little place there, too. It’s funny, but we don’t even have a backyard garden now. We rescue and foster boxers, and the dogs have taken over the yard. We have two of our own, and two fosters, and they’re our children,” Adrienne says.

She has her office arranged so from her desk she looks down on the gardens. “I was never in this to make money,” she says. “I love nature. I’ve always wanted to work outdoors.”

And Jon? In 2010 High Point University came calling. After a series of meetings where he shared his vision for the campus, he was offered the position of curator of grounds.

“It’s been a whirlwind,” Jon says. “I started with 120 acres and now I’m responsible for 400.” In just one area, his team planted three different types of purple-leaf redbuds to see which variety will perform best. “Where else would I have this much space and this much freedom? To help create one of the most beautiful campuses in the country? To leave such a legacy?”

That’s the third word we all long for, isn’t it? That we should live our lives with passion. With a sense of destiny. And leave a legacy for those who follow.

And what could be better than a shared legacy built on passion and destiny: “How could I be more fortunate than this?” asks Adrienne. “To live with someone who feels the same passion for plants I do? To work at a place where I have so great an opportunity to leave my own imprint on the finished gardens?”

Smiling, Adrienne reflects, “We have so many friends who work in gardening,” she says. “We love traveling to see them. It’s a very close community.”

Jon remembers a trip they took to the Green Swamp in Florida with a bunch of friends. “The place has all these Venus flytraps and pitcher plants. And we’re having beers afterward, talking about the exotic stuff we’d seen. Then my sister, who’d come along for the trip, says, ‘Do we always have to talk about plants?’ Everybody stopped talking, and turned like one person toward her, and shouted, ‘Yes!’” h

Ross Howell Jr. is a writer and editor who indulges his own passion for gardening at his home in Greensboro. His novel, Forsaken, was published earlier this year.

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Renovation Work

The Reimagined Ranch How a gifted designer (and her supportive husband) transformed an Emerywood classic into the perfect home

By Cynthia Adams • Photographs by Amy Freeman

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hirteen years ago, Christi Barbour smiled as she swept through the door into the Emerywood ranch. Initially, she had barely noted the traditional living room to the right and dining room to the left. (Both of which would matter later; there was room for her grandmother’s baby grand piano and also room for the more important furnishings they had either bought or inherited after marriage. Like many Southerners, they had an ample amount of the latter.)

Barbour, a small-boned, soft-spoken woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, stepped up from the sunken foyer and walked straight through into the den. She kept walking as if the space were all familiar. Somehow, it was.

The place resonated; something just clicked inside Barbour’s head. The cozy den was a classic — it had the original hard-wood paneling and a fireplace, with a span of windows offering a view to the creek that wound through the woods behind. Her husband, Brett, was with her but the designer’s eyes were on the bones of the 1950s house. And its strong emotional appeal.

She liked the screened porch, which was beyond a bank of windows that shot light into the room. Barbour frowned slightly at the walled-off kitchen.

That would not be a difficult fix, she mentally calculated, removing the wall so the kitchen would open into the den. “We knew immediately we would change the baths — they were very dated,” she says now.

But there was something else she also knew from experience with other design projects: First, get to know the house. Allow it to speak to you. “I preach to move in and live in the house. Everyone is in such a rush to get it perfect. A

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house is always changing, always evolving.”

Without even so much as looking at her husband, she already knew he must sense it too. This was the house.

She inhaled deeply. Barbour could see herself and her growing family here. It felt like home — specifically, her grandmother’s Virginia home in Blacksburg.

Barbour knew before seeing the rest of the spacious house, sitting on a full acre, that she was smitten. There were pluses — the house had been welltended. And yet a mental list was already forming as the couple completed the initial walk-through: Remove the kitchen wall and open it to the den; redo the bathrooms; figure out a way to improve the general flow. Much of what she would do initially could be achieved with paint and paper and introducing their own things. The house was pleasant and pleasing. Barbour may have even hummed a little — she wouldn’t even remember all the emotions flooding her but they were part of a complex of biological changes that were already underway. Her brain was bathing in hormones.

What Barbour didn’t know at the time — she smiles while remembering — was that she was already pregnant with her second child. That news was to come soon after, and that news, of course, would change a few plans—or at least, defer them.

Barbour is a partner in Barbour Spangle Design, with offices occupying a beautiful restored home at 308 North Lindsay Street downtown in High Point.

She and her partner — both are named Christi — shared a similar design aesthetSpring/Summer 2016

ic and a long friendship before they went into business together and restored the house where they work.

The projects posted on their website (www.barbourspangle.com) reflect designs curated to be polished without fussiness. The projects speak to a process that is perhaps most difficult for its sheer understatement, the obvious refinement of conscious editing.

“Editing,” explains Barbour, “is hard even for the pros.” But, as she points out, dogs are welcome, and even at the office, the partners focus on comfort and livability. The house, beautifully restored with a sweeping stair to the partners’ offices on the top floor, is an oasis of calm in the center of creative frenzy at Barbour Spangle.

Imagine you are a professional designer. You work in a veritable banquet hall of beautiful things all at your fingertips. You must think spatially and visually, while being constantly surrounded by the tools of the trade — vivid colors, fabric swatches, window treatments, flooring samples, paints, lights and fixtures, wallpapers, blueprints and sketches. To walk through the two floors of Barbour Spangle is to experience the many creative pieces of design — an array of the many elements composing a pleasing whole if the marriage is right.

Designers work with residential and commercial projects daily, Barbour explains. The daily work can create a sensory overload of things — surfaces, textures, and colors.

What Barbour craved most during her off hours was to be surrounded by a calming environment.

And that would require a quieting, neutral palate.

She thought about that as she reimagined the ranch house they were buying: the one in Emerywood with the peaceful creek below a canopy of trees and a screened porch where she and her young family could retreat at the end of a long day. Brett had a busy life working in the mattress industry. In the new house, near where they already lived, they would have ample room both indoors and out.

Of course, life is what happened as she was making plans. A new baby on the way was surely going to complicate their move. But it wouldn’t have changed their tendering an offer and buying the house.

That, Barbour felt confident, was the best decision the couple had made in a long time. And like so many of us, Barbour embarked upon a slow journey towards a design reformation —transforming a ranch into the calm and yet hip home in her mind’s eye.

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arbour studied design at Virginia Tech, graduating in 1992. “I went to work in a photo studio, a great place to start a design career,” she says. “Photography and set design — some residential, some commercial. It was fast and furious.” She also learned the ropes with showroom design, coming to work in High Point. “My first job was with Barbara Dalton of Dalton & Associates. I worked for several years then went on to work with a furniture company and then started my own company.” By 1998, Barbour Spangle Design was on its way.

The Emerywood house was an easy commute from her downtown offices.

It was convenient, surely, but, a close reflection of Christi Barbour and her

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family and the things that were central to their lives. She sought to create a haven — not a showroom.

“We liked the location—a neighborhood like this—and set on an acre with a creek. How can you not love it?” she says, explaining how neighboring homes disappear as spring arrives with trees in full leaf. Cooper, a yellow Labrador, waits impatiently for another treat, watching his mistress from the porch. She cracks open the door and he charges in, stopping at the counter in an all-white kitchen that looks fresh and inviting but that Barbour has already slated for further changes.

With the new open concept of kitchen and den, Barbour says she achieved what she hoped for: better flow. More openness. As much as ranch homes are flexible, sometimes the room arrangement could use a reinvention. It boiled down to flow, she explains. And in this house, that has happened in a seamless way that is enviable.

“The den is totally different,” says Barbour. “I decided to change it.” She painted the paneling (a difficult decision, she confesses) and redid the fireplace surround with custom touches. This space no longer reads a favorite den of a beloved grandmother. It reads cozy and contemporary. It is on trend with a ghost chair and arresting artwork. A serene pastoral painting dominates Seasons • Style & Design 65

the room. Much of the artwork on view, here and in the living room, are her mother’s creations.

“One of my dear friends says she finds it looks different every time she comes,” Barbour says of the reimagined space. “I move things. I encourage others not to be in such a rush to finish — it can be such a joy.”

There is a measure of creative chaos at work for a young family — they have two children now, a boy and a girl. Barbour juggles schedules, schools, sports, and activities, as well as a budget like everyone else. So her renovation plans sometimes necessarily take a backseat. Barbour has to plan and be patient.

When they first moved in, she had a list of priorities. The baths were redone first. The house was in great condition — and so cosmetics had a big impact.

The bigger projects she had in mind for the residence had to wait.

Some were a while in the making. “I knew for years I would open the kitchen to the den,” she explains. “I remember when the wall came down in the summer of 2014.” She remembers nearly shouting for joy when she came home and saw her vision realized. It achieved what she hoped, so she was no longer closeted off from family when preparing a meal. They added a wet bar in the den, boosting its entertainment function.

They relocated the laundry room to the basement, lining the stairs with ship plank siding and integrating it into the newly open design. Removing the laundry from upstairs allowed for their most ambitious change, altering the footprint of one wing of the house. Next, the couple took out a wall in the dining room, opening it to the rest of the home. Her husband had the idea to do that, she explains, yet Barbour resisted. Nonetheless, it became the key to a renovated master suite and provided the space needed.

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Why did Barbour concede — after all, he is a businessman and she is a designer by profession? “Because it worked,” she answers. “He was right.” Originally a large and isolated guest room, Barbour says this square footage provided for a successfully converted master bedroom suite, complete with a transitional space she describes as an entry foyer. They kept the children’s rooms and their former master as a guest room in the opposite wing of the house.

By creating an entry foyer into their suite, there was room for an inherited French demilune cabinet with ivory inlay. (Barbour is planning another renovation for the dining room. Like most of us, she is mulling over which family pieces she will keep and which she will not. It turns out that it is always tricky to navigate beloved heirlooms, even for designers. And just like us, their tastes change.)

They created a mosaic pattern in the oak floor, suggesting a transition from the intimate foyer space into another intimate space. Storage is hidden behind a pocket door.

This space, she says — leading the way through the entry foyer into a charming sitting area — is where she spends a lot of her time. It is tucked in like a delightful secret, with another fireplace (there are three in the house) and a navy blue accent wall. The sitting area is Barbour’s enviable nest. “I wanted a private, cozy place.” But her children, Ethan and Sarah, frequently invade her haven, wanting to join her there when she sits by the fireplace to read or watch television.

The house rambles, like an older, eccentric one, which gives it character and interest. Barbour points out a step, purposefully created in order to raise the bedroom elevation. “I love homes with slight changes in levels,” she Spring/Summer 2016

explains. It also mirrors the original step up from the main foyer into the house.

The master bedroom, however, is the tour de force.

“This is our retreat,” she says, and cannot contain a smile as our eyes widen in appreciation. With a vaulted ceiling inspired by one they admired during a holiday and recreated during the renovation, Barbour says the upfit helps create a sense of spa or resort space. “When lying in bed looking up, the design looks like a cross,” Barbour explains. The headboard is made of tufted linen, and the bed linens are all natural fibers. It is a room of understated elegance. The room is also expansive, and the vaulted ceiling makes the large room seem to open to the heavens.

During the renovation, they also added French casement windows, which further bathe the room with sunlight.

Barbour elected to use simple Plantation shutters and no drapes in keeping with a sleeker, spa-like theme. She kept the walls one of her favorite shades of restive, pale gray. A portrait mirror stands against one wall, bouncing light.

The grouping of small paintings reflects and reinforces the Caribbean calm she has purposefully designed. “The paintings are from St. Barths,” she explains. Another large painting is also intended to impart the same sense.

The master bedroom opens into the master bath, which is dominated by a soaking bath profiled with glass mosaic tiles and carnation “plate” sculptures clustered on the tiled wall. The bath flooring is white, veined marble as is the large shower, although it also contains glass tile accents. During the renovation, the Barbours expanded the bath by a full third, making room for double vanities, a European private toilet and a walk-in closet.

The closet is a revelation: This is pure Barbour.

Sophisticated and understated. (Her husband told her this closet space was hers alone. Not a small thing, she adds gratefully.)

The neutral palate of clothes, all grays, beiges, whites with a few accents of color, is her working palate that repeats throughout the house. “I find neutrals comforting and serene,” she explains. Tory Burch, Hunter, and Chanel shopping bags serve as grounding artwork within the room-sized closet. There is a dressing table and ottoman — but no clutter.

“I’m surrounded daily by colors and patterns and textures,” Barbour says. She seeks the calming opposite in her private spaces. “This makes me happy,” she says, standing inside the closet, which is lit by natural daylight from a small window and a dominant pendant light fixture.

When working with other clients, however, “I try to take great steps to understand their tastes.” She gestures towards her own streamlined wardrobe by way of example. Barbour asks clients what colors they wear, about their life style, and asks to see their closets, and takes her cues from these insights. “My lead-ins are questions: How they live, what works, what left them thinking they didn’t think their home worked? Color enters later. How their lives function matters first. How they watch television, where they eat — learning so much about the family and having a good read [on them].”

Barbour believes good design isn’t remotely about Spring/Summer 2016

Seasons • Style & Design 67

imposing her aesthetic onto a client. “My tastes don’t come into play when I do a design. When people hesitate or pause, I say, ‘Let’s regroup.’” She waits for confirmation, to hear what actually moves and delights. She waits to hear the sharp intake of breath that signals to her that, in fact, “They love it!”

She listens.

When the Barbours hosted a recent fundraiser, a neighbor and guest stopped before a Greg Osterhaus painting hanging in the den. The painting is a pastoral scene dominating much of an entire wall. “It was the first piece we purchased as a married couple, before we moved into our house,” Barbour explains. It is one of her favorite accents with deep significance to the couple: Osterhaus is a Virginia artist, one the couple discovered during family treks back to their roots.

Not only did their neighbor like the painting, it happened that he knew the artist well. “The guest went to school with Greg,” Barbour explains. She felt that sharp intake of breath. The fact that he recognized the art and artist filled her with happiness.

It was an affirmation.

Like so much that had begun with the den, the happy center of their house, the painting and its place of honor in the room, felt right. The Barbour home, an organic house that keeps changing along with the family, expresses the things they value most.

It surrounds them with joy. h Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O. Henry Seasons.

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Seasons • Style & Design 69

China, Crystal & Silver • Old & New

Finishing touches make a home.

The right gift makes an impression.

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life&home

Master Class

Late Bloomer

Our intrepid student learns the art of floral design

By Maria Johnson Photographs by Elise Manahan

S

issy Whittington, amateur floral designer, has turned the kitchen of her Winston-Salem home into a classroom.

She bought some of her teaching materials in grocery stores — red roses, yellow tulips and Gerbera daisies, purple hyacinths, white hydrangeas, succulent green beargrass, fragrant rosemary and dusty discs of eucalyptus with clusters of yellow-green berries.

The rest, she has snipped in her yard, in the yards of friends and in the yards of friends-to-be.

Remember, this is a woman who once introduced herself to a neighbor by knocking on his door and saying, “Hey, I’m Sissy Whittington. I live on Reynolds Drive, and I need some of your bush.”

Today, her winter forays have yielded mauve and creamy green hellebores, lipstick-pink camellias, and bronze branches of pussy willow and curly willow.

I’ve brought cuttings from my own yard: eastern red cedar with navy blue berries, nandina with orange-red berries, and spiky upright plum yew.

I’m going to school with Sissy, a Winston-Salem native with a reputation for creating simple, striking floral arrangements that enliven dinner parties and fundraisers.

She did not grow up knowing how to arrange flowers.

But people assumed she did. When she married and joined husband Jeff in New York in 1997, friends gave her the job of creating floral arrangements for a party.

Spring/Summer 2016

“They said, ‘You’re in charge of flowers because you are from the South, and all ladies in the South know how to arrange flowers.’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ It worked, but it was kind of a fiasco.”

Sissy decided she’d better get some real education on the subject. She signed up for flower-arranging classes at Parsons School of Design. There, she learned the basics of technique and color. That was almost twenty years ago.

Since she and Jeff moved back to Winston-Salem in 2001, she has practiced her hobby by assembling hundreds of blooming ditties. She sometimes shares her expertise by demonstrating flower arranging to garden clubs. She’s a member of both Weeds and Seeds and Twin City Garden Club.

Her all-time favorite centerpieces? Number One was the purple heather that she gathered for an impromptu dinner with a friend in Ireland.

“We stuffed that heather in three vases and put it down the table,” she says.

“It was great.”

The second was at a formal dinner party in Winston-Salem. The hostess put a single sunny Gerbera daisy in each of six glass vases. She spaced the vases down the length of the table.

“I appreciated it because it was so simple, but the effect of it was so refreshing,” Sissy says. “It left room for an appetite.”

Seasons • Style & Design 71

life&home She contrasts that with arrangements that overload the senses.

“You feel full before the meal is served,” she says.

“Some people say that in a great floral arrangement, it needs to be loose enough for butterflies to fly around in it.”

Her advice to beginners: Keep it simple.

She demonstrates simplicity with a mass of hellebores.

Cold weather had Maria Johnson, left and Sissy Whittington them bowing their heads, but Sissy clipped their stems short — so water had a shorter distance to travel — and mounded them in a squatty, square glass vase. Now, they lift their smiling faces and sing as a chorus.

She takes a curved glass tube that’s open at each end — basically a vase on its side — fills it with water and threads yellow tulips into each end with a few strands of beargrass. Violà. A promise of spring for her mantel.

She pulls out a shallow silver dish — a wedding present — pours in a couple

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of inches of water and floats several camellia blossoms in the pool.

She takes another stubby square vase, adds water, wraps beargrass around her hand, lifts off the coil and dunks it. The strands act as a visible armature, or support structure, for more yellow tulips.

It’s my turn. Sissy sets me up with a boxy glass vase and suggests that I create an underwater armature from curly willow branches or beargrass. I go for the curly willow. I start by breaking off the wispy ends and submerging them.

Sissy tells me to try different thicknesses. I do, and immediately the tangle looks better. It also seems like a better support for flowers.

“I’m going to make you do something you’re not going to like,” she says.

Leave? Maybe because I’m a terrible armature maker?

“I’m going to make you use this eucalyptus and berries. This stuff is so hot right now,” she says. “Create a collar around the edge of the vase so you can’t see the edge,” she says.

Check.

That’s the first layer. The second layer will be the meat of the arrangement. I pick hot pink camellias and white hydrangeas.

But how many should I use?

And how long should they be?

Sissy explains that because the vase is square, a flower should go in each corner, angled toward the center. In fact, putting three camellias diagonally across the

Spring/Summer 2016

life&home center would anchor the arrangement and hew to a principle that Sissy honors: use dominant flowers in odd numbers. It also would lay down a repetition that establishes rhythm.

As in most works of art, Sissy says, there’s a lot going on in a successful floral arrangement that you’re not aware of at first.

Like balance. But balance doesn’t necessarily mean symmetry, she says. So in one of the empty corners of my arrangement, I tuck a white hydrangea. In the opposite corner, I combine three green hydrangea buds, a lesson learned from watching Sissy use a handful of hellebores to stand as one.

I’m not sure about the height of my flowers.

I’ve seen cool arrangements with horizontal vases and leggy flowers, but Sissy points out that my flowers don’t have the stems to pull that off. A short mound would work better.

I clip the flowers again, on a 45-degree angle to maximize the surface area for water uptake. With the bones established, all that’s left to do is fill in.

I reach for a few hellebores and a spear of leucadendron — a.k.a. devil’s blush — with its rosy upturned petals. I also nab a few tight camellia buds for buttons of deep color.

Sissy asks if I’m up for using nandina branches with orange-red berries.

The color wheels come off the wagon of my mind. I’m pretty sure I wince.

Sissy laughs. That’s fine, she says. Color is a personal thing. The main thing is to make something that pleases you.

“The point is to enjoy,” she says.

Another thing: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. If you’re not satisfied with your bouquet, keep messing with it. Over time, you’ll figure it out.

As a friend of Sissy’s says about floral arranging: “You’ve got to be fearless about these things.”

Now, let’s throw in some surprises, Sissy says.

I add a stem of dark green yew; the plump bristle arcs from one side.

Sissy balances it with a shorter piece of yew on the opposite side.

“What about this?” she says, reaching for pussy willow branches dotted with velvety nubs.

Yes! Just what my arrangement needs: antlers.

Sissy ups the ante. She slides me a small, fake bird’s nest with eggs. She’s not above using nonflora in her floral arrangements. In the next room, a forest of orchids stands in a shallow dish. The floor of the orchid forest is peopled by ceramic figures from the hands of Penland potter Jane Peiser.

“Surprises make something ordinary, extraordinary,” says Sissy.

I wrap sticky green tape around floral wire to make a stand for the nest, then insert bird bed and behold.

“It’s restful,” says Sissy, inspecting my arrangement from different angles.

“You can be inspired by it, but you can rest.”

Restful, hell. This is exciting.

When I arrived, Sissy said she’d send me home with an arrangement. I demurred, but now it’s hard to refuse.

Without proof, no one would ever believe I did this. h Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry Seasons.

Carriage House

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Your resource for Antiques And Home decor Golden Gate Drive 336.373.6200| 2214 Greensboro, NC

Monday-Friday 10-6 • Saturday • 10-5 Sunday 1-5 Carriage_House@att.net

Spring/Summer 2016

Seasons • Style & Design 73

FRIDAY, JULY 1 The Magic of Mozart | Orchestra Gala Dana Auditorium | 8:00 PM Three Orchestras | Three Soloists

Anna Kate Mackle, harp | Les Roettges, flute | Shannon Scott, clarinet

SATURDAY, JULY 23

André Previn World Premiere Dana Auditorium | 8:00 PM James Ehnes, violin Strauss | Violin Concerto

THURSDAY, JULY 28 FRIDAY, JULY 29 Young Artists Orchestras

Furnishing stylish homes in the Triad

Dana Auditorium | 8:00 PM Young Artist Concerto Competition Winners

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Experience Builds Character Marsh Kitchens designs and builds beautiful kitchens for today’s families.

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74 Seasons •

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lAdIeS ClothIng, gIftS, BABy, jewelry, gIftS for the home, tABlewAre, delICIouS food

1738 Battleground Ave • Irving Park Plaza Shopping Center • (336) 273-3566 Spring/Summer 2016

life&home THE Architect’s Son

Gametime for High Point Transformation is in the air in the International City

By Peter Freeman

L

ike the last kid tapped for the neighborhood pick-up game, High A list of thirteen potentially transformative projects was proposed, Point stands a little gangly and overmatched beside Greensboro with priorities to be pursued in phases. Several projects have already been and Winston-Salem. But while High Point may lag behind its set in motion: Firstly, an intervention at the High Point Library that will neighbors in size and speed, it’s a proven competitor. The city replace its ill-disposed parking lot with a landscaped plaza to accommodate has a resilience, resourcefulness, determination and a flair for a farmers market and public gatherings. Next is the construction of an logistics — all ingredients for reinvention. amphitheater (4,000+ capacity) between Showplace and the Mendenhall High Point has a storied past with far-flung accomplishments. The streetTransportation Center. An imaginative creative arts market project called car named Desire featured in Tennessee Williams’ eponymous play was “The Pit.” is unashamedly aimed at the young, creative class. The idea is to manufactured in town at the Perley A. Thomas Car Works plant (nowadays provide an open-air venue for the arts, music and locally grown food. known as Thomas Built Buses). Willis H. Slane Sr., convinced that fiberglass Longer range priorities include a University Village, a mixed-use space adjacent hulls would make better boats, started Hatteras Yachts in High Point, despite to HPU and an ambitious plan to convert the Oak Hollow Mall into a regional the fact that he was 200 miles from the coast. post-graduate incubator for architecture students In 1963, George W. Lyles Jr. decided that High and budding entrepreneurs.

Point was the perfect place for a Rolls-Royce Sadly, a pedestrian- and bike-friendly moveIt is hoped that the stadium project — and Bentley dealership — the only one between ment for North Main Street to provide on-street Atlanta and New York.Today Bentley High Point parking, larger sidewalks, and an opportunity combined with a creative arts market and a for higher density (and property value) developcontinues as the oldest Bentley dealership in the country. The Furniture City continues to be has lost steam. Nevermind. Even without world-class amphitheater, all within steps of ment, home to two 10-day stints that pack the streets progressive support, retail, eating and gathering with folks from all over the world in search of the continue to spontaneously spring the High Point Theatre — will provide a solid opportunities latest home fashions, spurring more revenue to up on North Main Street, most recently marked the area than the Super Bowl. by the opening of the Brown Truck Brewery. foundation for revitalization.

From work to play — city boosters have A recent proposal for locating a multipurpose anteed up in any number of ways so that High baseball stadium downtown has a lot of people Point has a vibrant downtown that lures market excited. A newly formed task force is weighing the goers and citizens alike, so they don’t have to drive out of town in search benefits of building a ballpark for the historic High Point/Thomasville Hi-Toms, a of a chic shopping venue, world-class entertainment, stylish hotels or truly collegiate summer baseball team currently playing at Finch Field in Thomasville. memorable meal.

A mixed-use entertainment plan including a 3,000–4,000-seat venue for baseball, In reality, High Point has benefited little in recent years from the influx soccer and lacrosse, is being developed by Odell and Freeman Kennett Architects. of out-of-town furniture marketeers after the 5 o’ clock hour. Putting “feet on CSL of Dallas has been hired to provide feasibility and market analysis. The projthe street,” retaining college-aged students from the ever-budding High Point ect provides an anchor for creating the much-needed foot traffic in downtown and University and other area institutions, and tapping into the craftsman workforce is intended to create a synergy between other proposed projects. in the creation of new job opportunities are the true spur to revitalization.

It is hoped that the stadium project — combined with a creative arts Under leadership of the city Project Inc. more than 100 private investors market and a world-class amphitheater, all within steps of the High Point (with support from the City of High Point) contributed $410,000 to comTheatre — will provide a solid foundation for revitalization. Add an undemission the team of celebrated architect and town planner Andrés Duany rused Radisson Hotel, a renovated train station and a regional bus depot, of Duany Plater-Zybeck, aided by yours truly and partners in the guise of and there’s real hope for momentum downtown.

Freeman Kennett Architects, to prepare the Ignite High Point Master Plan.

So the next time the neighborhood is selecting sides for the big game, The nearly 200-page report emerged from a series of public charettes and don’t be surprised to find High Point a first-string player. h community meetings, including a thorough review of the less-than-cheery Peter Freeman is a native of High Point and principal at Freeman Kennett Architects. existing conditions.

Spring/Summer 2016

Seasons • Style & Design 75

VIVID INTERIORS

Interior Design • Furniture • Art • Accessories 513 S. Elm Street • (336) 265-8628 • vivid-interiors.com

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Artist reception • April 15, 6-8pm Tyler White O’Brien Gallery offers Art Consulting Services, delivery & hanging of artwork. Whether you are an avid art collector, first time purchaser, or artist, our gallery will guide you every step of the way!

Tyler White O’Brien Gallery 307 State Street, Greensboro (336) 279-1124 www.tylerwhitegallery.com “Crayons Matter Fundraiser”, April 23rd, 6-9pm

76 Seasons •

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life&home At Your (Silver) Service Want to learn how to care for, restore or simply appreciate fine silver in the Triad?

Consider the following:

Silver Belles Southerners’ ardor for argent

By Nancy Oakley

“P

lease, tell me you didn’t!” This, from one of my mother’s closest friends who was aghast to learn that, in light of my family’s reduced numbers last Thanksgiving (Mom, Dad, me), we ate turkey at the kitchen table in front of the TV blaring the Panthers/Cowboys game. But it wasn’t the informality of the kitchen or even the intrusion of the gridiron contest that bothered my mother’s chum; it was that Mom had set the table with . . . everyday flatware.

As any true Southern belle will tell you: Sterling silver flatware is to be enjoyed and used on special occasions and holidays, and if your heart desires, each and every day. For my mom’s dear pal, a daughter of the South if ever there was one, it is considered a high crime against civility to eschew the sterling for the quotidian at Thanksgiving.

“Promise me you won’t repeat the offense at Christmas,” she begged my mother. But I think her entreaty had less to do with tradition, and more from her recognition, in the twilight of her life, that while things of beauty are indeed joys forever, our time to enjoy them is fleeting. And there is nothing so beautiful as my mother’s silverware.

Her pattern, Repoussé by S. Kirk & Son, is an old one, evocative of a bygone era, when one of Southern ladies’ chief responsibilities was to entertain — and elegantly. It consists of swirling vines, leaves and chrysanthemums hammered into bas-relief that engulfs every handle of every fork, knife, spoon and serving piece. You can feel all the sinews and curves against your fingers and palms when you grasp the substantially hefty utensils.

Mom inherited most of the pieces from an aunt in Birmingham, Alabama; the rest were birthday and Christmas gifts, most often from godparents and grandparents, bestowed year after year as was customary among young Southern ladies of her generation. In addition, there is a pair of candlesticks

Spring/Summer 2016

consisting of ornate engraved tiers. These, Mom explains, are actually brass pieces coated in silver and likely made in Poland. Her grandmother, a Louisville belle with the delicious-sounding name of Anabel Lee, had acquired them in the old Brass Town district of lower Manhattan, once populated

by Romanians, Turks and Middle Easterners who worked in the brass trade.

During the year, the pieces were relegated to a large safe deposit box at the bank, but at Thanksgiving, Christmas or before a rare dinner party, Mom would retrieve them, lay them on the kitchen counter, and go to work with a bottle of Wright’s Silver Polish and a soft cloth — a task that would take hours, precious commodities in later years when Mom held a fulltime job. “Don’t polish too hard,” she always advises, “Or the silver will lose some of its patina; you want a few shadows in the crevices, to give it definition.” Her labors always produced a spectacular table, the flickering tapers atop Anabel’s candlesticks shining on the vine-laden handles of every serving spoon, fork, knife and demitasse, all set on an snowy lace tablecloth.

With advancing age and fewer of us at table, now that my sisters and I have all left the nest, Mom has taken to leaving the silver in the bank deposit box year round. Ultimately, it became easier just to leave it there, which is why Mom didn’t bother to retrieve any of the pieces last Thanksgiving. But her friend’s gentle admonishment spurred her, in early December, to make the trek to the bank, in spite of aching joints and shortness of breath. And just as she had when we were all little girls, she laid all the pieces on the kitchen counter and with arthritic fingers, got busy with a cloth and a bottle of Wright’s.

Come Christmas Eve, there it was, the familiar sight of my childhood: vines and flowers shimmering in the glow of candlelight crowning Anabel’s tiered candlesticks, all against a backdrop of white linen — the fairest and tenderest of Christmas gifts from a fair and tender lady. h

Wright’s Silver Polish: While there are plenty of hifalutin brands out there, you can’t go wrong with the tried-andtrue. Since 1893, Wright’s of Keene, New Hampshire, has been the, ahem, gold standard for cleaning silver (and makes a good brass polish, too, great for musical instruments). Now a division of the Weiman company, Wright’s offers two varieties of polish: a cream and an anti-tarnish liquid. It’s widely available at most grocery stores and box stores, such as Lowes or Walmart. If not, try amazon. com or jawright.com.

Replacements: If you’re missing a spoon, knife or dessert fork from your set of silver or need to identify a mysterious pattern from some pieces your great-aunt Edith gave you, contact one of the army of researchers at Replacements in Gibsonville. Are some of your pieces are damaged or need to be restored?

Replacements also has an on-site silversmith who can help. Replacements.com.

Antique Silver: See how the Southern gentry lived by admiring silver from Charleston and Baltimore at Museum of Early Sothern Deocrative Arts (MESDA) in Winston-Salem, whose collection also includes a silver-plated long rifle from Rowan County, North Carolina. (mesda.org). For a gander at repoussé craftsmanship usually associated with Samuel Kirk & Son, go to the the Twin City’s Reynolda House Museum of American Art, home to a fifteen-piece punch set that was a gift to R.J. Reynolds and his bride, Katharine Smith Reynolds on the occasion of their fourth anniversary. (reynoldahouse.org). Recently installed in the Greensboro Historical Museum’s Belle Meade period dining room is a portion of the Metcalf-Cooke Silver Collection, an elaborate silver service manufactured by Gorham &Thurber of Providence, Rhode Island in 1851 that initially belonged to Thomas Metcalf, a cotton merchant and Celia Greene, a relative of the Gate City’s namesake, Gen. Nathanael Greene. (greensborohistory.org).

Seasons • Style & Design 77

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78 Seasons •

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Spring/Summer 2016

life&home

The Language of Home

“Porte-Cochere:”

A roofed structure covering a driveway at the primary or side entrance of a house or building, designed to provide shelter while entering or exiting a vehicle; an architectural feature common to 18th- and 19th-century public buildings and large residences where coaches dropped off and picked up guests.

From the French “porte-cochère” meaning a “door for coaches.”

By Jim Dodson Photograph by Amy Freeman

S

ometime called a “coach gate” or “carriage porch,” it’s frequently found adorning historic homes and Victorian hotels, railway stations and large churches. Notable porte-cocheres include those found at the White House (added in 1830 and often referred to as the “North Portico”) and London’s Buckingham Palace.

Here in the South, the porte-cochere’s spiritual poor relation is the classic “carport,” an architectural innovation that was meant to replicate the elegance of classical porte-cocheres on a much smaller scale, extremely popular in middle-class residential homes built from the 1920s onward.

In reality and symbol, porte-cocheres seem to mean a great deal to Tennessee-born novelist and playwright Peter Taylor, best known for his stories of upper middle-class Southern families caught in sweeping social change during the 1940s and ’50s. Taylor met his wife, poet Eleanor Ross, at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University in 1943 and would go on to teach writing at her alma mater, Woman’s College — later named UNCGreensboro. Six years later, in July of 1949, perhaps his best-known short story, “Porte-Cochere” was published in The New Yorker. It later appeared in Taylor’s best collection of stories, The Old Forest, in 1985. The story involves an emotional battle between an obdurate father and his son, a theme that resurfaces in Taylor’s 1986 novel A Summons to Memphis, during which an angry grown son parks his car in the family’s porte-cochere — a symbol of decaying Old South values — to prevent meeting his father’s controversial fiancée.

Despite winning the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1986 for A Summons to Memphis, Taylor, who finished his academic life at the University of Virginia, once described himself as the “best known unknown writer in America.” Taylor died in 1994 at age 77. h

Here in the South, the porte-cochere’s spiritual poor relation is the classic “carport . . .

Click or Call We do it All Xan Tisdale 336-601-2337

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Spring/Summer 2016

Seasons • Style & Design 79

HomeWords

Ever So Humble A gifted writer reflects on her first grown-up digs in Greensboro

By Ashley Wahl

I

’m thinking back to my first apartment without roommates, a third-floor perch in downtown Greensboro on North Eugene Street. At once I’m standing in the narrow kitchen, early light filtering through the sash window while the aroma from the French press warms the air. Outside, a struggling band of potted herbs lines the rickety fire escape, and I can almost hear the neighbor pouring cereal next door.

On a sunny April day in 2011, while looking for a place to call home in the city I knew from my college days — days not too long gone for a dreamy young poet embarking on a grand new adventure with Greensboro’s then infant O.Henry magazine — my stomach turned. This is it, I recall thinking. On the shadowy fringe between a vibrant downtown and the city’s scenic and fashionable Fisher Park, I’d found my future home in the form of a quirky 1950s brick apartment — and, frankly, I was terrified.

And yet, through the eyes of an eternal romantic and recent boomeranger, the space had that “starving artist” type of character that made it oddly charming. Creaky wooden floors in the main living space. Retro black-and-white tiles in the bathroom.

A quirky niche in the bedroom wall fit for a rotary dial phone.

At $475/month, the price was right — even if there were cockroaches living inside the wafer-thin walls.

The building itself, L-shaped with four two-bedroom units and five one-bedroom units, had a common area with pollencaked patio furniture situated between the front entrances. No one ever used those doors (we entered through the back, up the fire escape), but if you stood quietly in the internal stairwell, you could hear an odd, echoey amalgam of what was happening in your neighbors’ apartments: laughter, arguments, guitar practice, dinner parties, football games — everything slightly amplified.

Before filling out the rental application, I knocked on a neighbor’s door — a doe-eyed twenty-something I’d just seen watering railing planters on the fire escape balcony. She looked friendly, like someone who might offer insight into what it was like to actually live there.

“Come in,” she said, holding her door open as I entered a breadbox of a kitchen with a half-stove and colorful coffee mugs hanging from tiny hooks above the kitchen sink.

Her living room, whimsically curated with fairy lights and vintage furniture, was quaint and cozy — just the kind of spot you’d pick for a young singer/songwriter with a mustached tuxedo cat named for silent film star Buster Keaton. The space was unmistakably hers, yet I could clearly see it filled with my own second-hand furniture, favorite books lining the living room shelves, my grandma’s drop-leaf table snug against the wall of the tiny kitchen.

Among the idiosyncrasies: stubborn windows, walls thin as

80 Seasons •

Style

& Design

Bible pages, outlets that would require two-prong adapters. In the summer, my future neighbor warned me, I’d have to choose between the deafening drone of window units or being too hot to sleep. But the sparkle in her eyes confirmed there was something special about this place, and I could feel it too.

Because it was small — no bigger than 500 square feet — I didn’t bring much furniture. Not that I would have had much to bring if space weren’t limited. Having lived with roommates in a furnished apartment at UNCG before boomeranging back to my parents’ house as a college grad trying to find my footing in the midst of the Great Recession, I simply hadn’t acquired much. A tired leather love seat, a small TV stand, a glass-top end table leftover from my grandparent’s yard sale, and my pièce de résistance — an antique vanity dresser I’d picked up from a curbside in Mount Airy and spray-painted sea-foam green. The kitchen table doubled as a writing desk, and my largest investment was the $200 futon that served as couch and guest bed.

But the space had great natural light, and on quiet mornings, I recall feeling deeply grateful for the tiny world that felt all mine — even if I’d been up half the night thanks to the college-age couple downstairs who decided to “rearrange their bedroom furniture” after Thirsty Thursday.

Life was raw and simple, and the intimate moments shared between neighbors — intentional or accidental — allowed me to see the beauty in the ordinary.

I knew it was temporary, but for nearly two years, while I penned stories for a magazine whose famous namesake is known for his twist endings, that one-bedroom space on North Eugene was my sanctuary in the literary city that granted me space and experience enough to understand, on a deeper level, what it means to be home.

As for my twist ending? I wouldn’t have changed a thing. h Ashley Wahl is the senior editor of O.Henry Seasons’ sister publication Salt, celebrating the art and soul of Wilmington.

Spring/Summer 2016

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